Parents have been demanding changes be made to the food served in our school for a long time, and this week they have had the door shut in their face. Congress is fighting back and saying they are keeping things like pizza and french fries in school, and keeping them classified as vegetables.
Popular movements, like the Jamie Oliver Food Revolution, have been trying to get schools and the government to realize that simple changes can lead to healthier lunches and take on the obesity problem in this country.
For many children, lunch is the only meal that is guaranteed. For many, they receive either a free or reduced-fee lunch, meaning their parents can't pack their lunch everyday. So before you say, "Just stop buying lunch and pack!", remember that there are children who can't afford that. Every child deserves a healthy meal.
Why is it so hard to limit the use of potatoes and start offering more vegetables (not pizza!) and fruits and whole grains?
Of course the companies providing the frozen, square slabs of pizza would be against any changes - the more pizza served, the more money they make! And we all know that money makes this country go.
How do you feel about this? Are you one of those who is fighting for healthier food in schools?
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Comments (73)
Haha french fries and pizza are a vegetable? I feel so healthy now! Thank you government.
That would be awesome if pizza and fries really were vegetables!
I'd love to see healthier meals in schools. Sad.
I am not fighting for it, although I think it is VERY worthwhile. It is appalling that pizza and french fries are considered vegetables. WTF, for real? I'm probably not fighting it because I'm homeschooling, to be honest. If my children had to go to public (or private) school, I would either pack their lunch or fight tooth and nail to have healthier options.
However, all of that being said, school should be a state-run program, not federal. This is how it was set up with our government. States can individually make their rules regulating their own school lunches. So before people get all teed off about Congress, remember that if you want to change it, you must change your state rep's position and fight for your state to change it's rules. This could not be passed because they were appealing to the federal government and this was not in their clearly defined jurisdiction.
You have to know the rules before you play the game successfully. That's a fact of life.
I'm all about children eating healthier foods, but if parents are so concerned with what their children eat then maybe they should start packing the child's lunch. For high schoolers and middle schoolers, they're pretty much old enough to be able to pick out their own food. You can't make an entire society be healthy just because you want your child to be. Society as a whole is not your child.
In my high school, they limited fries to only once a week or maybe it was a bi-weekly thing. I don't remember to be honest. They also locked the pop machines everyday except Friday and during basketball/volleyball games. They added more water machines in the halls. Took out all vending machines and added a salad bar. I do think this would be a great idea for all schools.
@victoria_lynn_92@xanga - "You can't make an entire society be healthy just because you want your child to be. Society as a whole is not your child."
Public schools, however, belong to the government; and government is free to decide what they serve in their schools.
I was just talking about this today with some friends of mine in class, weird! I can't believe they classified pizza as a vegetable. Really?? I suppose we aught to change the official definition of vegetable then. Thats so messed up.
I'm not in school so I don't care much either way. But let kids be kids and eat delicious foods. Sure only eating cookies is not a good choice but a chicken sandwich, corn, and fries with a diet soda doesn't seem bad to me. I doubt it is the schools that are making kids fat.
@littlemissjessga@xanga - School meals are often topping 1,000 calories because for many children, school lunch is the only meal they will receive during the day. For those children who aren't as likely to rely on that 1,000 as their main source of meal, and get normal meals + snacks throughout the day, those lunches DO make a difference. Especially since those meals be crammed with empty calories have little nutritional value.
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On the topic of pizza and fries, I don't think they are inherently unhealthy, but it depends on the preparation. You can have healthy pizza and health fries. A good compromise would to be sure that the pizza and fries meet the nutritional standards (without BS claims like how they are veggies) without giving them up.
"For many children, lunch is the only meal that is guaranteed. For many, they receive either a free or reduced-fee lunch..."
When I took AP Human Geography, we looked at my high school's school lunch program and a majority of our students fell under free or reduced priced lunch. This was the exact reason that our lunches were high in fat and high in starch, and therefore high calorie meals. Given that many of our students would only eat one meal a day, that meal needed to contain enough calories for the whole day.
Um... the only part of that pizza that is a vegetable is the tomato sauce. And how much of that is actual tomato, anyway? Probably not much. Fries are technically veggies, but they're... you know, fried. Actually, my school baked fries instead, but it's still white potato. Basically, white potatoes are empty calories and not much else. You get a little bit of good when you eat the skin, but not much there.
This strikes me as blatantly incorrect and ignorant on a level that is staggering at this point in time. Pizza as part of a school lunch once a week or such, that's not a big deal. But getting a balanced diet is all about variety. It's not just whether pizza is or isn't a vegetable; it's more that people, especially kids who are still developing, need more nutrients than are provided by this bogus excuse for a meal. I don't understand why this is so hard for policymakers to figure out...Of course these things are not healthy, but the reason they keep being included is because of cost. Healthier foods are still more expensive, and the education system cannot afford it.
I totally agree with the poster above who said that these programs should be state instead of federally run. That would help a lot.
Unless you have no food in your house, stop complaining and make your child a damn packed lunch every day. Not that hard.
I don't know.. seems pretty reasonable to me. I know plenty of people who ate what the school gave and uh.. didn't get obese.
Seriously, the food at school is a minuscule factor in childhood obesity. They aren't in the cafeteria for hours, and lately vending machines have been closed during the school day, and soda isn't offered anymore. WHY CAN'T THEY EAT SOME FUCKING PIZZA.
It's really too bad. Thoroughly follow Occupy groups. Some are very knowledgeable. All are learning as they go about what the root problems are. The truth is everyone needs to be with the movement. The problems they're attacking are far reaching, deeply embedded and massively damaging to populations and the planet. But they NEED a lot more people. Right now they're focusing as close to the core roots as they can. Many times their number could prevent the still pending WWIII. Remember that's the one that comes to our soil and could go as far as nuclear. Don't worry about radiation poisoning though, there are enough pointed over here to vaporize all of us.
@Celestial_Teapot@xanga - But under the Constitution, the Government belongs to the public. Therefore legally the people have a say about everything the government does for and too them. It is a crime to deny the people a fair demand, it is their predominant duty to comply, period.
I work at a school. Frankly, all these new lunch rules make me want to scream. If a child, and many children experience this, gets one good meal per day, you might as well pack it full of calories. I have looked at the nutrition information and at my school the pizza isn't so bad. They have two different kinds, one is worse than the other. I don't recall the calories off hand for the pizza. But the one lunch I recently checked on was about 680 calories if you ate everything. Now, for a child who is only getting breakfast and lunch all day and fending dinner for himself or eating a small dinner, they need more calories earlier in the day. There really are children only eating at school, so if they do eat pizza once every two weeks, that is no big deal.
People demanded the government take care of its budget problems and this is the result of one of them. Sorry, but healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food. The kids are at least getting fed so they are not starving. The food was horrible like this back before obesity rates started sky-rocketing so maybe it is less of a food issue and more of reduced recesses and lazy-ass kids and their parents who won't make them get off the couch and exercise once in a while.
When I was in elementary school we had pizza and ice cream served each Friday, which I looked forward to greatly. Every other day of the week my mom would make me a nutritious lunch. I thought it was good to have a "fun" meal every Friday, but I did like to take my lunch the rest of the week. I don't see why it's an issue to serve these type of things especially when no one is forcing anyone to buy the lunches. If you don't like it, make your kid's lunch.
Pizza isn't a vegetable?!?
I'm sorry, but if you don't like it, make your kids their lunch and stop complaining.
@victoria_lynn_92@xanga - On the flip side, if parent's don't want their kids having to bother with healthy food, they can just pack it. They are lunches provided by the government. The government should encourage healthy eating. IMO, it's not just about having pizza and french fries but NOT having healthy options. In high school, we had "choices" between fruit, salad, or juice. You got one. If there were no fries with that day, you got two. I wanted fruit and salad, and said I would forgo the french fries. And I got in trouble. I was told this was not allowed. The school wasn't allowing me to eat healthy, so I had to start packing my lunch.
Unfortunately, not everyone has that option. If they get free or reduced lunches, it probably wouldn't be easy to pack lunch. Their parents might not let them, and tell them to eat what the school has. If they are not middle school or high school, the parent might not be able to pack their lunch.
Maybe you can argue they shouldn't ban pizza and french fries, but that shouldn't be the only thing they serve.
Pizza and french fries are back in because the companies that make the pizza and the french fries lobbied against any health measures.
@TiredSoVeryTired@xanga - I will give you that. My mother is a lunch lady is she is always getting annoyed when they change things. They took away the snack stand at the middle school recently, which kinda sucks. I liked getting ice cream once in awhile myself when I was in middle school.
Your government is FUCKED UP! Pizza is NOT a vegetable.
Wow.