School Lunch - Can We Talk About Improving Nutrition for Kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't find vegetables more expensive. Have you taken a look at how cheap beets are? Or cabbages? Why can't schools buy vegetables from wholesale producers and prepare those instead of getting the packaged garbage?

Beets and cabbages??

Vegetables perish quickly. Schools would have to order them more often than frozen, which makes them more expansive.

It just so happens that beets and cabbage are two vegetables with a long shelf life.

But that is what food in schools must be. Cooked on-site from fresh by on-aite personnel whose job is cooking, not reheating like a flight attendent. I'm so sorry that this wasn't the case for you or your children. Many countries, rich and poor, manage to do that. That's how you feed children a nutrition and varied diet, and how you teach them to eat a nutritious and varied diet.

Since many of us were raised, at school and at home, on a non-varied diet as children, be reassured that all is not lost. Our kids are fine. They'll grow up to be adults who eat a nutritious and varied diet.

Yeah, sorry it sounded a little condescending. It's just that the adult PP I was replying to didn't know you can leave a whole cabbage on your counter longer than a bagged loaf of sandwich bread. If they'd eaten it at school more often, they'd buy it at the grocery store more often and feed it to their kids and eat it themselves and it wouldn't be perceived as such an incongruous food to procure, preserve, prepare, present to children. It's not a soufflé.

[Anonymous]

I agree with the Middle Eastern PP. kids like cooked vegetables, provided they are cooked well of course. They taste better and they are much easier to eats. We changed our diet 3 years ago. Now mostly follow the Mediterranean diet. My 6 year old, 4 year old and 2 year old love the food. I learned a lot from a blog I found by a Greek-American nutritionist called Olive Tomato. She talks about school lunches in this post: https://www.olivetomato.com/school-lunches-in-the-u-s-yes-you-can-make-kids-want-to-eat-vegetables-make-them-a-bit-more-mediterranean/

[Anonymous]

My kids love the free lunch. They eat every bit of it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't find vegetables more expensive. Have you taken a look at how cheap beets are? Or cabbages? Why can't schools buy vegetables from wholesale producers and prepare those instead of getting the packaged garbage?

Beets and cabbages??

Vegetables perish quickly. Schools would have to order them more often than frozen, which makes them more expansive.

It just so happens that beets and cabbage are two vegetables with a long shelf life.

But that is what food in schools must be. Cooked on-site from fresh by on-aite personnel whose job is cooking, not reheating like a flight attendent. I'm so sorry that this wasn't the case for you or your children. Many countries, rich and poor, manage to do that. That's how you feed children a nutrition and varied diet, and how you teach them to eat a nutritious and varied diet.

I haven’t seen a single person here disagree that school lunch needs to be healthier, but it reeks of privilege to complain without looking at the larger issue. We, as a society, do not provide schools with enough funding to do as suggested. Fresh, healthy food is expensive, despite your personal belief, and a great deal of people who are on strict budgets don’t buy fresh food for that reason. Why spend several dollars on apples when you can get ramen for $1 a bag, which could feed you for several meals? Healthy food is not easily accessible to everyone in this country. If you want it to be accessible to children through public schools, they’ll need to reallocate federal funding to school lunch programs.

Reeks of privilege??? Kids from lower income families deserve to eat healthy food. That’s why as a society we should make healthy and tasty school meals a priority. Of course schools need more funding. But until then we need to get creative. Other school districts have managed to improve their school meals. We can too. By the way I’m latino. I grew up poor. The food we ate at home was so much healthier than the food that they served at school. But we ate the school lunches anyways because they were free and my parents couldn’t afford to feed us three times a day. The meals were disgusting. It’s disgusting that schools think it’s okay to serve this crap to kids. Have some respect for the people who need these meals and keep your fake privilege talk to yourself. We need solutions now. The solutions won’t be perfect but we can serve kids better meals while also pushing the federal government to give more money to the schools.

[Anonymous]

There is a lot of encouragement to pick up these free food offerings, but I’ve seen a few moms in my local groups—who actually need the assistance—go and come away with applesauce and granola bars. The other food was all gone by the time they were able to stop by.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not just in NY but in Colorado as well. https://303magazine.com/2017/08/chef-ann-foundation/

It’s entirely possible. Colorado paid for the school lunch program using federal dollars. It didn’t cost extra.

This isn’t any better than what we offer in this area. These are all processes frozen food. That might then be cooked on site but by no means is anything on this menu great.

Umm no. They cook everything on site and the food isn’t processed. You must know nothing about school lunches if you haven’t heard of Ann Cooper.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with the Middle Eastern PP. kids like cooked vegetables, provided they are cooked well of course. They taste better and they are much easier to eats. We changed our diet 3 years ago. Now mostly follow the Mediterranean diet. My 6 year old, 4 year old and 2 year old love the food. I learned a lot from a blog I found by a Greek-American nutritionist called Olive Tomato. She talks about school lunches in this post: https://www.olivetomato.com/school-lunches-in-the-u-s-yes-you-can-make-kids-want-to-eat-vegetables-make-them-a-bit-more-mediterranean/

I'm an earlier PP who mentioned eating Greek food a lot. That's my favorite website! We pretty much follow her guidelines, though I can't eat bread myself for medical reasons.

[Anonymous]

I teach in a middle school and have lunch duty sometimes. The Obama Era school lunch changes were actually fine...they had a lot of sweet potato fries that the kids liked less than the smiley fries (which I do not understand why they like, but I digress. The mac and cheese was as least whole grain and they had some interesting options. The raw broccoli and carrots you all are talking about actually gets consumed more often than when they try to put out baked beans and jimcama. I agree that the breakfasts are terrible...not sure what they are serving at the meals sites, but when we are in person, the kids get a juice and choices like a sugary cereal, some weird warm pastry with cream cheese inside, waffle pouches, or pop tarts. The most healthy option is a small whole grain bagel with cream cheese.

[Anonymous]

I 100% support more federal spending on school lunch if that is what it takes to make it healthy. I'd like to think that more people's eyes are being opened to what is in school lunch now that it is so widely available, and that maybe this will be the catalyst for real improvement.

That's awful that one of the PP's mom friends who need the food were only able to get apple sauce and granola bars! I wonder what happened because moms in our PTA are swearing up and down that APS has ways to ensure there is enough food for everyone. Thought it is is a fair question how this is actually possible.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Not just in NY but in Colorado as well. https://303magazine.com/2017/08/chef-ann-foundation/

It’s entirely possible. Colorado paid for the school lunch program using federal dollars. It didn’t cost extra.

This isn’t any better than what we offer in this area. These are all processes frozen food. That might then be cooked on site but by no means is anything on this menu great.

Umm no. They cook everything on site and the food isn’t processed. You must know nothing about school lunches if you haven’t heard of Ann Cooper.

Are you crazy? Did you actually look at the pictures of the food they are serving? "cook on site" means, they are getting the frozen food and cooking it on the site. It doesn't mean they are slow roasting chicken!
Fried chicken patty with waffle? That's plenty processed. Hot Dog, baked beans, frozen mixed veggies? processed. Tortilla chips, taco meet, corn, cheese? processed.
I have seen each of these items on the menus of our local schools.
And many local schools have salad bars.
And all give out fresh fruit.
While they may have taken pretty pictures of their school lunches, they aren't serving anything better than our local school cafeterias.

[Anonymous]

I’m reminded of a very nice parent with rather short kids. She said they lived well in Africa for the first years of the kids lives. Everything came out of the ground and there were zero processed foods.

They came to the US and started eating processed foods like fortified cereal and shot up in height.

Leave things alone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't find vegetables more expensive. Have you taken a look at how cheap beets are? Or cabbages? Why can't schools buy vegetables from wholesale producers and prepare those instead of getting the packaged garbage?

Beets and cabbages??

Vegetables perish quickly. Schools would have to order them more often than frozen, which makes them more expansive.

It just so happens that beets and cabbage are two vegetables with a long shelf life.

But that is what food in schools must be. Cooked on-site from fresh by on-aite personnel whose job is cooking, not reheating like a flight attendent. I'm so sorry that this wasn't the case for you or your children. Many countries, rich and poor, manage to do that. That's how you feed children a nutrition and varied diet, and how you teach them to eat a nutritious and varied diet.

I haven’t seen a single person here disagree that school lunch needs to be healthier, but it reeks of privilege to complain without looking at the larger issue. We, as a society, do not provide schools with enough funding to do as suggested. Fresh, healthy food is expensive, despite your personal belief, and a great deal of people who are on strict budgets don’t buy fresh food for that reason. Why spend several dollars on apples when you can get ramen for $1 a bag, which could feed you for several meals? Healthy food is not easily accessible to everyone in this country. If you want it to be accessible to children through public schools, they’ll need to reallocate federal funding to school lunch programs.

Reeks of privilege??? Kids from lower income families deserve to eat healthy food. That’s why as a society we should make healthy and tasty school meals a priority. Of course schools need more funding. But until then we need to get creative. Other school districts have managed to improve their school meals. We can too. By the way I’m latino. I grew up poor. The food we ate at home was so much healthier than the food that they served at school. But we ate the school lunches anyways because they were free and my parents couldn’t afford to feed us three times a day. The meals were disgusting. It’s disgusting that schools think it’s okay to serve this crap to kids. Have some respect for the people who need these meals and keep your fake privilege talk to yourself. We need solutions now. The solutions won’t be perfect but we can serve kids better meals while also pushing the federal government to give more money to the schools.

This 100% reeks of privilege. People want to get on here and complain about school lunches without putting their money where their mouth is. Did you read Pp entire post? You are both saying the same thing—that allocation of federal funds needs to happen. Don’t be so triggered.

[Anonymous]

The issue here is it doesn't matter what you think. School lunches are based on what most kids eat, not what the kids of over achieving DCUM members eat.

I grew up in a poor home, we had fast food every night except when there was no food.

I loved school lunch. Still do. It was the one meal we could count on. I loved the cut up veggies and the chocolate milk and the frosted flakes.

Maybe your kids grew up with pureed organic leeks but most kids don't. And won't eat beets or cabbage in any form.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The issue here is it doesn't matter what you think. School lunches are based on what most kids eat, not what the kids of over achieving DCUM members eat.

I grew up in a poor home, we had fast food every night except when there was no food.

I loved school lunch. Still do. It was the one meal we could count on. I loved the cut up veggies and the chocolate milk and the frosted flakes.

Maybe your kids grew up with pureed organic leeks but most kids don't. And won't eat beets or cabbage in any form.

The fact that you think it’s ok to feed kids this stuff is insane. No one said to give kids puréed organic leeks. You realize that it isn’t either/or right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't find vegetables more expensive. Have you taken a look at how cheap beets are? Or cabbages? Why can't schools buy vegetables from wholesale producers and prepare those instead of getting the packaged garbage?

Beets and cabbages??

Vegetables perish quickly. Schools would have to order them more often than frozen, which makes them more expansive.

It just so happens that beets and cabbage are two vegetables with a long shelf life.

But that is what food in schools must be. Cooked on-site from fresh by on-aite personnel whose job is cooking, not reheating like a flight attendent. I'm so sorry that this wasn't the case for you or your children. Many countries, rich and poor, manage to do that. That's how you feed children a nutrition and varied diet, and how you teach them to eat a nutritious and varied diet.

I haven’t seen a single person here disagree that school lunch needs to be healthier, but it reeks of privilege to complain without looking at the larger issue. We, as a society, do not provide schools with enough funding to do as suggested. Fresh, healthy food is expensive, despite your personal belief, and a great deal of people who are on strict budgets don’t buy fresh food for that reason. Why spend several dollars on apples when you can get ramen for $1 a bag, which could feed you for several meals? Healthy food is not easily accessible to everyone in this country. If you want it to be accessible to children through public schools, they’ll need to reallocate federal funding to school lunch programs.

Reeks of privilege??? Kids from lower income families deserve to eat healthy food. That’s why as a society we should make healthy and tasty school meals a priority. Of course schools need more funding. But until then we need to get creative. Other school districts have managed to improve their school meals. We can too. By the way I’m latino. I grew up poor. The food we ate at home was so much healthier than the food that they served at school. But we ate the school lunches anyways because they were free and my parents couldn’t afford to feed us three times a day. The meals were disgusting. It’s disgusting that schools think it’s okay to serve this crap to kids. Have some respect for the people who need these meals and keep your fake privilege talk to yourself. We need solutions now. The solutions won’t be perfect but we can serve kids better meals while also pushing the federal government to give more money to the schools.

This 100% reeks of privilege. People want to get on here and complain about school lunches without putting their money where their mouth is. Did you read Pp entire post? You are both saying the same thing—that allocation of federal funds needs to happen. Don’t be so triggered.

Umm no. I’m saying that we need to push for more federal funding. But while doing that we can work with what we have.