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 ...
We loved Pizza day and Spaghetti day!
Even though it was made on site by the lunch ladies.
That’s a really good point. Some dishes just don’t hold up sitting around as well as others do.
Just a particularly shiny black bean, I think. But it does look a bit snailish. Gary where did you go?
I forgot about the fried chicken and hot sauce.
I went to a public school and we had some amazing lunch ladies, but it’s hard to turn crap into crepes.
I thought high Crab was paleolithic?
The fact is, the Gov food pyramid is poison.
It is completely wrong!
Mass food made by cooks who don’t give a crap and are not paid by the customers will never be good.
Outsource school cafeterias and make all kids pay. Make there be a diverse menu for 12 and up. Make a protein and fruit comfort menu for little kids (no candy and soda for the little ones).
Get government out from between the maker and the customer. Period.
One of the lunch ladies was my best friends Mom.
She always fed us right
I actually love those.
there are folks who text onto fr? beebelip belip blip blip beebeebeelip... doing that on a digit keyboard would drive me mad, and a chiclet qwerty not much better.
Think your on to something. I say both cheaper ingredients and kitchen staff isn’t paying enough attention during the cooking process and just are not skilled enough to pull some stuff off day to day. Really not that surprising considering some of the stuff I have seen come out of restaurants.
When I was in school, 1952-1964, I often ate at the lunchrooms. All the meals were excellent except the Aztec NM school in 1956 which were beyond horrible! Maccaroni every day and kids were puking it right back up, including me. I then talked mom into letting me take lunch.
In some locations I was close to home so ate my lunch there. Mom always made good lunches. What she made might be called junk today (lunch meat sandwiches, milk), not junk to us, but good food.
Right, there are good black bean burgers and there are bad ones. But it still isn’t meat! ;)
Fried Boloney and cheese sandwiches with pizza sauce was a hit that my Mom would make.
Tuna fish salad sandwich with mayo, celery and onions also rocked
I love black beans, but not in a burger.
Since it’s the LA school district I would suspect that they would get 100% participation if they offered tacos, burritos, tamales and churros everyday.
Black beans, cooked with onion, pork,serrano, and finished with cilantro..
Yum
The kids are throwing away taxpayer funded FREE whole milk because it isn’t “chocolate”.
The eventual solution will probably be monitors who will force kids to clean their plates a la Cool Hand Luke.
(The monitors, being on duty, will notably not be eating in the cafeteria.)
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