Posted on 05/06/2015 11:36:43 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
All children, regardless of their circumstances, deserve safe, nourishing and delicious school meals.
One of the best ways to help district nutrition programs as they transition to healthier food is to buy school lunch for your children.
When I talk with parents about school food, many are so disappointed in the options their schools provide that they’ve simply opted out. They pack their children’s lunches every day, giving up on their school’s nutrition program as a lost cause.
I understand and support parents who insist their children eat healthfully and responsibly. My dream is a nation in which all food – especially school food – is nourishing, safe and sustainably produced. And I strongly believe that parents should be engaged in their children’s diets, helping them learn to love fresh, delicious, nutrient-rich foods. But when a parent’s solution is to opt out of school food and not look back, I feel the loss keenly. There goes one potential change-maker who can make a real difference in his or her community.
Many of these same parents acknowledge the necessity of school food programs for children who would otherwise go hungry. But I think they’re missing something important. To implicitly state that school lunch is necessary for poor children, but a terrible choice for families that can afford better is emblematic of the social justice issues surrounding school food.
Of the over 30 million children who eat school lunch every day, more than 71.5 percent come from disadvantaged families. Many of these children come from the 14.3 percent of households that experienced food insecurity in 2013....
(Excerpt) Read more at health.usnews.com ...
I am a storyteller and spend time often in schools and libraries. You would not believe the outrage in a couple Appalachian schools I visited last year. Teachers and some librarians tell me often of the cafeteria workers having to throw out leftover food because of government regulations. If a child comes to them and asks for more they have to say no because it isn’t fair. The limits placed on them by the food Nazis make things even worse because they can’t serve traditional meals they would love to fix AND which would be a lot healthier in many respects.
These aren’t kids from great neighborhoods in some of these schools, not fat kids either. These are kids who the teachers, librarians and cafeteria workers know and they know that these kids are hungry. (BTW, the cafeteria workers are not allowed to take the food home or even give it to homeless shelters either. They have to account for what is taken by the children and what is disposed of)
In those counties in Kentucky and Tennessee (and elsewhere all around the country)civic groups, nonprofits, food banks,churches and teachers groups raise money and send backpacks of food home on weekends for these kids.
I’m from a county in Kentucky that is considered one of the poorest counties in the United States with a per capita income of less than $10,000 (9 of the 50 poorest are in that same area in Eastern Kentucky) Since Obama’s war on coal (no argument on the good or bad impact of coal on the environment)things have been even worse with so many miners losing their jobs, jobs that were considered good jobs there.
And I have heard and read online that they can send the food to local homeless shelters, but the workers tell me they are not allowed. Unopened milk or packaged food not taken by the kids can be put back and set out again, it is the cooked food and open products that becomes the issue.
Ignorance of complicated laws, what workers are actually told by “overseers” or what the law really is, food gets wasted instead of given students.
All that being said, seconds are not permitted to hungry kids.
Where in the hell did they get that food? Must be at Lubys or somewhere.
That picture is posed. At that age, boys and girls never sit together.
I should amend my remark. I should have said “real boys and real girls”.
Lubys? Is that a San Fran joke? What that school initiative called???
No child’s behind LEFT? Or some such. /sarc of course.
Agreed. Your mother sounds amazing and a good role model.
I just don’t understand where all the welfare money, WIC money, foodstamps and all other free money is that the welfare recipients are getting if the taxpayers still need to feed the welfare kids three times a day through school AND send food home in a backpack for the weekend meals since the egg donor isn’t feeding them.
And no meat on the plate. Their mental development will be stunted.
“delicious” school meals?
“delicious” school meals?
Social justice = communism
Our leaders must control everything
Well, Chef Ann, I think you should give up your tax=dodge “foundation” and pay the full tax load as we Middle Class families do. To do otherwise is to shirk your responsibility to The Coddled Poor.
Very sadly, there is a part of our population who will feed themselves before they feed their kids.
And, right or wrong, there are many leaders on both sides of the aisle who are afraid to make cuts in welfare programs because they know that it will be these individual's children who will suffer.
So now packing your kids lunch is a ‘social justice’ issue?
Everything to these people is a social justice issue.
That sure isn’t a U.S. public school. Milk is served in 1/2 pint containers, not glasses. Food is served on styrofoam trays, not plates.
A child on a free/reduced lunch MUST be served everything. So, even if a kid refuses to eat an option, it must still be put on their Styrofoam tray.
I've heard kids tell the lunch ladies, "I'm not eating that. It's going straight in the garbage." And still they'll put in on the tray. The kid then walks directly to the garbage can and scrapes it off.
I'm of mixed feelings about this. One the one hand it smacks of ingratitude, but on the other, I have a hard time blaming them.
I know I wouldn't want to eat with some of that stuff staring at me off the plate either.
I've complained about school lunch quality on many posts before, so I won't go into it again, rather than to say I cannot believe that we, as a society, allow our children to be fed that way. These photo's that kids put on social media are not isolated. The food is truly awful.
food stamps AND 3 meas. Why don’t we invite them to live in our @#$ houses!??
Redistribution at its best.
It’s hard to up and move at 46 but my stomach turns more and more in NYC and I might move to one of the few sane states left at this point.
lol. you would think I was faking it. like the dead end kids in those old movies lol.
and I speak so fast that at jury duty the court reporters told me to slow down three separate times lol
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