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More pizza, fewer vegetables: Trump administration further undercuts Obama school-lunch rules

ecofarm said:
One needn't be a parent to see obesity in America. One does need be a fat slob to ignore it or pretend it's okay.
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Hah! How'd I know?
 
Drawdown said:
Cafeteria work is a good gig for moms with school age children since you are working when they are at school. Before Sam Walton adopted a flexible scheduling model at Walmart it was one of the few jobs that otherwise stay at home moms could get and not have to turn around and spend their money on daycare or sitters or leave kids as latchkey children. In our school system, they enjoy the same sort of mandatory pay raises based on years of service as many government employees. You may start off as a MW dishwasher only getting 12-15 hours a week, but over time, you can put on some serious hourly rates for that level labor. Anyway, there is usually a waiting list for women wanting the job.
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I agree that being a "cafeteria lady" is a good gig for moms with school-age kids and for others who want only a part-time job and who don't have a "marketable" skill-set either. I also think that it's as "worthy" a job as any other, and there are possibilities for advancement.

I've never seen cafeteria food that looks like "prison food." Of course, I've never seen prison food first-hand and have to rely on others' descriptions. I know that my county motel serves TV dinners and sandwiches.

What I have seen first-hand is attractive-to-look at and wholesome meals which little kids take one bite of and then toss in the trash can--baked chicken breasts, green beans, rolls, and fruit for dessert. I always packed my kids' lunches, but when I could, I'd go up to elementary school to eat lunch with one of my kids (Obviously, in middle school this would be way uncool.) The lunches were nutritious and looked pretty good to me.
 
How many know how heavy spinach gets while dumping the Cafeteria trash like I do?
 
French schoolchildren are taught to eat healthy meals; American children are basically treated as a disposal site for farm surpluses.
 
trixare4kids said:
Lipps never wrote all of the above. That was the opinion of Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs for Center for Science in the Public Interest who surmised that Lipp's new ruling “would create a huge loophole in school nutrition guidelines, paving the way for children to choose pizza, burgers, french fries and other foods high in calories, saturated fat or sodium in place of balanced school meals every day.”

There's no proof that Schwartz's opinions will come to fruition.

Read more about his fear-mongering here:
USDA proposes changing school menus to allow more fries and fewer vegetables, reversing a Michelle Obama effort
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Is there proof it won't? Is what was stated true, that the new rules will allow more fries and fewer vegetables..?
 
ludin said:
there is nothing wrong with the nutrition in a big mac.

in fact dollar for dollar it is better nutrition than most people can afford. that isn't the issue.

the issue is sitting on your ass not doing anything.
kids playing video games more than they sleep.
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:lamo

Am I shocked? Nope....
 
CharisRose said:
Yes, but they didn’t make them tasty or even look appetizing. Why do you suppose they didn’t put in the extra effort to accomplish making a tasty dish or to look appetizing?

Roseann:)
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Wow, people who don't know how to do anything but slop reheated chicken nuggets and sloppy joes on a plate don't know how to make food tasty or look appetizing? Who woulda thunk? Maybe they didn't put in that effort because they have zero training in how to, or don't care to because the schools pay them a measly minimum wage? DUH.
 
CharisRose said:
Even a good chef would have difficulty making a good tasty meal if all they had to work with is glop you throw in an oven and frozen stuff you put in a microwave.
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But that's NOT what they have to work with. I'm unsure what is hard to grasp here. The cooks at these schools are untrained minimum wage employees, whose cooking skills are glop and frozen stuff. Chefs are not. This isn't rocket science.
You seem to be blaming the cooks as being the problem calling them crappy wannabes and not placing any blame on the supplies they must use and then expecting those cooks to turn them into tasty healthy meals.

Roseann:)
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Yes, I AM blaming the cooks because most schools do not bother to hire anyone who actuall knows how to cook beyond frozen things and bizarre concoctions. Let alone pay enough for people who actually know what they are doing.

My wife's school (public) pays actual chefs, and has delicious food from the 'supplies they must use' which includes the school gardens. And food waste there has dropped to an all-time low.
 
CharisRose said:
And I’m sure those French chef’s get the type of supplies that make it possible to create gorgeous food and tasty dishes.

Ignoring the type of supplies that those U.S. public schools are providing will never solve the problem and blaming the cooks is unfair.

Roseann:)
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They don't spend much more than US public schools. And it's the schools and their cooks who decide where to get their 'supplies' from and what foods to get. The unimaginative ones with people who don't know how to cook get the sort of crap seen in those pictures. The cooks don't get all the blame - as I said, you get what you pay for, and many school districts are so cheap they pay minimum wage and get people who couldn't cook a fresh meal if their life depended on it.
 
Tlrmln said:
I have no idea what this is, and it doesn't seem to care if the reader can decipher it.

Just name 1 so-called food desert. Why is that so hard?
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It's a map of food deserts in the united states. DUH.

Food deserts aren't 'named'. No one says hey this is the Sahara Food Desert. You're asking stupid questions, and insisting on remaining ignorant to the facts. You were given an entire country-wide map of the hundreds of food deserts in the US. This isn't rocket science.
 
Piglet said:
French kids also get two-hour lunches.
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Indeed they do. US kids get sometimes 15 minutes at best. Which is absurd, and one of the main reasons for food waste - simply no time to actually eat. Serving lunch at 11 or sometimes before is just as much of a problem.

Of course the population of France is much smaller than the US, and our school cafeterias are not designed to allow every child a two-hour lunch.
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Do you have evidence that their schools are smaller? Because geographically they are also smaller so they may well have just as many kids in their schools as we do.
My wife's school is not very small, yet they provide a full hour for kids to eat (and the kids have recess BEFORE lunch so they work up an appetite and aren't trying to slam in some food in order to go out and have more time to play.

Demographics plays a big part, but not wages so much -- most school districts pay their cooks quite a bit more than minimum wage.
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Not in our experience, and my wife has worked in 13 different states over the years at multiple districts.
 
jmotivator said:
Interesting that they are doing it in % eaten and deducing less was thrown away. That isn't how it works.

Also, they found that kids are "choosing" more fruit... why do authoritarians always take adherence to the rules as free choice?

Because they are starving.

But also LOL at government studies that show the government is doing a great job. :roll:
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Actually that is how it works. Otherwise you're not taking into account the fact that there are more kids now.
 
MTAtech said:
French schoolchildren are taught to eat healthy meals; American children are basically treated as a disposal site for farm surpluses.
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SOOooo True. It's truly sad. And there won't be any improvement in healthy eating unless changes are made. My wife's school has kids of every grade involved in some part of the growing process at the half-acre of school gardens. They're taught nutrition, taught how to cook, participate in student cooking challenges ala iron chef/chopped/guy's grocery games, free courses are offered to parents to learn how to cook healthy meals, no junk food frozen preservative filled crap is even on offer. If you're having chicken nuggets they're fresh, lightly breaded pieces of freshly sliced up chicken breast, a full salad bar is available and very often used, and fully vegan options are available in the mains as well. An actual skilled professional chef, whose kid attends the school, was hired as the head chef and meal planner, and has trained up the staff, many of whom have taken to it quite readily and simply did not have the training or knowledge of how to cook good meals when they were hired by the old administration.
 
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nota bene said:
I agree that being a "cafeteria lady" is a good gig for moms with school-age kids and for others who want only a part-time job and who don't have a "marketable" skill-set either. I also think that it's as "worthy" a job as any other, and there are possibilities for advancement.

I've never seen cafeteria food that looks like "prison food." Of course, I've never seen prison food first-hand and have to rely on others' descriptions. I know that my county motel serves TV dinners and sandwiches.

What I have seen first-hand is attractive-to-look at and wholesome meals which little kids take one bite of and then toss in the trash can--baked chicken breasts, green beans, rolls, and fruit for dessert. I always packed my kids' lunches, but when I could, I'd go up to elementary school to eat lunch with one of my kids (Obviously, in middle school this would be way uncool.) The lunches were nutritious and looked pretty good to me.
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Not a lot of rolls get dumped in our school system. A lot of kids bring money and buy extras of them so if you don't like them, you can usually find someone to take them. They are really good. Sure some kids dump food in the trash. So do restaurants, etc. It is just the reality of food service. Serve me baked chicken and it will go in the trash too. Hate the stuff. My dad told me at his elementary school they got to have a vote on which version of food they had in the cafeteria and most people did prefer the pre-made frozen process crap over the home made stuff.
 
Gondwanaland said:
Actually that is how it works. Otherwise you're not taking into account the fact that there are more kids now.
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Well, no, that is precisely how it works. If you have 4 carrots and eat 1 and throw the rest away you have wasted 3 carrots, or 75%. If you have 8 carrots and eat 3 you have only wasted 62.5% of the carrots but you threw away 5 carrots rather than 3. If you assume this is the average across all children then you can claim lower waste by percentage, but the reality if you have increased the number of carrots going in the trash. In this example, the food waste increases 66.7% even while carrots consumed increases 300%.
 
CharisRose said:
Catholic School. Saint Dennis. 1-8 It was! I forgot my lunch one time. Told my teacher (nun). She told me not to worry and follow her. I thought I was going to eat lunch with the nuns. She took me to a big room filled with tables and chairs. Then she left and after some time brought me food and then left again. Ate lunch alone. When lunch time was over she returned and I followed her back to the classroom.

Attended (public) Bogan High School. Didn’t like public school. Did like hanging out at the malt shop after school. Ate food and drank malts there and hung out with friends.

What flavor of cookies?

Roseann:)
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Peanut Butter, Butter, Chocolate Chip

A few of my cousins went to Bogan.
Wonder if you knew them?
 
Hari Seldon said:
Is there proof it won't? Is what was stated true, that the new rules will allow more fries and fewer vegetables..?
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Everything depends on who is in the WH.
According to the left, DJT is on his way out so there's your answer.
 
Gondwanaland said:
It's a map of food deserts in the united states. DUH.
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This map doesn't say anything about "food deserts." It refers to, e.g. "census tracts where a significant number or share of residents is more than 1 mile (urban) or 20 miles (rural) from the nearest
supermarket."

When I select the 1 and 20 option (red) (seemingly the most extreme category), it mostly highlights areas way out in the middle of nowhere, and a bunch of suburban areas that are full of supermarkets. For example there's a one mile wide swath between Kennett Square and Avondale, PA, with one supermarket right in it, and several others within a mile or two. And that area is anything but low-income. How's that "a food desert?"

Is that your definition of a "food desert"?

Food deserts aren't 'named'. No one says hey this is the Sahara Food Desert. You're asking stupid questions, and insisting on remaining ignorant to the facts. You were given an entire country-wide map of the hundreds of food deserts in the US. This isn't rocket science.
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Are you playing dumb now? Places have names. Just name one that you consider a "food desert." This isn't rocket science, as you say.
 
Gondwanaland said:
Wow, people who don't know how to do anything but slop reheated chicken nuggets and sloppy joes on a plate don't know how to make food tasty or look appetizing? Who woulda thunk? Maybe they didn't put in that effort because they have zero training in how to, or don't care to because the schools pay them a measly minimum wage? DUH.
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Your problem is that you expect public school budgets to include salaries for 3 star Michelin chefs.
There's only so much tax payer funding to go around. Most cafeteria workers are trained on the job, some bring culinary skills to their position, and make near $20k a year.
When you find your Utopian public school cafeteria, let us know.

In the meantime, it goes something like this...

“During school site visits, I was shocked to see that virtually everything in school meals came from a can or plastic packaging,” Hartle said. “Meat came frozen, pre-packaged, pre-cooked and pre-seasoned. Salads were pre-cut and pre-bagged. Corn, peaches and green beans came in cans. The only items not packaged in plastic were oranges, apples and bananas.”

This uptick in packaging is a result of schools’ efforts to streamline food preparation and meet federal nutrition standards while keeping costs low.
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Stanford study indicates school meals may expose children to unsafe levels of BPA
 
Gondwanaland said:
They don't spend much more than US public schools. And it's the schools and their cooks who decide where to get their 'supplies' from and what foods to get. The unimaginative ones with people who don't know how to cook get the sort of crap seen in those pictures. The cooks don't get all the blame - as I said, you get what you pay for, and many school districts are so cheap they pay minimum wage and get people who couldn't cook a fresh meal if their life depended on it.
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Learn your subject.
They get pre-packaged, frozen, and already seasoned meats and canned vegetables because it's about streamlining food preparation and meeting federal nutrition standards while keeping costs low.
You expect the hired to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear! Not gonna' happen in this lifetime with the federal government involved in the public school lunch programs. Perhaps returning the responsibility to local school districts and parents is the answer to improving nutritional and tastier meals for the nation's public school children.
 
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