Are school lunches a national security threat?

[Chibibar]

gotta love the headline. No, it is not the mystery meat, but talking about obesity and the military.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100420/ap_on_he_me/us_school_lunches_threat

I think this has some merit, but I believe the government has to look at the bigger picture. What is cheap? Fast food is cheap. Why is it cheap? what in it? (do you really want to know? hehe). The schools are keeping the lunch prices as low as possible so they can make a sale AT school.

It is hard to compete against like KFC Wednesday special (2.15$ for chicken fried steak) or McD 1$ menu item, or Jack in the Box 1$ menu (not bad too)

Eating healthy AND eating meat (which can be healthy) is NOT cheap. It is VERY expensive. I don't think the meager bill can fix that.

 

[DarkAudit]

Yet another scapegoat to excuse rotten parenting.

Shut of the TV. Yank the internet. Throw that fucking Xbox in the river. You parents bought all that shit for your lardball kids, now face up to what you turned them into.

 

[Chibibar]

Yet another scapegoat to excuse rotten parenting.

Shut of the TV. Yank the internet. Throw that fucking Xbox in the river. You parents bought all that shit for your lardball kids, now face up to what you turned them into.

heh. I didn't want to bring in lifestyle into it (it is part of the issue) but diet is also important.

you are what you eat. It is hard to be healthy inside when all you eat are junkfood like McD and Jack in the box.

 

[DarkAudit]

The parents are to blame for that too. You have a kitchen. USE IT! There's a nigh-infinite amount of healthy combinations you can whip up.Stuffing a fiver in the kid's hand is a cop-out.

"I'm too busy!" you say? BULLSHIT. Just what is it that is more important at that moment than the well-being of your child? Are you on fire? Are they? No? Than whatever the other thing is can wait until you've made sure that your kid leaves the house with a healthy and tasty lunch.

 

[Espy]

Whoa, whoa, whoa... are you saying parents should actually take care of their kids? Thats crazy talk there sir. You don't have kids to take care of, they are like accessories, like purses or small puppy dogs.

 

[SpecialKO]

You're probably right. No school district is capable of meeting the volume discounts afforded to national fast food chains. Trying to fight solely on price is a losing battle.

I imagine, though I don't know, that quality may play a huge part in combating the convenience of fast food. My high school had pretty okay food for a public school. It wasn't mom's home cooking or anything, but it was light years better than the local fast food places, and most kids preferred spending a little more to get food at school than taking the time to spend less for worse crap at BK. But when a school's only offering is bizarre mystery meat, there's no way kids wouldn't prefer to get a Whopper.

 

[GasBandit]

I think the food itself is only partially to blame. We're steadily becoming a more and more sedentary culture. We need more rigorous excercise programs in schools, if you ask me. Or maybe even after-school programs focused around fitness. After all, I know people who subsist entirely on pizza and beer, but because they aggressively play basketball every other night for several hours each, they work it all off.

 

[Espy]

Yeah, the food at my school was fine. Nothing special but it was just fine, unless you spent your entire day on your ass. Really no food is good if thats all you do.

 

[SpecialKO]

I think the food itself is only partially to blame. We're steadily becoming a more and more sedentary culture. We need more rigorous excercise programs in schools, if you ask me. Or maybe even after-school programs focused around fitness. After all, I know people who subsist entirely on pizza and beer, but because they aggressively play basketball every other night for several hours each, they work it all off.

I agree with this. I think schools need to incentivize sports and physical activities a lot more than they currently do. I know this sounds weird because the US has such a huge sports culture, but our current approach is focused more on driving the top 1% of high school athletes into pro-national leagues. The ones who don't make it don't get much out of the time they've invested, and the students aren't interested in pro-sports have very little motivation to get involved themselves beyond cheering from the sidelines. Parents whose children aren't already top athletes have no motivation to encourage their children to stay fit. I do agree that's a huge part of the problem, but if shouting from the rooftops about fat kids, the rising level of diabetes and heart attacks, and lots of money spent on "public education" about food doesn't get parents moving, some other measures clearly need to happen as well.

And god knows, gym class doesn't do shit for the physical health of the student population.

 

[Cajungal]

The parents are to blame for that too. You have a kitchen. USE IT! There's a nigh-infinite amount of healthy combinations you can whip up.Stuffing a fiver in the kid's hand is a cop-out.

"I'm too busy!" you say? BULLSHIT. Just what is it that is more important at that moment than the well-being of your child? Are you on fire? Are they? No? Than whatever the other thing is can wait until you've made sure that your kid leaves the house with a healthy and tasty lunch.

So all I have to do to avoid responsibility is set myself on fire, you say?.....

No, but really--I think... now I'm not a parent, but I'm going by what my mom, sister, and aunts did... But I think it's important to make sure you introduce healthy food really early. Still let them have treats--don't make junk food a big mysterious taboo--but make sure they can appreciate good food as well. My sister's kid as opposed to my cousin's kids: My niece begs my sister to take her out for grilled chicken salads (with plenty of "flomatoes") and sweet potato fries, whereas my cousin's kids whine for hours if they don't get McDonald's at least once a week. Similar incomes, similar jobs, but one took the time to prepare healthy food as soon as their kid could chew.

 

[@Li3n]

Bah, the biggest problem isn't the food itself, but how much you eat.... if you're getting fat that mean you're consuming more food then your body needs to function.

 

[figmentPez]

Bah, the biggest problem isn't the food itself, but how much you eat.... if you're getting fat that mean you're consuming more food then your body needs to function.

It's a lot easier to eat too many calories when consuming cheap meat on white bread and french fries dipped in 1/3 sugar than it is to do so when eating high water-content vegetables and whole grains.

 

[SpecialKO]

Bah, the biggest problem isn't the food itself, but how much you eat.... if you're getting fat that mean you're consuming more food then your body needs to function.

It's a lot easier to eat too many calories when consuming cheap meat on white bread and french fries dipped in 1/3 sugar than it is to do so when eating high water-content vegetables and whole grains.[/QUOTE]

That sounds like a challenge!!!
:hungry:

 

[Cajungal]

^That's definitely true. Healthier food makes you feel more satisfied. But he's right--portion control and knowing when to stop is just as important as eating right. I try to tell my dad that... he thinks that just because it's a huge soup bowl of Kashi that he eats every night at 10pm, it doesn't count or something.

 

[SpecialKO]

^That's definitely true. Healthier food makes you feel more satisfied. But he's right--portion control and knowing when to stop is just as important as eating right. I try to tell my dad that... he thinks that just because it's a huge soup bowl of Kashi that he eats every night at 10pm, it doesn't count or something.

You dad is able to eat after 10pm? He must be a man of remarkable digestive ability.

Or he just sleeps different hours.

 

[Cajungal]

Yeah, Dad just loves the late-night snacks. He keeps normal hours. When he's not feeling more stressed than usual, he's got a cast-iron stomach.

 

[sixpackshaker]

Seriously, schools need to get rid of the junk food and balance their normal meals. The kids were bypassing the nearly healthy food served in the cafeteria. During a normal lunch period, there were likely 300 kids hitting the snack-bar compared to the 100 or so hitting the normal cafeteria line. The big sellers was a quarter of a medium pizza with fries, or double cheese burgers with fries. Basically the only kids that hit the normal line were on free or assisted lunches.

Now I've seen this a couple of times on the "normal" menu... Chicken fried steak, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, mac&cheese, roll, and vanilla pudding. We used to call it the "Tan Plate." Starch. Starch, Starch, with a side of Starch. Schools treat Mac&Cheese like it is a vegetable.

 

[Cajungal]

And corn.

 

[Shakey]

I think all I ever ate from our high school cafeteria was cheese bread, pizza, and cheeseburgers. They always had at least one of those as an option.

 

[Cajungal]

Yeah, our high school always had a pizza line. But it was always that weird rectangular pizza with questionable, gristly meat.

 

[Shakey]

Same with ours. I don't think anyone actually cared though. It was pizza, we didn't want to ask questions.

 

[Cajungal]

:laugh: I definitely ate the questionable pizza at first, because it was a novelty. But then I got sick of it. I started bringing my own lunch.

 

[@Li3n]

Bah, the biggest problem isn't the food itself, but how much you eat.... if you're getting fat that mean you're consuming more food then your body needs to function.

It's a lot easier to eat too many calories when consuming cheap meat on white bread and french fries dipped in 1/3 sugar than it is to do so when eating high water-content vegetables and whole grains.[/QUOTE]

Sure, until you get home and eat more because the vegetables and grain weren't very satisfying... or you even skipped them altogether.

 

[figmentPez]

Sure, until you get home and eat more because the vegetables and grain weren't very satisfying... or you even skipped them altogether.

Or the flipside of that, when you get hungry even after eating the nutritionally lacking calorie-fest because you're not getting essential nutrients and your body is screaming for certain essential fatty acids, vitamins, minerals, etc. that it needs to survive. The highly processed food of this post-industrial world is designed to trigger all our food cues, salty, fatty, sugary, savory tastiness, but it doesn't have all the usual accompanying nutrients. Our taste and smell says we're eating great, but we're only getting lots of calories. What's lacking makes us hungry for more, even though we don't need calories.

Also, if you think that a meal that contains vegetables and whole grains is inherently unsatisfying, then you don't know much about good cooking, or about nutrution. I never meant to imply the meal wouldn't have any meat, just that the bulk of the volume would be nutrient-rich and calorie-poor offerings. A balanced meal with the correct amount of calories will be satisfying, far more than an unbalanced meal.

Skipping them altogether is a problem, but fear of rejection shouldn't stop anyone from offering good food instead of junk.

If anyone thinks that portion control is the sole issue in maintaining a healthy weight, I call bullshit. Especially when it comes to the stuff they put in food lunches. If someone only eats the right amount of calories from junk food, they still won't be healthy, even if they're not overweight. Nutrition is far more than counting calories.

Check out a movie called Food Inc. I watched it on TV yesterday, I'm not sure if it's available online yet anywhere. It's a pretty good look at the issue of where food comes from in the United States, and why it's so difficult to eat healthy on a budget. Make no mistake, that's why the food in schools is so awful. It's because corn, wheat and soybean subsidies have made calories cheap and nutrition expensive.

 

[@Li3n]

If anyone thinks that portion control is the sole issue in maintaining a healthy weight, I call bullshit. Especially when it comes to the stuff they put in food lunches. If someone only eats the right amount of calories from junk food, they still won't be healthy, even if they're not overweight. Nutrition is far more than counting calories.

But you're probably right about a balanced diet being the best option, but the pragmatist in me says that it's not going to work unless you eliminate McDonalds from everywhere...

Skipping them altogether is a problem, but fear of rejection shouldn't stop anyone from offering good food instead of junk.

I refer you to this:

Seriously, schools need to get rid of the junk food and balance their normal meals. The kids were bypassing the nearly healthy food served in the cafeteria. During a normal lunch period, there were likely 300 kids hitting the snack-bar compared to the 100 or so hitting the normal cafeteria line. The big sellers was a quarter of a medium pizza with fries, or double cheese burgers with fries. Basically the only kids that hit the normal line were on free or assisted lunches.

Now I've seen this a couple of times on the "normal" menu... Chicken fried steak, gravy, mashed potatoes, corn, mac&cheese, roll, and vanilla pudding. We used to call it the "Tan Plate." Starch. Starch, Starch, with a side of Starch. Schools treat Mac&Cheese like it is a vegetable.

 

[figmentPez]

If anyone thinks that portion control is the sole issue in maintaining a healthy weight, I call bullshit. Especially when it comes to the stuff they put in food lunches. If someone only eats the right amount of calories from junk food, they still won't be healthy, even if they're not overweight. Nutrition is far more than counting calories.

[/quote]
Not being overweight doesn't mean you're healthy. Excercise, balanced nutrition, adequate sleep and more will all make it easier to stick to the right portions of food. Not only that, but science is starting to realize that not all calories are created equal. A recent study showed that rats fed high fructose corn syrup gained more weight than those fed equal calories of sugar. If you doubt that, it's been medically proven that complex carbohydrates trigger insulin reaction differently than simple sugars. Eating the same amount of calories from whole wheat bread, from white breat and from sugar will cause the body to react in three very different ways. The insulin response, and other biological processes will effect how a person's metabolism handles those calories. If two otherwise comparable people eat the exact same amount of calories, but from radically different foods, they will experience different results in weight and health.

Yeah, eliminating McDonald's would be the only way to force people to eat healthy, but we're talking about school lunch specifically. There are changes that should be made that would make it harder for McDonald's to be so much cheaper than healthy alternatives, but those changes are part of why it's so hard for schools to even offer healthy food. Processed wheat, corn, meat and cheese are so cheap because of subsidies that it's hard for schools to switch to better alternatives because freshly prepared food costs more than frozen pizza.

As to your quotes, the only reason that schools can seve "tan plates" is because potatoes and ketchup are counted as vegetables. The nutritional guidelines that they follow for lunch offerings are broken and need to be fixed. Watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (past episodes available on Hulu and ABC.com, and currently ongoing on ABC broadcast). He and other activists are working on getting options like those removed from the school lunch menu. They've already proven that grade-school children will eat the better quality food if it's also well prepared and they're encouraged to do so by the adults around them. High schoolers can be influenced to, if they're informed about what they're eating, and they have truly good options to choose, they are more likely to eat better.

 

[North_Ranger]

Free school lunch all the way to the end of high school.

"That's how dad did it. That's how Finland did it. And it seems to have worked just fine."

- North_Ranger, a fat bloke who lost a lot of weight as a tank buster (Private, 15th Pori Jaeger Brigade).

 

[@Li3n]

Not being overweight doesn't mean you're healthy.

I know, i was just picking on your choice of words... healthy weight doesn't imply you're healthy either...

Watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (past episodes available on Hulu and ABC.com, and currently ongoing on ABC broadcast). He and other activists are working on getting options like those removed from the school lunch menu. They've already proven that grade-school children will eat the better quality food if it's also well prepared and they're encouraged to do so by the adults around them. High schoolers can be influenced to, if they're informed about what they're eating, and they have truly good options to choose, they are more likely to eat better.

Funny you should mention that, as i saw this just a week or so ago:


Of course the disgusting meat paste is probably not any unhealthier then any other part of the chicken, it's all the additives and crap they put in so it lasts longer etc. that's bad for you...

 

[Covar]

Not being overweight doesn't mean you're healthy.

I know, i was just picking on your choice of words... healthy weight doesn't imply you're healthy either...

Watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution (past episodes available on Hulu and ABC.com, and currently ongoing on ABC broadcast). He and other activists are working on getting options like those removed from the school lunch menu. They've already proven that grade-school children will eat the better quality food if it's also well prepared and they're encouraged to do so by the adults around them. High schoolers can be influenced to, if they're informed about what they're eating, and they have truly good options to choose, they are more likely to eat better.

Funny you should mention that, as i saw this just a week or so ago:


Of course the disgusting meat paste is probably not any unhealthier then any other part of the chicken, it's all the additives and crap they put in so it lasts longer etc. that's bad for you...[/QUOTE]

heh at the beginning of the video I thought he was going to make stock.