She’s kind of the Virgin Mary of the whole thing. She can pray to the USDA and Congress on your children’s behalf, but she doesn’t have any magical (or elected, or appointed) powers to actually make anything happen.
I beg to differ.
A lot of teenagers have increased metabolism, coupled with increased activity such as sports. So while a caloric content may be sufficient on paper, in reality it is not. When I was 16 I could eat 4500 calories a day and not gain an ounce.
According to reports I’ve heard on TV & radio around here the top complaint from students is they’re still hungry after lunch because they didn’t get enough. What kind of snide comment do you have for a kid that tells you they’re still hungry after lunch? Go read Oliver Twist?
A couple of school districts here have opted out of the subsidized lunch program because the students hate the new menu. It’s a weird irony. They can’t stand the food being served but also hate that there’s not enough of it. Proof that if you’re hungry enough you’ll eat almost anything.
(bolding mine)
Do you mind elaborating or clarifying? By “a turn for the worse” are you referring to the … taste? nutritional quality? variety? appearance? quantity? Debating the hypotheticals is one thing, but since you’re in the trenches, so to speak, your firsthand observations could add valuable detail.
A food cannot be deficient in calories. That very concept makes no fucking sense.
And the notion that Michelle Obama is responsible for not providing 4500-calorie school lunch meals is…misguided, at best.
If a student told me that they were still hungry after lunch, I’d tell them that they need to start eating the whole thing, instead of throwing out the vegetables. If they ate everything, including the vegetables, and were still going hungry, then I’d either refer them to a doctor to determine what disease was preventing them from absorbing the nutrients, or refer them to Child Protection Services because their parents aren’t feeding them supper.
And while children have been throwing away vegetables since time immemorable, at least now the portions of the lunches that they do eat are a bit healthier (whole grain buns on the hamburgers, etc.).
I didn’t say the meal should be 4500 calories. I said that I could eat 4500 calories in an entire day back then. A 4500 calorie meal would be ridiculous.
And who used the word deficient? It’s just not enough. Not every teenager is a fat loser blob who’s obese and needs to eat less and get off their ass more. Some of these kids have faster metabolisms and participate in activities that increase their need for energy (calories). I raised 3 kids, 2 of them boys. Both of them played sports year round. You wouldn’t believe how enormous their appetites were. Yet neither were overweight. Same with myself when I was that age.
If a large number of students are complaining they’re hungry even after eating, perhaps we should listen to them and dump this social experiment.
But if the reports of food waste are also to be believed, they’re not *eating *it…so of course they’re hungry!
Taste.
Which is the point of the whole thing, and why people observing that the standards were developed by nutrition experts and not by MO are missing part of the point. Because having nutritious food served that kids dislike and won’t eat is not going to add to their health or nutritious intake.
So there’s a trade-off. As you make food healthier and healthier you sacrifice in taste, and there’s a point of diminishing returns where the added nutrition does not overcome the fact that kids are eating less of it. So even if nutrition experts tell you that such-and-such standards are the optimum from the standpoint of nutrition, that doesn’t mean that you’re actually adding any nutrition.
Now again, this is not something I’ve followed closely so I can’t vouch for what influence MO had. The only cite I see in this thread claims that she was an “instrumental player” in the implementation of the new standards, and insured further changes. So empty and unsourced declarations by various posters in this thread that she couldn’t possibly have had anything to do with it don’t have much value if any.
Further disclaimer: I don’t know how widespread the phenomenon of kids ceasing to eat the food is. What I wrote is anecdotal, based on what my kids report about themselves and their friends and what the local school administration told my wife. But it’s possible that on balance the new standards are a positive.
I heard a radio show a while back and a bunch of high school kids called in and described some of the stuff they were served. As described I wouldn’t eat some of it either and I’m not that picky.
What is the whole point of messing with school lunch? If it’s to fight obesity, that’s absurd. No one ever got fat from school lunch. The fat kids get fat from genetics, medical conditions, not being active and eating bags of Doritos outside of school. So why ram this down the throats of every kid (pun intended) because of a few lazy, gluttonous ones?
These boards are biased, though. Had Sarah Palins name been associated with this there would be dozens of threads with hundreds of posts of screams about how she’s starving our kids and making them eat disgusting food, and how dare you blame a kid for throwing it out, and blah, blah, blah.
Kids who don’t want to eat whole wheat bread are kind of spoiled, aren’t they? “Ooh, you poor things! You’re being forced to eat healthy food! That’s horrible! Here, have a mayonnaise sandwich on white cardboard.”
Yes, let’s feed them junk so they’ll eat it. I’m fairly sure that IF Sarah Palin WERE involved with this, the current whiners would be cheering it on.
What IS it about offering healthy food that makes some parents go batshit? (See the reaction to Jamie Oliver’s UK initiative.)
Just as a point of comparison, let’s see what kindergarteners are eating in Paris this week.
I weep for our kids and our future.
Well, if there’s one thing today’s teens are clamoring for, it’s more lentil salad.
I saw that program with Jamie Oliver. I didn’t know before watching it that many school lunches today are pre-packaged or prepared at a central kitchen that prepares all of the meals for the city schools. When I went to school, the meals were made at the school itself.
You’re right. The biggest part of the problem, in my not so humble opinion, is not healthy food, but *awful *(“healthy”) food. Get some actual chefs in there along with those nutritionists, put actual kitchens with working stoves and ovens back into the cafeterias so they can cook fresh food, and get the kids themselves involved in meal planning and prep. My completely rectally derived three step plan for fixing school lunches.
You’re wrong. That’s not an opinion, that’s based on actual science.
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1675660
Neither did I.
It’s hard to say where to start with this.
But the most basic problem is that you don’t have any idea what you’re talking about. Do you know what the USDA calorie recommendation is? Do you know what their policy is on different lunches for student athletes? How about their policy on allowing students to select the items in their lunch? It sure doesn’t seem like you do.
Beyond that, you’ve fundamentally misunderstood the current and historical role of school lunches, which is to provide a nutritional safety net for students whose households are unable to adequately provide for them. There is a trade-off involved in shaping the meals to prevent obesity instead of shaping them to provide enough calories for linebackers looking to bulk up. But that’s a perfectly ordinary policy trade-off for something the government is paying to provide and that neither schools nor families have any obligation to follow.
Right-wing news anecdotes aside, I’ll believe that’s happening when I see some real valid numbers.
Maybe parents should do their job and feed their kids breakfast instead of hoping the kid will make it to lunch, entirely famished. And then be aghast that they are still hungry.
Really, you don’t want a big lunch. For various reasons other than making you sleepy such as that if you are sedentary at school/work, your metabolism will be lower. So, having a high caloric lunch will “go straight to the hips”. And, you’d probably never satisfy the hunger of a growing adolescent anyways. I was always hungry until like 20.
nm
I don’t think getting chefs involved (assuming they’re not already) would help anything. When I’m on cafeteria duty, I never see students trying a bite of the vegetables, deciding they don’t like them, and then throwing out the rest. It’s always students who just throw them away untouched. Make the veggies taste better, and those students would never even know it.
This is why California schools serve breakfast. It may just be a bagel, cream cheese and a banana, but it’s something. For some of our kids it’s the only breakfast they ever get.
Oddly enough, while having a chef doesn’t seem to make students choose the chef’s dish (if they have a choice), it does seem to make them choose more side fruits and vegetables. No one’s determined why, but I’d guess that simply having the idea that the school cares about school lunch enough to hire a chef makes the kids care more about their lunch choices as well.
http://archpedi.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2210437