AUGUSTA – In an effort to get Mainers healthier, what if the state were to:

• Tax soda 2 cents for every 12 ounces, with the money going to school health programs.

• Mandate schools give students 150 minutes of physical activity every week.

• Mandate schools give students at least 30 minutes for lunch, to avoid a fast-food meal.

• Force chain restaurants to provide nutrition information – calories and fat content – about the food they sell.

• Use 1 percent of the cost of all road-building or road-improvement projects to create walking and bicycle paths.

• Mandate that food sold on state government grounds be 100 percent healthy; no more soda, candy bars or chips.

• Ban advertising of unhealthy food, such as fast-food meals targeted at young children and junk food advertised on school grounds.

Those were among the ideas considered Friday by a state commission studying how to reduce Maine’s obesity problem: A majority of Mainers have health risks because they’re overweight or obese, according to a state study.

The recommendations discussed Friday will be reconsidered by the Commission to Study Public Health when it next meets on Aug. 3. After that, a public hearing on the proposals will be held in September, said commission co-chair Sen. John Martin, D-Eagle Lake. The recommendations will then become legislation considered by next year’s Legislature.

The commission was formed last year to help lawmakers decide how to encourage Mainers to achieve and maintain a healthy weight.

“Nutritional advice in the daily media is in utter shambles,” said Donald Nicolson of Farmington, who gave a presentation to the commission Friday. The retiree lost 75 pounds after researching recommendations by Harvard University expert Walter C. Willett. Nicolson now teaches nutrition at the Senior College in Farmington.

The enemy is too much sugar and starch in foods, and too much food being hawked by the industry, Nicolson said.

“American food producers harvest twice what our nation really needs for sustenance, thus they must sell 320,000 different food items or go belly up.” That leads to “extended bellies and wide hips. … The food industry refuses to agree that people should eat less.”

Meanwhile Maine’s physical education programs in schools “are a sham.” In most high schools, physical education is only required of freshmen. Nicolson said he’d like to see Maine kids get to school by “walking behind school buses.”

Dr. Robert Holmberg, a Bangor pediatrician who serves on the commission’s Subcommittee on Children, Nutrition and Schools, agreed, saying schools should be expected to develop coordinated health programs that include more physical and nutrition education.

Food and beverages with too much sugar and fat should not be sold on school grounds, Holmberg said. He also wants schools to give students 150 minutes a week of physical activity. “It doesn’t need to be an extra expense,” he said. “We’re encouraging all teachers and principals to join children in getting out and walk more during the school day.”

Taxing soda was another idea raised. Most people drink too much soda, and even diet soda isn’t healthy, the doctor said. “Just like with tobacco, we’re looking at a similar approach,” Holmberg said. “If you increase the price of a sugar-added beverage it’ll decrease the demand for it.”

The commission is headed by Martin and Rep. Margaret Craven, D-Lewiston, but includes several doctors and dentists, nutritionists, physical education experts, food vendors and educators.

For more information, go to http://www.state.me.us/legis/opla/pubhealt.htm.

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