US school lunches, generally more processed than most, because it's supposedly cheaper

[CreekDog]

A blog article in our local paper discusses our nation's increasingly packaged and processed school lunches...often this way to save money over making the lunches from local produce and from scratch on site or within the district.

When the hell did money become the most important thing in our country that we can't even feed children without figuring out how to give them the very cheapest thing we can find? No, it's not everywhere, but this mentality is driving me crazy.

This nation's children can have the following:

1) food of the quality of our armaments
2) classrooms of the quality of the offices of our defense contractors
3) teachers paid as well as the people who design and build our weapons

Yes we can! Anyone who says that we can't afford it is telling me bullshit.

If we cannot afford this for our children, then they won't be able to afford us older folks when they grow up and we are among the aged.

Anyway, on to the article, sorry to preface it with my rant, but this just pisses me off.

http://blog.sfgate.com/sfmoms/2012/09/12/20-school-lunches-from-around-the-world/#7307-1

India:


San Francisco:


Peru:


China:

[flyguyjake]

1. It sickens me as well

I can't believe in America, the richest country in the world, our children eat so poorly. Appalling Ignorance!!!

[Bonobo]

2. I am on the PTA's school lunch board here in Japan.

Our kids eat locally caught fish and all handmade food. Nothing processed.

[CreekDog]

4. thanks for the example

[piratefish08]

9. I'm proud that our tiny rural VT elementary school does the same - all local, nothing preprocessed!

at normal school lunch prices.

[Bonobo]

12. You SHOULD be proud.

It is a lot of work, but it certainly is worth it -and it is nothing that people haven't done for ages.

I don't know when America gave up on the idea that they could actually cook meals for kids, I think maybe in the 60's with the rise of processed foods, but it was a sad thing.

Making food that is good and nutritious is a sign of love and caring and what could be more important than that we nurture our young as best as we can.

Bravo to your school. They should be an example to all. I fucking love Vermont.

[piratefish08]

13. we've been here just over a year now and don't have a single regret.......

[Viva_La_Revolution]

15. My Gram was head cook at our school for years. She blamed Reagan

My favorite mornings were the ones when we had to get up early cause Mom had to be at work at 7am. So we got dropped off at the back kitchen doors of the school kitchen and would spend the next hour or so watching the dough machine, big kettles of bubbling stuff on the stove, helping make the fresh rolls that we had 3 times a week. 6 or so ladies bustling around chattering the local news. The vegies and fruit were canned, and some of the meat (all in those big black and white USDA cans) but it was good quality stuff.
Then catsup was ruled a vegetable, the fat, salt and sugar limits were implemented (no more chili and cinnamon roll fridays ) and budgets were cut severely. then they had to start buying commercial processed food when the staff budgets were cut and the USDA food disappeared.

By the time my son went to the same school, it was all awful processed crap.

[Downwinder]

3. Education IS a national security issue.

[CreekDog]

5. I agree and that's half the reason I use our defense as an analogy

when I compare our education system to what it could and should be in terms of quality and funding.

[no_hypocrisy]

6. In the public elementary schools in Ridgewood, NJ they have prepackaged lunches for the kids.

Ridgewood is on the high end scale of communities with the reputation of its schools to be enviable. The kids are offered mostly pizza in a box with some fresh fruit which they generally eschew and milk.

[Javaman]

7. Principle Skinner: Good Gravy!

Last edited Thu Sep 13, 2012, 12:17 PM - Edit history (1)

School Lunch server: Thank you, sir. It's mostly brown and water.

- The Simpsons

[cali]

8. Fighting this trend is The Farm To School program

http://www.farmtoschool.org/

[piratefish08]

10. Love this program!

[revolution breeze]

11. My daughter is at a private school this year

The difference between their lunch and public school lunches astounds me. The new school has a culinary staff that prepare all the meals in the school's kitchen from scratch. Fresh whole wheat bread, beutiful baked turkey breast, steamed farm fresh vegetable. They even prepare home made noodles for spaghetti. For the last five years in public school, food was prepared at a central kitchen from pre-prepared mixes and sent to the school for re-heating. Sometimes you had to use the side dishes to identify the protein (applesauce means it is pork, mashed potatoes beef, french fries chicken). Lasagna was a hot mess of egg noodles and watery tomatoe sauce. Yes it takes alot of effort and money, but I am personal friends with two public school lunch ladies and I know they are temendous cooks and, if given the resources, thye would love to do better for the children.

[Odin2005]

14. Another problem is that our kids learn to hate healthy food.

Just because you serve them something healthy does not mean they will eat it. In the US eating healthy food is associated with your parents forcing you to eat your veggies, and so veggies become associated with coercion and so are thought of as unpleasant.

[MadHound]

16. Cool, so when the next school bond issue comes up in your area,

Will you get out and support it? Not just vote for it, but get out and walk the streets, talk up support for it? Because quite frankly, the choice for many school districts comes down to this. Buy up to date equipment, or provide healthy lunches. Hire that extra teacher(never mind paying them a decent wage) to ease overcrowded classrooms, or provide healthy lunches. Fix that leaking roof, or provide healthy lunches. These are the kind of decisions that school districts have to make because the public, you, me, and everybody else, constrains the school districts with a horribly small amount of money.

Not only are school budgets based on highly variable property taxes(and the recent housing crash has still devastated property tax revenue, and hence school district budgets across the nation), but to get any sort of increase in their budget, they have to go to the people, with a bond issue, which takes a super majority, sixty percent or more, in order to pass. No other public service do we fund in this same manner, and it severely handicaps many school districts.

So, next time a bond issue comes up in your community, can we expect your vote and your support?

[CreekDog]

17. I'm not criticizing school districts, I'm criticizing a society/taxation that forces these choices

yes, absolutely I support increased funding, vote for bonds and parcel taxes, though the past school bonds and parcel taxes have mostly passed here in the Bay Area (and passing school bonds requires 55% of the vote and parcel taxes requires 66 2/3% of the vote --the second being very, very difficult).

Are you asking me to be pleased with the current funding situation for the nation's schoolchildren, especially the woeful funding here in California?

Am I not supposed to decry its limitations?

Is the key to getting more funding for me to be quiet and say that everything's ducky?

What the hell do you expect of me?

[MadHound]

18. No, I'm not asking you to stay quiet, quite the contrary,

I'm asking you to get involved and active, to do more than post on an internet chat board. Our schools are in a funding crisis right now, being driven into the ground across the country. We need to people to work both within the existing system of laws, ie get bonds and taxes passed, and agitate for long term funding reform.

I am pointing out that school districts are having to face some hard choices, like those I mentioned and more, choices that they shouldn't have to be making. If we don't want a two tier school system, then it is incumbent upon everybody to get involved. Teachers have been doing what they can, and taking the lion's share of the return fire. It is time that we got some people from other walks of life involved as well.

[CreekDog]

19. Don't assume what I do or don't do offline