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Wednesday, October 3, 2012

A school lunch solution in search of a problem causing another solution.

Federal school lunch guidelines over the last few weeks have shown how kids will not eat crap they don't like. Thanks to Michelle Obama et all many healthy students are being starved right now. From Kansas a few weeks ago:
...“Here we are in the Wheat State … and I’ve heard some very sad stories recently about school lunches,” said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler.

One was from Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, where students and teachers created a YouTube parody, “We Are Hungry,” that blasts the new calorie guidelines:

Give me some seconds, I,

I need to get some food today

My friends are at the corner store

Getting junk so they don’t waste away …

The video, based on the Fun. hit “We Are Young,” shows students staring woefully at lunch trays, stuffing lockers with junk food, collapsing during volleyball practice and crawling on the ground in exhaustion.

“There’s just not enough” food, said 16-year-old Callahan Grund, a football player and star of the video. By Friday it had garnered 48,000 views – more than 62 times the population of Sharon Springs, a farming town not far from the Colorado border.

“When you have chores in the morning and football practice after school, you need energy. … This doesn’t cut it,” Grund said.

The major sticking point: a new federal rule that sets calorie maximums for school lunches — 650 calories for elementary-schoolers, 700 for middle-schoolers and 850 for high-schoolers.

Protesters in Kansas and elsewhere say 850 calories isn’t enough for some high-schoolers, particularly athletes who can burn calories by the thousands...
Putting aside this is not the business of the federal government, this is a family/local issue, this shows the bureaucratic "one size fits all" approach to any issue doesn't work. Years ago (85/86?) I was doing research on a paper (completely unrelated to nutrition) but I found an article on a similar issue. A report on how some children's growth had slowed or even stopped. When the doctor asked the parents what they were servings the kids and basically it was more veggies, complex carbs, limited meat. In other words a diet for an adult trying to maintain or lose weight, not for a child needing simple carbs for energy and protein for growth. After this was corrected, the kids started to grow again.

So what's the results of this federally mandated cluster f$%^. Kids are throwing the veggies they don't like into the trash. And what does the genius class what to do? Let's put cameras in the trash cans!
Lake County considers 'trash-cams' at school cafeterias
Officials say federal law requires veggies on menu, but students toss them


TAVARES, Fla. - Lake County School Board officials are considering attaching cameras to school cafeteria trash cans to study what students are tossing after officials found that most of the vegetables on the school menu end up in the trash can.

New federal laws require students to take a healthy produce at lunchtime, but last year in Lake County, students tossed $75,000 worth of produce in the garbage.

"It's a big issue, and it's very hard to get our hands around it," said School Board member Todd Howard, who suggested "trash-cams." "They have to take (the vegetable), and then it ends up in the trash can, and that's a waste of taxpayer money. It's also not giving students the nutrition that they need."

Laurel Walsh, whose daughter attends Tavares Elementary School, says getting kids to eat their fruits and vegetables is not the job of the respective schools.
 
"I think it starts at home with the parents. If the kids just don't like it because they've never been given it at home, they're not going to try something new here," she said.

No decisions have been made on the cameras, but school leaders say they wouldn't capture students faces, just what they're throwing away.

How about you cut out the crap they won't eat, give them food they will eat and get ride of the camera idea. The lady in this article has it right. This is a family issue. But remember, a bureaucracy only wants to exist. If it preforms a useful issue is irrelevant.

2 comments:

  1. Actually, we need *more* regulation! That'll fix the problem.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Remember what I've said what is the only purpose of any bureaucracy....to insure its own existance!

      Delete