Posted on 09/08/2012 10:48:08 PM PDT by newzjunkey
In his gut, Kurt Myers knows when a student arrives at school on an empty stomach.
He can see it on a cold Monday morning in the coat that remains zipped and the hat that stays pulled down, in the rush to eat school breakfast as if it's the student's first meal in days.
And in the Reading School District, where 92 percent of students received free or reduced-price meals in 2011-12, Myers knows it doesn't take a food services director such as himself to realize that "when a student looks like he hasn't eaten all weekend, he probably hasn't eaten all weekend."
For that reason, Myers traditionally has had the district offer more than the required servings of protein at lunch, knowing it could be the last filling meal of the day for many students.
But this year, new lunch standards set by the national Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act are changing the way lunches are served and limiting the amount of protein city schools can serve.
Approved in 2010 and championed by first lady Michelle Obama, the law handed the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to mandate a menu makeover for 2012-13, introducing new grain and protein restrictions and more fruits and vegetables. ...
Berks County food service administrators have welcomed the law in spirit, embracing its combination of whole grains, fruits and vegetables as a way to combat childhood obesity.
But they are concerned that the act could prove a recipe for wasted food that will leave students anything but hunger-free even as it raises the average Berks school lunch price by 11 cents, from $2.22 to $2.33. ...
"If Johnny gets three-quarters of a cup of carrots and doesn't like carrots, he's going to dump the carrots in the trash," Myers said. "He's going to go home. He's going to be hungry, and he's going to plop on the couch and bust open a bag of chips."
And if Johnny receives free or reduced-price lunches and refuses to take a fruit or vegetable, the district will not receive its government reimbursement for the meal.
However, for every meal that complies with the new requirements, schools can receive an extra reimbursement of 6 cents, even if a student pays the full price.
In the Muhlenberg School District, food services coordinator Tony Brochu Jr. already is seeing and hearing, the law's effects. Within the first week of school, and with five chicken nuggets on his plate, a high school student turned to Brochu and asked, "Is this it?"
And an elementary parent sent an email that read, "I know there were sides that went with that, but I cannot believe that the school expects the children to have a full stomach on only three chicken nuggets."
The refrain is one that Vonda Cooke, the Pennsylvania Department of Education's food and nutrition director, said she has heard before.
Cooke said she understands that for some students, school lunch is the only substantive meal of the day. It will be important, she said, to steer those students into school-based snack programs or after-school food programs offered by community or child care facilities.
But Cooke noted that children need to learn to put fruits and vegetables, rather than proteins, at the center of a meal. Students can purchase more food at higher a la carte prices, but Cooke hopes the revised standards will train them to fill up on fruits and vegetables - and not just at lunch.
"That comes back to educating students on what is an acceptable snack to have, on what is a good dinner to have," she said. "I don't think it's unrealistic at all to have a student go home hungry.
"One of things we have taken into consideration is we are a snacking population." ...
Driven partly by the requirement to offer both a fruit and vegetable, prices are rising to better reflect the cost of fixing a meal.
The law urges school districts charging less than $2.51 a lunch to increase the price, preventing them from subsidizing paid meals with government reimbursements for free and reduced-priced meals. ...
To help cover the higher food costs, a school district can be certified as complying with the standards and receive a 6-cent reimbursement for every meal that meets the new requirements.
But based on even conservative estimates, Myers said that 6-cent reimbursement still will leave him with a $250,000 budget gap. ...
McKinney isn't sold on the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, particularly not when it limits high school students to 10 to 12 ounces of grains and proteins per week.
"With the restrictions I have now, I don't think I can put a value out there for $2.60 respecting the parents' money," McKinney said.
For athletes especially, he worries the law will backfire, forcing them to "go someplace down the road - to McDonald's, to Burger King, to Wendy's, to Roy Rogers - and get something that's a cheap boost of carbs."
"And so, have we improved what they're eating?" McKinney wondered. "Yes and no."
One has to wonder what’s on the menu for the little darlings at Sidwell Friends. I would bet a million dollars that it’s not three chicken nuggets and a side of carrots.
LOL! No doubt about that!
at the school my wife works, they are now forcing every student to take two fruits or vegetables. No choice. the high schoolers grab the pizza, dump everything else, and go on. Fraud, waste, and abuse.
Does your wife see any kids who are starving? More than half seem to be over-weight.
Two fruits and vegetables like carrots or corn and that is waaaaayyyy too much sugar for a meal. Sugar is sugar whether it comes in the form of fructose or the white stuff.. Granted, there are additional nutritional benefits in fruit (if it is whole), but it certainly won’t help anyone’s concentration, blood sugar or weight to eat such an unbalanced lunch.
“Isn’t a high protein diet good for you?
Fruits are FULL of sugar, grains are FULL of carbs (which are sugars, of course)l veggies are good, of course.
What’s wrong with proteins? I thought a high protein low carb diet was good for you.”
You are correct. Fats and proteins are good for you. Non-fiber carbs are bad, particularly fructose, which is metabolized and utilized by the liver EXACTLY like ethanol, which is why there is a national epidemic of NASH (Nonalcoholic Steatohepatitis) liver disease and obesity.
Eat fresh meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, berries, nuts and smaller amounts of beans and brown rice (and totally avoid processed and/or fast food) and you’ll have a significantly better chance of avoiding the national epidemics of Type II diabetes, heart disease, obesity, hypertension, and liver disease.
“Does your wife see any kids who are starving? More than half seem to be over-weight.”
Sadly enough, those grossly overweight children are in fact starving to death in a way, in that they are consuming massive amounts of fructose and other empty calories without obtaining many of the fundamental nutrients that their bodies should have.
I have it! The answer!
You take all of the food for the meals required by the government, run it through a food processor and simply plop it onto the kid’s plates. Since it is all gound up and mixed together they will have to eat it. On holidays we can sprinkle soy fake baco bits on top for a more festive meal!
It will be healthful and will keep the kids growing like weeds.
We can call it ..... Gruel.
I remember reading somewhere that the people in the concentration camps during WWII thought they were being fed ‘good food’ because they had vegetable soup, etc. What they didn’t know is that starving your body of protein makes your brain slow down, and your thinking ‘fuzzy’, and your overall body ‘sluggish’. Don’t know how true the concentration camp story is but I know protein makes your mind sharper. Could this possibly be what ‘they’ have in mind? Fuzzy brained, sluggish kids are easier to program... My kids have NEVER eaten school food. I’ve always packed their lunches. Even on days when I offered to let them have ‘hot lunch’, they chose a home packed meal instead. School food is ‘gross’.
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