Posted on 12/17/2011 8:33:29 PM PST by Steelfish
L.A. Schools' Healthful Lunch Menu Panned By Students For many students, Los Angeles Unified's introduction of healthful lunches — part of a campaign against obesity, diabetes and other problems — has been a flop. The district says the menu will be revised.
By Teresa Watanabe December 17, 2011 It's lunchtime at Van Nuys High School and students stream into the cafeteria to check out the day's fare: black bean burgers, tostada salad, fresh pears and other items on a new healthful menu introduced this year by the Los Angeles Unified School District.
But Iraides Renteria and Mayra Gutierrez don't even bother to line up. Iraides said the school food previously made her throw up, and Mayra calls it "nasty, rotty stuff." So what do they eat? The juniors pull three bags of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and soda from their backpacks.
"This is our daily lunch," Iraides says. "We're eating more junk food now than last year."
For many students, L.A. Unified's trailblazing introduction of healthful school lunches has been a flop. Earlier this year, the district got rid of chocolate and strawberry milk, chicken nuggets, corn dogs, nachos and other food high in fat, sugar and sodium. Instead, district chefs concocted such healthful alternatives as vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles.
There's just one problem: Many of the meals are being rejected en masse. Participation in the school lunch program has dropped by thousands of students. Principals report massive waste, with unopened milk cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away. Students are ditching lunch, and some say they're suffering from headaches, stomach pains and even anemia. At many campuses, an underground market for chips, candy, fast-food burgers and other taboo fare is thriving.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Johnnie L Cochran Middle School??? You can’t make this stuff up!
If the food is not fit....you must a quit
Actually the food at our school was good. But the free meal ticket folks just got cake with their free meal ticket.
Let’s be honest. This was the liberal plan: “We have to save black people from themselves”. They heard about the obesity and diabetes in the black community and they decided they had the plan to save them. The imagined lines of black kids walking into the cafeteria, seeing the choices and saying “I no longer have to suffer by eating cheetos and soft drinks. I can now eat a healthy lunch. LONG LIVE THE DEMOCRAT PARTY, THE PARTY OF THE PEOPLE. LONG LIVE THE DEAR LEADER OBAMA AND QUEEN MICHELLE. WE WILL DOUBLE OUR PRODUCTION OF VOTES IN THE 5 YEAR PLAN. DEATH TO THE REPUBLICANS”
Has anyone other than me noticed Burger King fries suck now? I used to love them. They were giving away fries on the 16th and I heard the radio ad. They wanted people to try their “new thicker cut less salt fries.” No more BK fries for me. I love salt.
That looks like something I find out in my Uncle’s cow pasture.
C Rations in the Air Force made me appreciate almost anything that did not come out of an OD Green can.
I ate a few C-rats in my 24 years in the AF and agree - they were nutritious, but tasted like crap.
For eight years of grade school and four years of high school my lunch consisted mostly of either a baloney lunchmeat or peanut butter sandwich and an apple. Milk from a vending machine. In high school I had an occasional bag of potato chips or ice cream bar to go along with the sandwich and apple. How did I, and the hundreds of other kids who ate similarly to me, survive?
I had a similar experience in grade school for a few months back in the early sixties. The food was indescribably awful. But I'll try to describe some of it anyway. For instance, I wish I had a little of the ahem "peanut butter" i.e. industrial sludge they used to serve. I still have nightmares. And I'd like to make the school officials who bought this stuff for us kids eat it and all other slop they served at the point of a gun with my finger on the trigger.
The teachers love this food though. I’ve been wolfing down a quinoa salad every day. I mean, they are awesome! High fiber, seems to be pretty high protein... a small amount is quite filling. But yeah, the kids want Hot Cheetos and cupcakes. And their parents apparently just let them eat whatever they want.
These kids throw away TONS of good food. And a huge percentage of them are overweight.
Or, more likely, administrators getting kickbacks to not question food quality from the suppliers.
School cafeterias are an example of socialism. To improve food quality, competition is needed. The minimum would be to allow students to bring their own food if they don't like the cafeteria food (which isn't allowed in some places). In high schools, the population is generally large enough to support two or more vendors.
So what prevents their mothers from making them a sandwich the morning/night-before they go to school?
One way to reduce this waste by about 17% or more would be to allow the kids to test out of grade 12. Speaking for myself, I would have been FAR better off turning 18 in a college or military environment.
Yep, and it was called "whole wheat pizza" on the menu...and that was in the 1960's. We also liked the turkey and gravy served over mashed potatoes and the mac and cheese. Those cafeteria ladies could really cook.
Why not conduct a survey amount the kids and present a list of relatively healthy but good-tasting foods they would actually EAT? Then keep the school's daily menu limited to what the food choices they selected. Anyone who has kids knows they don't mind eating the same things over and over.
Beats throwing out perfectly good food!
No “whole wheat” pizza! blech.
Ive had potato pizza with fried italian greens and garlic, white sauce and romano cheese and it is yummy, but I say “no” to whole wheat crust.
Nothing wrong with turkey and gravy served over mashed potatoes.
The school I went to did not have a cafeteria, everyone brought their own lunch and we paid for little cartons of milk. If you didn’t bring a lunch, you didn’t eat unless someone didn’t like their bologna sandwich and gave it to you! Amazingly, even the “poor” kids managed to bring a lunch each and every day and back then there were a lot of families who had upwards of 8 to 10 or more kids and they all ate breakfast, brought a lunch and sat down for dinner, no starving, hungry kids back then - geez, these days look at how far we’ve come thanks to liberals.
Those look almost like chocolate chip cookies, except for the parsley.
I understand most school cafeterias now do not have a cooking staff. The food is cooked off-site and boxed up and brought in. Sounds pretty unappealing.
I just feel that crust is one of the most important components of pizza.
I like traditional.
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