Columnist Susan Snyder: Food news is fun to snack on

Thursday, July 28, 2005 | 8:21 a.m.

Penn State University researchers say high school students will choose a healthier item at lunch if the fat and calorie content is posted.

At one of the six Pennsylvania high schools studied researchers noted that 380 pepperoni pizzas were ordered daily, on average, when nutritional information was not posted.

The daily average dropped to 346 when the fat and calorie content was shown, while the number of "healthier" cheese pizzas sold increased from 37 to 60.

What does it all mean?

Well, they can read.

Researchers conceded that their methods did not measure the effects of peer pressure ("You're going to eat that?!"). Nor did it address the possibility of boredom ("You're going to eat that again ?!").

The latter likely plays little or no part, for a teenager's motto is: If it tastes good or irritates your parents, stay with it.

I consumed a hot processed ham-and-cheese sandwich, french fries and a Coke for lunch for four straight years at Muncie (Ind.) Northside High School. Anything green would have been a Lifesaver.

On rare occasions I would opt for the doggie-dinner sausage pizza. But for the most part it was cholesterol on a bun, cholesterol in a bag and refined sugar in a can. Then, nod off during geometry.

Somehow, these typical teen eating habits have turned into a teen obesity epidemic. So adults are scrambling to figure out how to curb the bulge of youth and the life-shortening maladies it brings.

Even California's Governator (whose wife looks like an eating disorder draped in Versace) is backing legislation to ban soda machines and junk food in public schools.

Why the fuss?

Children are our (retirement) future. We need to protect their (employable years) lives.

I don't recall the governor of Indiana threatening removal of the Coke machine (we'd have hidden it in the band room) or fretting over giving us information about what we were being served.

Aside from breaching school cafeteria policy, telling us what actually was in that stuff would have prevented us from eating altogether most days. We didn't want to know.

So where were the food police back then?

At home. That's my brother's theory.

We got to talking about it last weekend, and recalled that our family ate in restaurants maybe once or twice a month. Cokes were something we had two or three times a week, not two or three times a day.

Desserts were even more rare -- typically birthday cake or pumpkin pie. That's four birthdays, Christmas and Thanksgiving.

The rest of the time there likely was some vanilla ice cream in the freezer or -- yegods -- Jell-O with pieces of fruit in it.

Gee, there's a crowd-pleaser. (Rest assured, my mother is firing off an e-mail right now. I hate the Internet almost as much as orange Jell-O with bananas.)

Maybe we could eat lousy food at school and after Friday night football games because the food police were at home and with us most of the time.

Still, I'm all for posting nutritional information in high school cafeterias. It'll strip the mystique from mystery meat, but at least they will know what's in the Jell-O.