Monday, 19 October 2009
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What Schools Are Feeding Your Children!
If you have school-aged children, I feel it is my duty as an educator to inform you of what they really are feeding your kids at lunch.
Today I helped out with lunch duty and was asked to help with the feeding of some of the lower-functioning kids. I couldn't get myself to do it, and it may go down as a mark against me, but you couldn't make me force feed the crap they serve in the lunch line to our school children. It's shameful.
What were the options to choose from for lunch? Well, low-fat flavored or non-fat milk to drink (or water), that's not so bad. But you either had the option of chicken patty sandwiches or nachos. No veggies (other than pickles you could buy separately), and sides of either fries, pinto beans or spanish rice, with jello for dessert. What does this spell? Starch, bad carbs, sodium, saturated fats and processed muck!
Whatever happened to the days of lunch ladies actually cooking stuff up from scratch? You know, we're talking about those hearty, healthy, balanced meals!
When the government decided to step in and control the school lunch program, they made schools start taking bids for product and to go with the lowest bid. As a result, food-service corporations bid their lowest quality, least expensive food in order to try to get the business. Of course, all of this low-priced stuff is processed and absolute junk food.That's not the worst news of all, though. The really sad part of it? These meals are often times MORE NUTRITIOUS than the meals they get fed at home. And people wonder why childhood obesity is at epidemic levels!
So what can be done?- Parents, for the meantime, pack your kids a healthy lunch to take with them to school, including plenty of veggies, good carbs, healthy, low-fat protein, and either water or 100% fruit juice.
- Learn to cook healthier foods and teach your kids to eat them. The palate is developed from an early age, and so it's crucial to develop their palate to like healthy foods early.
- Tell the government to butt out of this system. Giving schools local control of their own lunch programs would allow them to purchase high-quality ingredients and cook healthy meals once again.
Are you aware of what kids are eating during their lunchtime at school? Were your school lunches healthy, or could they have been better?
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About the Author
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- From: mathematicalbagpiper@xanga
- Name: LG
- About Me: Math grad student/teaching assistant at Idaho State University, bagpipe performer, atheist, and intactivist/anti-mutilationist, and supporter of the "guy thigh revival." I'm also an ordained minister of The First Church of Atheism. That's about all there is to know about me.
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Comments (26)
I haven't been in HS for quite many years now, so I don't know if it's changed in the meantime; but we used to have a pretty good cafeteria (public school).
5 lines for "regular" lunch
1 line for "vegetarian" lunch
1 line for salad
1 line for "alternative choices" (ala carte, better food)
1 line for desserts only
1 counter for "special needs" (special dietary restrictions, requires advance notice)
The bid system is stupid. Yes, it saves money; but Education and Schools should be a top priority for budgeting anyway, imo. At this point, if I had kids, I wouldn't send them into the Public School system anyway; much less have them eat the garbage being served now.
God, High School food is just hideous. I prefer to eat lunch at HOME because I am fortunate enough to live in a house with nutritous food. I mean, seriously. Most of the food at my school make me gag. The only good things any schools have are salads, but they're riddicuously expensive for just lettuce and carrots. >__> Having separate stands just for COOKIES is also, I think, unacceptable. People are just too greedy. Dinero is the root of all evil. /:
@chow@ireallylikefood - wow, that has changed drastically. There's a line for fried chicken, a line for french fries, a line for "regular" lunch, and a stand for cookies and one for drinks and salad.
@chow@ireallylikefood - Wow! Your high school was awesome!
We had two choices for salad, otherwise it was hot dogs, pizza, or a cold sub. The subs were all processed cheeses, "mystery" meat, and wonder bread. Which wasn't incredibly appetizing.
when i was in high school there were two lines:
1 for "regular" lunch food (i.e. the things you mentioned above)
2 for pizza, fries, or whatever other fried food of the day.
Guess which line was wrapped around the room twice?
I knew after the first semester of my freshman year to start bringing my own lunch. problem is not everyone can afford to do that for various reasons. My family could barely afford to buy all the "healthy" stuff to put in my lunch and we weren't living in poverty.
@nerdishh8D@xanga - @Shy___Away@xanga - Wow, is that what school lunch has devolved into? That's... awful =/
I heard some schools don't even have kitchens anymore, and that they just get food from a central location and have it trucked in at lunchtime.
The nice thing is that we had both a salad line and an actual vegetarian option line (hot vegetarian meal). In hindsight, I think that was pretty progressive of the local school administration to allow our HS that much leeway in the meals they served. If I remember, they used the money from the dessert and snack sales to fund the vegetarian option. Blood money, I suppose, but still worked out.
my school feeds us crap. we always go to the canteen feeling hungry, but just looking and smelling that junk makes us full.
Ugh, I try to stay away from processed foods as much as possible.
I'm glad I was homeschooled. My mom used to be a dietician, so we eat pretty healthy. And my dad's Italian, so we know how to cook good food too.
I hate parents that blame their kids poor diet on just the schools. Try looking in the mirror and see what you've been feeding you're kids at home.
Brandon
http://www.alumniclass.com
W-what? That mystery meat is more nutritious (nutritous? i can't spell. sdkfjkfd) than what my mommy cooks for me at home? I hope not... cus I got really bad diarreah eating some gooey mess at school the other day. LOL
I think the lunch menus of different high schools variate depending on funds, regulations, etc.
Most of the people at my high school subsisted on the Arby's cart, Bosco sticks, pizza, french fries and Starbucks Cold Frappuccinos Rarely did I see anyone get a nutritious lunch.
I haven't been there for over 6 years, so I don't know what they're feeding them now.
My school had really strict nutritional standards, no soda, no fries, we had pizza like once a week, it was made of whole-wheat crust and came with veggies. We also had salads, salad wraps, turkey and tuna sandwiches made of brown bread. We had snacks like cookies that were unhealthy, but there was also fruit, fruit cups, crackers. Pretty good really. Everything tasted great!
i HATE school food
@jazziegal97@xanga - same but there were more carts with pizza so the lines where shorter. The regular lunch line would have eaten all of my 25 mins of lunch period, so I usually didn't eat anything or ate pizza.
Either way I 90% of the time I spent my lunch period doing my hw, so I didn't really eat all that much. I had really bad eating habits in high school.
I remember the same crap food that they serve now is almost the same thing they serve 5 years ago. Oh good times, good times.
i ate the school lunch and I gained weight. do yourself a favor and brown bag it up baby. the chicken ain't real chicken and the tater tots are a sorry excuse to be a potato
lol. my high school literally fed shit =___=. like same chicken sandwiches that are all hard and burnt and who knows how long they were laying there for. lol. gross. even the greasy cafeteria food in the picture looks GOOD compared to the food i was fed lol. throughout k-12. gross food. it got worse as i moved on from school to school. ele, middle, highschool.
i love school food hahaha. there's a stall for drinks/tidbits/fruits/yoghurts, there's western, there's noodle, there's rice and lastly halal food. i'm going to graduate from my school soon and i must say, i'll miss my school food. they're really nice. :(
I'm a substitute teacher and the food they feed the staff is a heck of a lot better. Yesterday at work, the kids had chicken fingers, pizza, french fries, hamburger, juice, milk and cookies/ice cream to choose from. The teacher's lounge had vegetarian lasagna with 12 different kinds of vegetables, Salad, Brown Rice, Iced Tea, Cookies and Grilled Salmon. It's insane.
I am willing to be that most schools with kitchens now offer healthier stuff than they did many years ago. The question is whether kids are eating it -- or if, yes, the french fries and pizza still rule. I'm guessing it's the fried stuff. I try very hard to make good meals for my family, but I will say pasta still rules. But there are still vegetables and there is still salad! I can but try. I have new help now from Family Fit a book with great tips on activity for families, plus food ideas. And yes, there's a place for French fries -- it's in moderation. It helps with two things at once, really -- healthy families, and family togetherness time. (I love that!)
I go to school, and I have never seen anything as disgusting as that.
We only have fries on a friday, but we do have desserts like a muffin or cake with custard daily. There's usually a healthy dish, and a pasta or casserole. You can also buy sandwiches, wraps, rolls and pots of pasta and fruit along with a lot of other stuff.
But then again, I am in England at a school that is trying desperately to make themselves world-class.
Our school lunches during first school and junior school in the UK was fairly varied, chips everyday. There were desserts everyday, including fruit everyday for dessert.
Secondary school, sandwiches, also the usually sausages, chips etc. hot chocolate, tea and coffee etc.
I really like school dinners, apart from being on last sittings, where we ended up what was left. So apart from the first two schools where we had to pay for our meals per term, we were commited to pack up or school lunches, secondary school we paid per day which was better.
I was never fond of school lunch, often skipped it because I was grossed out by it.
I've actually never seen anything like that. In every school I've taught at, there has been at least one fruit or veggie on the menu.... you got a protein, a starch, a vegetable and a fruit, plus either juice or milk to drink.
My daughter was in preschool until we moved recently, and the school menu there wasn't much different from what we made at home. Yeah, there was the pizza day on Fridays, but for the most part it was meat loaf with mashed potatoes and peas and things like that. Sad that some of you live in places that don't serve healthy meals.
@Brandon8 - I absolutely agree.
Are you complaining that the school meals are more nutritious than meals at home.. And you can't accept that because it doesn't look homemade? School cafeterias and foodservice operators must provide nutritious foods that are cheap enough to feed children (to be eligible for the free lunch and breakfast program). And another thing you must consider is that schools must feed nutritious meals to hundreds to children with picky taste buds. So of course they will try to serve foods that children will actually eat.
Nevertheless, I agree with the article that our kids do deserve the best foods, but we shouldn't continue to blame schools when they are actually trying.