New York school drops Michelle Obama lunch standards: Kids too hungry

O.K. I skipped 5 pages of posts but have to add my two cents to this discussion.

I have a 9 year old daughter who would look invisible if she turned sideways but Is NOT a picky eater. She has a healthy appetite. I also have another, 7 year old boy who turns his nose up at almost anything. My point......Both had no problems with school lunches until last year. Now they want nothing to do with them. They come home starving and grumpy if they try to eat the school lunch! My daughter says the food tastes just awful! So we are no longer doing school lunches and packing our own.

It is just sad. What are her daughters eating for lunch? What is Michelle eating for lunch.

New meaning to let them eat cake! Oh, I mean crap!

Sorry I had to vent but kids are starving because of her!

Jamie Oliver did a school food 'revolution' here in the UK, some parents were passing burgers through the fence to their kids at lunchtimes and in the US it didn't go down well either, at least at first.

Here, the schools that I know of, do hot school dinners which consist of decent sized portions (it was too much for me when parents were invited to try) things like roast chicken, chicken curry, lasagne, fish, chicken / beef casserole, shepherds / cottage pie etc all served with veg and potatoes / rice / pasta, there is always a vegetarian option and often a buyable 'packed lunch' option of sandwich, fruit, yogurt, milk etc. there are pudding served with hot dinners though, such as cake and custard, which though nice, aren't exactly healthy, I would prefer healthier fruit served with evaporated milk or some healthy option as pudding instead.

Interesting to see the variations between the US and here, a lot bigger portions, more fried and sugary food, pizza and fries were counted as 'veg' and apparently there is / was a rule that there had to be 3 portions of bread in kids lunches or something like that.

I wouldn't know the items on Michelle Obama's plan but I say give them healthy food and no choice, same for at home, kids will eat healthy if healthy is all they are given.

Originally posted by ShadeWolf
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Public willingness doesn't enter the equation, far as I'm concerned. It's an empirical fact that Americans are getting fatter and more unhealthy. Something needs to be done about that, and if it comes down to the government having to force it, then that's how it has to be.

So there are no limits to where Government should respect a boundary in a free nation vs. doing whatever is required for the health of the people it's being done to or with?

That seems the very opposite of freedom. "We're going to make you healthy even if your quality of life becomes crap to do it'? That doesn't sound the route to go. In fact, it sounds like it's teaching the kids more of the same they've been getting by the truck load. Obey, Comply and never stand out of express individuality. Even in the lunch room, it seems. Obey, Comply and don't even THINK about asking for a french fry.

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Once again the Wrabbit with his ear to the ground. S&F My son eats constantly and is thin as a rail(just like i was at his age). He rarely will eat anything other than pizza or peanut butter(i was pretty picky when i was younger too)
I was in my late 20's before i started eating healthy foods and trying thing i would have never dared try.

This program was doomed from the start everyone knows how picky kids are. And it's not because of cookie monster...oh wait he's Veggie monster now, right?

The kid's don't even like it when the Obama's try to dictate. Should tell us a lot

How quick one forgets when a personal chef takes over.

The biggest thing that gets lost in translation with regards to the topic?

Metabolism kids have high a metabolism can't really judge kids eating by the standards of adults.

Originally posted by KeliOnyx

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000
reply to post by KeliOnyx

 

Some California schools have Cappuccino and Espresso Machines.. Should we use that as representative for the debate too? Perhaps I should have been more precise to say that, of the thousands of schools across our 50 states, some exceptions may exist...HOWEVER...in general and on average, publicly funded schools do not serve branded fast food in their public, general access lunch rooms in a standard menu presentation for grade school kids.

Better for precision?

That is where you would be wrong. These aren't just a few exceptions to the rule. These are representative of the rule. This has been the trend for around 30 years now. Cash strapped districts have been cashing in on fast food chains for sometime now. Starting as early as the 90's when my district agreed to let Domino's and Burger King in the door.

Well, I've been a bit slow to get back to you because I've been a bit surprised at what I found. I didn't get all the way into quarterly reports for Burger King and the parent company of the Taco Bell/Pizza Hut group but came close.

First, you're absolutely right and I was wrong. This is far more common than I would have suspected. One estimate says 13% another roughly 20% of American public schools serve branded fast food. It's amazing....but then, so is the article that best lays out the reasoning for it. (Note, I didn't say I agreed with any of it, it just lays it out logically)

It is estimated that kids get up to 40 percent of their meals from fast-food chains, convenience stores and restaurants.

There are fast-food franchise outlets in 13 percent of the nation's schools.

Source

That stat isn't particularly recent either. 2001 article on it. So, I'd lean closer to the 20% I'd seen in a far more recent reference to USDA data on the matter. It had more on that logic part.

First, it's downright terrible what and how they define healthy.

Meal program directors say the brand-name items they serve are nutritious because they’re tweaked to meet the USDA requirements for school meals. The slices of pizza, for example, get a health boost from low-fat cheese and a whole-wheat crust.

Another part mentions tomato paste qualifies as a serving. They're as bad about defining our kid's food as they are in getting criminals off in court or writing bad bills that just look good until they're passed. I mean, it's the same double talking gobbley-guck.

Oh, this has more though...and despite it being a minority number of schools, it doesn't lessen your point about it being too many.

When a group of parents in Pleasanton asked Castro to stop serving McDonald’s hamburgers in the elementary school cafeteria, he explained that the burgers brought in 25 percent more sales. “Parents can always choose not to have their child buy lunch that day,” he said.

Linn said parents who want to see change should approach their school’s wellness committee, not the cafeteria. All schools are required to have wellness policies addressing nutrition education and physical activity.

It seems to me their wellness policies are seriously UNWELL.

For Castro and other meal program directors, increasing the lunch count — the number of student purchases — is key to staying in business. Schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program receive federal reimbursements for every meal they serve, along with agricultural commodities donated by the Department of Agriculture. That allows them to offer free and reduced-price meals to low-income students. But the government support only covers about half of the expenses for a typical cafeteria. To cover labor and facilities costs and keep their programs in the black, food service supervisors turn to students with lunch money.

Source

and there-in seems to lay the problem. I suppose I've tended to think of Cafeterias and school meal service as a PART of the District and school. Not a concession running for it's own profit interests on lease of space (or something similar) with the school to peddle food to our kids. Funny...but I don't recall the lunchroom being a profit center for how it was treated when I was in school...and hell, it wasn't that long ago. The late 80's or so.

Perhaps taking the profit drive out of that aspect of schooling would make the local handling of lunch decisions more meaningful for a positive outcome.....so Feds don't HAVE to peddle their own brand of S.O.S. in a fancy package.

Thanks for a challenging reply though... I cited two articles but read a good number for this. I appreciate the excuse for research I wouldn't have otherwise done.

Originally posted by ShadeWolf
reply to post by Wrabbit2000

 

Public willingness doesn't enter the equation, far as I'm concerned. It's an empirical fact that Americans are getting fatter and more unhealthy. Something needs to be done about that, and if it comes down to the government having to force it, then that's how it has to be.

So you want some concentration camps for fat people now? Fat people are people just like you and me. It doesn't matter if the government "forces it" there will still be fat people.

If people like you would worry about yourself instead of judging others the U.S. wouldn't be in it's current state.

If people all acted that way we would all be standing in lines for our gruel and stale bread.

reply to post by neo96


You know Neo...as I was researching my surprising reply for KeliOnyx, something else came up in a few places and it relates to this. It's how the schools are really making their own problem in some ways for the obesity. As much as they're getting into the lunchroom, they're getting out of the recess business. As if recess itself is just wasted time much better spent on prep'ing for the all important state standard testing they all teach to these days.

If kids have no recess....they lose critical socialization skills, but more importantly, they lose an hour or two of collective moving time. Even walking about the school yard, chatting instead of playing in anything is exercise ...and yet, even that much is under attack where it hasn't already been cut back or cut out.

reply to post by jimmyx


Yeah, I'm aware of the logic behind the original creation of the Department of Education at the Federal Level and that being part of it. There was also a little equality problem Lincoln needed to write a whole proclamation of Emancipation for. Quite a major problem.......then. Times change and old institutions sometimes outlive the period they were needed. Such an end has really come (and long overdue) for the Dept of Education. We aren't a nation where little bergs of sheer ignorance with a sense of pride can really exist if others there don't want it to. .....where it still does? Well, if decades of Federal work hasn't solved it by now, they're wasting billions in a department that never will at this point.

There are a lot of things in life where the difference between a very good idea and a very ignorant or destructive one is timing and immediate need. The time would be to disband them because there is no longer a tangible need for Uncle Sam and his Nanny state to do what the states know how to better handle as each is different from the other in enough ways to matter.

Originally posted by Wrabbit2000

So there are no limits to where Government should respect a boundary in a free nation vs. doing whatever is required for the health of the people it's being done to or with?

i didn't realize eating good food to stay healthy was so evil to people.

That seems the very opposite of freedom. "We're going to make you healthy even if your quality of life becomes crap to do it'?

LOL WUT? you really think your quality of life will get worse if you eat better?! are you kidding me? have we gone into bizzaro world?

That doesn't sound the route to go. In fact, it sounds like it's teaching the kids more of the same they've been getting by the truck load. Obey, Comply and never stand out of express individuality. Even in the lunch room, it seems. Obey, Comply and don't even THINK about asking for a french fry.

OH NO THEY WON'T LET THE KIDS EAT CRAP THAT MAKES THEM FAT AND SICK, WHAT EVER WILL WE DO?!
come on, this is one of the stupidest things i've ever heard, until they start feeding kids soylent green i think we are okay with having kids eat something that isn't processed crap.

this is the problem with america, we pick stupid things to fight over, and care more about grandstanding over having the choice to be gluttonous pigs over caring about our children's health.

if you don't like this tell parents to suck it up and feed their kids a proper diet instead of demanding the government do it for them.

it's all the parents fault! parents stop asking the government to do your job, stop being cowardly and lazy, i get that you work, but if you demand the government take over the job you created by producing children, don't whine if they don't do what you like.
you lost the right to whine the second you let them.

reply to post by firemonkey


My parents tried to make me drink milk once, and left the glass of milk on the table while the whole family went to Velvet Freeze(this was before the 81 flavors of what's its name) and when we got home they again tried to make me drink it only it was warm by then. No such luck. Another time my Dad tried to make me eat spinach. The spinach landed on the front of his face. He never did that again. That was all by the time I was 7. To this day, I don't believe in forcing kids to eat or drink what they hate.
Oh yes, I once threw up on a banana. Never eaten one since. Only authoritarian parents force feed their kids. And authoritarian governments are just as bad if not worse. Jonah Goldberg called it Liberal Fascism.

reply to post by demongoat


You're debating something radically different than I am. Totally different planes of thinking on this. In an earlier reply I had mentioned that the diet issues of school lunches did need addressed at some point at some level. State or Local would be the preference in my thinking for all the reasons I've said. Local authority means local ears to yell in and throw out of office when things go wrong. Central Government control means you and I never have a snowball's chance in a very hot place of even having our vague opinions registered as existing unless we have mega-money to throw behind those opinions as contributors on the national level.

This was PRECISELY what the 10th Amendment was written to prevent. A strong and overbearing Federal Government. It's security, it's health care, it's the very food our kids put on their plates in their local lunchroom. It's TOO MUCH and it's far beyond what the United States system of Government was EVER designed or intended to support. This is a socialist style centralized control of production, education and standards of living across an entire nation at once.

This must be a regional thing, or someone is finding just the fat schools and creating information to manage the masses with, because well, for example, my daughter goes to a school with lots of kids, but not one single kid at this school is fat or obese, or even overweight at all... They have good food at the school, nothing is fried since they cut that out a long time ago nationwide, at least according to federal guidelines and what I have heard..

I guess we are lucky here out west to have escaped Michelle's "survivor series" school lunch menus.. If people here even saw stuff like this trying to be implemented in the schools, there would be people getting smacked around for being stupid enough to be asking people's kids to eat that way in the first place...

Angry parents yelling at administrators and giving their head a rug burn on the library carpet and things like that.. But we haven't had any of that here luckily.. We'll see what 2013/2014 school year brings though..

reply to post by demongoat


This is not about parents not doing their job. It is about Nanny Statism hiding under the cloak of promoting good nutrition. It's just like Mayor Bloomberg outlawing Big Gulps thinking he has a right to tell people how much of something to drink.

I have never seen so many people so upset about healthy lunches.

Also, so many people so scared about government being too powerful and authoritative...I know my opinion won't be popular...but I am would like the government to govern even more than they do now. Stupid people need to be governed, for their own good, even if they don't realize it....America has a lot of stupid people in it...so we need a lot of governing.

Originally posted by alienreality
This must be a regional thing, or someone is finding just the fat schools and creating information to manage the masses with, because well, for example, my daughter goes to a school with lots of kids, but not one single kid at this school is fat or obese, or even overweight at all... They have good food at the school, nothing is fried since they cut that out a long time ago nationwide, at least according to federal guidelines and what I have heard..

I guess we are lucky here out west to have escaped Michelle's "survivor series" school lunch menus.. If people here even saw stuff like this trying to be implemented in the schools, there would be people getting smacked around for being stupid enough to be asking people's kids to eat that way in the first place...

Angry parents yelling at administrators and giving their head a rug burn on the library carpet and things like that.. But we haven't had any of that here luckily.. We'll see what 2013/2014 school year brings though..

Well I can't speak for the whole country, but in the district where my kids attend, the kids are all skinny too.

But its not due to the school lunches...it's all the coke they sniffing and psychotropics they dealing and narcs, etc. in a very WELL TO DO DISTRICT. Yep, those kids pumping out those prescribed drugs like candy along with coke lines and ex and you name it...That and the whole it's CHIC to be Bulemic and Anorexic.

Just saying...

As for lunch, since it's a Charter school they don't do lunches, other than Ramen, or frozen burritos. But it wouldn't matter anyway,

Like I said, it's all drug culture in ole Yuppie ville' and the majority of it is psychotropics or prescribed the kids deal and shoot up or snort, etc. But hey they ALL SKINNY SKINNY SKINNY!

reply to post by firemonkey


The problem though, is all the stupid people are trying to do all the governing right now.. If you didn't notice that yet, then I am afraid to say that you are already being governed by those very people, and quite successfully too.. You may be able to break free though if you can shake the hypoxia you are experiencing

edit: Sorry to hear about that issue there Threebears.. Here it isn't bad like that, and what I hear from relatives that are in high school here, say stuff like that is pretty low occurrence, at least on the surface..The police have a very big presence here though, and they, the police are mostly really good people here.. They aren't militarized like Seattle, at least not yet..

The local police chief is a long time family friend, so we get the inside scoop on a lot of things, hopefully this city avoids federal encroachment and the corruption that seems to accompany federal influences.. For now anyways.. Could change next week or month I suppose.. Hope not..

reply to post by firemonkey


It has absolutely nothing to do with fear. It has to do with what point, if EVER...do we even get annoyed at the control out of Washington. If it isn't when some of our own kids are telling us the food, new to them by reports here, isn't worth eating and they'd rather go hungry? Whatever argument existed for the overreach to begin with seems about dead on arrival as it's been a total failure. Whatever they were trying for? They missed.

Now the fundamental question is...under our very clear, very basic and very simple system of Government (which it is, when it comes down to it and people strip the B.S. away) is this the role of the White House to force or isn't it? Is this a brick too far to at least comment on and be annoyed with ...or does more of the wall around us need completed first?

reply to post by Wrabbit2000


Kids are used to eating food that over stimulate their taste buds. If you give them food that is good for them instead of just being a taste bud stimulator of course they are not going to like it, much less buy it.

I am honestly on board with michelle obama on this one.. however... it really isn't the schools job to feed the kids.. let the parents feed them.

Pack lunches imo.

Why do we have to feed kids in school, let alone dictate their diet? When I went to school, you either brought lunch or got a baloney and cheese sandwich with a carton of milk.
Most kids are overweight because they don't get a good home cooked meal. Both parents are working to support them in this economy and that usually results in more fast-food or pre-fab, high calorie GMO crap that's on the shelves.
But you want the government to dictate how your kids eat? PHOOEY...they already do!
Wake up you statist zombies!