Stahl: Yeah I was thinking when I started with WIC that I’d be working with more undernourised thin kids [who] didn’t have enough to eat in the household.

Grant: About 100,000 Ohio children are still at risk of such hunger. But malnourishment among most of the poor today means that they are making poor food choices. And it starts when many are still in the crib...

Stahl: I see Kool-Aid in bottles for little babies; I think that’s a problem. I’ve seen coffee in bottles; I’ve seen tea in bottles. In my own experience as a middle class person in this society, I always felt like a cereal, milk and maybe fruit or juice was a breakfast. We do find with the lower class that chips and Pepsi is breakfast and I was shocked at first. But I had to hold myself back from passing judgment...like how can you do that? Don’t you know any better? They don’t. They don’t know any better; that’s how they eat for breakfast and that’s how their parents ate for breakfast.

Grant: The director of the medina county WIC program is Pam Shank...

Shank: The people who don’t grow up with fruits and vegetables on their table tend not to eat them because they didn’t see anybody else eating them. They don’t know how to fix them and they’re not familiar with them, and they just assume they don’t like them so that’s why we’re trying to break that cycle.

Grant: Even with WIC’s efforts, the poor are still gaining weight faster than middle and upper income families. In households with less than $10,000 annual income, 33% of blacks and 19% of whites are obese. Those percentages fall as income levels rise. There are many reasons for this. Standing outside a downtown Akron convenience store, 12-year old Mackensie rips open a piece of bazooka gum...

Grant: What did you buy today?

Mackensie: Doritos and two honey buns.

Grant: Honey buns, chips, and sodas are all cheap at this corner store. Poor families in the inner city don’t have quick access to well-stocked suburban grocery stores. It’s easier for them to go to fast food restaurants, or purchase processed packaged foods at the convenience store. Marion Nestle, author of the book “Food Politics,” says that is often the case for the middle class, when both parents are working all day.

Nestle: People do the best they can so they’re going to bring in take-out food. They’re going to bring in things in packages because they’re cheap. They’re going to get Kraft macaroni and cheese because it hardly costs anything and has lots and lots of calories and they’re going to pay as little as they possibly can for the largest number of calories and not think about those other issues because those other issues are too hard to think about.

Grant: Not only that, but parents of every class have to fight the food industry, which markets directly to children. Nestle blames the government for subsidizing the sugar industry. On the contrary, Morgan Downey, director of the American Obesity Association said on NPR that the government should be taxing high sugar foods.

Downey: We know that in human and in rat studies that if you put a rat in a cage and you over supply fats and carbohydrates half will fail; they will over consume those. The normal controls that we develop though evolution in controlling our diets get overwhelmed.

Grant: Downey debated John Doyle of the Center for Consumer Freedom...

Doyle: The comment that we just heard about the rats...just as food is not tobacco, humans are not rats and rats don’t get a chance to look in the mirror and say, “I think I’m getting a little chubby, I think I’ll cut back a little.” And that distinction is what allows us as responsible humans to live in a society and make our own choices without being forced by taxes or bans or what have you.

Grant: But there is one place the government does have control over what children eat. That’s in schools...

Foulk: You’ll see peas and carrots here. Broccoli with cheese sauce...these are carrot sticks and they come in little three-ounce bags...

Grant: Debra Foulk plans the menus for Akron city schools.

Foulk: This one’s going to be new. This is a brand new menu.

Grant: The menu also includes burgers and fries, hot dogs, and cookies.

Foulk: We must meet a certain amount of protein, calories, fat, and saturated fat and meet a certain amount of vitamin A, vitamin C, iron, calcium, sodium, and cholesterol [guidelines]. We pretty much are evaluated on the whole range of nutritional information that a menu can give.

Grant: When Foulk was growing up, she says kids went home for lunch. Today, many kids who might otherwise go hungry get free and reduced-priced meals. To make money, some schools have made deals with fast food chains and soft drink companies to sell their products in the cafeteria.

Grant: Nutritionist Amy Laneau has written a book on childhood nutrition and worries about this trend.

Laneau: The whole system is not currently designed to promote the health of children. It’s designed to keep them fat which unfortunately not the same thing.

Grant: Laneau says the government provides schools with commodities that can’t be sold elsewhere...such as low-grade meats.

Laneau: I think that the government structure needs to support schools in making an effort to serve kids healthier food.

Grant: Upper-middle class kids are eating just as bad as poor kids in many schools. But some districts are starting to make changes. In Los Angeles, they removed soda machines. In one Wisconsin district, they made a dramatic menu change. Greg Bretthauer, dean of Central Alternative High School in Appleton, Wisconsin says they replaced pops and pizzas with fruit-based drinks, grain breads, and a salad bar.

Bretthauer: And the purpose of this was to see if that didn’t improve attendance and academic performance and kids’ abilities to concentrate...and it did and it does.

Grant: Bretthauer says grades are up, truancy and fighting are almost non-existent now, and the hallways are calmer and kids come to class ready to learn. But Appleton is an upper middle class community. Marion Nestle says it’s more likely schools will make changes for wealthier parents.

Nestle: And that’s a class issue again. So you have parents who think they have a right to make sure that their kids are fed adequately, and they’re in the school screaming about what’s going on, and you know that the schools will listen.

Grant: But low and middle income parents don’t seem likely to call on the schools to improve nutrition, when families aren’t doing it at home. The U.S. Surgeon General says 60% of American adults and 13% of children are overweight or obese.