Posted on 12/21/2011 4:11:59 AM PST by Kaslin
The road to gastric hell is paved with first lady Michelle Obama's Nanny State intentions. Don't take my word for it. School kids in Los Angeles have blown the whistle on the east wing chef-in-chief's healthy lunch diktats. Get your Pepto Bismol ready. The taste of government waste is indigestion-inducing.
According to a weekend report by the Los Angeles Times, the city's "trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop." In response to the public hectoring and financial inducement of Mrs. Obama's federally subsidized anti-obesity campaign, the district dropped chicken nuggets, corn dogs and flavored milk from the menu for "beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads."
Sounds delectable in theory. But in practice, the initiative has been what L.A. Unified's food services director Dennis Barrett plainly concludes is a "disaster." While the Obama administration has showered the nation's second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market -- stoked not just by students, but also by teachers -- is now thriving. Moreover, "(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away."
This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional improvements -- from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce.
This despite a nearly half-billion-dollar budget shortfall and 3,000 layoffs earlier this year.
Earlier this spring, L.A. school officials acknowledged that the sprawling district is left with a whopping 21,000 uneaten meals a day, in part because the federal school lunch program "sometimes requires more food to be served than a child wants to eat." The leftovers will now be donated to nonprofit agencies. But after the recipients hear about students' reports of moldy noodles, undercooked meat and hard rice, one wonders how much of the "free" food will go down the hatch -- or down the drain. Ahhh, savor the flavor of one-size-fits-all mandates.
There's nothing wrong with encouraging our children to eat healthier, of course. There's nothing wrong with well-run, locally based and parent-driven efforts. But as I've noted before, the federal foodie cops care much less about students' waistlines than they do about boosting government and public union payrolls.
In a little-noticed announcement several months ago, Obama health officials declared their intention to use school lunch applications to boost government health care rolls. Never mind the privacy concerns of parents.
Big Government programs "for the children" are never about the children. If they were, you wouldn't see Chicago public school officials banning students from bringing home-packed meals made by their own parents. In April, The Chicago Tribune reported that "unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria." The bottom line? Banning homemade lunches means a fatter payday for the school and its food provider.
Remember: The unwritten mantra driving Mrs. Obama's federal school lunch meddling and expansion is: "Cede the children, feed the state." And the biggest beneficiaries of her efforts over the past three years have been her husband's deep-pocketed pals at the Service Employees International Union. There are 400,000 workers who prepare and serve lunch to American schoolchildren. SEIU represents tens of thousands of those workers and is trying to unionize many more at all costs.
In L.A., the district's cafeteria fund is $20 million in the hole thanks to political finagling by SEIU Local 99. The union's left-wing allies on the school board and in the mayor's office pressured the district to adopt reckless fiscal policies awarding gold-plated health benefits to part-time cafeteria workers in the name of "social justice." As one school board member who opposed the budget-busting entitlements said: "Everyone in this country deserves health benefits. But it was a very expensive proposal. And it wasn't done at the bargaining table, which is where health benefits are usually negotiated. And no one had any idea where the money was going to come from."
Early next year, Mrs. Obama will use the "success" of her child nutrition campaign to hawk a new tome and lobby for more money and power in concert with her husband's re-election campaign. It's a recipe for more half-baked progressivism served with a side order of bitter arugula.
SO, with results like these ..... let's let the Federal Government run our healthcare ..... /s
Good grief. There are so many ways to make healthful food that is delicious. Why subject the kids to this kind of cr*p?
… "beef jambalaya, vegetable curry, pad Thai, lentil and brown rice cutlets, and quinoa and black-eyed pea salads."
I can’t imagine many school kids scarfing down such things. Does she think the kids are so hungry they’ll eat it anyway?
She certainly is so out of touch with reality
“I can’t imagine many school kids scarfing down such things”
Many children are texture/visual picky when it comes to food. For example, they will eat the meat first, then the potatoes, then the vegetables. Something like beef jambalaya, vegetable curry... the flavors are too strong and too many textures at once. I have no idea what a lentil and brown rice cutlet is or what it is suppose to look like. Doesn’t sound like something I would eat.
That picture is AWESOME! Photoshopped but not far from the truth.
God that woman is a pig.
Who are the other two females? They are hot!!!!!
Lentil and Brown rice - bastardization of Hispanic staple of rice and beans.
This is a test run for Agenda 21 proponents. It will be eat what you got or f’n die. And who’s to protest? There will be an information censorship so if a whole complex or stack’em & dispatch’em cubbyholes dies, nobody in other slave complexes would know about it.
They are not females. They are Obama’s bathouse buddies.
We get closer to a soviet state with each passing day.
I thought initially that they were the wives of European heads of state, but when I saw the pic was ‘shopped, I figured they were just two well-assembled women going up some steps.
Central planning doesn’t work. Never has...never will.
“(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away.”
Proof the War On Poverty has been won.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy (R) and Spain’s Princess Letizia (L) walk the stairs of the Zarzuela Palace in Madrid on April 27, 2009.
Well there you have it! Thanks, Blow.
The original 'un-shopped' copy of pic that can be found through google pics. Moochie's rear is still as big as Alabama in real life. But this pic was funnier.
As to the other two females in the pic - don't know who they are but they must 'have some money'. The one in the Blue suit & wearing the red soled high heeled shoes - I'm pretty sure those cost a small fortune, like a couple thousand dollars. (heck, even her handbag matches her suit)
Princess Letizia of Spain and Mrs. Sarkozy of France.
A PBJ or Tuna sandwich, maybe a soup or fries, a carton of milk and a cookie.
Cheaper, same nutritional value and the kids like it.
I think this crap all started with the 70’s libs creating the peanut allergy scare. All of a sudden, half the kids in school have peanut allergies. You ask them what it was like to suffer an episode, they will tell you they never had one but their mom said they have it.
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