We have reached an all time high in the US!

Steve, don't get me started on school lunches....whoops, I think it is too late...

My wife volunteers at the school our daughter goes to, and sees first hand which side of the "balanced" lunch goes to waste every day...likewise has seen the other side of the arguement (a kid actually brought a "sandwich" consisting of saltines wrapped in a white tortilla shell). The system is broken, and government regulation is NO SUBSTITUTE for common sense and parrential involvement. If you want to get really scarred, watch some of Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. We don't even have a TV, but I have seen some of them on Hulu or Youtube or some such. It is scarry the stranglehold which the Agricultural/Industrial complex has on America, especially the school system.

Chuck
 
Unbelieveable isn't it. If you want more and more of this, vote for the status quo. If you want real hope and change, vote for anyone other than Obama. Not saying Republicans are any better but my belief is that they wouldn't cram stuff like this down our throats. Sort of like requiring us to purchase health care. If this is found legal, just wait until 10 years from now when this is the biggest government giveaway. I can see it now, "if you can't aford to buy the mandatory health care, the governement will buy it for you".

Oh yeah. If I was the Mom of this child, I would send the school the bill for the confiscated lunch she packed including the cost to go grocery shopping.

Mark W
 
Last edited:
Recently schools here in SD were told they need to have more diversity in veggies. One of the suggestion was to start serving okra... ok okra may be fine if you are brought up on it but here in SD not a bit of that is going to be eaten. My mom works at a school and sees a lot of that 'good' food being dumped.

It is amazing to me that they claim kids are both going hungry and getting fat on the same school lunches. I wish schools would just worry about the subjects and stopped trying to be mommy to every kid.

Besides I can't figure out what was wrong with that meal for a 4 year old that 3 chicken nuggets solved. They have no way to know what that kid eats the rest of the day... but I bet they want to know. And they say conservatives are controlling.

Tim
 
I spent a few hours in the dumpsters at school looking for a retainer. I am relieved now by the fact that should I ever loose my means, I will be well fed on delicious and nutritions food, all still in wrapper, by visiting an elementary school dumpster.
 
Did you know that greasy, salty french fries count as a vegetable in shcool lunches? Besides the fact that they aren't healthy, they're a freeking grain!

Okay...maybe time for a new avitar...

nqny1s.jpg


If you want to read more on related subjects of how screwed up our culture is in realtion to food, Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemmia is a very good read. A little lighter read is Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me (he made a movie too). We have a few more in our library I have been meaning to read, but just haven't found the time. For those of you that would rather be feed your information through the boob tube, check out the movie Food Inc. for a good documantary, or for a political satire approach Fast Food Nation...I'm not a big Bruce Willis fan, but he does a spactacular supporting role in this.

Okay, down off the soapbox...

Chuck
 
Not sure if it ever aired in the US but when I lived in New Zealand there was a TV series on called Jamie's School Dinners, where the chef Jamie Oliver went to different schools in England and examined their lunch programs. Pretty much the same situation as here, but the thing that really stuck with me was when he visited classrooms and held up different vegetables, and only a handfull of kids could identify basic vegetables like peppers and eggplant. He did the same thing in Italy and every kid could name every vegetable he showed them. It was actually a law in Italy that school food had to be local, fresh and organic.

What was really interesting to me is that he got a few schools to ditch their normal program and start feeding the kids fresh-cooked veggies and meat from local sources, and also got rid of soda and candy machines in the schools. The kid's average test scores went way up and behavior problems went way down. Unfortunately I don't see anything like this happening here. What it comes down to is parents taking responsibility for their own kid's food.
 
Last edited:
I spent a few hours in the dumpsters at school looking for a retainer. I am relieved now by the fact that should I ever loose my means, I will be well fed on delicious and nutritions food, all still in wrapper, by visiting an elementary school dumpster.
Click to expand...


ok, I will admit to doing the EXACT same thing, except it was for that day it was chili.....................I only could wish for wrappers.....And you are right, you could live VERY well off that food.

and yes, it was found.....
 
To borrow a line from Dennis Miller..."Now I don't want to go off on a rant here people, but...."

Since WHEN do we have to have Lunch Inspectors? All of the gaping holes in our educational system, producing high school graduates that can't read, write coherently or even simply make change, and the FOOD is our concern? That's like saying the loss of life on the Titanic was unavoidable because so many people couldn't swim. How about we take a little wider view and not hit the iceberg first?

I'm glad that my tax dollars are being efficiently spent. Let's break this farce down for a minute: Mom packs a lunch that is pretty universal from the 1950's to today...sandwich, fruit, chips and drink. Sounds a lot like some of the lunches I took to school as a kid, although in grade school, I actually walked home and ate lunch...shocking I know, but hey, somehow I survived it all. Back to the story at hand, some person with a title and a mission determined that particular lunch was Not Good Enough. So, in place of the lunch that Mom packed, this little girl got a cafeteria lunch. Having eaten in public school and university cafeterias, and actually having been subjected to food poisoning by my high school cafeteria, I can tell you for damn sure that what the little girl got on her plate was far less valuable than what Mom packed. Maybe nutritionally it was better overall, but this works under the assumption that the child actually EATS everything on the plate. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The kid ate....wait for it!!!!...three chicken nuggets. The tasty, fried food, and nothing else on the tray. I'm not even a parent, and I'm not surprised in the least that the kid went for the nuggets and left the rest...

I don't know which part of the story to be the most incredulous about...the fact that we have a Lunch Inspector who adjudicates what is or isn't appropriate; that they ignored the actual rule which says that if the lunch from home is missing some item from the balanced meal list that the school is to provide THAT ITEM, not replace the entire lunch; or that the Lunch Inspector is so ignorant that he or she assumed the child would eat the entire healthy meal, not just the chicken nuggets, even though Mom wasn't there.

If this was a movie, this is where the villagers would be storming the castle with torches and pitchforks. Instead, in real life, we are forced to endure just this kind of idiocy every day. Only in the eyes of the Federal Government does three chicken nuggets constitute a healthier meal than the sack lunch Mom packed. Instead of providing a meal for a child who actually needed it, 90% of the provided food went into the trash, as did the little girl's sandwich (at least).

And what message does this really send to the kid? Mom doesn't really know what you need...here, have some nuggets. We have the fattest, unhealthiest society in history, and what do we include in a healthy cafeteria lunch? Chicken nuggets.

I'm just shaking my head here. If the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions, we are well on the way to creating an 8-lane superhighway...
 
I volunteer in a program, and part of what I do is prepare a meal for the kids 2 days a month. Its shocking to see that a lot of the kids have never eaten a fresh carrot before (based on them all looking at it and one kid eating it like a corn on the cob). Whats even weirder is that the other adults in the program look forward to the food because its the only home cooked meal they get all week... seems to me the system may have failed a long time ago if the adults around here don't know how to turn on their stoves.

The other thing that I disagree with is kids drinking energy drinks for breakfast now, and coffee is served in junior high. Do kids really need all that extra sugar and caffeine? Its 1/4 cup of sugar in those things (and most sodas as well).

guess I must be getting old if I am saying "Back when I was your age we didn't have a wii, we played super mario, or kick the can" hehe.
 
To borrow a line from Dennis Miller..."Now I don't want to go off on a rant here people, but...."

Since WHEN do we have to have Lunch Inspectors? All of the gaping holes in our educational system, producing high school graduates that can't read, write coherently or even simply make change, and the FOOD is our concern? That's like saying the loss of life on the Titanic was unavoidable because so many people couldn't swim. How about we take a little wider view and not hit the iceberg first?

I'm glad that my tax dollars are being efficiently spent. Let's break this farce down for a minute: Mom packs a lunch that is pretty universal from the 1950's to today...sandwich, fruit, chips and drink. Sounds a lot like some of the lunches I took to school as a kid, although in grade school, I actually walked home and ate lunch...shocking I know, but hey, somehow I survived it all. Back to the story at hand, some person with a title and a mission determined that particular lunch was Not Good Enough. So, in place of the lunch that Mom packed, this little girl got a cafeteria lunch. Having eaten in public school and university cafeterias, and actually having been subjected to food poisoning by my high school cafeteria, I can tell you for damn sure that what the little girl got on her plate was far less valuable than what Mom packed. Maybe nutritionally it was better overall, but this works under the assumption that the child actually EATS everything on the plate. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The kid ate....wait for it!!!!...three chicken nuggets. The tasty, fried food, and nothing else on the tray. I'm not even a parent, and I'm not surprised in the least that the kid went for the nuggets and left the rest...

I don't know which part of the story to be the most incredulous about...the fact that we have a Lunch Inspector who adjudicates what is or isn't appropriate; that they ignored the actual rule which says that if the lunch from home is missing some item from the balanced meal list that the school is to provide THAT ITEM, not replace the entire lunch; or that the Lunch Inspector is so ignorant that he or she assumed the child would eat the entire healthy meal, not just the chicken nuggets, even though Mom wasn't there.

If this was a movie, this is where the villagers would be storming the castle with torches and pitchforks. Instead, in real life, we are forced to endure just this kind of idiocy every day. Only in the eyes of the Federal Government does three chicken nuggets constitute a healthier meal than the sack lunch Mom packed. Instead of providing a meal for a child who actually needed it, 90% of the provided food went into the trash, as did the little girl's sandwich (at least).

And what message does this really send to the kid? Mom doesn't really know what you need...here, have some nuggets. We have the fattest, unhealthiest society in history, and what do we include in a healthy cafeteria lunch? Chicken nuggets.

I'm just shaking my head here. If the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions, we are well on the way to creating an 8-lane superhighway...
Click to expand...


As for the overall issue... Although I am no expert, I believe the link between nutrition and school performance and behaviour is well documented (link to a summary of primary research on the topic: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/pubs/learning.pdf). Does it make sense to spend your tax dollars teaching kids that are unable to learn because they lack basic needs. This is one approach to try to keep from wasting your tax dollars as far as I can see.

Obviously, piss poor execution of the program - no question, colossal let down and embarrassment. I don't have a solution, but the biggest waste in my eye is to put kids in the classroom and set them up to fail because they can't learn or behave because their nutritional needs are not met. Flog the parents maybe? Either way, I only make these points because no one has mentioned or clarified why such programs exist.
 
To borrow a line from Dennis Miller..."Now I don't want to go off on a rant here people, but...."

Since WHEN do we have to have Lunch Inspectors? All of the gaping holes in our educational system, producing high school graduates that can't read, write coherently or even simply make change, and the FOOD is our concern? That's like saying the loss of life on the Titanic was unavoidable because so many people couldn't swim. How about we take a little wider view and not hit the iceberg first?

I'm glad that my tax dollars are being efficiently spent. Let's break this farce down for a minute: Mom packs a lunch that is pretty universal from the 1950's to today...sandwich, fruit, chips and drink. Sounds a lot like some of the lunches I took to school as a kid, although in grade school, I actually walked home and ate lunch...shocking I know, but hey, somehow I survived it all. Back to the story at hand, some person with a title and a mission determined that particular lunch was Not Good Enough. So, in place of the lunch that Mom packed, this little girl got a cafeteria lunch. Having eaten in public school and university cafeterias, and actually having been subjected to food poisoning by my high school cafeteria, I can tell you for damn sure that what the little girl got on her plate was far less valuable than what Mom packed. Maybe nutritionally it was better overall, but this works under the assumption that the child actually EATS everything on the plate. Surprise, surprise, surprise! The kid ate....wait for it!!!!...three chicken nuggets. The tasty, fried food, and nothing else on the tray. I'm not even a parent, and I'm not surprised in the least that the kid went for the nuggets and left the rest...

I don't know which part of the story to be the most incredulous about...the fact that we have a Lunch Inspector who adjudicates what is or isn't appropriate; that they ignored the actual rule which says that if the lunch from home is missing some item from the balanced meal list that the school is to provide THAT ITEM, not replace the entire lunch; or that the Lunch Inspector is so ignorant that he or she assumed the child would eat the entire healthy meal, not just the chicken nuggets, even though Mom wasn't there.

If this was a movie, this is where the villagers would be storming the castle with torches and pitchforks. Instead, in real life, we are forced to endure just this kind of idiocy every day. Only in the eyes of the Federal Government does three chicken nuggets constitute a healthier meal than the sack lunch Mom packed. Instead of providing a meal for a child who actually needed it, 90% of the provided food went into the trash, as did the little girl's sandwich (at least).

And what message does this really send to the kid? Mom doesn't really know what you need...here, have some nuggets. We have the fattest, unhealthiest society in history, and what do we include in a healthy cafeteria lunch? Chicken nuggets.

I'm just shaking my head here. If the road to Hell is indeed paved with good intentions, we are well on the way to creating an 8-lane superhighway...
Click to expand...


As for the overall issue... Although I am no expert, I believe the link between nutrition and school performance and behaviour is well documented (link to a summary of primary research on the topic: http://www.nal.usda.gov/fnic/pubs/learning.pdf). Does it make sense to spend your tax dollars teaching kids that are unable to learn because they lack basic needs. This is one approach to try to keep from wasting your tax dollars as far as I can see.

Obviously, piss poor execution of the program - no question, colossal let down and embarrassment. I don't have a solution, but the biggest waste in my eye is to put kids in the classroom and set them up to fail because they can't learn or behave because their nutritional needs are not met. Flog the parents maybe? Either way, I only make these points because no one has mentioned or clarified why such programs exist.
Click to expand...


Tod, really, when has there ever been a well executed government program? But yes, you are totally right as to the motive behind this nonsence, and you also may be right that flogging the parents might be the only long term solution to our society's failings.

Chris, the fact that you actually asked that question to me says you'll be a better parent than the average meathead that's spawning the next generation.
 
Tod, I do understand much better than I let on, and they have been preaching for years (since I was in grade school in the 1970's at least) the link between nutrition and learning.

I don't for a minute make light of that, and the thought that children are hungry and going to school should be something from the 1800's, not the 2000's.

But...

This is also an issue of how far We are willing to allow the government to insert itself. When we have to have lunch inspectors, I think the pendulum has swung. No, the kids shouldn't suffer for the parents' choices, issues, problems, etc., but there is a point of "enough". We shouldn't necessarily have to shoulder the burden of the parents' bad decisions, either, but somehow it was determined that We should. And to an extent, it starts becoming a vicious circle with succeeding generations becoming more dependent on government to save them from themselves.

Perhaps I should have been more rational, but every now and again I let the demon out of the box. And this is such a grand failure that it really underscores the point...the government inserted itself with the best of intentions and did more harm than good as a result.
 
Tod, I do understand much better than I let on, and they have been preaching for years (since I was in grade school in the 1970's at least) the link between nutrition and learning.

I don't for a minute make light of that, and the thought that children are hungry and going to school should be something from the 1800's, not the 2000's.

But...

This is also an issue of how far We are willing to allow the government to insert itself. When we have to have lunch inspectors, I think the pendulum has swung. No, the kids shouldn't suffer for the parents' choices, issues, problems, etc., but there is a point of "enough". We shouldn't necessarily have to shoulder the burden of the parents' bad decisions, either, but somehow it was determined that We should. And to an extent, it starts becoming a vicious circle with succeeding generations becoming more dependent on government to save them from themselves.

Perhaps I should have been more rational, but every now and again I let the demon out of the box. And this is such a grand failure that it really underscores the point...the government inserted itself with the best of intentions and did more harm than good as a result.
Click to expand...


Lots of ways of looking at these things... but looking at it from a selfish perspective as a parent that invests heavily in thier kid - anything that improves the learning experiance for the majority (including my kid) and reduces the time spent on classroom management by the teachers and increases their time teaching is a good thing. I can't impact on the fuck-ups that don't feed thier kid right, but if the district (my tax dollars) can manage the nutrition of a few kids to the benefit of every other kid - that is a good thing. It seems like a very practical approach to an awful problem to me (the horrific mess up in the story aside).

T
 
I think this quote covers it.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
¯ C.S. Lewis
 
Ah yes government at its worse! Unreal! Big Brother is just lookingout for us because obviuosly we cant make decissions for our selves we're just not smart enough. Kind of like the people who believe in ancient aliens because obviuosly mankind couldnt possibly build structures like the pyramids they just were not smart enough. I just wonder what the lunchroom nazi must have ate as a kid.
 
Unbelieveable isn't it. If you want more and more of this, vote for the status quo. If you want real hope and change, vote for anyone other than Obama. Not saying Republicans are any better but my belief is that they wouldn't cram stuff like this down our throats. Sort of like requiring us to purchase health care. If this is found legal, just wait until 10 years from now when this is the biggest government giveaway. I can see it now, "if you can't aford to buy the mandatory health care, the governement will buy it for you".

Oh yeah. If I was the Mom of this child, I would send the school the bill for the confiscated lunch she packed including the cost to go grocery shopping.

Mark W No mark. the government will tell you how much health care you can have.
Click to expand...
 
Did you know that greasy, salty french fries count as a vegetable in shcool lunches? Besides the fact that they aren't healthy, they're a freeking grain!


Chuck

Chuck, you can thank my 2 senators--along with folks from Idaho and Colorado, if I remember--for defending the french fries and tater tots in school lunches as a "healthy vegetable". They've got to defend our Maine potatoes!

I'm just waiting for the "lobster in school lunch" lobby to get momentum and give me an excuse to go back to school. "Who cares if it's dipped in melted butter? That's a lean protein!"
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top