School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

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bernomatic
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#1 School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

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In the past, we have talked about the school lunch programs under the Michelle Obama regime. Well it seems that schools (and the students that attend them) are now able to be more selective by having more choices.
After former first lady Michelle Obama’s “healthy” school lunch program was deployed several years ago, a long list of fed-up students posted photos of their menu options, declaring their meals weren’t what you might characterize as filling — or appetizing:

But with Republican President Donald Trump now in office, GOP leaders look to be on the road to rolling back Obama’s program — and one western Pennsylvania high school already has taken matters into its own hands.

It used to be that students at Penn-Trafford High School in Harrison City were forced to wait in longer lines for fewer food choices, TribLive reported. What’s more, the district’s food-service program was losing money, the outlet added.

But that all changed this school year when administrators opted to pull the high school from the National School Lunch Program, TribLive said.

“Healthy” meal rules limit how many calories schools can serve and require items such as fruits and vegetables on trays, the outlet said — and at Penn-Trafford, like many other schools, often students simply threw out fruits and veggies.
Michelle Obama School lunch.jpg
Michelle Obama School lunch.jpg (20.1 KiB) Viewed 4729 times
An added benefit? Ask any none communistic retailer and he will tell you that if you give the buyer what they want, you will make more money, even after government subsidies.
And what’s more, the program stopped losing money, despite forgoing federal subsidies.

“We’ve lost, to date, about $40,000 worth of reimbursement, but our sales are up about $50,000 over last year,” Lago told TribLive, adding that the student “participation has gone from about 25 to 45 percent, and we’re still providing free lunches to all those students who would have been eligible under the school lunch program.”
:arrow: full article
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luke strawwalker
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#2 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

Post by luke strawwalker »

Yup... saw this firsthand...

When I was driving the schoolbus, our boss "reminded" us that "school policy forbids eating and drinking on school buses". That's all well and good, except for a few problems:

1) it's totally unenforceable. My job was to drive a bus; to do that I have to look out the FRONT windshield. I have a mirror to watch the students from time to time as I drive, but that's more for spotting major disruptions or discipline issues than minor things. Besides, the first time you bust a kid for eating on the bus, the rest learn to just "slink down in the seat" and eat surreptitiously, so they cannot be seen and therefore cannot get written up for violating the policy.

2) Once the kids learn that "slinking down in the seat" will prevent 90% or better of their chances of being caught, they then remain that way and as they finish eating their snacks, kids do what kids do, and instead of sticking the wrappers or empty packages back into their lunch kits or backpacks, they stuff those empty wrappers and crap down into the crack between the seat back and seat cushion... which of course is already full of wrappers expended by other kids on previous days/weeks, which then dislodges about 3 wrappers out the bottom of the crack which then drop onto the floor and blow around the bus, making the bus about as sanitary as a pig sty...

3) then the excess litter builds up and creates a huge trash problem that has to be swept up and cleaned out when the driver (me) sweeps the bus. I was actually fairly diligent in this regard and swept my bus on Fridays, so it would be (mostly) clean if it were sent out over the weekend on various sports or activities or contests. Some drivers NEVER cleaned their buses despite that being part of their job...

SO, noticing that despite diligent enforcement efforts on my part and trying to keep the bus clean, I was fighting a losing battle, I made a deal with the kids-- I'd let them eat on the bus without anything being said, IF THEY would agree to put ALL the trash either back into their backpacks or lunch kits, or take it to the bus's trash cans by the front and back doors. I wouldn't even say anything about them getting up while the bus was in motion, so long as they went straight to the trash can, deposited the garbage in it, and returned straight to their seats (perhaps talking to their friend a moment or passing a note along the way, which is what they were really after anyway). The kids agreed and I cut the trash problem on my bus by about 3/4. We fixed the rest of it by "passing the trash can" and requiring the students to pick up the trash under their seats (regardless of who threw it there) and put it in the can as it passed, before we would start our route home on Friday evenings... the kids particularly want to get home ASAP on Friday evenings and will do ANYTHING to get moving as rapidly as possible, and having to delay leaving the school until the bus "passed my inspection" for wayward trash was something they wanted to avoid-- so much so that they started fussing at other kids throwing stuff on the floor rather than taking it to the trash cans on their own, so I wouldn't pull a "trash inspection" on Friday afternoons.

My boss fussed at me about kids eating on the bus, but I told him my reasons and that it worked for me... and if he wanted to write up kids for eating, he could come do it himself.

Once the kids were free to eat on the bus, I realized why there was SO much garbage (to the point you couldn't see the floor on some buses for all the trash and litter floating around down there-- the kids are STARVING by the time they get out of school! School lunches had long been somewhat of a joke (even back in the late 80's when I was in high school... breakfasts were particularly awful, but the lunches were usually pretty bad; we had an elderly Bohemian woman who was the school's head cook-- she would save up some money on the 'cheap' meals like the crappy square pieces of pizza and canned corn or fish bricks and mac-n-cheese we'd get on Friday's (and some other days of the week had lousy items as well... the soyburgers we had almost every Thursday were mediocre... not good but not awful either). With the money she saved, she would cook a REALLY good meal about once every other week... beef tips and rice, or turkey and dressing, stuff like that, which was actually GOOD. The cafeteria was particularly busy on those days...

When Moo-shell Obummer got in there and the big fat heifer decided that kids needed to be fed tiny portions of prepackaged CRAP, the kids rebelled... I know I ate at my daughter's elementary school a couple times... it's ridiculous! Our beknighted idiot former Ag Commissioner, Susan Combs, who's department oversees the school lunch programs, decided to institute new regulations regarding menus, calories, and all that other crap more in line with Mooshell Obummer's nonsense, they fired all the old kitchen staff... a fellow bus driver's wife had ascended to head the cafeteria when the elderly lady retired, and they canned her-- "they cannot understand the new rules and regulations" and then hired it out under contract to Chartwells. Virtually all the schools now hire out their cafeteria staff to these "food service" companies like Chartwells. I know when I ate at my daughter's school, she begged me to eat lunch but I demurred and just drank an overpriced half-pint of shitty orange juice (mostly water and green sour/frosted oranges squeezed for juice that tasted about like floor polish) and visited with the kids, and then I went to Cafe East (chinese buffet) afterwards... the kids each got a dinky pull-top plastic cup of corn in water, a piece of rather shitty looking fruit, and a choice of either a dried out pink-slime "chicken fingers" or a cold tortilla folded over onto itself with a pinch of cheese in it as a "quesadilla", and a half-pint of sugary 1% watered down chocolate, strawberry, or white milk, though 99% of them chose chocolate or strawberry. I watched the kids eat, and most chose the "quesadilla" because it was at least PARTIALLY edible-- NOTHING is cooked "on site" anymore, it's simply REHEATED at the school after being cooked in a huge central kitchen somewhere that Chartwell's runs and then delivers the food to the schools. Even the little packages of corn are just kept on trays in a warmer, that they're put into straight off the truck-- the kids have to pull their own tabs off the top to open them like a pudding cup. The chicken fingers were hard as a rock, the one girl I saw at Keira's table had begged ketchup cups from some of her friends and had drowned the thing in ketchup trying to soften it enough to be edible. The kids usually ate the pre-packed veggie, nibbled at the tortilla or pulled the cheese out of it, and threw the obviously not-store-sellable undersize, blemished fruit in the trash with about 2/3 of the rest of the "lunch". They'd guzzle the milk and for some, eat the ketchup... most of the "food" went into the trash. One of our M&O guys had to stay at the school on a job and couldn't go into town to eat lunch and then had to sub-drive a bus for someone who called in, and he commented how lousy the school lunch was even for teachers/adult employees-- "I got SIX lousy cold french fries-- SIX-- they count the damn things out!"

SO, on my bus every day, the kids were having a luau... soon as the got on the bus and everybody got pretty much situated, they'd open up their lunch kits and backpacks and out would come the snacks-- bags of chips, various other snacks like candy bars, granola bars, fruit roll ups, etc that kids usually eat for snacks. They'd pass them around and trade back and forth between and amongst themselves... and so long as the garbage ended up in the can, I could care less...

Mooshell Obummer was a moronic heifer anyway. Kids have bottomless appetites-- even back when we had pretty decent school lunches by today's standards, we would be "starving" by the time we got home. Mom and Dad both worked, so we let ourselves into the house and had our own little luau... which usually involved grabbing a couple slices of cheese from the fridge and a coke and busting open a big back of Doritos and munching out while we watched afternoon cartoons... She was too stupid to figure out that by starving the kids at school, they just PIG OUT on "munchies" and other junk food when they get home, most of them ahead of their parents. Instead of the school taking the opportunity to feed the kids GOOD BALANCED meals of a meat protein, a couple healthy cooked vegetables, and a slice of bread or something and GOOD milk or juice, and filling them up with GOOD HEALTHY food, they elect to starve them with starvation rations of crap that would cause a prison riot if it were served in the joint... and of course the kids aren't idiots-- the nibble enough to stave off their hunger for a few hours and MOST of it ended up in the trash... then they PIG OUT on junk food when they get home. Most of them live in single parent families and all they get is prefabbed junk food and take out anyway... Hell my sister is a teacher and she never feeds her kids right-- if she or my BIL DO cook it's usually just pasta or something quick and easy like that-- my nephews practically live on pizza and junk food and one NEVER eats veggies-- both are overweight and the older boy (who's a freshman in high school) has "the back of a 40 year old" according to his doctor...

If the school served a decent, healthy lunch of lean meat, prepared fruits and vegetables, and whole grain bread or pasta along with a healthy dairy serving, the kids WOULD AT LEAST get ONE healthy fulfilling meal a day...

Oh well... That's why my wife and daughter take their lunches... the boys do too-- mostly those practically worthless "lunchables" things since Mom's nowdays are too busy to make balogne sandwiches anymore and toss a little bag of doritos in with it and a fruit roll up or fruit cup...

Later! OL J R :)
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#3 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

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Up here in Illinoisy, some parents were so disgusted about the school lunches they started packing lunches for their kids to eat. So many did that in fact, that the cafeteria operators started losing money and the school decided to ban bringing in lunches on the theory that the parental units were not packing "healthy" food for their kids. There was too much meat and too much food.

When the parents flooded the next school board meeting it started coming out (too many complaints for the media to ignore) that a 17 year old sports player got the exact same size lunch as a 5th grader did. There were actually football players collapsing during practice from being hungry.
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#4 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

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Joe Wooten wrote:Up here in Illinoisy, some parents were so disgusted about the school lunches they started packing lunches for their kids to eat. So many did that in fact, that the cafeteria operators started losing money and the school decided to ban bringing in lunches on the theory that the parental units were not packing "healthy" food for their kids. There was too much meat and too much food.

When the parents flooded the next school board meeting it started coming out (too many complaints for the media to ignore) that a 17 year old sports player got the exact same size lunch as a 5th grader did. There were actually football players collapsing during practice from being hungry.
Communism at its best.
Here Comrade Soldier, eat. It's the same we feed our children.
Ya, comrade commissioner, even down to the size of portion. :lol:
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#5 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

Post by luke strawwalker »

bernomatic wrote:
Joe Wooten wrote:Up here in Illinoisy, some parents were so disgusted about the school lunches they started packing lunches for their kids to eat. So many did that in fact, that the cafeteria operators started losing money and the school decided to ban bringing in lunches on the theory that the parental units were not packing "healthy" food for their kids. There was too much meat and too much food.

When the parents flooded the next school board meeting it started coming out (too many complaints for the media to ignore) that a 17 year old sports player got the exact same size lunch as a 5th grader did. There were actually football players collapsing during practice from being hungry.
Communism at its best.
Here Comrade Soldier, eat. It's the same we feed our children.
Ya, comrade commissioner, even down to the size of portion. :lol:
Da... Da...

They already ban stuff like "peanut butter" because some lil snot nose that's allergic to everything *MIGHT* come in contact with it. Well, IMHO, TOUGH *oops you said word #1! If you're kid's that friggin' allergic to everything, they should live in a friggin bubble... not impose on the rest of society. They were putting all the "food allergy" kids at a seperate table to be monitored by a teacher or nurse or someone "in the know" about who was allowed to eat what and kinda remind them not to eat stuff they're not supposed to have (WHEN did this become the school's job again??) but evidently, lunch time is more about SOCIALIZING than obtaining decent sustenance and having them separate was damaging to their tiny little self esteems so no, we can't do that anymore-- but everybody else in the friggin' school can do without peanut butter in case the little nutjob sitting at your table that's allergic to it might come in contact with it, whether you wanted him there or not. My suggestion was "then let the kids that want to eat peanut butter sit at their own farkin' table away from the little allergy shitheads..." Nope, can't do that either... Whatever happened to "freedom of association", ie, I wanna eat peanut butter, shithead is allergic, I don't want him to puff up like a toad, therefore I'll sit at a different table where shithead won't be potentially exposed to my lunch..." NOPE-- the social Nazi's won't allow it-- sitting at a different table from shithead might make him feel ostracized by his peanut-butter eating peers, therefore they must forego peanut butter so that shithead feels good about himself and everybody else learns that they are expected to conform to the wishes of shithead and his ilk, regardless of their own feelings on the subject.

F*** that...

And these friggin' public schools wonder why anybody who realistically can pulls their kids out and puts them in private school, or home schools them...

Stupidity on top of stupidity...

Later! OL J R :)

Makes me sick... OL J R :)
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#6 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

Post by Joe Wooten »

Most of the Catholic and some of the Protestant church schools are almost as bad as the public ones. Our boys went K-12 to Catholic schools and I was to burn the local Catholic high school to the ground over the PC crap by the time my youngest graduated. If we had to do it all over again now, we'd take the hit and homeschool.
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#7 Re: School lunches? Healthy isn't always better

Post by luke strawwalker »

Joe Wooten wrote:Most of the Catholic and some of the Protestant church schools are almost as bad as the public ones. Our boys went K-12 to Catholic schools and I was to burn the local Catholic high school to the ground over the PC crap by the time my youngest graduated. If we had to do it all over again now, we'd take the hit and homeschool.
Yeah, my wife's best friend from college (who she's still best friends with today) in Nashville has her ADHD pre-teen son in catholic school up there... She and Betty have both said that public schools in Tennessee are a complete joke. Okay...

Thing is, she's had no end of problems with them. Her son, being ADHD, is a "problem child" at times and they end up locking horns with the teacher(s). I'm like "who's paying WHO here??" IMHO, If *I'm* paying the bill for my kid to go there, I GET THE FIRST AND LAST WORD. Now if it was an issue over discipline or my kid smacking somebody around or something, I'd kick their ass a lot harder than the school would think of, I guarantee it. I've spanked my daughter before for stealing pocket change from her aunt, and I handcuffed her one time when she got involved with some brats that took a copy of the teacher's test off her desk and she was stupid enough to take it from the morons and got caught holding it. I made damn sure she knows that "hey, you want to be a thief, this is what you have to look forward too-- this is how we treated thieves when I graduated the police academy!" I get why they put him in private school, but I gotta ask WHY that particular (or catholic in general) school?? They're not even catholic!

More and more I see the attraction people have for homeschooling. Keira has asked to be homeschooled before but we've got her in a GOOD suburban school (not the local asshat district we live in; she goes to another district my wife works for instead).

Anyway, it's a mess... The educational system is just as broken as the agricultural system, the health care system, the political system, the aerospace system, you name it... I'd like to know of a system that ISN'T broken!

Later! OL J R :)
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