Well you know the left isn’t nearly concerned about drug use. If anything being addicted to something makes you a better citizen.
Either way I’ve never seen kids get fat off of school lunch programs. Most calories are consumed outside of the school lunch room. I’ll decide what my children eat. I noticed my son was getting a bit pudgy so I started ordering for him and stopped buying regular soda. Plus he goes to martial arts frequently. It solved the problem before it started.
I tell my children no. I don’t let my 10 year old son eat adult meals just because he desires to. My nephew sadly doesn’t have the guidance in his life and though he is the same age and height as my son he weighs so much his legs have bowed and he waddles like a penguin. Parenting not govt is the solution.
To take the side opposite of Nancy is to defend the indefensible - teen drug use.
But for Sarah and Michelle the debate about the proper role of government is always a valid discussion.
Palin was right. Desserts are not the source of the obesity problem.
However, Michelle Obama was right to take on the school lunch problem. It’s really too bad she took the easy way out, because she could have made a real impact. That would have involved using some of BO’s political capital and as we all know, he’s a chicken shit.
I’ve been researching this whole school lunch thing for months, due to some dietary issues in my own family. The first thing I realized is that school lunches are NOT the way most of us FReepers remember them from our own school days. Nearly gone are the friendly lunch ladies who actually prepare the meals. They’ve been replaced by lunch staffers that simply that & reheat prepared food that’s been delivered to schools. Essentially, what we used to call “TV dinners.”
Another thing I’ve learned is that local schools are as big a problem as anything. And they do it for the money.
Fast food chains have been allowed to set up in school cafeterias & the districts get a commission. These compete with traditional lunch choices. Schools not only set up banks of vending machines with junk food, soda, & candy but they also set up separate lunch lines that sell nothing but goodies to compete with usual lunch choices. Again, the schools do it for money toward the school. Please don’t assume that “good” school districts don’t do this; many of them do. You’ll have to do your own research.
While you’re at it, find out if your district has contracted out their meal service. This could take a bit of time and your best detective skills. Now HERE is where Michelle Obama could have made a difference, but chose not to.
1. She could have insisted that the USDA stop categorizing a potato as a vegetable for the purposes of school lunches. It would have saved a lot of kids from the spectacle of ordering the pizza meal, which comes with a side of FF or tater tots. Have you ever served that at home? Me neither. We recognize that that is too many starches/carbs for one sitting. But to the USDA, those taters count the same as broccoli or carrots. But this would have pissed off the potato lobby in DC.
2. She could have insisted the USDA regulate nearly all the high fructose corn syrup out of school lunches, in order for the meals to be eligible for reimbursement. In fact, this should have been the first change made. Most dieticians believe the ubiquitous use of HFCS in all kinds of foods...from soup, spaghetti sauce, gravy, chili, chicken nuggets, mystery meats and of course, sweets is the cause for the steep increase in diabetic kids and adults. There are almost none of the breakfast items that don’t contain HFCS. But, BO can’t upset the farmers in Iowa.
Let me give you a vivid example. Here is a menu from a Chicago Public School, and how they describe their meals. Now, a CPS teacher went on one year experiment, eating the same meals the students get. This is a December menu. Following is a link to the teacher’s blog, start with her December 1 meal. You can follow along the menu, and also the teachers actual photograph of the meal, and her description of it.
http://www.cantyschool.org/cpsDECmenus.pdf (2nd menu is lunch, 1st menu is breakfast so scroll down a little)
http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/2010/12/day-151-chicken-nuggets-and-murphys-law.html (from time to time, you’ll run into snarky political remarks made by commenters. Ignore them. This is not a political blog, it’s about kid lunches. Everyone that is beginning to worry about this knows this is a Dem/Rep problem, but even more than that: a lobbying money problem, a bureaucrat problem,a corruption problem, etc.
And this affects you, even if you pack your own child’s lunch. Because the other kids, eating all this crap, are in their classroom. And they have two guaranteed “sugar crashes” a day. One after breakfast, and one after lunch. My sweetie & my brother in law are both teachers and they can tell you plenty about trying to teach 35 kids virtually all on a sugar high at the same time. It’s impossible. And it goes on every single day of the school week.
As a taxpayer, you should feel cheated. As a conservative, you may be as enraged as I am. We understand that families are going through rough financial times and are benevolent in allowing our tax dollars to help feed schoolkids who need it. Yet it is an outrage that the poorest of the poor are being served this utter crap with our tax dollars. And mind you, this is 2 of their 3 meals each school day! meh
If you haven’t already done so, I urge you to watch all six episodes of Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution. I missed it when it first aired, since I don’t watch network TV.
Each episode has 4 segments, about 10 minutes each. The entire series can be watched here, no commercials.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7eaHytpJWQ&feature=&p=DAAC39B20FCE8E2F&index=0&playnext=1
And, he found the same problems in the UK:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFkAszCA9dI&playnext=1&list=PL558F03BD812C914F&index=15 (this is a 2 part sneak peak of his Jamie’s School Dinners project in the UK. I’ve been unable to find the whole series online, however)
When you see what these politicians and bureaucrats (from DC down to your local school board) have been up to, with YOUR tax dollars, your conservative blood will be in full, rolling boil.
I promise.