It's time for kids to go back to school, but what are they eating? The foods children consume now can adversely affect their future health, particularly their risk of developing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Join the September edition of Health Dialogues as we examine childhood nutrition -- in the busy home, in the lunchroom and in the lunchbox.

Listen to the program
Watch an audio slideshow of Balboa High School's Healthy Food Plan.
View a chart showing what some San Francisco elementary students are eating on a daily basis.
Watch a Sports4Kids Video
Join the Dialogue: Many schools in California ban junk food and sodas from campus. Is it wrong for schools to be enforcing eating habits? Or should they be doing more?

HOST: Scott Shafer

GUESTS:
Dana Woldow, Co-chair of the student nutrition and physical activity committee for the San Francisco Unified School District
Patricia Gray, Principal of Balboa High School, San Francisco
Round table of students from Balboa High School: Kristal Davila, Gisell Jimenez, Corrie Fong, Sylvia Brookback, Nancy Doan
Dr. Francine Kaufman, MD, Director of the Center for Diabetes at Children’s Hospital, Los Angeles
Matt Sharp, Senior Advocate at California Food Policy Advocates
Jill Violet, President and Founder of Sports4kids

KQED Public Radio 88.5FM premiere broadcast:
Thursday, September 18, 8:00 PM

Repeat broadcasts:
Friday, September 19, 2:00 AM
Saturday, September 20, 2:00 PM

Listen to The California Report: Health Dialogues -- Junk Food
Reporter: Sarah Varney
It's been a year since California's first-in-the-nation bans on soda and junk food have been phasing in on school campuses. Combating childhood obesity with these prohibitions is proving harder than advocates thought. But how well have the bans worked? Los Angeles was the first district in the state to go soda and junk food-free and provides a glimpse of the challenges other school districts will likely face.

Health Dialogues, a special series from The California Report, engages listeners in an ongoing discussion of California health care issues that are important to the underserved: children, low-income residents, minorities, people with disabilities, immigrants, and rural and migrant worker communities in particular. The series seeks to generate and facilitate dialogue between communities, health care providers and policy-makers.

I'm a very impatient person, but on this trip to Minneapolis patience and forbearance paid off in spades. That said, St. Paul-based Izzy's Ice Cream was harder to get into than SPQR at 7:00 on a Friday.

Our first attempt was via the web on Saturday morning. Since we were crossing the grand Mississippi to pay a virgin visit to the St. Paul Farmer's Market, we thought we'd drop by for a frozen scoop or two before lunch. The website put Izzy's opening hours at 2:00pm, which rather late for what is still essentially summer, but we decided to swing by anyway. Maybe the website was wrong.

We got Izzy's, which was clearly closed, and looked at the hours painted on the glass door. They stated they opened at 12:00pm. It was 11:00am. Without anything left to do in the capital city, we went back to Minneapolis to lunch at Bryant Lake Bowl. (This was a happy side trip because we had our first taste of Surly beer, but more on that later.) At 12:30 we headed back across the river. Izzy's was still not open. This time we found a red sign stating that their "fall" opening hours (valid only for September and October because true Minnesotans know that November is not fall but winter) was 2:00 pm. Lord.

Frustrated and yearning for the elusive salted caramel I had sampled over a year ago, we trudged to Kowalski's on Lake Street. We knew they carried Izzy's but sadly, not one pint of salted caramel could be found. I didn't want to be mad at Izzy's -- after all, they were (by their calculations) the first shop in the nation to be run by solar power! Also, I really wanted to get my husband in on that salted caramel because the lines at Bi-Rite have been Bi-Ridiculous.

Our third and final attempt on Monday afternoon actually got us in the open door, but as we scanned the list of ice creams, we saw no Salted Caramel. We looked in the pint freezer. No salted caramel.

We sighed sadly and made other delicious choices -- sampling an incredible pink grapefruit sorbet before settling on seasonal pumpkin and coffee -- but when I mentioned to the girl helping me that I had been hoping for the mythical salted caramel, she said, "We're making it right now. We'll have it tomorrow." I said, "Oh, I'm leaving town tomorrow..." She said, "We'll have it for you when you get back." "No, I live in San Francisco," I mourned. "Hang on," she said. She went next door -- TO WHERE THEY WERE MAKING THE ICE CREAM -- and came pack with a fresh pint. "We haven't blast-chilled it yet, so it's more like soft serve consistency," she told me apologetically.

Did I care? I would have taken it if it was fully liquid! (Also, since my father has this odd habit of microwaving his ice cream to make ice cream soup, this would be better for him.) It was served that night after dinner and received rave reviews from the whole family.

Sweet was the long-sought taste of salted caramel, but sweeter was the way we got it.