Health, football, spanking & pie

By: | TriCities.com
Published: October 24, 2009

THUMBS UP TO:

Tennessee making healthier strides

Tennessee is making some progress in serving more-nutritious food and drinks in its public schools.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, compared to all other states, Tennessee has the highest percentage of schools (66.1 percent) that don’t sell sports drinks.

Additionally, Tennessee is ranked second, at 74 percent, in the number of schools that don’t sell soft drinks or juice drinks that aren’t 100 percent juice.

The results, State Health Commissioner Susan R. Cooper said, are from “determined efforts to ensure that only healthy food options are available in Tennessee schools.”

This week there has been a national call for increasing the amount of vegetables, fruits and whole grains served to children in their school cafeterias. Seeing the improvements Tennessee is making, by reducing access to sugary drinks, is another good step to good health.

Drive to bring back ETSU football

A group determined to return college football to East Tennessee State University is taking its campaign on the road. Because ETSU doesn’t have a homecoming to celebrate, the Buccaneer Football Friends Foundation is going to the Tusculum-Catawba college game to spread the message of support to bring back a football program at ETSU.

“The idea is just to continue the effort of gathering support in the community to one day have ETSU football come back,” Buccaneer Football Friends Foundation Member Matt Wilhjelm told the Bristol Herald Courier. “Is this going to be the one event that everyone comes and that’s going to be the tipping point to bring back ETSU football? Boy, I hope so. Whether it is or not, I don’t know.”

The Buccaneer Football Friends Foundation will tailgate leading up to the game, which kicks off at 2 p.m.

Last week, an ETSU athletics department spokesman said the university was still open to bringing football back, but at this time there is no funding to restart the program.

Persistence and enthusiasm is what will bring football back to ETSU and we admire the stalwart supporters who know that football adds to a robust college experience and yields increased financial support for the university.

Closer to banning corporal punishment

On Monday, the Bristol Tennessee School Board took one step closer to ending corporal punishment in its schools – a practice that should have been banned long ago. On a 4-1 vote, board members approved a recommendation by Director of Schools Gary Lilly that the district drop corporal punishment as a discipline option.

The only holdout was Kelly Buskell III, who doesn’t support corporal punishment, but said he didn’t see a reason for the ban. And Buskell rightly noted that it is rarely used now.

Our bottom line? Spanking at school leaves personnel vulnerable to allegations of inappropriate touching. It’s banned in 29 other states, including Virginia. And there are other ways to discipline children that prove effective.

Let this method go.

The board must hold a second vote Dec. 14 to approve the ban. We hope that is the fate of corporal punishment in Bristol, Tenn.

THUMBS DOWN TO:

Shortage of pumpkin pie filling? Oh no!

OK, this isn’t the end of the world, but for fall bakers, a lack of pumpkin pie filling is a serious culinary calamity. Canned pumpkin pie filling is going to be hard to find, for the second year in a row, due to bad weather in a single village that is home to a single company that controls more than 80 percent of the nation’s pumpkin pie mix. That’s Morton, Ill., population 16,000.

Supply is expected to be tight through Thanksgiving, a spokeswoman told Media General News Service.

For now, no suppliers are limiting individual purchases of canned pumpkin pie mix but companies say customers could see empty shelves.