Junk Food Should Be Banned From Elementary, Middle, and High Schools

I'll start by thanking my opponent for an intriguing debate. I appreciate his perspective greatly, as well as his arguments, and I feel that this has been a solid debate over the issues involved in schools affording students access to junk food. That being said, I will use this final round to engage in some rebuttal of both Pro's R2 post, followed by analysis of his R3 rebuttal and conclusions, and then set down my conclusions and reasons why voters should afford me the win. Before I launch into this, however, I'd like to quickly go through the citations of my opponent. In R2, he provides 3 citations. The first is just a set of statistics on obesity, which doesn't really benefit his case. He has to prove that he's solving for obesity for this link to function into the impact calculus, and since my case also aims to reduce obesity, it is essentially just extra information and background. The same is true of his second link, which he provides again in R3 as his second link. This affords no benefit to him in this debate. The third link is really the only one in this whole debate that supports his argument, and it doesn't do a good job of that either. Firstly, it specifically utilizes USDA dietary guidelines, which are separate from Pro's case. It's supporting a separate set of guidelines, which actually are more closely related to mine, since they still allow access to a "high carbohydrate and low fat" diet, which includes junk food, just in smaller amounts. In other words, it's not supportive of a ban, which is Pro's entire case. Secondly, it only applies to the National School Lunch Program, where students lack choice anyway. Therefore, the loss of choice in meal selection on school campuses isn't being evaluated. In R3, we get 4 links. As I said, the second is rehashed. The third is my own link, and I'll get to his points here that over the course of my rebuttal. The first link, again, doesn't support his point. It's a dissimilar ban, focused on a few key pieces of junk food instead of a broad effort to remove all junk food. More importantly, it doesn't provide any actual support for the argument that Pro himself hasn't stated. This link actually hurts his case, as I'll describe in my rebuttal. The last link, again, doesn't support a ban. Getting a full meal of fast food 3 days a week is far in excess of what my own case would allow, and as such, we both garner the benefits to learning, though I will restate how Pro is harming learning among students. Now, going into rebuttal. Pro starts his R2 by arguing that obesity is a problem. We agree here. He says that there is a correlation between school lunches and obesity. I've put multiple responses here about how nutrition is actually most influenced by what children eat at home, that children will simply bring junk food to school, and that this correlation only exists between obesity and TOO MUCH junk food. Pro has provided no response to these points (his only response being that they don't seek vending machines or fast food on campus), so extend them. Look to my [1] where I show that no single approach will change the way these kids eat. Look at my [2], where I provided support for kids bringing junk food to school. These essentially mitigate his point that school lunches specifically influence behavior by themselves. He talks about choices, "preempting" my argument, or at least so he says. But he's really ignored the majority of my points here. Extend my points about how removing any measure of choice removes their ability to make health decision for themselves, and how this will lead to a lack of internalization, meaning there will be 0 long-term benefit. Extend my [8], where I showed that control measures like this will make children act out and rebel, which impacts their learning as well as their diet. Pro's only response here is that enforcement needs to happen in order to teach students good eating habits, but he never states how a ban accomplishes this goal of education, something I've argued won't happen. Nor does Pro state a harm to my case, rather just saying that too many freedoms are problematic, something he never warrants. He has dropped these two points meaning that, at best, he gets some short-term benefit at more significant long-term cost. Pro states that we should care because of the burden this places on society. I would contend that, while we should care about this burden, we should do as much as possible to minimize any possible fallout that results from the implementation of policies that aim to eradicate obesity. So let's talk about that fallout. In this case, Pro is not only failing to respond, but he's actively biting the harms that I'm talking about. Pro provides absolutely no response to the increased costs I present. Extend my [3], which talks about how healthier foods cost more to purchase. Considering all schools will have to stock up heavily on these healthier items after tossing out all the junk food, they will incur dramatically large costs. I'll get into what that means in a moment. Extend my point about the uncertainties in Pro's definitions, as I think these are likelier to lead to harsher bans, meaning that schools will have few, if any, cheap options for feeding their students the appropriate vitamins and minerals. This means that students will end up malnourished, or the schools themselves will pay far larger costs. Extend my point about less parental participation, and what that means for the education system in their district and for the schools' bottom lines. Extend my [4], which shows the importance of soda and snack vending machine contracts in their funds as well. Pro's first citation in R3 only makes this worse for him. "The administration has proposed spending $1 billion more each year on the $18 billion meals program, but the increase may not be enough to cover the extra costs. " In other words, this program that is more minimalistic than Pro's requires far more than a billion dollars a year to cover the costs. That's not to mention that this link supports my point of choice being integral to their long term health. So voters are buying every word of this. They're also buying the outcomes, which also go cold dropped. Extend my [4] again, which shows that the likeliest place that money will be taken from is health classes and P. E. Extend my point about masking, and how a ban creates incentive to spend less in other areas relating to student health. In this case, Pro is actively supporting these impacts! Extend all of his own points (including the "Why Health Education Is Important" and "A Federal Effort to Push Junk Food Out of School" links), and all of the harms of this ban become apparent. Pro is right - "Health education builds on students' knowledge, skills, and positive attitudes about health. " He doesn't seem to realize that by dropping my points, this becomes a major harm to his case, since health education completely disappears. Extend my [6], where I show the benefits of P. E. as well, revealing yet another harm to his case. Lastly, going back onto my case, his only response here comes from this Telegraph point that students who eat too much junk food will do poorly. First off, this ignores the fact that any student can bring in food whether a ban or restriction exists or not. Second, my case solves for this by restricting access sufficiently to get it under that amount. Third, a ban actually would do worse for both health outcomes and learning outcomes. Most of the warrants for this I've described above, but I have another more extension. Extend my [7], where I show that even the CDC supports the consumption of small amounts of comfort food for health benefits. Conclusions: So, how should voters decide this debate? Ask yourselves the following questions: 1) Will a ban on junk food in schools accomplish its intended goals with regards to health outcomes? 2) Will this ban avoid substantial harms as a result of its implementation? 3) Is a ban justified by comparison to enforced restrictions on the amount of junk food schoolchildren can have? The answers to all of these questions is no. I've shown that even the health outcomes of the ban would be minimal at best. I've shown that the loss of funds, support, and the masking that results from this kind of policy would cause dramatic harms to students' educations and their health. Lastly, I've shown that the types of restrictions I've suggested will garner all the benefits of Pro's case without biting the harms I've presented. Pro's links do more to support my case than they do his, and I never see a single argument that supports an absolute ban, which is his whole case! There's simply no reason to justify voting Pro.