Posted on 03/04/2009 3:18:56 PM PST by Oldeconomybuyer
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - More poor children should be allowed to eat for free at school and the government should pay higher reimbursement rates for school meals, a school food service group said at a U.S. Senate hearing on Wednesday.
The School Nutrition Association also endorsed a proposal that any food or beverage sold at school, even from vending machines, must comply with U.S. nutrition standards.
Agriculture Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, whose committee oversees public nutrition, told reporters on Tuesday he liked the idea of standards for vending machine snacks at schools.
An array of child nutrition programs including school lunch and the Women, Infants and Children food program are due for renewal this year by Congress. They cost $21 billion a year. [snip]
The group also asked for an additional 35 cents reimbursement for each lunch and an extra 20 cents for each breakfast served. Some 32 million lunches and 11 million breakfasts are served daily at school.
The association did not say how much its proposals would cost. [snip]
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
I do agree with the idea of restricting vending and soda machines though. Kids are way too fat these days to be eating that crap.
anyone really can get a free lunch. its not like they investigate. they will happily say so.
its not hard
Jeez, my parents were way poor, and I didn’t exactly have Ruth Chris Steak House for lunch but I never went without a meal.
I hate what a country of victims we’ve become.
It was through the free school lunch program, when I was in elementary school, that I learned there really is no free lunch...That set off the spark of conservatism in me.
Still basically a good idea, the feds just cannot resist putting hundreds of strings on free and low cost food to children. Had they just left it alone it would have done wonders, but they just cannot control themselves.
Free Lunches cost $21 billion a year,
I’m confused, LOL
I think it has to do with the TANSTAAFL thing.
A fool and his money can't hold a candle to speed a government can fleece its citizens.
Never had vending machines in school -- until college.
Me too. Even as I child, it made me angry to see people getting “free” lunches when Dad worked to pay for mine.
We never struggled for money, but I guarantee you if we did, I would have been taught to make do with cheap food from home, and to be thankful for it.
Then, by high school, not only did they get “free” lunches, they got “free” breakfast, too! I bet the food stamps weren’t decreased with two of the three meals of the day being provided, either.
Meanwhile, our costs kept going up. I saw for the first time the pride of the poor, the smugness in knowing that they were getting away with legal theft.
Poor should be in quotation marks, by the way.
We have been so very wrong for thousands of years, insisting that parents feed their children. How backward and stupid.
No one cares for our children like the State, and that’s where our kiddos should be getting their nutrition.
It is insidious, isn’t it. I don’t doubt the school lunch program was started with good intentions but it teaches kids to rely on uncle sugar from a young age. They don’t understand the dynamics of someone else paying taxes so they can eat..and with their parents probably on welfare, they just accept it as the norm. It progresses from there and by the time they’re adults many of them have learned to game the system. It’s sad really.
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