Posted on 08/30/2011 12:40:45 PM PDT by grundle
I recently heard an ad on the radio from Let's Move, Michelle Obama's anti-obesity campaign. It stated that nearly one in three children in American are overweight or obese. The numbers are even higher in African-American and Hispanic communities, where nearly 40 percent of the children are overweight or obese.
Then, within the same hour, I heard an ad for the Food Bank of Lincoln stating that one in four children in America are hungry. Looking at their website, this could mean they do not have enough food or are food insecure. The website further noted that the word "hunger" has been stricken by the USDA from its measurements, seemingly indicating that measuring hunger in America today is a bit tricky.
Now I was confused. Do we have a hunger problem in America or an obesity problem?
In countries with real poverty (more on that later), you see vast numbers of very thin and obviously hungry people. In America, you see vast numbers of fat and obviously not hungry people -- and this is especially true among the poor, which is at the least ironic.
The hunger advocates will answer that we have both a hunger and an obesity problem. Their claim is that the poor are not fat because they have and consume too much food but the poor are fat because they do not move enough and do not eat enough fruits and vegetables. They then blame this, of course, on evil corporate America for providing TV and video games that keep children from moving and McDonald's that keeps children from eating right.
I have a different theory. I blame this problem on the largest, most pervasive and powerful entity known to man -- Big Government.
They say your garbage man knows more about you than your neighbors do.
I work as a custodian in the Lincoln Public Schools. I clean up the cafeterias after the students get done eating. I have done this in both a grade school and a high school. I will offer a few observations.
LPS feeds the children of Lincoln morning, noon and night. They feed them food that looks and tastes (I eat it) a lot like the food McDonald's serves its customers. My first observation is that the kids simply cannot eat all the food available to them.
We have 37 grade schools alone in Lincoln. Each one of them throws out barrels and barrels of perfectly good uneaten food. I know this because I haul it to our trash bins each and every school day.
At first I was appalled by this waste. I asked why we keep serving food to kids who are obviously not hungry and won't eat it. I noted that just one grade school's wasted food would serve the City Mission and that all 37 grade schools' wasted food could serve all the hungry in Lincoln.
My second observation is that American kids are fat because they are encouraged to eat too much food. I have looked and looked for skinny kids. Most look about right to me and quite a few are chubby. In the school where I work, 57 percent of the students get free or reduced lunches. In the entire cafeteria, it is hard to find a skinny kid when at least half of them should be.
I have been told that when free or reduced lunches are given by the taxpayer to poor children, our federal government dictates that they must take it whether they want it or not. If they do not want it, then we must throw it away when it comes back on their trays. Since our government never has any fraud nor waste, I know there is a perfectly good explanation for this. What? No, I don't know what it is. I just know there is one.
LPS also serves the students fruit and veggies and salad if they want it. Again a lot like McDonald's. Except, at McDonald's, the customers actually eat what they order.
Poverty, like "The Rich," is a relative term. Most Americans would think of poverty as having some real deprivation associated with it. These are the poor we see in countries run by African dictators, communists and the corrupt governments of Mexico, India and the Middle East. These poor people are thin and starving. They are truly hungry and they look thin because they do not receive enough food to thrive or even survive.
The federal government and the statist-leaning media are like the old joke: "Who you gonna believe? Me or your own lying eyes." When poor children are as big, as athletic and as fat (or even more so) as middle class and rich children, and the first lady deems obesity an epidemic, and the public schools shove food constantly at their students who throw it away, then we do not have a hunger problem in America. We have typical government policy and consequences.
Don't you worry about that. Gummint will soon forbid that. In fact, there are schools in Chicago that already prohibit sack lunches, unless you can get a Doctor to sign off on a special dietary need.
The author of this post sounds pretty damn intelligent for a school custodian. Maybe he’s a working class philosopher, like that Eric Hoffer(IIRC) guy.
wow. That is insane.
The story about the Chicago schools was on FR a few months ago. You are correct: Insane.
I could make a different observation.
In World War II, the US Army discovered that many soldiers from the South would only eat grits, and would shun most other food given them, because they had no experience or interest in it. These men were scrawny, and many only avoided the niacin deficiency disease pellagra because the government had made all (white) children take brewer’s yeast, once the cause of this horrific disease was known.
This was made worse by what passed for nutritionists at the time, who would try to feed soldiers anything as long as it had “x” amount of protein, “x” amount of fat, etc. So the Army bought enormous amounts of food that just about nobody wanted to eat.
One such experiment was boxcars full of salmon on ice. At the time seen as a “junk fish” outside of the Pacific Northwest, nobody was familiar with it and its strong flavor, and soldiers rejected it, almost to the point of mutiny.
So eventually the salmon was replaced with a very low grade of bologna, which was fried for breakfast. It was of such poor quality that many soldiers regularly vomited after eating it. But at least more of them would eat it.
My point is that even in the 1960s, there were efforts to provide “nutritious” food to poor children in schools. And no matter what it was, if they were not used to eating it, they would throw it out, and do without, or smuggle in their own food.
Most any school cafeteria worker could tell you what foods children would eat, and what they would not, and it varied considerably around the US. Many Mexican-American children only wanted to eat rice and beans, rounded off with corn tortillas. Children in the South still often had to have grits on their plate. In the Midwest, beef and potatoes were the menu.
But very, very few children around the country, even today, like the crap that trendy nutritionists and do-gooders like Michelle Obama want them to eat. Bean sprouts, tofu, cooked beets, and stuff like that is, in the great majority of cases, destined for the trash can.
And not because the children are not hungry.
About my son - Active teenage boys can consume significantly more calories than any other age/gender group. My son is very active (a runner, plays baseball, etc.) and so his servings are on the highest end of the spectrum, with additional servings of calcium and protein to help build muscles and bones. He’s grown several inches in the last 6 months, and doesn’t show any signs of slowing — and he is very lean. When his growth rate slows, so generally does his eating. We still focus on portion sizes and healthy (non-processed) foods, but he’s just fortunate in that he gets to eat more servings than the average person!
Unless you’re ribs are showing and there are flies on you, you are not “hungry”.
One of the major points of progressivism is to have the government provide for children in the way that parents used to.
They push for programs in which the government provides meals, healthcare and so forth directly to children.
The government also subsidizes the having of children by those least fit to be parents. In effect, unambitious, unintelligent underclass women (in many cases, mere girls) are made to be government employees in exchange for having children by whomever and however many, no questions asked. Then, these dysfunctional families are used as justification for ever greater government intervention and control over children and people generally.
The ideology behind the programs is that to end bourgeouis society, one must destroy the nuclear family.
One would think that if parents, with government assistance, cannot feed and provide healthcare to their children then they have no business raising children, and the children would be better off with foster parents. But for progressives, this is a desirable condition in order to further ideological change.
Bump
Poor people are fat, rich people are skinny.
It’s because the poor people can’t afford physical trainers, or aerobics classes.
We need to have FREE EXERCISE classes for all children. That would solve the problem.
: )
I have gotten to the point that if he is on, the TV goes off.
LOL. I finally got used to it. During during my smack year at Air Force we had that at breakfast the day of one of my "indoctrination" flights. While flying upside down and doing loops I filled the barf bag, and could never eat SOS again... I went hungry until lunch.
I just had all my teeth pulled Monday morning, and my mouth is full of stitches.
Yesterday I had some ice cream, this morning I had a small bowl of cottage cheese.
I don't feel hungry, and If I did, that would be too bad because I can't eat much of anything unless it is the consistency of yogurt.
Funny how I'm not 'starving' to death.
If you are struggling with portion control, simply give up all foods made with grains. Also all foods made with sugar. You won’t have that problem any more. Plus you can eat all you want from meat, veggies, and healthy fats. Just dump all the breads. You will lose weight and you will not struggle with portion control. The only foods that make you eat too much of them are grain or bean based foods. Don’t touch them.
The note at the bottom oh his other articles say he’s a systems analyst at Goodyear. Maybe he lost that job.
LOL. Of course they are. They push their vegetables around the plate, don't eat their dinner and then scream at Mom & Dad that they are hungry for a snack later in the evening.
Fat kids probably are more hungry. They are eating the wrong things, grains and processed starches and sugars, and they are exhibiting symptoms of metabolic syndrome, on their chubby way to diabetes.
Feed them meats, veggies, good fats, whole organic milk, a cookie made with butter or good ice cream, and they will be slender, strong, and healthy. The emphasis on grains and non fats is killing them. All they get are frankenfoods. Starches turn to sugar and that makes their bodies crave more of it.
Silly Freepers! This is not about children nor hunger nor portion sizes. It is about welfare for farmers! Ditto for foreign food aid. Just try to end any of these programs and watch the farm state politicians squeal the loudest, even the supposedly conservative ones.
Try it with two pinches of salt instead of sugar - delicious.
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