Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution - What do you think?

[Anonymous]

His show got me thinking about the junk in the classroom from birthday celebrations, class parties and every valentine card having a bag of candy taped to it. I saw some good suggestions for Classroom Birthday Parties without food posted on fan page I found on facebook http://www.facebook.com/pages/Healthier-Schools-Parents-Inspired-by-the-Food-Revolution/107798879261518?ref=ts

How do you feel about the food at your school? Does your school allow food for every student's birthday?javascript:void(0);

[Anonymous]

Our preschool allows a birthday treat for each kid, but the stress that it must be really small. I don't have a problem with a small treat on those occasions.

I haven't watched all the Jamie Oliver show but I saw the bit about pink & chocolate milk!!

[Anonymous]

Each kid brings in cupcakes for their birthday or 1/2 birthday, that's 18 days in the year. They get treats at the parties - about 5 of them a year. They go to birthday parties and other celebrations outside of school - probably at least 25 days a year. Halloween, Christmas and Easter give us enough candy to last 3 months each. The public school apparently has numerous pizza parties each year. And playdates seem to always include candy.

And my kids wonder why I don't give them desserts after dinner? Its because they get so many treats in school and at parties. I'd be happy to make dessert a more regular occurrence if I didn't know they were already eating candy and cupcakes 1-2 times a week when I can't control it.

I'm not anti-candy, but it gets to be too much. I'd rather the schools just not allow treats, honestly. Its not like they don't get them elsewhere. Each time there's a birthday, we get cupcakes that day at school and then also on the weekend at their real birthday party. And half the kids seem to have allergies, so it becomes complicated to provide treats in addition to being unhealthy.

[Anonymous]

For my child's birthday I brought in fresh fruit rather than the usual sugary sweets. All the children seemed happy about the birthday snack. Ironically the next day I overheard one of the mothers complaining how she couldn't believe that sos and so's mother didn't even think to send in cupcakes and sweets, and how her poor child was just given boring fruit for a birthday. I was very surprised!

[Anonymous]

I think Jaime's done some better work, and is a bit condescending in this program. The main points are good ones.

My son's school does not allow birthday treats, and the kids are absolutely fine with it. They don't expect cupcakes three times a month (20 odd birthdays with some holidays tossed in), and therefore don't miss it. The kids get plenty of crap elsewhere in their lives.

I am grateful to them for the treat ban.

[Anonymous]

I've been appalled for 3 years now (I've got a 2nd grader) at the elementary school food in MoCo. For me, it has nothing to do with the birthday cupcake and everything to do with the food served in cafeterias, the sweetened milks that they OFFER to the elementary kids, the pizza and ice cream every friday and the snacks like Doritos and Cheetos and Oreos that they let the kids eat mid-morning -- b/c that's what parents supply for the kindergartners and first graders.

Fairfax and Loudoun at least try to teach kids in their counties to eat healthy. MoCo seems to not care at all. It's disgusting and horrendous.

[Anonymous]

I think the show is ridiculous. Which is healthier pizza and chocolate milk or salad and water? Duh! When the show leaves and is not paying for all of the organic, grass-fed, uber healthy ingredients how are people living in a poor community going to afford those things? Is Jamie Oliver going to keep paying for all of the food he thinks these people should eat?

[Anonymous]

The crux of the issue is money. What these celebrity chefs do is appealing but is unsustainable on the amount of money school districts and the Feds allot to school food. How can these schools in a poor state manage? They will have to go back to chicken nuggets.

What many people don't know is that school nutrition departments are usually required to be self-sufficient and sometimes must actually make a profit for their district. The tiny Federal reimbursement for free and reduced price lunches must cover the cost of the food, labor, etc. Many school nutrition programs sell junk food to cover the extra costs.

This won't stop until we insist that our local districts and the Feds increase the money they reimburse for these lunches. You can't buy, prepare and serve healthy, fresh lunches on $2.20 per meal. You can't cook fresh food if all of your schools only have warming ovens, not real kitchens. And you have to give the department a big enough budget to pay for the labor required to prepare fresh fruits and vegetables, instead of dumping things out of a can.

Most school foodservice directors are registered dietitians with a real zeal for nutrition and feeding kids in a healthy way. They are completely hamstrung by budgetary restrictions and do what they can to buy healthy ingredients and get kids to eat them.

A secondary issue is the kind of food most kids get elsewhere. Believe it or not, many parents do not want their kids to lose access to the fast/junk kind of food that's served, and that's what they serve at home. When a group of parents tried to remove twice-weekly ice cream snacks from our ES, you wouldn't believe the uproar, a la "my kid isn't fat, Why should he be deprived because your kids is a fatty?" All this for those nasty Blue Bunny fake "dairy product" things. This was completely driven by parents.

It should also be noted that the actual meals (not a la carte items) do have to meet nutrition guidelines regarding fat, sugar and calories. They may not be strict enough guidelines but if your child eats a week of only the lunches served at school (no a la carte items, etc.) plus milk, he will get no more than 30% of calories from fat, the recommended amount of protein, etc. It may not be the most delicious but it's not unhealthy. A lot of that pizza has whole wheat crust and low fat cheese, for example.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think the show is ridiculous. Which is healthier pizza and chocolate milk or salad and water? Duh! When the show leaves and is not paying for all of the organic, grass-fed, uber healthy ingredients how are people living in a poor community going to afford those things? Is Jamie Oliver going to keep paying for all of the food he thinks these people should eat?

It is a political decision to decide how much to spend on school lunches. It is a political decision how much to spend on subsidies for unhealthy food vs. healthy food.

This is the richest country in the world. If enough people prioritized this issue huge strides could be made. What are you doing to make things better?

[Anonymous]

PP makes a great point. The USDA, which provides subsidies to farmers in the corm of commodity buys that are used in schools, is supporting FARMERS, not healthy eating. It's an economic program.

[Anonymous]

The USDA could subsidize small farms that provide fruits and vegetables, it we wanted it to.

[Anonymous]

That's right -- but right now political pressure supports subsidizing huge factory farms that produce corn and other commodities.

It's up to us to put the political pressure on to change the whole scenario.

[Anonymous]

Agree with everything here. We need to change how we spend money and make healthy food in schools a priority. Agree that it's sugar overload and we could start st the parent level. Please don't give my child candy with a Valentine's day card! Teachers should not be giving out candy as rewards or for any other reason. How about mini cupcakes for class birthdays or dare I say it do what that brave mom did and bring fruit. (I soo want to, but don't want to make the kids feel different). Class holiday parties are sugar central. It's disgusting how much cra* is give to our kids. How are they supposed to learn with so much sugar, preservatives and artificial dyes running through them.

[Anonymous]

Interesting that sending in a birthday treat of fresh fruit would be looked down upon. In our elem school (Ffx Cty), they do not allow sugary treats to be brought in for birthdays. This changed two years ago and the parents, as far as I can tell, are happy about it.

You can bring in a non-food item, like pencils or stickers, or you can bring in a healthy snack. I've seen pumpkin or banana mini-muffins, yogurt parfaits in a clear plastic cup, squeezable yogurts, fruit kebabs, fresh fruit cups....

[Anonymous]

I don't think the kids need treats all of the time like that, either. But I don't think the birthday parties are the problem. Did you see the crap the parents put in the brown bag lunches?!?!?! Only a few kids had fruit. One child had 2 kinds of chips and candy -- no sandwich.

I think some sugar treats here and there is fine. I don't believe in deprivation, but I think overall, the food needs to be healthier.

The menu at my child's school looks relatively healthy (FFX Cty.) The cafeteria ladies told me the try to talk every kid into taking fruit and veg. My real objection is that the ids can buy a la carte ice cream and cookies. I don't think they should have them at all. I guess they have chocolate milk, but my child just doesn't like it anyway. If she did, I'd refer they didn't have it, I guess.