School Food Contract Hearing - Sodexho Magic = horsemeat and more of the same

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Avoid the dogfood. Pack your child's lunch. How lazy are you that you can't make a sandwich and include an apple?

Not about laziness. Also what 4, 5, and/or 6th grade boy who plays multiple sports just eats a sandwich and apple for lunch.

Then include a granola bar and a yogurt.

The point is that if you're incapable of doing a better job of creating a lunch than Chartwells or the horse-meat-seller-du-jour you shouldn't have procreated.

I start my shift at the mammogram unit at 7:00 am three times a week dear stay at home freelance mom. When you get your mammogram at 11:00 am after your yoga class, I have already been there for 4 hours. I pay taxes and demand healthy food for my kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Avoid the dogfood. Pack your child's lunch. How lazy are you that you can't make a sandwich and include an apple?

How lazy is your CHILD is the real question. Signed, lazy SAHM, who makes her child make her own lunch.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Horsemeat story:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-21696325

Can't even. Beyond appalling. And these people are going to be feeding our children? I'm moving to VA next year and not letting the door hit me. Rock bottom doesn't convey what is going on with our schools here. Now we're feeding it to our kids?...

Not that I don't understand your general disgust, but when it comes to food you can always pack your kids lunch.

School lunch is rather low-status.

Low status? Are you escalade jealousy mom?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I have children at Yu Ying. They don't like the lunch, but the vanilla milk is supposedly good. If DCPS did nothing else but supply healthy milk to the 60% or so students in poverty that would be a step up.

You think vanilla milk is healthy?! It's filled with sugar. That's not healthy.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Of course they're low class, but no they should not be "yucky" (just don't act surprised when they are). Horsemeat or mac-and-cheese, either way it's disgusting.

All kids deserve better than this. Once upon a time we could do that with a piece of fruit and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, but of course that's pretty much illegal now. Do you know what the single most effective food is for feeding starving children in Africa? Peanuts. Yes. But for some reason, we're all too good for that here.

It's not being "too good" so much as concern related to fatal allergies. Whether that concern is overblown and whether banning PB&J is the right way to address it are certainly up for discussion, but do you actually think that it's a snobbery thing and not an allergy thing? Are your kids going to school with a PB&J and an apple, or are you giving them also a vegetable? If you actually care about feeding kids good food, why are you blowing off conversations about the contract? 3/4 of DCPS kids are eligible for free lunch. Have whatever opinion you want about other people's procreation, but there are laws that guarantee low income children nutritious food when their parents don't make enough money to feed them that food at home. Are you really suggesting that we punish those children MORE for their parents' choices?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have children at Yu Ying. They don't like the lunch, but the vanilla milk is supposedly good. If DCPS did nothing else but supply healthy milk to the 60% or so students in poverty that would be a step up.

You think vanilla milk is healthy?! It's filled with sugar. That's not healthy.

That milk is 'processed milk' made by Fairlife, a coca-cola subsidiary. They got their foot in the door in DC by giving free trips to the chef/head of food at Elsie Stokes...and have been slowly working their way into other charters and DCPS by telling people their milk comes from "clean cows" and bashing the local dairy industry. (This milk is shipped in concentrated form from Illlinois and/or New Mexico).

[Anonymous]

Why is this even a thread? If you can't figure out how to feed your child, why did you have one?

Buy healthy food. Give it to your child. Sometimes it will be breakfast. Sometimes it will be in the form of a lunch you need to pack for school. Sometimes it will be dinner.

Rinse. Repeat.

If this is too hard for you, don't make babies.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why is this even a thread? If you can't figure out how to feed your child, why did you have one?

Buy healthy food. Give it to your child. Sometimes it will be breakfast. Sometimes it will be in the form of a lunch you need to pack for school. Sometimes it will be dinner.

Rinse. Repeat.

If this is too hard for you, don't make babies.

So again, your proposal is to provide no food, because you wish to teach parents a lesson by hurting their children?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this even a thread? If you can't figure out how to feed your child, why did you have one?

Buy healthy food. Give it to your child. Sometimes it will be breakfast. Sometimes it will be in the form of a lunch you need to pack for school. Sometimes it will be dinner.

Rinse. Repeat.

If this is too hard for you, don't make babies.

So again, your proposal is to provide no food, because you wish to teach parents a lesson by hurting their children?

Didn't The Atlantic run a thought-piece on how subsidizing poverty encourages or prolongs poverty?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why is this even a thread? If you can't figure out how to feed your child, why did you have one?

Buy healthy food. Give it to your child. Sometimes it will be breakfast. Sometimes it will be in the form of a lunch you need to pack for school. Sometimes it will be dinner.

Rinse. Repeat.

If this is too hard for you, don't make babies.

So again, your proposal is to provide no food, because you wish to teach parents a lesson by hurting their children?

Didn't The Atlantic run a thought-piece on how subsidizing poverty encourages or prolongs poverty?

Again, we are talking about thousands of actual children. Are you suggesting that my daughter's friend deserves to go hungry or be fed sub-par food to encourage her mother to make more money?

The thing about "thought pieces" is that the abstract can be made neat and tidy without much difficulty. It becomes more complicated for most non-sociopaths when you're talking about real human beings who go hungry because someone wants to teach a policy lesson.

Also, assuming we are talking about the same articles (this one: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/how-poverty-compounds/478539/ or this one: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/total-inequality/476238/), the "subsidizing poverty encourages or prolongs it" is an interesting take-home message. I read both articles and if I was applying them to the subject of this thread, my take-home would be that schools have a duty to provide nutritious lunch that children want to eat, so that children living in poverty a) have 2 reliably healthy meals and b) develop an appreciation for something other than carry-out and Hot Pockets. There is a known correlation between hunger and difficulty achieving (academically or professionally, for that matter) and a the known correlation between education and achievement. We should be doing absolutely everything we can to provide healthy food to at risk kids as a protection against their future poverty.

And at the end of the day, I see no moral high ground gained by punishing children for their parents' decisions.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have children at Yu Ying. They don't like the lunch, but the vanilla milk is supposedly good. If DCPS did nothing else but supply healthy milk to the 60% or so students in poverty that would be a step up.

You think vanilla milk is healthy?! It's filled with sugar. That's not healthy.

Hey Mom:

Watch out ! Children need sugars and lots of carbohydrates calories, daily. Sugar is unhealthy only for overweight kids. For normal kids, vanilla milk is extremely healthy (as long as the milk used is good quality milk) . Actually sugared milk or sugared yogurt are our recommended snacks for mid-afternoon snacks for school-age kids, as they digestion time is longer than carb-only snacks (thus providing for a longer lasting satiation), they provide calcium and proteins, animal fats for brain/neuro development and a shot of carb energy kid need for the rest of their day.

Let me restate it: sugar-added milk and yogurts are very healthy food for normal kids (non-overweight, non milk intolerant/allergic).

In my NW family medicine practice, in the most recent years and following guidelines from our main campus medical school hospital and national best-practice guidelines, we have experienced a shift in focus from child obesity/overweight monitoring to child under/malnutrition, which affects an increasingly high number of high SES families. Parents imposing vegetarian diets on toddlers (which can be fine only if calcium and iron supplements are provided, together with food protein counts) , non-breast feeding moms feeding (severely underweight) babies with organic goat and soy milk instead of the "evil Nestle" formula, underweight kids due to lack of age-appropriate fat and sugar intake. We see parents literally depriving kids of carbos and sugars. 8 year old kids with eating disorders induced by years of quinoa and kale meals. Some months ago I had a 7 year old patient girl who erupted in tears during a routine exam, telling us that during the previous weekend she had a glass of coke , and she was freaking out she might die because coke corrodes the stomach "dad showed me the video of coke corroding a coin!.." .

Again, child under/malnutrition is a phenomenon that the medical community is looking at with growing concerns in well-off communities , as parents seems to turn to their kids (instead of on themselves) in their need to follow to marketing-induced and non-scientific based trends on what is healthy food and what is not healthy food.

So if we want to have a useful and healthy debate on our kids school-provided meals , let's frame it in the right context:

- Hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairies are very unhealthy. In particular antibiotics in livestock are proven contributors to the development of resistant strains of bacteria, which are a hazard not only for our kids, but also for the society at large. Antibiotics-free or at least "green-meat" (lower antibiotics and only from a small determined set of molecules) should have been Priority #1 for DCPS. We see instead that no attention has been placed on this aspect. Worse, the Sodexo contract is worse than Chartwell's in this respect. This very alarming and a shame for the public school system of our nation's capital , at a time when many school districts are turning to antibiotic-free chicken and meats (eg, New York, Chicago, LA, a large sub-district in Miami, etc ). Even McDonalds recently committed to antibiotics-free poultry! Bottom line: a morning stop at Mc Donalds for a grilled chicken sandwich for school lunch can provide for a healthier meal for your kid than Sodexo's meats. T

- Pesticides in vegetable and fruit can be bad. But this really depends on the vegetable type. Very bad on carrots and strawberries for instance. Not a big concern for oranges and bananas or legumes. Plus, there's no scientifically proven nutritive superiority of organic vegetables vs standard vegetables. I have no problems with my kids having non-organic vegetables at school (though, I have to admit, at home we buy organics for high pesticide vegetables such as carrots, strawberries, grapes).

- Sugared milk and yogurts are very healthy for elementary and middle school students . Let's move the debate away from this aspect. Whole milk is very healthy too , and ES and MS kids dramatically need that fat for a healthy neuro-development (and BTW whole milk is on average only 4% fat , and much more tasty than 1% reduced fat milk). Fat is removed from milk through solvents, and this process lowers the vitamin load in milk (so vitamins A and D are then re-added to the milk, artificially).

- Sodas, high fat strong and sour dressing (ketchup, mayo, ranch) are unsuited ingredients to healthy school diets, due to very low nutritional properties relative to their calories from sugars and fats, and generate addiction to strong, artificial and processed tastes and smells.

- Processed foods , compared to simple foods, are on average unhealthier, for several reasons I have no time to list (the UK NHS made several studies on this issue some years ago, several are available online).

In sum: in my (professional) view, the biggest problem with the Sodexo contract lies in allowing meats and dairies from livestock treated with growth hormones and antibiotics. This poses a proven long-term health hazard to the kids, and to the society at large. This marks a setback compared to the Chartwells contract . This is outrageous , especially at a time where several US districts are banning these foods from school tables. And we should never stop pointing fingers against DCPS on this aspect until this is changed.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I have children at Yu Ying. They don't like the lunch, but the vanilla milk is supposedly good. If DCPS did nothing else but supply healthy milk to the 60% or so students in poverty that would be a step up.

You think vanilla milk is healthy?! It's filled with sugar. That's not healthy.

Hey Mom:

Watch out ! Children need sugars and lots of carbohydrates calories, daily. Sugar is unhealthy only for overweight kids. For normal kids, vanilla milk is extremely healthy (as long as the milk used is good quality milk) . Actually sugared milk or sugared yogurt are our recommended snacks for mid-afternoon snacks for school-age kids, as they digestion time is longer than carb-only snacks (thus providing for a longer lasting satiation), they provide calcium and proteins, animal fats for brain/neuro development and a shot of carb energy kid need for the rest of their day.

Let me restate it: sugar-added milk and yogurts are very healthy food for normal kids (non-overweight, non milk intolerant/allergic).

In my NW family medicine practice, in the most recent years and following guidelines from our main campus medical school hospital and national best-practice guidelines, we have experienced a shift in focus from child obesity/overweight monitoring to child under/malnutrition, which affects an increasingly high number of high SES families. Parents imposing vegetarian diets on toddlers (which can be fine only if calcium and iron supplements are provided, together with food protein counts) , non-breast feeding moms feeding (severely underweight) babies with organic goat and soy milk instead of the "evil Nestle" formula, underweight kids due to lack of age-appropriate fat and sugar intake. We see parents literally depriving kids of carbos and sugars. 8 year old kids with eating disorders induced by years of quinoa and kale meals. Some months ago I had a 7 year old patient girl who erupted in tears during a routine exam, telling us that during the previous weekend she had a glass of coke , and she was freaking out she might die because coke corrodes the stomach "dad showed me the video of coke corroding a coin!.." .

Again, child under/malnutrition is a phenomenon that the medical community is looking at with growing concerns in well-off communities , as parents seems to turn to their kids (instead of on themselves) in their need to follow to marketing-induced and non-scientific based trends on what is healthy food and what is not healthy food.

So if we want to have a useful and healthy debate on our kids school-provided meals , let's frame it in the right context:

- Hormones and antibiotics in meat and dairies are very unhealthy. In particular antibiotics in livestock are proven contributors to the development of resistant strains of bacteria, which are a hazard not only for our kids, but also for the society at large. Antibiotics-free or at least "green-meat" (lower antibiotics and only from a small determined set of molecules) should have been Priority #1 for DCPS. We see instead that no attention has been placed on this aspect. Worse, the Sodexo contract is worse than Chartwell's in this respect. This very alarming and a shame for the public school system of our nation's capital , at a time when many school districts are turning to antibiotic-free chicken and meats (eg, New York, Chicago, LA, a large sub-district in Miami, etc ). Even McDonalds recently committed to antibiotics-free poultry! Bottom line: a morning stop at Mc Donalds for a grilled chicken sandwich for school lunch can provide for a healthier meal for your kid than Sodexo's meats. T

- Pesticides in vegetable and fruit can be bad. But this really depends on the vegetable type. Very bad on carrots and strawberries for instance. Not a big concern for oranges and bananas or legumes. Plus, there's no scientifically proven nutritive superiority of organic vegetables vs standard vegetables. I have no problems with my kids having non-organic vegetables at school (though, I have to admit, at home we buy organics for high pesticide vegetables such as carrots, strawberries, grapes).

- Sugared milk and yogurts are very healthy for elementary and middle school students . Let's move the debate away from this aspect. Whole milk is very healthy too , and ES and MS kids dramatically need that fat for a healthy neuro-development (and BTW whole milk is on average only 4% fat , and much more tasty than 1% reduced fat milk). Fat is removed from milk through solvents, and this process lowers the vitamin load in milk (so vitamins A and D are then re-added to the milk, artificially).

- Sodas, high fat strong and sour dressing (ketchup, mayo, ranch) are unsuited ingredients to healthy school diets, due to very low nutritional properties relative to their calories from sugars and fats, and generate addiction to strong, artificial and processed tastes and smells.

- Processed foods , compared to simple foods, are on average unhealthier, for several reasons I have no time to list (the UK NHS made several studies on this issue some years ago, several are available online).

In sum: in my (professional) view, the biggest problem with the Sodexo contract lies in allowing meats and dairies from livestock treated with growth hormones and antibiotics. This poses a proven long-term health hazard to the kids, and to the society at large. This marks a setback compared to the Chartwells contract . This is outrageous , especially at a time where several US districts are banning these foods from school tables. And we should never stop pointing fingers against DCPS on this aspect until this is changed.

Er, no. High sugar foods affect the brain in ways that increase craving and lead to hyper behavior. And there is entirely too much sugar in the typical person's -- even if normal weight -- diet these days. Look at the recent reports by the WHO and the CDC. Plain old milk is just fine. Milk, whole grains or nuts, fruit -- that makes a good afternoon snack.

Sure, sugared milk beats Twinkies, but that's a horribly low standard.

[Anonymous]

And let me add, the vast majority of children eating DCPS lunches are not the anorexic sugar-starved kids in your NW medical practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Avoid the dogfood. Pack your child's lunch. How lazy are you that you can't make a sandwich and include an apple?

Not about laziness. Also what 4, 5, and/or 6th grade boy who plays multiple sports just eats a sandwich and apple for lunch.

Then include a granola bar and a yogurt.

The point is that if you're incapable of doing a better job of creating a lunch than Chartwells or the horse-meat-seller-du-jour you shouldn't have procreated.

I start my shift at the mammogram unit at 7:00 am three times a week dear stay at home freelance mom. When you get your mammogram at 11:00 am after your yoga class, I have already been there for 4 hours. I pay taxes and demand healthy food for my kids.

Just stop. You aren't a martyr because you do mammograms. Lots of us start work at that time and plenty of us do good for society.

[Anonymous]

(But I also completely agree with you on the antibiotics and hormones - yuck.)