Reply to Why are schools serving meat?

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Why are schools serving meat?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Well... let's see...

You have several fallacies in your argument.

[quote][b]It has been consistently shown hat local farm to table food is MORE expensive than the large mass produced foods.[/b]/quote]

*I would assume you have some data to support that statement but we both know that the research results can depend on who finances it.
*I hope that in your infinite wisdom you hold true that US is the most horticulturally advanced country in the world with the best technology and resources so farming is way more cost effective here then in Italy, France, Brazil or UK, therefore I beg your explanation why those countries can provide produce for the school needs in the affordable non -subsidised manner. Let me suport this by
the fact that Jammie Oliver proved the very miracle possible in UK. 
* As far as the consistency is concerned, if you are using the same methods and resources you surely will get the same results. 
[/quote][/quote]

You still don't seem to understand economies of scale very well.  You realize that the US is roughly the size of the entire subcontinent of Europe.  Several of the states within the US are larger than many of the countries in Europe.  Your examples are all significantly smaller.  The US has a population of 330M.  All of those nations are smaller (Italy 60M, UK 66M, France 67M, Brazil 211M).  And costs grow exponentially as do issues as you make the system larger.  You can make things work on smaller scales that do not work well in larger scales.

You picked a fine example of Jamie Oliver.  He ranted and raved like you did about American school food.  So in 2010, he set out to meet the challenge.  He went to Huntingdon, WV, dubbed the unhealthiest city in America and tried to reform their school food program.  Like you he stressed good ingredients and cooking.  The problem is that his solution was not feasible within the US and also not successful.  He did not meet the current budget of $1.50 per meal that the school district could afford.  He afforded it by not charging the school district for the labor.  All of the cooks in the show were paid for by ABC.  Additionally, he demanded local produce and organic meats.  Again, ABC paid for those ingredients.  Finally, the results:

[url]https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/school-lunch/[/url]
[quote]But there was a problem with this made-for-TV narrative—several, actually. Shortly after Oliver left, a study by the West Virginia University Health Research Center reported that 77 percent of students were “very unhappy” with his food. Students who relied on school meals for nearly half of their daily calories routinely dumped their trays in the trash. Some did it because they hated the taste; others because it became the cool thing to do. And while Oliver’s meals used fresh, high-quality ingredients, many turned out to be too high in fat to meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s standards. Within a year, McCoy said, the number of students eating school lunch fell 10 percent, forcing her to cut her budget and lay off several cooks.[/quote]

It took Rhonda McCoy years to fix the mess that Jamie Oliver had abandoned her with.

The ultimate problem is that school districts are being faced with lower budgets and your proposal is significantly more costly.  It's been tried and no one has been able to make the system cost effective yet.  And so far, the ideas have been executed on a local level.  If they can't get the programs to work on a local level in one city, they aren't going to be able to make such systems cost effective on a nationwide scale in the US.

You should read the full article linked above.  It will give you an idea of the complex problems involved in fixing the broken school lunch programs and the cost issues that are associated with it.  It is not a simple fix and issues need to be fixed in the system before trying to convert to a different model (like local sourcing and cooking in-house) completely.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics