Pouring rights contracts and childhood overweight: a critical theory perspective.

PURPOSE

To examine school environments, and in particular, pouring rights contracts and how they relate to childhood overweight from a critical theory perspective.

CONCLUSIONS

Pouring rights contracts provide a profit to powerful mega-corporations at the expense of children's health. There is a need to move beyond a solely individual approach to addressing childhood overweight and involve a social ecology approach. This would involve a push for social change, including removal of soda machines from schools, and changing marketing practices targeted at children.

PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS

Nurses are poised in community situations to actively effect social changes to improve health outcomes of our nation's most vulnerable people, but nurses must get involved.