The city wants to make sure day care kids get in shape — and that means more exercise and less juice.
In a pint-sized version of ex-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s attempt to ban super-sized sugary drinks, the city’s Board of Health on Monday announced dramatically stricter rules for all licensed city day cares, including a limit on how much juice kids can drink.
Under the new rules, designed to try to cut obesity rates, children must be at least 2 years old before they can take their first sip of juice at day care, and they are only allowed four ounces a day.
Only 100% juice is allowed.
The old rules allowed babies as young as eight months to guzzle six ounces of 100% juice a day.
Other new rules restrict kids’ “sedentary time” to less than 30 minutes a day — down from 60 minutes a day currently — and only one half-hour of screen time a week.
Previously, kids could watch TV or play with devices like iPads up to 60 minutes a day.
The “sedentary time” does not include naps, or time spent reading, doing puzzles or painting.
Not all parents were thrilled with the new regulations. “It’s like the big soda ban under Bloomberg!” said Brooklyn mom of two Victoria Clark,33.
She said the rules were too “strict” for her taste.
“TV can be educational, and not all juices are bad,” she said.
She said she prefers to talk to the day care provider about what she thinks her child needs — and thinks the city should chill a bit.
“They’re only kids,” she said.
New dad Eric Diaz, also of Brooklyn, agreed that the city is out of line.
“They want to control everything,” said Diaz, 31. “Every kid has their own level of intake.”
Other parents applauded the new health regime.
“I would never send my kid to a day care where they are watching TV,” said Elizabeth Clements, a mother of three who lives in TriBeCa.
Helen Chernikoff, 42, a mom of two from Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, said sometimes the mayor knows best.
“Juice and TV are bad and I would embrace the nanny state when it comes to this stuff,” she said
The rule changes were approved by the Board of Health earlier this month and posted in the City Record Monday, as required by law.
Officials say that the dramatic changes are necessary to stem skyrocketing childhood obesity rates.
According to the notice in the City Record, a whopping 15% of 3-year-old and 17% of 4-year-old preschoolers from low- income families were deemed obese in 2011.
That’s why it’s important to make changes now, the Board of Health says.
“Dietary and lifestyle habits and preferences developed at a very early age can often persist and may have profound impact on an individual’s health later on,” the Board wrote in the City Record.
The changes apply to non-residential day care programs and pre-schools, which are regulated by the city.
Home-based day cares are regulated by the state, which has its own rules.
The new changes recall Bloomberg’s failed crusade to ban sugary drinks over 16 ounces, which the courts struck down after soda companies sued the city.
Mayor de Blasio has said that he agreed with the concept of the soda ban, and would try and bring it back through other means.
The Board of Health also passed new safety rules for day cares. Because of several incidents in which kids left the building by themselves, the day cares will now have to have a “panic bar” on all exits, out of reach of the kids.
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