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School Lunches (or A Peculiar Political Attacks)
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School Lunches (or A Peculiar Political Attacks) People have complained about school lunches since the first lunch was served. There was never enough food for the price (unless the meal served was pizza, which made everyone happy). The food was cold/ old/ bland/ mushy/ smelly/ or just plain disgusting. What else is new? The First Lady has championed reforms to the school lunch program as a way to combat childhood obesity. Now, we look at school lunches and have someone to blame! When my family moved to Texas from Michigan, there was a large degree of culture shock involved. I moved from a suburb of one large city to a suburb of another, so the demographic wasn't altogether different. It wasn't as multicultural (I didn't have Muslim and Mormon best friends living on my street, for one), but the level of general middle class respectability was the same. Some of my classmates had more, but it never came in gluttonous proportions. The shock for me came when I saw my first sloppy joe. For those of you unfamiliar with the phenomenon, it is everything that ever went wrong with a loose meat sandwich combined with chili sauce. Uncertain what aspect of it made me want to vomit the most, the fact that the liquid element had saturated the bread back to a dough-like state or the stench that emanated from it, the sloppy joe was a pass for me long before I became a vegan. It is, to be certain, one thing I will never attempt to make a vegan version of under any circumstances. I ate the boiled vegetables and fruit cocktail and drank my milk in silent protest to the atrocity that occupied the main compartment of my lunch tray. Whenever the meal popped back up on the menu, I chose to starve rather than eat it (my lunch money conveniently disappeared). This was before they gave a sandwich if they had no money but didn't qualify for free lunches. And I never regretted going without. With my own experience in mind, I had a certain expectation with regards to the school lunches that would fulfill the new standards. I know that other areas are apt to have ethnic meals that cater to a number but not all of their students, with parts of those meals not looking as appetizing as even my boiled vegetables did. I saw some of the pictures and thought back to the sloppy joe. Only one was a question mark in identifying, being either an attempt at a stroganoff or the unlikely clam dish. I lead toward stroganoff, as clam is not likely budget conscious. Most of the items weren't desirable, but that was never an expectation that I had of school lunches. And then there were the commentaries about whether the lunches were sufficient for different populations. The same lunch meal was appropriate for cheer leader as for a football player? A pregnant shouldn't receive more nutrition? My head cocked over to the side, and the gears started moving. If your is a football player, you probably want to make sure that his nutritional needs are met through sending him to school with a prepackaged lunch. He is certainly not typical in his nutritional needs, and it is his PARENT'S responsibility to assure that these greater than average needs are met. To expect the school to meet these needs within the same price per meal that other students pay is obnoxious and bordering on ludicrous. You take your athlete to a restaurant, and you'll pay for the extra portions that your growing boy to freak of nature eats. Supplement his meals at school if you won't provide him with the meals fully from your home. If your is pregnant, read the suggestions for the football player and re-associate them with your . Atypical nutritional needs are not the school's responsibility to meet but yours as the PARENT. Stop abdicating your responsibility toward your because the government offers you care services under the umbrella of education. Okay. That started sounding a little rant-y. The fact, though, remains that if anyone is unhappy with the school lunch program, they can opt out of it by sending their with their own lunches. Those lunches can range from nutritionally complete and meeting the excessively high requirements of special groups of students, or they could be catered to the tastes of finicky eaters who only eat food that comes in nugget or wing forms and contain more complex carbohydrates (read sugar) than actual food. Michelle Obama isn't forcing your to eat the lunches. She's only making it the only non-parental option available. Others have argued that a 1,100 calorie diet provided by the breakfast and lunch at the schools is not sufficient for who will not be fed at home. The calorie estimates between breakfast and lunch being at 1,100 calories, a sedentary girl under eight would need only an additional one hundred calories at home to fulfill her caloric needs. Your sedentary aged girl would need seven hundred more at home. For boys, the numbers increase, three hundred and double what is provided for a sedentary lifestyle. Food stamps does not, incidentally, decrease the funding provided to based on the fact that their are enrolled in free breakfast and lunch programs. The families receiving the benefits should be able to provide three nutritionally balanced meals for their and not have difficulties with providing one. Again, for the active teenagers, of course the meals are insufficient to meet the full nutritional needs of the . They are not presupposing that the eat nothing outside of school and are not attempts to be all inclusive. As I said previously, don't like Michelle's meal choices? Buy your own. My only question regarding the matter is whether the White House implements anything like the calorie restrictions in White House dinners. I imagine we would have heard of the meager portions provided at such dinners through Instagram and Twitter long ago. It makes me laugh to think of diplomats eyeing their plates like an eight year old me eyed that sloppy joe. Thank you, Michelle, for giving me that visual. This isn't a nanny state, but nanny says to eat your peas. |
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