Beverage group: Pull soda from primary schools

I don't know that I completely disagree with the move to get junk food and Coke (yes I said Coke, not soda or pop) out of schools. While I am generally loathe for the government to try to tell people how to live their lives, I do agree that this situation is different because we are talking about children.

However, the lead paragraph of this story really caught my attention:

"The American Beverage Association is recommending limiting the availability of soft drinks in schools across the country, a move that comes amid increased pressure to curb the epidemic of childhood obesity."

When I was growing up, almost everyone I knew drank Coke (of course this was in Atlanta and Coke is the official drink and is probably cheaper than water). And I don't recall us getting fat. But I do recall something that we did then that I rarely see happen now.

We played outside.

We didn't sit inside for hours playing video games. We didn't surf the net. We played football in the fall, basketball in the winter, and baseball in the spring. Rare was the week growing up that I wasn't outside at least one day playing with my friends. Kinda hard to get fat doing that. And it wasn't for lack of eating. I still haven't figured out how my parents afforded all the food my brother and I ate. The snack food industry is still trying to recover from the sharp decline in sales when we left home and stopped eating all the time.

It is sad that the only time I see kids playing now is if I am at a park with my kids. I never see kids playing in the street or in yards. What has this world come to?