Wasted Food, Hungry Kids: Michelle Obama’s Bill in Action
In 2010, Michelle Obama went to a lame-duck session of Congress with a request: pass a nutrition bill giving the United States Department of Agriculture broad new powers to regulate school lunches. That bill was passed in late December of that year, and the new regulations have started to go into effect, with the predictable results of wasted food and angry, hungry children.
The cinnamon rolls and chili everyone loved from their childhood are now gone. Bands and other school groups can no longer sell candy bars as a fundraiser. The government is mandating everything from portion size to how many tomatoes have to be on a salad.
P.J. Moran, a food service director for a small district in rural Kansas, said wastage has gone up “at least 20 percent” over last year, as students, particularly at the grade school level, cannot refuse anything on their trays — but, of course, cannot be forced to eat it.
At the high school and junior high levels, things are more flexible, but not much. Moran said those students can refuse up to three items on the tray, but must take the fruit and vegetable servings whether they plan to eat them or not.
The district’s principal, Jim Bolden, said that at the beginning of the year, food service put fresh peaches on the students’ trays, only to helplessly watch them be thrown away by students who didn’t want them:
I bet we threw away four boxes of peaches.
The 8th grade class, which had planned — as always — to sell candy bars to fund its class trip this spring, has had to find new ways to fund it as sales of candy bars this year are allowed only during certain hours. Says Bolden:
Next year we will not be able to do any selling of food products at all. Right now we cannot sell from an hour before lunch until an hour after lunch ends.
Not only is the mandated food not popular and often wasted, there also is not enough of it, and students are protesting. Students in one district have released a YouTube video parodying their quest for enough to eat during the day. A Facebook page asks kids to send in pictures of their meager lunches.
According to Livestrong.com, teenagers need between 2,000 and 3,000 calories per day to be healthy, and athletes can need as many as 5,000 calories. But the new regulations limit the intake to just 750-850 calories on the tray. Which, if the food is unpalatable, means the students may not be getting even that much.
I get that these kids need a full healthy lunch, but they’re forgetting that the lunch meal at school isn’t the only meal these kids will be eating. Don’t they eat breakfast at home? Don’t they eat dinner? Why should lunch complete their entire days caloric requirements?
Well, I for one was not aware of these mandates. My child eats breakfast at 5:30 am to make it to football practice at 6:15 a.m.. His lunch is at noon, or slightly thereafter. Were I to send him his usual lunchmeat and cheese sandwich, even with a cold-pack, it would likely spoil. It has before. The temperatures reach into the 90s, at the start of the school year. The halls are not air-conditioned, to encourage the kids to get to class promptly.
He’s in football. I don’t want to feed him peanut butter and jelly. The proteins in peanut butter are shown to be irritating to stomach-linings if there is any- and I do mean any- element of dehydration.
I’ve been counting on the ridiculously calorie-laden, high-fat food usually served in the cafeteria, to tent-pole his calories during the day. I want fresh, hot, high-fat, high-protein meals. This is the first year I’ve had him eating lunch at school, for exactly this reason.
I’ve switched before, a week at a time, when the boys have gone through growth spurts. It’s pretty regular- early October. They’ve spent the summer outside at the pool. They only get sunscreen on the first few weeks. They are physically spent, after hours at the pool. They don’t really grow during the summer. School immobilizes them, basically. They get hungry and sleepy, and grow a size or two in about two weeks every October. It’s shocking how reliable it is. The one hitting puberty gets a jolt in the spring, as well. Otherwise, they have only steady growth.
And, yes, I do switch the foods at home, when they are growing like this. And, yes, I do make chili-mac with beans on Mondays, and pizza on Fridays, and unlimited salads. I’m good with what they serve at the cafeteria. Or, at least, I was.
Get him a Packit…the food will stay cool all day..even in the summer.
Do not overlook the fact that many school districts across the country are now confiscating home made lunches that do not meet with these new mandates and guidelines. Allergies are not taken into consideration. If these schools confiscate a homemade lunch the parents will be charged for an unrequested school meal. Welcome the SS.
Welcome to “1984″. And “Big Brother Government”. Statist Democrats are responsible for this state of affairs. And “Big Sister” (Michelle Obama)is now in control of your children’s lunches. Another good reason here for school vouchers too…
This is a ridiculous diatribe. YOU have the responsibility to feed you kid, not the government. Get over expecting the school to have fries, burgers and nasty salad bar so your little porkers (err, the “football” players) can stuff their gourds.
I’ve never heard of sandwiches rotting from temperature if they’re packed in a cooler with chill-packs…and I’ve worked construction in the Deep South for over 30 years.
Get over yourself, whiner soccer-mom.
And when your kids (if you actually have any) went to school back in the “old days”, they were likely allowed to eat whatever they wanted for lunch; and even lived to tell about it.
Maybe if your kids were coming home from school hungry you’d have a little more compasion.
My kids are in school now, not the “old days”: 2 in elementary, and 1 in middle school. They wouldn’t even know what a school provided lunch is, they take their own lunch, made by their parents, off of our incomes. Further, though I pay an inordinate amount of tax to support failing, leftist government schools, my children have (and will) always attend private schools.
I started working for my father at age 14, finished high school, then college. I would be ashamed to sound like this stupid soccer-mom. She’s worse than the worst white trash tweaker, or colored crack-head: typical 47% whiner.
What people are forgetting or what some people do not know is that, in the “old days”,it did not matter what we ate at school. I had my choice of bringing my lunch or eating what the school provided. Certain days were known as “good days”. That is, they served piza or something really tasty. On “bad days”, I’d bring my lunch from home.
While Michelle or our worthless first lady is trying to do is to reduce obesity. That sounds fine but it won’t work by regulating school lunches.
WhenI came home from school, we did not have tv; internet; smartphones or electronic gadgets. We went out and played sports at the schoolyard. I was not fat and neither were any of my friends. Sometimes, we woulkd walk…yes walk..2 or 3 miles just to have burgers with some friends at some burger joint; then walk home.
Kids today do not walk. They are just plain lazy and they certainly do not get together and play sports.
We have lazy, do nothing kids and this is why they risk becoming fat.
Bowie, the only “diatribe” I read was your’s. It’s pretty clear that freedom doesn’t mean a thing to you. Try to follow this if you can; Bigfoot’s, and the federal government’s, sickening intrusion into our kid’s school lunches (and our lives) IS AN INCREASE IN GOVERNMENT INVOLVEMENT. Get it? The woman is saying let OUR SCHOOLS DECIDE what to feed OUR KIDS. Now, let’s have a peek at what Yeti’s kids ate last week at the Sidwell School shall we? Philly Cheese Steak, Cheesy Ziti Bake with Alfredo Sauce; Asian Coconut Chicken; Sweet Italian Sausages and Senegalese Chicken, yet us peons have to be told to eat brussels sprouts and spinach?? Sweet Italian Sausages??? Really now? At least Sasquatch’s kids will enjoy their meals.
Yeti? Sasquatch? I was willing to hear your argument until you started in with the juvenile insults. Are you seriously mocking the First Lady for being tall? Stay on topic, wouldja?
@Mavis, no one believes your premise, that you were so magnanimously willing to reflect intellectually upon the argument until – OMG! – namecalling began! Oh noes!
If Mooch doesn’t want to be compared to a Yeti or Sasquatch, then she should stop behaving as such.
Can we go back to the time before First “Ladies” (using the term “lady” very loosely) began to insist on sponsoring a nanny-state “do-gooder” project to make themselves seem important?
See: Now this is disgusting: Mooch serves vile swill to kids at White House state dinner for more.
@Mavis -Yeti? Sasquatch? I was willing to hear your argument until you started in with the juvenile insults.
Spot on.
Clearly she’s a wookie.
@Mavis I wasnt even thinking the writer was talking about Michelle! You must be racist to even go there.
Back to food, when I worked in the restaurant biz, I noticed that the best chefs made a note of what was being thrown out. They then adjusted accordingly to please the customer and to minimize waste. School cafeterias would be out of business if they were for profit. All that has to be done is fortify the stuff kids will eat.
But hey: all we are saying is give peas a chance.
Having Mochelle decide what Kids eat, is like having the Fox guard the Hen house ! This Woman is so hypocritical, Her butt is as big as Cowboy stadium !
People can feed their kids what they want…..unfortunately, obesity has really gotten out of control with adults…..not we have a bunch of fat kids, that don’t exercise or stop eating all the high fat….high calorie food. Michele, just wanted to help this crisis in children. That could have also gotten the parents to start thinking about that at home…..and about what they feed their children at home. If people don’t want their kids to eat at school……their are plenty of “safe” packs….pack up what they want their kids to eat. Now do any of you know how to get this nation thinner?
Hey Bowie,
The issue is this: active kids burn off the calories. They should be able to bring food from home and snacks. Apparently the required cafeteria food is inadequate.
Starting tomorrow, you are invited to eat an apple, two slices of bread with one slice of sandwich meat for lunch. No snacks, no soda, no coffee with creamer or sugar. No morning snack break at the office or home, no afternoon snack or break.
You must go to the local gym for thirty minutes in the morning and again in the afternoon to represent the regular activities of a teenager. Now, remember, no snacks, gum, candy, nada until 6:00 pm
The diet prescribed of 700 calories is a joke. So one person in the entire class is overweight and everyone has to eat ridiculous food because one person has an impulse, genetic, thyroid, exercise problem.
Open up the salad bar, open up food from home and snacks. Oh, Mrs. Obama, if you have a problem with people’s size, put PE back in school. Its not the food, its the lack of exercise of a few.
The federal government already mandates 300 minutes of PE a week, which is ridiculous in a six-hour school day.
Er, no. The 800 limit thing is for one meal–lunch.
Since we’re talking arithmetic, how much is 3 x 800 again?
Oh wait, you can eat as much as you want for breakfast and dinner, and I’m pretty sure you can (gasp!) pay for your own lunch and bring it. So, what’s 800 + infinity?
wow your smart.
“you’re” smart, too…sigh
@grammarnazi:
Whoosh!
Correct. The government does not have the responsibility, in which case they should not be mandating calories and portion sizes. Why are you okay with this blatant power grab?
Oh no: I agree with you the government should not be mandating portion size. It the classic rule of he who has the gold makes the rule. State run school will dictate what is to be eaten whether it is not eaten. Remember: We just had the Oracle of Delphi (The Supreme Courts) state it was constitutional for the government to mandate the purchase of insurance.
The problem here, is that people actually pay for the school lunches. They’re not free. In fact at my school they were a little overpriced, it was cheaper to drive to McD’s for a sandwhich than to to buy what the cafeteria was serving. When people pay for food, they want to be able to actually enjoy the meal and not find them selves hungry later. The problem with most school lunches is the way they’re made due to limited time and materials. Most of the food ends up cooked so much that it’s devoid of nutrition. The fruit schools usually buy isn’t ripe. I was one of the few kids that genuinely liked ‘healthy food’ but I wouldn’t touch anything at the salad bar because it was downright awful. Oranges that were dyed orange because they weren’t ready for eating, tiny apples that were still hard and tasted bland at best, iceburg lettuce ‘salads’(literally shredded iceburg lettuce and made a couple shredded carrots.) The only edible thing on the salad bar was the bags of baby carrots, and those went fast!
School lunches don’t need limits and regulations. The lunch program just needs help on efficient meal preparation. The school shouldn’t be losing money on a salad like I described above while charging students $3 or more for it! If the government would back out and each school would hire one of those frugal grandmother type ladies, they’d be in a much better place. Healthy, delicious, and cheap really can happen all at the same time.
No – schools lunches are not free. Nor should kids whose families are on foodstamps get them for free. Their parents get food stamps – that means there is food at home. Food that you and me already PAY for. Let them bring that food to school for lunch. School lunches should be for people who don’t WANT to make lunch and are willing to PAY for their kid to get a GOOD tasty lunch. NOT the garbage they are forcing on these kids.
If I’m in a hurry and don’t have time to fix my child a lunch I would give them money KNOWING they would get a pizza or chicken nuggets and french fries – maybe a chocolate pudding. My job was still breakfast and dinner. These people are turning schools into a 3 meal a day soup kitchen and starving the kids in the process!
Umm, you do realize how stupid you sound, right?
It’s not the govt’s job to feed your kids, but you’re arguing in favor of the govt dictating to schools what can and cannot be served.
By your attacks on teenagers, one would assume you’re probably not smart enough to understand how you completely negated your entire comment.
I intensely dislike government in my personal life! , But there was a time when I did go to school hungry and that small carton of milk (only) got me through the day. Like the Fuller Brush Salesman, if the government get a toe in the door you’ll be sitting every night with a new unwanted family member.
well, if i don’t like what the school is giving i guess i can always pack their lunch. oh, but wait, the teachers are taking their home packed food away if they feel it’s not to their standards so i guess there goes parents regulating what their kids eat instead of the govt.
Yes! This! How dare they! Perfectly nutritous and healthy meals and teachers are now food nazi’s to force them to eat such atrocious garbage the child actually throws it away and goes hungry.
Well gotta kill this at the local level. Bottom up works!
Don’t be stupid. That’s not what the post was about. There is nothing wrong with expecting and receiving local control over the foods that are served in the lunchrooms. A government “food panel” of one size fits each age group is ridiculous.
Maybe once they start telling YOU what you are allowed to eat you will realize this.
Or maybe you haven’t heard the furor over EBT cards not being able to buy certain “non-healthy” foods?
Take it away from the kids but not your pals right?
I didn’t say free. We pay for our kids’ lunch. None of their friends pay- the school is at 80%.
Really? Did you think I didn’t send a lunchbox? And not notice that he spent a weekend vomiting? He takes to school- at 6;15 am- a fully-loaded backpack for his school supplies, a sportsbag, with a complete change of clothes and grooming supplies- he’s worked out for two hours before he even makes it to class- and a bag with food. He eats the food by 10 am.
His school does not air-condition the halls. It has been 90 degrees at midnight for the past two weeks. You can extrapolate how hot it is, in the middle of the day, on a building with a metal roof. The school air-conditions the classrooms.
When its cold- the halls are cold, too.
He’ll likely go back to bringing his lunch when he is not in turbo-calorie deficit. And, seriously- a kid with a cooler? Or two lunchboxes, and two backpacks fully loaded on the bus? I was good with paying for high-calorie, high-protein, fresh food. I am going to go ask at school.
And, yes, my kids go to public school. In TEXAS- which means my kids have, at every age, been taught a rigorous curriculum by dedicated teachers. I’m okay with where they go, and what they are learning. Just because the schools where you live aren’t competitive, doesn’t mean that the schools where we live are not.
And, for the person slamming stupid football players- get real. They have to keep up above a B. They have to have teachers sign a sheet weekly for their grades and for their demeanor. If they are rude or disrespectful-if any teacher has a problem with any player- they don’t get to play in the game, and they have extra conditioning- on top of their three hours of practice. The football coach is the anvil that big young men become big, well-educated, polite gentlemen. They get monitored weekly- they have to get this sheet signed WEEKLY. I’ve already seen one kid not allowed to play a game- he didn’t turn in his weekly sheet- and I’ve seen one kid knocked down a team for manners. They really follow through.
Texas is ranked 36 of 50 for education. I wouldn’t brag about that too much.
You should run for president. Seriously.
How’d you like her concern that that the proteins in peanut butter hurt the kids stomach lining? She should send her kid to ballet lessons instead of football from the sounds of it.
She’s one of those parents who wanted them to stop keeping score at football games so the loser’s feelings aren’t hurt.
You may want to dial back your level of douchebag when you post on the Internet there hero.
1) Since her (and your) tax dollars are buying those school lunches and the government has made it difficult to get lunch anywhere else other than the cafeteria she actually DOES have a right to request something decent…she is paying for it.
2) Given what she wrote calling her a “soccer mom” seems overwhelmingly stupid. At best you could call her a “football mom”. Besides which, is it so terrible that she is taking her kids to practice and trying to feed them right? Are you really so bothered by child rearing that you see “soccer mom” as an insult?
Prior comment should be @Bowie
Dear Bowie, You are one of the few “real people” at this site. I,too,brought my own lunch to school and liked it. I also rode a bike to school and didn’t need my mommy to take me to soccer practice.
When I was in Canada, there was a school cafeteria and my mom worked at it. It gave real food such as meat and potatoes and cocoa. I walked to and frome school every day and I liked it. There was no school lunch in California schools until the liberals decided to set up shop. I brought my own lunch and walked to and from school and I liked it.
Sincerely,
TJF, Mitt Romney supporter
I grew up in California – we didn’t have school lunches. We had a kitchen with a window that sold STUFF. 99% of us brought our own lunches – sometimes we would buy one of the side dishes (they had a killer mini warm bread loaf that if you tore off a piece and smeared it into the cold butter was AWSOME! I still try to recreate that to this day!).
I really think the differnce today is that back in my day we walked everywhere and had a real PE class. We also (most of us) were in some sort of ater school sport.
We who were fortunate enough to send our children to private schools were able also to decide what to put in their lunches. Since my sons played football and baseball, they were accustomed to eating about six meals a day, and, as my pediatrician stated, didn’t carry an ounce of fat! Their bodies needed those extra calories and protein, even supplemental protein drinks! However, several of my grandchildren attend public schools where the food nazis reign. If they are permitted to bring lunches (which many now are not), those are inspected and must conform to government mandated standards or the lunch is confiscated, the child forced to eat in the cafeteria and the parent billed for the cost. Even in my one granddaughter’s parochial grammar school, due to two (out of 90+ students)children’s peanut allergy, ALL children were forbidden to bring peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in their lunches! Has anyone (including the Food Queen) researched the possible correlation between the cessation of mandatory physical ed and overweight students? I don’t remember obese children in my 12 years of parochial schools, nor in my four children’s classes. We had PE. Please learn all the facts before you condemn a mother who knows her own child — and who also pays exorbitant taxes for schools to usurp her parental rights!
Get over your rudeness and post like an adult. I don’t care if you agree or disagree, but your unnecessary nastiness is offensive and destroys any argument you make.
Come on Bowie, the only ridiculous diatribe is coming from you. People do feed their children at home. When they don’t send lunch they expect that their children can buy decent food in the cafeteria which never sells greasy burger and pork. They used to sell healthy food cooked on the premises but many school districts have gone to pre-prepared miles cooked days before in central kitchens. These meals have to be re-heated and are high in sodium to keep some semblance of flavor. The problem is government and in particular the federal government and their continuing attempt to control every aspect of our lives. If you can’t see the cumulative results of this administration then perhaps you need a better diet. Little by little this administration if using government authority to insinuate itself into our live lives and we’re allowing it.
Amen Brother! Stop the school lunch/breakfast program and get the parents to take responsibility. Don’t give me that “poor” kid line. They have cell phones and Cable.
You both are missing the point… this is what happens when a large centralized government tries to set blanket rules for a country of 300 million. If these decisions are to be made at all, they should be made by local school boards elected by locals, and supported by a local tax base. Then stupid rules like these could be easily changed – one community could serve school lunches and another could choose not to. Get the FEDS out!
SHe is a football mom, not a soccer mom. Soccer moms do not whine like that. She needs to have her kid pack his lunch. She does need to be careful. In NC last year, the food police took a kid’s lunch because it was not good enough…
It’s not ridiculous at all. I was a collegiate level athlete and went through a period where I battled problems with my scholarship house limiting my caloric intake to the standard 2,000 calorie/day diet. I finally had to get my coaches to get me admitted to the training table dining room, so I could eat properly. By then, I had lost over 10 pounds thanks to the demands of training on a substandard diet.
In this case, you’re taking about growing bodies training on a very substandard diet.
You know it’s one thing for the government to dominate the online conversation, but since the truth has leaked out they’re controlling the media narrative. The real story on our last election and the next has leaked and Obama supporters are going ballistic. Do you know why Sarah Palin’s bus tour was really canceled last year? Do you know why she stayed 30 miles away from the second debate and chose the death of Steve Jobs to announce that she’s not running? Know what leaked out? Sarah Palin isn’t in this race and because too many people now know the truth. She was planted as McCain’s running mate with no intention of winning.
Search PalinsDirtyLittleSecret for the BIGGEST cover up in world history before it disappears forever.
Liar.
The biggest reason McCain received the many votes he did was because of Sarah, her decency, her loyalty for America and its citizens, her faithfulness to G-d and her family.
Don’t forget the approximately 30 lawyers dispatched to Alaska during the election campaign to dig up dirt…oh, dang…no dirt…well…alrighty then, how about let’s make up some!?
Get over this obsession with Sarah…she’s SO above your pay grade.
Sarah Palin is an idiot who did what she did for fame and fortune not out of any genuine care for the people of her state or of her country. There is a difference between misinformation and straight up being too stupid to become informed before you open your mouth, the latter of which describes Ms. Palin’s idea of giving a speech.
On topic however, it’s ridiculous that parents have to pay for a school lunch for a child because the food brought from home is taken away from them and they are not allowed to eat what they need and when they need. Obesity is not a public problem or a governmental problem, it’s a personal problem and it needs to be dealt with on a personal, not a public, level. Free will people. If the general public wants to eat themselves to death, it is their right to do so. It is not the right of the government to step in and say “nope, that is bad for you so we’re going to take control”. If that were the case, they would have banned cigarettes and alcohol. Oh wait, they tried banning alcohol in the 20′s and look what happened. People will find a way to do what they want, illegal or not. However, when it gets to be illegal to let your kids have a Little Debbie snack after a meal of 700 calories in the middle of the day, well then I’ll be a law breaker.
I am a human and I have free will with which I choose what to do with my life and will teach my children the same.
Above “FreeElection’s” pay grade? I read the site and it’s obvious you’re either an Obama supporter who doesn’t want the truth leaking out or you work for some government agency. I encourage others to check it out and judge for themselves. Thanks “FreeElection,” I doubt our government will be able to keep a lid on that.
Why bother about Sarah anymore? HELLO? SHE’S OUT OF OFFICE, BRAINSTORM!
Sarah was driven out by endless unsubstantiated and slanderous charges of misconduct, that would have cost Alaskan taxpayers millions in lawyers fees to defend her *proven* integrity; and she made the decision to step down to spare them the costs of a forever fight fending them off…not unlike what has been written against her, here.
Remember what was found from reading the thousands of Sarah’s emails sent during her tenure in the Governor’s Office? N.O.T.H.I.N.G. It’s her daughter who has *chased* after money offered by those who hate her mother, gullibilly accepting offers for interviews/tv appearances, in my opinion. And Levi…forget it.
It’s unfortunate that in America, Sarah is twice the man of ‘most’ of those found in Washington or (any) State offices, and leftist voters sent her packing in 2008 because they hated that for which she set a public example: dignity, sterling character and motive, a public embarrassment to people like yourself.
As for me being an Obama-bot? You must be new around here. If there was any machinations involved in the Republican pick for 2008, it was in choosing a Rino sure loser McCain, put up against a leg tingling pants leg crease.
You’re so full of cr@p.
Please Please either loosen the tin foil or start taking your meds again.
Is there anywhere on the internet that is safe from your sick spamming? Good grief, haven’t you tired of trying to promote that trashy website?
BLOGGERS — THIS SPAMMER IS ON EVERY COMMENT SECTION ON EVERY WEBSITE, USING A MULTITUDE OF NAMES, BUT THE MESSAGE IS ALWAYS THE SAME! IGNORE HIM!
Oh no, not you again. You are on every web site trying to undermine Governor Palin. What is wrong with you “Johnny One Note”? did she turn you down for a date.
And does anybody wonder why our kids are basket cases when they have neurotic moms like this? Holy crap, do you still wipe his bottom after potty time?
I brought my own lunch to school when I was a kid. My parents paid for my private education and purchased food for my lunch. The “hot lunch” program at my prep school was paid for by the parents of the students. My children will have to make their own lunches and bring them to school like I did. I also was an athlete and my packed lunch and snack were plenty for me during the day. Why should taxpayers have to bear the expense of your kids’ food? I don’t even understand how this is a discussion. It’s really simple to pack a lunch, and no, it does not go bad by noon. That’s pure fallacy. I agree that the government has no right deciding what kids eat, but I cannot understand why one would complain when they willingly participate in such a program. Why would you want them to eat that crap anyway? Have you seen what that cafeteria “food” looks like? Ugh! Pay for your own child’s care. You’ll be more respectable and they’ll be healthier for it.
Kay,
Most school districts are no longer allowing kids to bring lunches or snacks from home. Her complaint is justified. You are forced to accept what hte school dishes out yet it does NOT meet nutritional standards and no way near enough calories for an active teenager.
Second, the program is a failure and ineffective and does not address the issue….just like all of Obama’s programs. They look pretty on the package but are worthless. You think teenagers are unhealthy and have to have their lunches dictated?
What happens when they go to college and eat on their own? Will they know how to behave then?
Will the one person out of 30 teenagers that was overweight now be thin because of the high school lunches?
All this does is encourage skipping and leaving campus to go to 7-11 to grab hotdogs, chip and a soda.
Believe it or not in some school you are not allowed to bring food from home. The days of taking your lunch to school is practically over, at least in state run schools.
I don’t think that taxpayers should have to pay for school lunch foods. If you don’t like how government schools do things, don’t send your child to those schools. It’s really quite simple. We homeschool our kids and theey eat what we eat. Before you go off saying that only rich folks, etc… can do that, let me tell you, we are below the poverty line, but it was more important to us than having a new car or home ownership. Take full responsibility for your own children for every aspect of their lives! They are not the government’s kids!
Bless you, Momof2! Most people at my church homeschool their kids. You sure see the diffence in church between the homneschool kids and the public school kids.
You sure have your priorities straight.
ari…my son plays college football and during his high school days, he brought cartons of muscle milk (protein drink) along with sandwiches, granola bars, nuts etc to eat between classes. He is a lineman and weighed 285 pounds, but after ACL surgery, his weight dropped to around 240 lbs. Some of his teammates are 6’7″ 325lbs and 6’9″ 340 lbs….to compete with the big boys he has to eat and workout like a mad man…..so use both food from home and food from school to keep his weight on for football. I am glad to say at 6’4 and 275 lbs my son is as solid as a rock and his fellow linemen take pride in closing down buffets near the campus…good luck.
Thanks. I am stunned at the comments. We pay for his school lunch- full-price.
I send him with protein drinks and granola bars and fruit, and they are gone by 10 am. I thought, until I read this, that he was getting the sort of food that was served in elementary, which was prior to the O’s interference. Which is to say, chili-mac, spaghetti, salad, fruit salad, soup, chili, rolls,- you know, normal kid food.
He arrives at school at 6:15. He eats the snacks we send by 10- protein drinks, granola bars, an apple- and is hungry again by noon. He’s growing, and he’s on a sports team. He’s had two hours of practice by the time school starts. The place is sweltering. I’m surprised the protein drink doesn’t go bad. I know the apples have gone from lovely and crisp to slimey. He eats lunch at school. Then he has a weights and workout class. He comes home by four and eats another meal. And then he eats dinner with the family at around 7.
I don’t think of it as a government service- I think of it as a limited choice restaurant- because we do pay full price. I did see kids in elementary- the thin ones brought stuff from home, and the eventually chubby ones were on paid lunches. 80% of the kids at this school were on free or reduced school lunches. Since my child is, right now, going from slender reed to substantial chunk of muscle, I thought I could help the process along by paying for high-fat, high-protein, fresh green foods.
I’ve experimented before. I’m going to look up the more formidable lunch carriers. The regular lunchbox didn’t have enough capacity ( apples, granolas, two drinks, two sandwiches, thermos of soup, and two snacks) and didn’t stay cold. So, wilted salads, spoiled meat and cheese that caused him to spend his weekend vomiting, soured, undrinkable protein drinks……
I’m not stupid, or unobservant. I just haven’t been to this schools’ cafeteria. Why would I think it was different, and needed monitoring? I don’t want to eat lunch with him- I want him eating lunch with his friends, classmates and teammates.
I knew Michelle Obama flounced around in an organic garden on the White House lawn- why take that seriously? Mrs Coolidge kept sheep- but she didn’t mandate we all had to wear hand-knit sweaters. I know Michelle griped about fresh, fabulous food- but so does every rich mom in the playgroups my kids were in- why would I think Mrs Obama would get excited and do something. She surely had not been effective before, Why now?
Feel lucky. You seem to have a great school. In NC, they will take your kids luch away – even if it came from home if it has “unwanted” items in it. I have been to the school twice and told them to leave my child alone. The next time I go back is with a baseball bat. My child is no where near fat. If a fat kid walks in to eat. Feed them the bad lunch. Government in your house – work – car – now your kids lunch. All coming from a woman wih an a$$ the size of a bus.
Your son, is he okay, after his surgery? He sounds like he’s okay, if he’s with his teammates. Was it rough going rehabbing after surgery? I’ve just seen videos of athletes rehabbing, and it looks rough- they are pushing through so much pain, and they look so frustrated from being weak for the first time. It always looks more like a battle of the mind and soul, with the body along for the ride.
I’ll cheer for him, by proxy- I’m assuming he’s playing this weekend, and on through Christmas.
are you an urban family
They didn’t have chili when I was in school and they never should. The last thing I would want is a bunch of bean farting kids churning in their seats as their stomach rumbles and releases gasses…
Wrong questions. The pertinent questions are; Why is the Government taking the place of the family concerning food choices?
Why is the Government taking the place of individual choice,(and yes responsibility) when it comes to food choices?
We are “smart enough” to choose our representatives, but not smart enough to decide what to eat and take responsibility for it? B.S.
Don’t you know know Kenyan Obama family wants to dictate everything ? Obama even dictates that some of the money you earn must be set aside to buy contraceptive and condom for your neighbors.
For the love of Pete. Kenyan Obama? The level of discourse is amazing in here.
If you’re not up to it, Mavis, you can go away. The rest of us will discuss how illegitimate statist tyrants are trying to disintegrate the freest, most productive nation the mind of man ever created.
Welcome to PJmedia! If you had been here long, you would’ve seen Obama’s author bio, wherein Obama bragged to his publisher, and his readers, and the world, that he was born in Kenya. Feel free to rebut the substantiative part of the post; Obama and his wife wish to dictate everything.
The gov’t should be in charge. I’d prefer others to pay for and choose our and our kids foods and types and quantities including times served. This is best for all since gov’t takes this burden off of working parents especially those single mothers working 38 hours a week. These are probably victims one might label but our gov’t needs to assist families through gov’t spending at actions as much as possible. The Gov’t could do so much more for our children if politicians would dare to pass such legislation. Life shouldn’t be filled with poverty, hunger, pain, illness, depression, despair and hopelessness at knowing you will not win life’s lottery by meeting the ‘right people’ in your life. Gov’t is more our friend and the businesses, even those with less than 25 employees, tend to act parasitic and exhaust the life from each worker so they can go on lavish European trip 2 months per year.
Thanks for the satire.
If you are not interested, or for any reason cannot raise your own kids, why do you think other total strangers like myself should be INTERESTED or overjoyed to be FORCED by government into raising or supporting your children? What gives YOU the “right” to force ME or others to serve you? Blacks served Whites until 1865. Now you feel you have the right to force the general population (black and white) to be slaves to each other?
Just for those who really believe more gov’t is the answer and not (sarc)
Biggest load of crap ever. My family owns a small business. I have never been to Europe ever. I have been on a plane once in my life, and that was funded by a government grant when I was a student. We take off season driving distance vacations, not luxury vacations. Why am I explaining myself to you? Grow up and get a clue about real life.
You’re some desperate shill from the Obama campaign. Go away.
Hasn’t the government ALWAYS been involved? Technically the school is run by local governments, I am sure someone sees the cafeteria budget and understands what they are feeding kids. It’s just cheaper and a lot easier to feed them things they actually want to eat. Part of the problem is they are taught to not like veggies from the time they are born. They hate the taste, and if they aren’t force fed them at a young age, they grow up refusing to try them.
Thank you for the snippet of common sense.
This issue of the government dictating what school children can eat, along with the ridiculous “zero-tolerance” policies and the anti-Christian policies at public schools across the country should finally start to wake people up to the real problem, which is public education itself. Why do people send their kids to government-run schools? Why are taxpayers forced to pay for the terrible education they provide? People, nobody owes you a free education for your kids. And if you want it for free, then you’re gonna have to take whatever the government is willing to give you. Don’t be surprised at the lack of freedom that comes with it. If you want your kids to get a good education, if you want teachers with accountability, if you want the freedom to choose what they eat at school and how they express themselves, then you need to take them out of public school! Try homeschooling, try parochial schools, try forming a cooperative school through your church or a community group. I know it’s not easy to give up the “free” babysitting, but your children and our society will all be better for it in the end.
You do keep mentioning that taxpayers pay for the public schools which is true. However, do you not think that people who work and pay taxes have children? Everyone who lives and has ever worked in the US is a taxpayer and everyone deserves to have their children educated. Stop acting like it’s just you and your friends paying for the whole country’s children to be poorly educated in underfunded state run schools that are now forced to charge high prices for trashcans full of the USDA’s requirements. I work, I have children, I pay taxes, my children go to public school, I pay for their meager school lunches because the teacher told me straight out she threw my children’s home made lunches away because they did not meet USDA requirements due to the fact that they had too much protein and a lowfat pudding in them. I am a taxpayer and I say I deserve the right to feed my children what I want and I don’t expect anyone else to pay for it.
It is all part of hope and change. They hope they can change you and the country to what THEY want. Doesn’t anyone get it yet?
You all are apparently not from Chicago. Most kids in the public schools here get breakfast, lunch, and in some cases a “super snack” which is comprised of a sandwich and fruit. The more the government gives these meals, the larger the number grows of recipients. The amazing thing? Most of the kids are fat, and when you look at their clothes, they have the newest Jordan’s or D Rose’s or whatever the popular $200 shoes are. We’re being taken for a big ride on this one!
I worked in the school cafeteria where we were applying the new calorie standards. A couple things I noticed were massive waste of expensive, state-subsidized fresh fruits and vegetables, students telling us that they’re still hungry and many paying students are no longer interested in hot lunch. My kids ALWAYS took hot lunch. Now they might take it once each week. So schools are also losing money from those families who pay for their own lunches because a portion of the lunch fees go back to the schools. We often joked that someday, we will be feeding kids their dinner. It’s less of a joke these days.
The sad part is that there are already districts which do serve three meals, and I’m told it’s optional and that there is reimbursement funding available.
How long before it’s mandatory?
The government mandated requirements for school lunches are very far from nutritional as they are very high in sugar and carbohydrates–fruit and vegetables–and quite low in protein. It’s bad enough that school lunches are government controlled but what’s worse is that the diet is a semi-starvation, extremely non-nutritional one. Sugar and carbs are burned so quickly that it’s no wonder kids are hungry all the time. And when the kids are that hungry they’ll eat anything they can get their hands on to fill up and will get fatter not slimmer.
And those 10-15 free meals per week aren’t factored into their family’s food stamp allotment.
Dang. That’s sucky.
Yes because obviously every family who has ever eaten school lunch is on food stamps or some other government program and no one in that family actually works or anything…(sarcasm)
Are you really that stupid? (genuine non-rhetorical question)
Well, yes they are. You have to be on a government program to get the free 2 to 3 times a day meals. During the teachers strike in C-town. They kept some schools open just so the kids could eat. Who problem is this? The contry is changing. You wanted change – you got it. 30% of famialies now what the government to take care of them and their kids too.
FOOD STAMPS rears its head again?
You GOPers do realize that benefit is VERY tiny and is not intended to and never could buy all your food?
I was on food stamps for 6 whole months and NEVER qualified for more than $40 per month, yes $40 no typo there. And I could spend that buying food that would make 5 maybe 6 meals if I was lucky, that leaves the other meals ( 30 days X 3 meals) – 6 meals food stamps covered = my part I pay for = 84, so I would have to pay out of pocket for 84 meals monthly and that excludes snacks even healthy snacks. Plus most people need toilet paper and those things which aren’t covered.
It should be around a formula, 25% of your gross monthly income in food stamp credits and it’s a min benefit for 60 days for anyone earning less than about $20K-$26K yearly.
BTW, don’t like what your kids get from school lunch? Do what 98% of my classmates did K-12, bring your own and buy vending machine stuff to augment that food.
Those food stamp credit cards should be swipable in vending machines also, should a federal law to force vending machine to comply with the law.
For any thing dispensed in a vending type machine selling anything that is considered food or beverage should be required by federal law to take/accept food stamp debit cards. Jail sentences and fines for people who decide to ignore the laws.
thanks
You have a point about lunch not being their only source of calories for the day, but most kids don’t take in many calories for breakfast due to the time limitations in the morning when they are getting ready for school. Not to mention that most of their calories are needed before the end of the afternoon. Activities such as football practice tend to be during the school hours or immediately after school. You can only burn calories you have already consumed. This goes beyond calories. This is about the state wanting to control every aspect of what you do and make decisions for you about your children.
As a school teacher in an urban school I can attest to the fact that lunch is the only meal of the day that many of my students get. The new guidelines are ridiculous. I am sure some veggie farmers are being subsidized to provide the foods that no kids want to eat. Trust me, the lunches are horrible and many kids are refusing to purchase them.
Wait until the “locally grown/sustainable farming/organic/farm-to-school” programs take full affect. The cost of these politically correct foods will be 40-50% higher than what is available currently. It will be more difficult to proces because it will arrive very dirty and it’s shelf life will be dimished substantially. Lazy union staff will throw away whatever is difficult to use. Local growers will not be able to meet the demand they think they produce in their “happy thought” ag programs which will screw up the predetermined menus. There’s just about a bucketfull of reasons more federal gov intrusion will simply make a poor system even worse.
Who the hell are all these parents who can’t even give their children breakfast or dinner, and rely on the free lunch provided by their kids’ schools to keep them alive? And you wonder why so many of these kids are going nowhere in school?
A big bowl of oatmeal, milk and sugar included, costs about 23 cents in Canada, probably less in the U.S. No, it’s not the tastiest breakfast in the world, but it’s nutritious and filling and is definitely better than no breakfast at all. A sandwich made with peanut butter, processed cheese or meat (which most adults dislike but most kids like, and it is nutritious) doesn’t cost a lot more. Or how about one or two fried eggs, with a side of boiled potatoes and carrots? We often had eggs for dinner when I was a kid. Plus there’s that wonderful old standby, cabbage, although I admit it’s hard to get that down most kids. Most kids seem to like canned baked beans though, as well as those cheap macaroni and cheese mixes, which only need milk added – the directions say to add butter or margarine, but it’s not necessary. Hotdogs are cheap; chicken drumsticks usually are pretty cheap too. Ever checked out the price of a can of sardines? My point being that these were all pretty much staple foods of my childhood. I find it hard to believe that so many parents can’t even afford to provide for the basic nutritional needs of their growing children, when they all, at the very least, have kitchens with stoves and ovens in their homes as well as refrigerators with freezer compartments. My mother would buy 10 or more loaves of bread at a time when it was on special and freeze it. My parents no doubt struggled to keep 4 children fed but at no time did we ever go hungry and never once did we take handouts; it would have been a disgrace.
The kids at your school don’t need more free meals; they need parents who are actually responsible and competent adults.
What do you mean oatmeal isn’t tasty? That’s all my grandmother fed us for breakfast. Oatmeal with raisins and some flax. Best breakfast in the world! And if you want to sweeten it up, a dollop of honey or a spoonful of brown sugar goes a long way! Lovely stuff!
By the way, most kids aren’t on the government free lunch program. I biked to school and packed a lunch everyday because we didn’t have enough money for the gas or the lunches, but we didn’t qualify for the reduced price or free lunch program either. I knew one, maybe two, kids who were on the lunch program, and I went to a large school. The government isn’t paying for as enough of the lunches to control what everybody eats!
These types of mandates and limitations mean the school officials have to spend more money jumping through more hoops, meaning the quality of food drops farther.
BTW that meal isn’t free for everybody. I am a widow with two school aged children and pay roughly $686 per year for them to eat at school. They eat breakfast at home, snack during homework, and dinner. Now this is the first year they have ever complained about how they get so hungry while in class and before they get home that their stomah starts to hurt. It was like this every day!!! By week 3 i started packing them a lunch so they will have enough fuel to get their Honor Roll and Banner Roll all year as they always have. For those of you screaming it’s bad parenting I’d like to say that even those children with good parents who feed them are still getting a government putting their kids on a diet who don’t need it and will be hurt more than helped. Some of us have healthy fit kids who can eat a FULL meal wihtout getting fat.
veggies coming from WH magic garden? kids are going to eat what they like, don’t even try to force food they don’t like on them.
Remember folks:
The Obamas eat greasy hamburgers, french fries, expensive lobsters and Michelle sucks down 150 dollar a bottle champagne.
Just send your kids to prison folks, they would get a better meal than in school.
Had enough of the ObamaNazis yet?
This is surreal.
Yes, and they’re millionaires while they expect you to suck it up on welfare and lose all social mobility.
Commies are always like that.
Yes they are millionaires, and the sick thing about it is WE the taxpayers still pay for their expensive meals while our kids are starving.
Oh the irony.
Actually we don’t. The only meals that are paid for by the citizens of the United States are State Dinners. All President pay for their meals and family while in the White House.
At least where I live there are plenty of deer, turkey, bear, and ducks to live on. Michelle and the food nazi’s can shove their rules where the sun don’t shine.
Live free or Die!
What makes you so sure this meal ISN’T the only one some of these kids will be getting?
Why are taxpayers feeding children at school anyway?
That is the parents’ task.
Please: You are close to two decades late on this argument. It is to the point where schools are open in the summer, not all summer which is the irony, to provide hot meals for starving children. When you hear the commercial that 1 in 6 children in the United States are going to bed hungry, as one of the previous post stated, the next move will be to provide dinner from the school so the little kiddy will not starve. Paraphrase the first President Bush: When you hear these words, It’s for the children, Watch your wallet.
many kids won’t get a real meal at home, as many parents are working too late and long, in dysfunctional families the traditional school lunch, sloppy-joe’s and all, is the main and regular meal for many youngsters…..
If your parents suck, you go hungry.
I drive through Harlem often. FAT is the problem, not hunger.
Stop with this whiny BS. If you’re a crappy parent, your kids suffer.
Tough crap.
The school lunch is *not* the entire source of nutrition for the day for – some – kids.
But to put an entire nation of children on a diet?
That’s another story entirely.
To go from selling food choices to mandating purchase of foods they will NOT eat isn’t ‘asking the school to provide all their calories for the day’.
And any physician or dietitian will tell you that you can’t make long term sustainable changes in health by mandating dramatic sudden changes and expect it to work or to last.
Long lasting, effective change in health metrics comes from gradually introducing positive behavior changes gradually.
But in the meantime, let’s watch the fattest nation in the world INCREASE the amount of food we throw away, and let’s watch the 33 million kids for whom this may well be the only meal of the day starve.
OK my two cents.
Schools: Offer good nutritious food and yes pizza can be nutritious. If the student doesn’t want what is offered (their choice) that is OK. Their choice will be to go hungry that afternoon. Waste is controlled. Period!
Those that are truly hungry will eat and not complain.
For those hungry football players, allow them to buy two lunches or supplement with food from home nuts, protein bars, fresh fruit etc. Problem solved!
For those so upset on the school lunches offered. Pack their children a lunch. Problem solved!
If there has to be vending machines, offer good choices. Again, if you or your child doesn’t like the choices offered, pack.problem solved!
Sounds to me a lot of people whining about nothing. I think Mrs. Obama heart might of been in the right place but went overboard. There is a problem with the foods being offered. But I also think it isn’t a federal government issue. Do they not have more serious problems to deal with?
It is about allowing parents to be parents and choices. But first the parent needs to take the responsibility for their child’s health and stop whining. Period!
For some kids the only food they eat is at school – for whatever reason. Have you not heard of FUEL programs in the churches? Evidently the Obama’s are completely out of touch with the problems of America. Surprise!!!
I work in a district where the only food they get is at school. I have mixed feelings about this – there is no perfect system.
So easy in the old days,,the nerds ate in school,,the cool kids left,,went to the bowling alley,,smoked,,maybe a hambrger
The Federal Government has NO place saying what people eat. Localities and school administrators have done just fine for 200+ years. The Federal Leviathan is out of control. Pretty much every Federal agency, power, and law passed since Woodrow Wilson should be repealed.
An armed rebellion is coming if we continue down this totalitarian road. It might be 5 years from now or 100 years from now but people won’t put up with this forever. Ironically, the thing that may save us is the fact that the profligate gov’t spending will bankrupt us soon and the gov’t will have to shrink.
I did not read all the comments but there is tyranny involved BUT all lunches are sold as reimbersible from the government: ie. they get a certain amount of money for EVERY lunch sold–IF they have the 3 components of fruit/vegetable/protein/milk/carbs etc. The government can control the lunch programs because the schools get this rebate from them. The only way to allow the school to sell what they want is to NOT take the government rebate on the lunches sold.
Do you have kids in school? Also,the article didn’t say anything about getting all their caloric intake in one sitting in school, it said this is how much they need all day and this is how much they are getting in school.
My childeren are in 5th and 1st grade and this year is the first year they have ever come home complaining about the lunch. They tell me how much (or how little) they were given and considering i have been feeding them since birth and know how much they eat I am appaled. I started making them a lunch. My kids are not overweight and don’t need a diet, expecially a government mandated diet. My children are active and fit and require more food than 2 chicken nuggets and a spoon of fruit cocktail.
RJ: So many kids in this country don’t get to eat breakfast (unless it’s at school) and may go home to nothing for dinner as well. We have a problem here in the “land of plenty” and that’s poverty and hunger. My son and I volunteered all summer at a food pantry that was inundated with people trying to supplement their food because children were home for the summer and not getting fed at school. I certainly agree that children need nutritious and well-balanced meals, but if they can’t or won’t eat the food now then there needs to be something else offered (such as PB&J sandwiches on whole grain breads). It is NOT the government’s job, nor should they have the authority to regulate what goes into children’s mouths. It’s the slippery slope toward the “nanny state” that is socialism (and ultimately communism).
What business is it of the Federal Government what the schools feed their kids? Yes, there was room for improvement but I am pushing 70 and don’t seem to have been affected by all the high-calorie food from the high school cafeteria. Teen boys, in particular, can consume amazing amounts of food. Those involved in athletics need lots of calories. I guess we need to get rid of this overreach by the Obamas along with the others.
Hah! The kids of most of “his” people are lucky if there is someone home yet to feed them breakfast and they are probably gone by the time supper rolls along. Which alternate universe have you been living in?
Because this meal is the only meal that some kids get, unless the school gives free Breakfast.
I was a school food service director 20 years ago, we went out of our way to have healthy ,tasty lunches for a reasonoble price,from 45 t0 75c. in 14 years, and made money for the district (imagine that).The waste at that time was disgusting, whole chicken breast a la the colonel where trown out , whole apples trown out, when I offered halfs it was disallowed!! Why is there uberhaupt a lunch program? since when can’t parents provide lunch for their offspring. At a coast to the taxpayer into the tens of billions!!
Many school districts already provide breakfast, lunch AND dinner to their students. This is the result of a plan by the USDA to provide ALL students’ meals at school, the more subsidized (i.e.”free”)the better. School districts are encouraged to market their food programs to increase participation and discourage kids from bringing food from home. I know this because I used to work for a private vendor who developed and sold food items and marketing tools to school districts for the National School Lunch Program.
This makes sense when you consider that the aim of the Obama administration is to expand the size and scope of the Federal bureaucracy by any means possible. I believe the First Lady’s pet project was carefully chosen for her with the idea of facilitating the intrusion of the USDA and the NSLP into America’s everyday lives.
It’s amusing to see the unintended consequence of Michelle Obama’s imposition of her nanny-state dietary theories on the real world: Kids are rebelling and vowing to bring lunches from home, which of course undercuts the very program Mrs. Obama was tasked with growing. The resulting spectacle provides delicious irony with zero calories!
Just think, 100+ years ago the vast majority of students didn’t have air conditioning or better then coal or wood burning heaters. All students were in the same room, all at different grade levels with one teacher for all. And the biggest complaints year after year were spit-wads, chewing gum and loud talking.
But the golden unicorn solution by American Obama’s American Wife’s is playing games with school lunch that sucked even BEFORE these changes.
People with too much time on their hands, answer, birth certificate valid American Michelle OBAMA!
Some kids dont get breakfast OR supper at home. For some, the lunch at school is their ONLY meal of the day. These simple-minded turkeys should be horse-whipped. Kids being overweight has a whole lot less to do with their diet than their activities. If a person sits and vegges all the time. they are apt to gain weight, unless they are not fed. Then they are in danger of starving. It is none of YOUR freaking business if I am overweight or underweight. It is none of MY freaking business if YOU are overweight or underweight. Get YOUR nose out of my business. I PROMISE that I will leave YOU alone as well.
I wonder if the same food standards are in place over at the White House?
Michelle Obama’s ass is 4 axe handles wide.
I’m thinking that she is not eating her friuts and veggies.
Maybe she is just engaged in a fit of meta-projection.
Let’s give her and her husband something else to do in January, shall we?
No it isn’t. AND upon doing some research and found that our criminals in prison eat immensely better than our children in schools.
Since when has getting a government agency involved in anything made it better. Rediculous.
I believe the White House currently has mainly the ribs and other backyard bbq type dishes served most often along with deserts of, my favorite too, the melon families of cantaloupe, watermelon and so many more I’m gettin’ hungry now!!
Don’t eat those seeds they cause cancers in 11 organ systems according to the New England Journal of Medicine study in 1987.
Of course, RJ, the students shouldn’t have all their calories in one meal. But just imagine what most student athletes do: eat breakfast before 6 am so they can get in a morning practice, have nothing but a “Michelle approved” lunch, then be expected to perform in an afternoon competition. The calorie requirements are the same for scrawny 98 lb. freshmen and 250 lb. linemen, for obese teens and skinny ones going through the greatest growth spurt since infancy. And for poor teens on free or subsidized breakfasts and lunches, those who are involved in sports will be hurt the most.
Actually, many kids don’t get breakfast at home, nor dinner. Haven’t you been reading the ObamaNews as to how many children go to bed hungry. Now you know – Obamameals
And yet these poor kids’ parent are probably getting Food Stamps. At what point do we stop subsidizing stupid & irresponsible?
No, they’re not getting food stamps.
You need a photo ID to get food stamps and Obama has said repeatedly that the poor do not have access to photo ID’s.
That’s why showing proof of identity before voting is unfair.
Wait until they start dealing with the lawsuits from vegetarians, vegans, parents of hyper-allergic kids, athletes, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, racially hyper-sensitive blacks, chocolate syrup smugglers and I suppose gays and communists will find some damned reason to sue as well. Not to mention parents of fat kids.
The ACLU is gonna have a field day with this….
and a prelude for ‘obama-care’… soon these weak and sickly kids will be ripe for the culling at your local ‘health-care station’ that’ll take care of ‘em…..
Obamaphones, Obamafood, Obamalies, Obamaugly, Obamasucks!
I’ve seen enough with the administration. No one wants the government to determine what’s in our best interests. Vote with your conscience in November
Like food stamps, public schools go overboard recruiting kids to participate in reduced price/free lunch programs. Some schools systems even want to deny kids the option to bring sack lunches because they can’t control the contents. So they’re creating a captive audience for their food policy. Also, many school systems now provide FREE breakfast to all, and some even have started providing FREE dinner.
Ideally, public schools would get out of the business of providing breakfast and dinner, ans stop trying to get everyone to eat their micro-managed inedible fare.
But it’s not about food – it’s about control.
The federal government should not be involving themselves in what children eat at school. There are many more pressing and dire concerns that should be addressed instead, and to focus resources on this is a collossal waste!! Parents need to wake up and start doing their jobs!! If you or your child do not like what the school is serving, then pack a lunch instead. Kids should not be going hungry because of a school lunch…and if your child is, then it’s your own dang fault. Start taking responsibility for your own..feed them a good breakfast, pack them a good lunch, and make them a good dinner. Why should the schools be providing meals, anyway??
JR,
What about the school districts – and there are more than a few – that don’t allow the kids to bring packed food?
It’s about control, pure and simple.
Last I heard Kate, this was the United States of America. We have elections for local government and school boards too. The only reason a school would be able to “ban” home packed lunches, is if the parents in those communities had abdicated their responsibility and authority as parents a long time ago. A government cannot usurp such power without a complacent public. Ever hear of a school board meeting? Go to one. Find out what they are doing. If you don’t like the decisions they’re making, fight to stop it, and hold them accountable. I’m tired of people acting like they are serfs. Our government is what we make it to be.
But JR, that’s the whole point. The local School Boards are losing control as they become ever more dependent on the federal tax dollars. Its play to the federal government’s tune or lose funding. Too many School Boards are afraid to take a stand because of the lost dollars at stake. Its like a deal with the devil in the beginning; free money with little or no strings attached. But the strings were there, you just didn’t see them.
Having read the article and many of the comments I can assure you that we are no strangers to this in Britan. Of course, there are differences from my own schooldays—this is 1948 to 1961 I speak of—but I recall that we had breakfast, and at school we had dinner provided for us.
Problem: two items(semolina and rice pudding) were hated by a good many kids, and I can recall being told that if I didn’t eat up rice put I would be kept in until I did eat it—no lunch break.
So, when I moved from primary to secondary level I wasn’t having school dinners at any price! From my recollection we could bring our own packed lunches, and they were NOT searched! Another option—frowned on by many schools—was to find a local takeaway/café and eat lunch there, often a combination of chips[frnch fries], filleted cod, and peas or beans. A third option was to go home for dinner. When I got myself a bike I’de ride to and from school.
And today? from time to time I read of unapproved contents being removed from children’s lunch boxes, and of allegedly ‘clinically obese’ children who looked as slim as could be. The basis of the obesity verdict was a calculation of their ‘body mass indes’ by a rather arcane formula which, as I mentioned, didn’t necessarily correspond with reality. Can ‘experts’ be wrong? Yes they can!
A few years back Republicans who were interested in changes to the school lunch program were accused of trying to starve children. I guess Michele succeeded.
They told me that if I voted for McCain, kids would go hungry. They were right.
Zing!
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha ha Ha ! ! ! ! ! ! That was the best comment I’ve seen in a loooong time. Thanks @arhooley ! ! ! !
What about those unprivileged kids who depend on their subsidized school lunch (and breakfast, where it is provided) as the ONLY meal they will eat that day? This happens far more than we realize. Family with the resources will send their kids to school with a packed lunch so they don’t go hungry. What about those kids who don’t have the resources? I thought the Obamas were all about helping the poor? These school lunch restrictions are only hurting the poor.
What would you like to wager that the majority of the parents in those so called “families with no resources” have a cell phone….a car…tv with cable…manicured nails…and so on? The issue isn’t resources..it’s priorities.
9. CW says: “What about those unprivileged kids who depend on their subsidized school lunch ..”
Let them starve, damnit!
What part about parents being responsible for their kids well-being did you miss?
Get fed-gov out of the lunch business!
_Jim
The Federal Government should not be involved with such insight. Only States and individual counties should have any input as to how lunch’s are served in public schools. Parents and kids should picket schools…even set up outposts outside of the school grounds. They could post vids of the protest and I am sure that the media would take notice of that.
why don’t parents fix them a lunch they could eat instead of lunch at the school. Called personal responsibility of parents–duh
First off, Roboodles, in a number of school districts across the country, kids are no longer ALLOWED to bring lunch from home, and if they do, it’s CONFISCATED by the school’s “food monitor” because it “might not meet government standards”. Second, it’s not always possible to keep a sack lunch from spoiling, especially if the school refuses to air-condition the hallways (you know, where the lockers are?). Sneering about “Parental responsibility” is all fine and good, but there’s a lot more to it than some binary paradigm, and Moochie-pig and Her Exalted Buddies need to BUTT THE HELL OUT.
The only reason being for some schools not to allow home packed lunches and government monitors inspecting kids lunch boxes, is because the parents in those areas abdicated all responsibility for their kids a long long time ago. The government cannot usurp such authority without a willing and complacent public. It’s time to wake up, fight back, and take back your role as parent to your children. Plus a lunch won’t spoil if you use an ice pack or get a Packit lunch box….people have been packing lunches for decades..stop whining about what the big bad government is doing to you and start asserting your rights as an American citizen!
This particular problem – low calorie menus, required servings of (uneaten) veggies – was implemented at the federal level, so attending School Board meetings will yield nothing. As for sack lunches, I’ve always done this. I agree that this is basic parenting, and I ignored the ever-creeping “suggestions” from the school, such as not using zip-lock bags and individually wrapped items – it’s none of their business how or what I pack so long as it’s providing him enough fuel to get through the afternoon and not sugar-packed/causing behavior issues. We’ve now taken the ultimate step of exiting the public school system altogether, so we won’t have to deal with this kind of busybody needling from institutions that are failing to meet their true purpose: educating students on reading, writing & math. The family is much happier post-public school.
what I can tell you for sure is that you need to read the student handbook and if it does not directly state that your child cannot bring a packed lunch to school you are legally allowed to sue. I’m a freshman, and since i’m the only person that’s actually read the handbook I understand the rules that I signed to, so we can bring in any food we want except anything with caffeine(which is treated as a drug). There’s some surprising things in that you’ll learn if you read the handbook.
My mom actually works in the cafeteria as well so what I can tell you is at our school they have to serve so many colors a week, and all this other crap that isn’t nessessary to make us healthy, actually I bring in salt and share with about half of the 200 kids in my lunch because that seems to make the food edible, just read those rules and see what your children can and cannot do to see if lawsuits are possible
@njohnson3163, that’s hilarious, bringing SALT to school so the M’chelle lunches TASTE like something besides rabbit-hutch sweepings.
njohnson3163, you’ve got a stone-cold pair (assuming you are male, of course).
If your school bans lunch from being brought from home….just get a doctor to order a diet. They’ll be more than happy to let you bring your lunch from home.
Not sure if you heard but brown bag lunches have been confiscated and deemed unfit in certain schools.
So dont get caught sneaking a cookie by the food monitors, you may be visiting the princal office.
My tax dollars are going toward paying the salary and expenses of our school’s cafeteria. Is it too much to expect to be able to purchase a decent lunch from it? Telling parents to pack lunches as a response just allows the real problem to become entrenched. Far better to nip this in the bud now.
Fear not! WE THE PEOPLE will put a stop to this dumbsh*t that has been forced down the throats of the American People! WE THE PEOPLE will send this Marxist AND his Moose looking wife back to Chicago! Since our Representatives elected in 2010 by landslide proportions won’t stand up to these thugs, WE THE PEOPLE will put an end to this dumbsh*t on November 6, 2012! Once again, WE THE PEOPLE have enough! and WE THE PEOPLE will put an end to this dumbsh*t on November 6, 2012!
its going to be a long four years for you girlfriend
Just like Hillary know better how to raise your child, Michelle knows better how to feed them. Lib’s are all smarter than the stupid public and if you do not believe me, just ask one.
I graduated high school two years ago. At that time, my school refused to let parents bring their children lunch— from fast food places anyways. It was prohibited. I’m not too sure about home lunches. Either way, a parent should never lose their right to feed their children what they think is best. I feel like this new program is only one step closer to the government deciding what we are and aren’t allowed to eat, and what better place to start than with the children?
This is yet another reason to get the Federal Government completely OUT of the education process, including school lunches.
What happens then is the kids come home and eat 3 bags of potato chips and 2 comes but the food police go home happy because they think they did their job.
Rep. Huelskamp, this isn’t a case of “good intentions gone awry.” Never ascribe to good intentions what can be more easily ascribed to a control-freak crusade. And control is exactly what the Obama administration is all about.
There’s one sure fired way to solve the problem, organize the kid’s to rise up in revolt – a massive nationwide walk-out would certainly bring this issue to the forefront and force these political hacks to revisit this stupid legislation!
Kids don’t need the government to regulate their weight. They already developed a good system called “make fun of the fat kid.” Fat kids either submit to the peer pressure and lose weight, which is good, or else they come up with clever taunts to throw back, which is also good, or simply learn not to give a damn what other people think, which is even better. Do not underestimate the constructive power of social stigma.
here in nord, Calif they get breakfast and lunch, in my kids time there was none of this,busing neither.
i wonder if monsanto and its genetically-corrupted crops had anything to do with these new meal plans
Welcome to the “Land of the Enslaved(Formerly Free)”. Go ahead, Vote Obama in Nov. This is a taste, if I may be so punny, of what is to come. I say parents should boycott these meals. Send your kids to school for a month with packed lunches. Starve the bureaucratic tyrants of money. See how fast this get’s reversed.
How about we limit food stamps to “hummus and black bean salad”? Or we demand that the White House menu follow the USDA requirements for the occupants of that government housing? I mean if a “one size fits all” central planning committee is so good, why is Obama not following it also?
We are teaching kids to take what they won’t eat because its free and when you don’t eat it, throw it in the trash. Greed and avarice, maybe even sloth.
Liberals truly suck. Thanks for the “hope and change,” you freaking stooges. Your “hope and change” looks a lot like an authoritarian state.
What happened to America? Can’t use incandescent lightbulbs, can’t have a Big Gulp (but it’s OK that NY City has a sky-high percentage of genital herpes among the adults there) — soon pizza will be outlawed.
But as long as Moose-shelle can stuff her wide load with deep-fried fat and tamales, I guess all is well among the brainwashed useful-idiots. Now eat your peas.
I worked for 6 years in a school cafeteria. Why am I not surprised to read what’s happening with the school lunches? The only kids who actually ate the fruits and vegetables were from the very poor families who had little or no food at home. We employees used to have to add extra garbage cans on the days when fresh fruit and veggies were served in larger quantities.
Good grief,,the woman who used to serve you food in school
Ah, the wonders of central planning.
Feed the little urchins. The meals are perfect nutrition, perfect portion size, etc. Only one problem………..the kids don’t like them and won’t eat them.
Milton Freedman once quipped that if the Federal Government was in charge of the Sahara Desert, it would run out of sand in 5 years. We are witnessing this process right now. Whatever your disagreement with Romney, you have got to get rid of the scumbag Obama.
Fast forward 100 years.
“Historians who have been relentlessly analyzing life in the early 21st Century are totally perplexed by what is now referred to as the “Brown Bag Rebellion of 2013″. It seems that hungry children, tired of being told what and how much they could consume in any given day, overran the White House with 1000 White Castle double cheeseburgers, onion rings and 44 ounce Coca Colas and proceeded to feed the First Lady Michelle Obama 500 of them until she burst. While trying to defend her, President Barack Obama was seen consuming the same burgers, all the time yelling “I’ll be right there honey to save you as soon as I am done eating this good food”. This was the event that eventually led to the abolition of Central Government Planning and Libtardyism which resulted in the return to States rights and freedom of choice in school cafeterias throughout all 57 states (quoting Obama from 2008).”
Wonder if he ever found those missing states.
Seems like we are always reading about the fat laden menu of the Obama’s yet they tell the schools what our kids have to eat.
Anyone with half a brain could have looked these rules and regulations over and would have known they weren’t going to work. The only thing accomplished is more waste of tax payers money.
How about parents start feeding their own kids at their own expense!
Liberalism really is a mental disorder!
It’s designed to get us used to eating less…so as our President said…”…the world won’t let you eat all you want….”
Fight the Power!
This is how Obamacare will work.
i urinate upon the usa
BHO thinks government is the answer. he’s the problem and that nasty wife of his as well!
We need a mandatory federal fecal testing and reporting program. Think urine test but only for food. Politically correct food. The Homeland Security can tie the “end results” with I.d. cards of what the students were served. Also this would create jobs and increase the GDP. Forward!
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” First, they “give” you a meal. Then they tell you what and how much you should eat. The only power politicians won’t abuse is power “we the people” don’t give them.
It’s been six years since my youngest graduated from high school, but my kids always brought lunch….because we keep kosher. (And of course it always contained food they liked and would actually eat. Non of my kids were or are obese.) So that wouldn’t be allowed either under these new guidelines?
I’m waiting for the Obomber admin to start banning books…for the sake of “the children” of course.
Already been done for children’s books published before sometime in … the mid-80s? You can’t economically prove the earlier ones don’t have lead in their ink, so they all have to go.
Books are unsanitary. We’ll pass out federal Kindles with restricted access to the government reading list: Dreams of My Father, Audacity of Hope, Earth in the Balance…
OYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY
They will not be happy until we are all undernourished like the North Koreans. I can’t believe the United States has come to this.
This why everyone thought Obama was a foreigner. Americans can’t even conceive of crap like this.
Well, I hope these kids learn fast about Government Mandates and Socialism. Now, if we can convince the idiot adults about the Evils of government control.
Without even mentioning this to my gradeschool kid, she came back about three days into school FURIOUS at the lunch situation and swore never to buy again. Said tons of food being thrown out, kids being forced to take stuff they hate, everyone upset.
This is the reason my kids have home-made sandwiches in school. We don’t care about the USDA.
Whatever is entrusted to the government is going waste.
Have seen more than one group of kids on outings with bureaucracy provided lunches fill the trash cans with half pints of milk.
Flavored milk is no longer a choice, so kids who would drink milk, getting Vitamin D, calium, etc., aren’t getting anything and tens of thousands of dollars are thrown away daily across the country.
Interesting that we are told to “stay out” of people’s bedrooms, sacrifice conscience at the altar of the reproductive “right” of “choice” but are not allowed to choose what our kids eat for lunch, much less let them choose what to eat, or let the various schools figure out how to feed the kids.
Republicans want to monitor your bedroom. Democrats want to monitor everything else. It’s hell to choose between them.
Don’t you get it…they want us hungry and weak…easier to control.
Someone tell me again why we are housing kids in these brick and mortar monuments to government waste. New thing out there, called the internet. Friend of mine is taking classes from freakin Afghanistan, and yet we are arguing about how to feed all these kids in a system that should have went extinct with the Betamax.
So true. You can get an amazing education online these days. A lot of sites are free. Public schools should go the way of the horse and buggy.
some of the best porn ever,,ask your kids
This was the only way she thought she could get the black population to lose weight.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t start at school. It starts at home, where the black parents sit around all day watching Television, and then take their welfare check and buy ding dongs, pizza, burgers, candy, sodas, chips, tacos, ice cream, chicken nuggets, pies, and all other junk, because the government lets them.
If she wants to stop obesity, especially in the black population, then her and her husband need to preach personal responsibility, something Romney already did and was astrocised by the media.
Until then, they will get fatter and fatter, and eventually die out. And then the liberals will blame the republicans for that, when it was their own dang fault.
Fred, you can’t teach what you don’t know.
It is not Michele Obama’s job to make people lose weight. It is not her responsibility to live other peoples lives for them. If her behavior since her husbands been in office is any indication, she has no business telling people what to do. Her decision making paradigm is hopelessly skewed.
Kids can get all the condoms they want at school. Condiments are now banned.
Why is a junk food binge eater dictating what are children should be eating and getting it completely wrong?
Is it guilt over her own poor eating habits?
sasquatch, who is not a nutritionist, went to the democrat congress at the end 0f 2010 and got them tho pass a bill to get the usda to implement these guidelines. considering the nefarious way these people operate, what do you think they’ll do when they know that don’t have to answer to you or congress if re-elected?
Leave it to lardass Michelle to stick her nose into something that did not need fixing. She could stand to skip a few meals to work off some of the rump roast that she is toting around.
A government that can’t/won’t enforce immigration laws will, however, micro manage your kids lunch. Move the food police to the border to confiscate non-USDA approved eatables and fine the carriers.
If the Obamas had teenagers we’d have a different set of rules.
Well, things are looking up then. In the second term, they will!
See how everything works out?
Michael Phelps consumed a staggering 12,000 calories a day just to keep his energy up. He doesn’t have an ounce of fat on him. He is a finely tuned engine that efficiently turns all that fat and protein into outstanding performances. Course he’s working out in an extreme fashion.
Football players would bring a heck of a lot of food. Pretty much a full size grocery brown bag stuffed with food for lunch. They would also eat a big high protein breakfast. We’re talking about 6′ 200+ lbs 15 year olds. Hmm, just like Trayvon! Or how about track and field players who run a couple miles before school then go to practice right after school. I was on the swin team. I would eat breakfast and workout in the morning before school, eat a large lunch full of fat and protein, swim about 5 miles from 2:30 – 6pm. Rinse and repeat the next day. I was eating at least 5,000 calories a day. I didn’t buy lunch unless I was particularly hungry one day. Then it was pan baked chocolate chip cookies that were 6″ square and a 1/4 inch thick, two of them and a chocolate milk. This was after eating the lunch I brought.
It’s not about diet it is about exercise. Kids are fat because all they do is play video games and surf the net instead of getting up and moving.
Yeah, I don’t remember more than two or three fat kids in grade school. When we got home riding our bikes, mom would give us a snack, then we went out to play in the neighborhood for a few hours. “Be in by dark.” On the weekend, it was breakfast, then: “Be in by dark. No video games, cell phones, texting etc. We’d tag up for softball in the street, or explore the creek, or go to the park and play touch football or hardball. If any weirdos bothered anyone, our fathers, who were fresh back from WWII, would take care of the problem. That meant that there wasn’t any problem. People need to take responsibility for their families, screw the government.
The Republican House should pass a bill stripping the Ag Dept of the power it received at the end of 2010 (lame duck Congress). Dare the Senate to pass it also.
Set aside the fact that free lunch programs are aimed at kids in poverty, which is not their fault and they need the meal.
What really amazing – kids “go hungry” while nutritious food gets thrown away? That’s simply called spoiled kids. I know that most of the negative comments here about the program, come from people that follow the same rules in their own houses. You serve fruit and veggies and the kid just needs to eat it. We would also never tolerate ongoing behavior of throwing away food because they are too picky. If they want to eat candy – they can pay for that themselves. But while under my room, they’ll eat what their given.
Don’t align yourself with and defend the spoiled kids. Michelle’s advocacy is right here. Remember, even a broken watch is right twice a day.
These are the scary people. This response is actually a microcosm of what we’re complaining about here. Pat’s has a great idea on how to raise his kids, everyone else should do it his way, or be force to do so… just like the Feds say.
That’s fine and dandy, in “your room”, but this is a public school, so you have respect the wishes of the parents of the kids who attend their. They aren’t going to play by your rules, just because you think you’re superior.
What if you insist that your children eat only vegetables, but the USDA came out with a “guideline” that required all children to eat some type of meat product in their lunches (you know, because they said it is healthy). You’d be pissed wouldn’t you… Perhaps you don’t mind the the government telling other parents how to raise their kids, but I am quite sure that if the government mandated something that was against your wishes, you’d be just as indignant as the rest of us.
Pat, you have a point, but this isn’t about starving kids, this is about government contracts with large food service corporations and kickbacks. The food must be thrown away. Even unopened packages of food must be thrown away. This creates artificial consumption numbers that allow for increases in annual bids and grants. This isn’t new it’s just been expanded under the current administration.
You’re trying way to hard to politicize this. Pat is right on the spot. Kids are being given food that is in no way bad, the kids are throwing the food away, and then the kids are complaining about being hungry. Let them starve. Maybe that will teach them the lesson that their actions have consequences; a lesson their parents are too childish to teach them.
In the near future, I can easily imagine FORCED physicals, due to the new Obamacare law. If you’re found to be OVERWEIGHT or ill, your EBT card will block out ALL “junk food” purchases, allowing only fresh fruits and veggies. If you’re not on food stamps, the IRS can easily collect additional TAXES as a “PENALTY” for your being OVERWEIGHT and UNHEALTHY. Remember, the new health care law is supposed to “save money.” Americans are gonna have to grow BRAINS and SPINES or just get used to TOTAL GOVERNMENT CONTROL of their lives.
My father grew up on a farm. Before the sun was up, he would have a cup of coffee and some toast with jelly and real butter. Then he would feed the pigs, the chickens, the cows and horses, the he would come back, wash up, and have a large breakfast. Eggs, sausage, bacon, sometimes steak, a bowl of blueberries in whole cream. Everything cooked in lard. Then he would do more chores and walk to school a few miles. He was in various sports so he would practice after school. On weekends he would play casual sports or hunt.
Nobody worried about diet and everyone smoked. But they got a lot of exercise. Some would drop dead of a heart attack, but at least try weren’t drooling on themselves and wearing diapers in a nursing home where no one visits.
Seems to me more people drop dead now than back then. Your father’s story was like that of my grandparents, all of whom lived into their early 90′s.
Just another Chimp. What else would one expect from them?
I wonder if Her Highness Michelle follows these same diet restrictions because her caboose has grown substantially in the past 4 years.
The Obama’s are all about control. Reminds me of my readings on Stalin.
Gee, I graduated in 1981, and my high school had a smoking area!
How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat.
“Not only is the mandated food not popular and often wasted, there also is not enough of it, and students are protesting.”
“There’s just so little that it’s constantly being thrown away!” What?! Use your social skills, and ask if that kid next to you wants their veggies and fruit. If not, ask if you can have it. We did this all the time as kids. It used to be called “sharing” and “normal.”
Also, the grumbling over not getting enough — then pack from home, or supplement from home.
The argument of not getting enough seems to be made strictly on behalf of student athletes who burn more than the average number of calories. Guess what? Not all students are athletes, and fewer still are elite demanding 5000 calories a day. the 750-850 standard for a school lunch fits nicely into the 2000-5000 calories A DAY required by the average child.
Plus, what are we sending them to school for? To get an education, or be a meaty crash-test dummy for the football team? A certain amount of hunger stimulates the production of ghrelin — a neuropeptide that facilitates learning and retention. If you want to send your own child into a food coma every day so in twenty years they’re the husky former jock who’s working for my kid, be my guest, but NOT ON MY DIME.
Bootlickers like this sound like inmates of Auschwitz praising Hitler’s wisdom and generosity while enjoying a lunch consisting of a soda cracker and a bowl of warm water that had been shown a soup bone.
Indeed, we may as well place signs above the entrances to all of our public schools, to properly inspire our children: “ARBEIT MACHT FREI.”
Little Johnny can’t do basic arithmetic, can barely read and retain information, can’t spell without using a computer or google, can’t type more then a hunt and peck style, can’t compose a coherent thought and has no critical reasoning skills…
But at least he ate his fruit cup today!
The underlying problem is the belief that the government should feed other people’s kids at all. What ever happened to a lunch pail prepared at home?
The woman responsible for these new regulations is not a nutritionist or dietitian. Nor is she an elected official, or even an appointee. She is Caesar’s wife, and she is hoping that you will vote for her husband and extend her reign for another four years so she can continue her “good works.”
Of course, if you have half a brain, you already know that returning her husband to the White House would be a very bad thing.
Save the children!
Who cares. Darn…Just give the kids some food, like we all had as kids and get over it. The last ting we need is this government stepping in to be the police of food. If the parents don’t like the local menu they will handle it locally, by state, by county, by city, by district, by school. Let the local level handle how their kids eat and not the darn government.
Three kids. 5 days a week. 180 days of school. 540 lunches prepared at home. Nutritious, child-specific lunches-no need for government to get involved. One wants fruit, another wants cheese, another likes yogurt, and so on. Happy kids, full tummies, growing bodies, delighted mom. Smart kids, happy kids.
Wake up people. Get government OUT of our lives, partly, by not letting them in.
Go Romney.
power and fame, power and fame…i’ll do ANYTHING to keep this power and fame. even if it means growing a F**KING garden at the white house. for chrissakes, how’d i let them talk me into this? well…as long as the high school kids are weak enough not to resist when we try to take over with the military like in Red Dawn…that’s all that matters. let them eat cake! haha, i love saying that. aw man… where’s them ribs ‘n lobsters?
My grandparents ate better food at Auschwitz concentration camp.
They used to push kids to eat all the time, and that’s why they served high fat content food to burn off. Now they’re are starving on political correctness.
If it weren’t being done by left/libtard educators it’d be called “child abuse.”
The woman has no authority to tell anyone what to eat. I don’t care what bill passed.
Wake up people. An illegal law is null and void.
Tell her to stuff it, and eat what you want!
Why did you think I did this people?
Now there is MORE FOOD FOR ME !!!!
HA HA HA
Chumps……
She told us it wouldn’t be easy.
So a few, or a few hundred thousand kids have to suffer to be properly progressive? so what? Who are they compared to the thousands denied medical care so Marie could earn her 300K when Prince Barry won his first major knighthood. There are worse things than going hungry. Marie and Barry should know. No one has suffered more than those two in their unending battle to be affirmed as good as white people.
This is the price the little people have to pay to earn the blessing of Marie.
She has much bigger plans for all of us in 2013.
Is she going to start dressing us like her too?
Oh the horror!
The Holodomor Ukrainian literal translation Killing by hunger was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933. During the famine, which is also known as the “terror-famine in Ukraine” and “famine-genocide in Ukraine” millions of Ukrainians died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine. Recent research has since narrowed the estimates to between 2.4 and 7.5 million.
Death by Government. The leading killer of the last 200 years and counting.
MURDER BY GOVERNMENT – DEMOCIDE.
www . hawaii . edu / powerkills / MURDER.HTM
This one of the reason’s why the dept. of education needs to go….the body needs protein, not empty calories
Young girls dropping to their knees in the stairwell, flopping on their backs on demand. Pregnancy can be fixed by abortion ora”morning after” pill, but the best Michelle can offer is warn against eating twinkies and praise the virtues of eating arugula. Pathetic.
When you give kids crap to eat, you can’t be shocked when that crap ends up in the trash can. Duh!
Crap? It’s FOOD, you spoiled puddle of horse manure. If someone gave you money to pay your rent, and you spent it on something else, getting evicted, you don’t blame the person that gave you the money, tard.
Don’t forget recently obama was whining about michelle not getting a salary for all the work she does. I’m guessing he will soon reward her with a generous salaried position.
My kids high school had a bad skipping problem. The lunches were so bad the entire school started leaving campus for lunch; many didn’t bother to come back in the afternoons.
So the school district put in a pizza hut kiosco. Then a salad bar. Soon they had Taco Bell and a vegan stand with soups. They opened an afternoon snack stand in each wing. It was a huge hit.
Then the Texas PILOT Gov Program started. THEY came and took the coke machines out and put in high calorie orange juices, which no one drank. We knew the days were numbered.
Now its back to bread rations. Someone decided that beans wrapped in a natural corn meal patty was unhealthy. Skipping is back and food is an underground, black listed, economy competing with pot.
Those who do not remember the ’70s are condemned to repeat learning that kids hate healthfood.
let us make the morning after pill very available. It is not abortion, it is prevention. That would delete about 50% of these little bastards. These little greedy , hungry bastards.
Hope ‘n Change: For more of the vote Demo-rat on Nov 6!
Before she insists on anything to do with school meals, she should stand next to the garbage cans in the school cafeteria to see what the kids throw out.
Mothers who pacl those lovely lunches should spend a few days in the cafeteria also.
Don’t give her any ideas, she is bound to jump in and eat it all….
The level of stupidity and hatred on display here is astounding.
How can the government mandating healthy food be served to kids in public schools be a bad thing?
Get off your ideological high horse and use an iota of common sense… There’s plenty of stuff you can beat up the Democrat party on, but when you argue against vegetables and fruits and decry them as totalitarian control, no one’s going to listen to you when you have a legitimate grievance.
If your kids don’t like eating healthy food, you’ve done a poor job of raising them. My kid will kick their butt on the athletic field, in the classroom, and in the business world, because we don’t mess around.
You sound as if you’re compensating for something, Brian.
I hear you! While I was never a fatty, I have been fighting the battle of the bulge in my forties, and mostly winning… I think it’s probably easier if you learn to eat right when you’re young (I didn’t). When I eat poorly now I get that disappointed look from wife and son… and resolve to do better.
How can the government mandating FEMA camp rationing for kids in public schools be a bad thing?
fixed that for you
Brian, I totally agree with you. My comment was snark..and I am sorry to say that no one here “got it”. You “get it”. Thank goodness, someone here does.
“if the food is unpalatable…,”
That’s got to be the funniest part of an otherwise sad article. I don’t recall any school food being palatable, and that was long before the federal government got involved.
School is for learning not eating.
In Soviet Russia, the school eats you!
Do you have kids? Were you a kid? Children who are hungry don’t learn, don’t retain what they are trying to learn, spend more time sick, pass around that sickness because they’re not supposed to stay home. I’ll bet you have lunch everyday. I’ll also bet you get what ever you please for lunch. So lets turn it around. You will now be allowed to eat .03 oz of protein for lunch with a cup of brussel sprout and two cubes of tofu. Everyday 5 days a week 180 days a year. Oh and you don’t get to bring a lunch from home, it’s not good enough.
Zee Regime has spoken and you vill love zee food! You must eat for zee good of zee Regime! Comrades, zeese are Socialist ideals you voted for!
Why are people getting in such a tizzy about the fact policy makers want to protect the health of our country’s youth? Because a healthier lunch costs 25 cents more? Ok.. that’ll be nothing compared to the long term costs of health problems we see now in adults suffering from diabetes and obesity. Anyways, until now, public school lunches have been rather gross. Do you all recall with fond memories an exquisite cafeteria dining experience when you were a chubby little kid? People are acting like our kids are so underprivileged now that they have to eat healthier foods. Fresh fruits? Fresh veggies? “Quinoa.. whats that? Sounds gross! It must be crap because I don’t understand it..” What is wrong with healthy foods!? Would you rather continue poisoning the population with grade F fodder? People are acting like if their kids aren’t getting 5000 calories in one a lunch, they’re going to starve to death. Or God forbid these kids stop ingesting 20 grams of corn syrup a day. Once childhood obesity and early on-set diabetes rates are curtailed, people will be thinking otherwise. This country is finally making moves forward.. it’s what you voted for in 2008, remember? Well, half of you. Anyways, lets keep thinking forward. Hot dogs and cheeseburgers have had their time. Learn to love the green! And learn to love each other.
Hey librul troll – you’ll pry my Five Guys double cheeseburger from my cold dead hands!
I do “love the green”; watching liberals turn that color is one of my favorite pastimes.
It is not about health. It is not about 25cents more for a healthy meal. It’s about governments interference in how we raise our children, what we feed them (including what they bring from home, which is not dictated by these foodnazis). I have a friend who’s allergic to fruits,they make her violently ill. It took years to find this out and she was sick all the time. My spouse and several of my children have GURD. They suffer from heartburn ALL the time. They can’t eat the crap served in schools today. It’s also about the money being wasted for kids to throw food away they are FORCED to take by the school. Most kids are taught but parents if you aren’t going to eat it don’t take it. But at school they have to take veg and fruits even if they aren’t going to eat them. Waste,fraud and abuse the typical Democrat trifecta.
This is just the beginning,
The Obamanation also is allowing the school
nurse to give “The morning after” pills to children 14 and up. The abortion pill.
Imagine being a mother and your daughter is preggy and instead of going to mom to talk about it, she goes to the Nurse and gets some pills.
Paul Ryan had it right, “The Central Planners” The New Democratic Party.
My entire family has quit the Dem Party and now we are all Independents. We will all be voting against Obama this time, so by default Romney will get our votes until the Dem Party gets rid of the commies.
Oh great, now they’re doing to lunch what they did to grade point averages…..straight in the trash!!
Morons.
When I went to school the BEST thing in the winter was the pasta shells and humongous meatballs in the cafeteria, buffet style, no servers/lunch ladies filling your tray.
Hmmm….I’m 83……guess it didn’t kill me and I can probably outwalk most of these high school basketball players that are complaining about the rabbit chow!
Michelle and Obama are drunk with power.
They make up their own laws, stuff socialism down our throats with a half-assed heathcare bill that nobody read before joy boy signed it into law, spend taxpayer money like it grows on trees and let illegal aliens flow into the country like sewer rats running to feast on dead gutter carcasses, leak national secrets to the New York Times, lie about Operation Fast and Furious. And, as most everybody who comes to PJM knows, that just a taste of your malfeasances.
Basically, the O and M show work hard at running this country into the ground.
Michelle spends millions of tax payer dollars on lavish vacations and stuffs herself with five hundred dollar dinners night after night with a smile covering her usual frown because she knows she’s looting the treasury.
But it’s not enough for Michelle to have her belly full when she’s so incredibly full of yourself and power hungry at the same time.
She has to stick her nose where it doesn’t belong and tell our kids what they can eat at school.
Michelle, why don’t you and your light footed, left leaning husband cash in all of those frequent liar miles, and move to a country that hates westerners and loves narcissists. Why do so many people dislike you?
You’re both corrupt to the core, and deserve not just to be beaten this November, but deserve to be led out of the White House in handcuffs, where you can get more free tax payer food, spending a couple of terms in the Fed Pen.
And by the way, the Federal Government has been involved with school meals since the 40’s. Your tax dollars have been funding public school meals for decades.. there’s nothing new about that. It’s only natural for policy to evolve- long overdue in this case.
And the schools can easily buy Boars Head Black Forrest ham and turkey and slice nice, fresh sandwiches with lettuce and tomato, a fruit cup, and other options. 50 cents worth of sliced meat when you buy wholesale and they can do 1/4 lbs. sandwiches. Offer pita bread, etc..
It seems like Socialism is getting into the Dem platform in a concerning way.
It’s so insulting to say I cannot afford my own birth control pills, or take care of myself. That Sandra Fluke woman is not what most American woman are like. She was planted as an Obama operative right from the start, that rush guy got it right at the get-go.
Just because some people buy all junk food with their EBT Food Stamp Money does not mean the rest of us eat that way. Have you ever seen a skinny EBT Card user at the food mart? I rest my case.
Since our tax dollars are paying for the free EBT Food Stamp money for 1/2 of America, the US Gov should only allow certain foods to be charged with Gov Food Money. No soda, chips etc.
Then you will see the weight go down on these ‘overweight’ people.
You can buy 100lbs. of Hershey’s Chocolate with the EBT Card, Mrs. Obama should lobby for this before they stave the kids at school.
It’s the mother and father that allow the children to get fat.
Most people will choose the food they like, but if they are serving Mrs. Obama’s famous Cabbage Sloppy Joe’s at school, I believe 99% of them will end up in the trash.
I can’t wait for them to leave The White House, so we can get a real leader and our Freedom back.
I wonder what our First Harridan would prescribe for ‘Julia,’ the perfect socialist toad. Young Pioneers will properly indoctrinate the little brat, empowering her. Then she’ll constantly lecture her classmates and parents to distraction on the subject of diet. Of course, if they won’t take the good advice of the State, then they’ll have to be reported to the political officer. After all, the Capitalist Roaders have to be identified so that their evil ways can be corrected. Mom probably won’t like the reeducation camp they send her to, but it’s going to be for her own good, after all.
The issue for me is that there are children we have to feed or they won’t get fed. I can’t do anything about that and I’m not willing to watch children starve in this the most blessed country on earth. That said, I don’t want the government making decisions about what children are going to eat based on some pie in the sky, liberal nonsense. Feed them what the average child needs to eat. Feed them healthy things they will eat. Stop feeding them designer meals with nothing in them. If they’ll eat at a salad bar, I would be dancing in the street. Since when is cheese bad for you?
Maybe if this country spent more time making the streets safe for kids to play on or got the criminals off the streets so they could go to a park every now and then we wouldn’t be having an obesity problem. Maybe if kids had moms who could afford to stay home and fix meals for them and supervise them after school we wouldn’t have near the obesity, drug, alcohol, VD, AIDS, abortion problems we have now. Children raising themselves will never work out.
By now it should be evident: If you want the kids fed, don’t trust anyone in the government to make it happen. They’ll just screw it up! If a kid needs a lunch, post it to the web and I can make an extra lunch, send it to school with my daughter in a brown bag, and it will be a lot better than anything the school can come up with. If it would embarrass someone, then it can trivially be done anonymously, so that nobody knows who provided it and likewise who received it. If half of the school needs lunches, let the local churches take turns. They’ll be happy to stand up.
Or the web can match up donors with those in need, and we can tailor the lunches to the kids. Think web. Screw the government.
We already do this on some of our sports teams. If a kid’s parent can’t afford some equipment, then it magically appears. Only the coach knows where it came from and who got it. Nobody feels bad. Come on people, take a little responsibility.
By the way, it seems it’s time for a daily food fight. Instead of throwing the peaches in the garbage, think of something creative to do with them. After all, you government went to the trouble of providing a lot of very acceptable ammo, may as well use it. Throwing it at the people feeding it to you is only the most obvious way to rebel, and probably get into trouble. The truly creative kid will come up with something much more effective (and untraceable to anyone).
don’t all the school districts get paid per head per day? I mean the money comes in via student attendance…. I invite all Kids and their Teachers & Folks to go on strike and picket the schools, district offices, etc., until they can get this repealed….. God forbid we must eat according to Federal Mandate!?
The taxpayer shouldn’t be spending money on food that will not be eaten and should not be spending money on junk food either. Let these kids bring a lunch or go back to the old standby of a sandwich and milk or juice. If things don’t sell don’t stock it.
No wonder we oldies but goodies wish so hard for those old days! When I was a kid my elementary school didn’t even HAVE a cafeteria. Our mothers packed our lunches in cute little boxes with Barbie or GI Joe on them and they included a thermos for milk. The big thrill for some lucky dogs whose parents gave them the 10 cents a week to buy their milk was which flavor would the milkman deliver in small pints to our classroom door just before the lunch bell. All eyes would turn to him as he neatly stacked them up inside the door against the wall – even in 90 degrees. None of us ever got sick. We ate our unrefrigerated bolonge sandwiches at our desks and if a friend forgot his or was still hungry we SHARED. After that? RECESS with dodge ball and “catchers”. There were no fat kids at school in those days that I remember.
This thread is a great example of how big government creates strife in the community.
If the feds were not involved in education there would be no need for this thread.
I’m all for better, healthier meals for kids……and on the whole, they already have been largely at schools….but as a former food exec that worked with school districts foodservice directors in NY and PA on lunch programs, there are two major issues at play here: The first is the school gov’t commodities programs- schools are allocated foods that must be used from the gov’t to offset local budgets….some of those allocated foods are not always compatible with this new guideline combined with compliance, state reimbursement dollars vs. student participation….quite a balancing act for foodservice directors. The biggest issue however is legislating eating habits…it just doesn’t work for most kids. They will not embrace and participate in lunch that includes green beens,baked turkey and an apple when the eat fast food,chips, donuts and double cheese pizza in front of the TV at nearly every meal at home. Eating habits begin at home and cannot be legislated for the masses successfully at the school level. It sounds good on paper, but as with most gov’t programs, is full of ‘holes’ and unrealistic objectives. Like with most things- personal choice and responsibility- even for kids- is what sets reducing poor behaviors.
“students, particularly at the grade school level, cannot refuse anything on their trays — but, of course, cannot be forced to eat it.”
Well, there you go. That’s the solution right in front of you, at least if you’re a liberal: you just force the kids to eat what’s on their plate regardless of whether they want to or not. After all, they’ve mandated low-flow shower heads, toilets that won’t flush, and toxic light bulbs on us, so why not require the kids to eat what they’re served? The government is better able to make decisions for us than we can for ourselves and besides, kids can’t vote (or else we wouldn’t be piling on all this debt they’ll have to pay off).
In fact, to address the obvious follow-on problem, let’s also mandate that they can’t complain about having to eat what they’re served. To paraphrase Humphrey Bogart, “You’ll eat it and like it!”
Well, now, they have a problem, don’t they. If parents can’t get the kids to eat what’s on the plate, then the government has no chance at all. What are you going to do? Threaten them with the IRS? To them, it’s not a credible threat. So Big O and Bitch finally bit off more than they can chew. Just try to make a bunch of 8-year-olds eat what you demand. Good f*****g luck!
control the food and control the people
Its just a way to acclimate to Socialist , east Block food and having petty tyrants telling them what to do–how much to eat and what to eat—next they will have “monotors” watching the trash cans–forcing kids to eat the slop that is served. It was bad enough when I was a Kid, that is why I always brought my own lunch to School—now THAT is being forbidden.
Gotta train the kids to live under Socialisim, I suppose (they think) that way they will be used to it when it comes and won’t complain as much
My kids always ate breakfast, and my older son ate the lunch I packed them every day by mid-morning (during class), then ate a school lunch (that we paid for!) — then ate dinner (after football, baseball, etc. practice), and he was always raiding the refrigerator. Today, he’s 30 years old, 6 ft. 4 in., and struggles to keep at 190 pounds. All kids are different — get a life, Michelle, and leave us alone!
this is not about children. its about the central planners getting a stream of recipients on line for their agricultural products. the prisons are lowballing the labor costs and contracting to do farm work, so this is a iron clad market. Plus they are going to jam in the GMO crops with zero labeling. When they couldn’t use DDT in America, they just shipped it south. When Mexico outlaws GMO crops for their own people, they will ship it north, and be sold to be used in the schools.
its sinister, but it took a long time to get where we are today, millions of mindbenders have been plotting and planning. We will lose a generation or two, but we will be ruined when they finish with America. It would be better now, to shut off the lights and live in a cave, only to emerge in 20 years back in our productive society. your choice, a new Ipad, and a diminished potential, or take your chances on your own abilities to teach your children, and put food on the table. The rest in ginger, you dont need.
School lunch guidelines mandated by the government have always been a joke. They considered ketchup a vegetable and required 2 starches be served prior to the recent changes. School lunches are not what what is causing the obesity problem in our youth. Its the lack of physical activity and the over consumption of processed and genetically modified foods. If you want to reduce obesity, go after Coke, Pepsi, Frito Lay, Hostess, etc. and put phys ed back in the curriculum.
They have left out one half of their own manifesto: “to each according to his needs”.
Learn well young people when you elect and vote for Liberal Democrats then this is what you get. Government telling you what to do and what’s best for everyone. Re-distribute the wealth and we know what’s best for you. When you elect Liberals you get this magnified and amplified exponentially.
What a sad state we are in, in our post-Constitutional America, where the President’s wife dictates policy for what a 6-year old in Kansas can eat for lunch. Even Hitler didn’t have as much power, but then we’ve had 60+ years to refine fascism to how it is practiced in Obama’s America today. We fight wars that are not wars, we allow the President to appoint leaders of business (GM), and allow him to ignore laws he doesn’t agree with while ignoring real crimes.
“Li Chin, eat your hamburgers. Don’t you know that kids are starving in America?”
How much would we save by eliminating– departments of ag, Ed, energy. Wasted money as far as I’m concerned.
I’m sooo tired of my kids coming home starving everyday… I can’t wait until the Obama’s and the rest of his Democrat cronies begin to force feed our children.
Idiots. I’m gonna date myself. It’s not that they are obese from eating anything that has not been available for decades. It’s from eating it and sitting on their a$$ in front of computers and video games all day! Go outside and play!
Lunch last week was:
Brussel Sprouts
Mac n- Cheese
Carrots with dip
Cole Slaw
The kids were running to throw out the government paid lunch here at school to buy chips and ice cream. The athletes are complaining during practice after school. Make it a choice and let the parents guide their kids.
Get this woman away from my child. Im not stupid, I know what she needs to eat
The day that Queenie Mooschelle Lard b*#t Obama starts eating her dictates then and only then would it be acceptable to foist her elections upon the populous. This is what Liberals do: demand that their way of thinking should be the same for everybody else, as long as they do not have to live by the same rules. Queenie cannot be heating “healthy” to have grown that large a caboose. It’s time for a little personal responsibility and decision making, not blindly following the rules of hypocrites like Mooschelle.
Mrs. O seems more worried about kids girth size than their brain capacity.
The brain needs a lot of nutrition to function well, especially a child’s growing brain. This failing government program goes along well with the government failing school programs in total.
Kids can’t read, can’t write well, can’t figure out simple math problems. All the money we spend on schools in the country every year and yet we fall further and further behind other countries each year.
Like uneatable food going into the trash can every day, so is the education of our children.
All that trashed food being thrown away should collected and composted for a school garden. Kids could learn about growing healthy food, enjoy the miracle of watching plants grow from seeds, learn about bugs and dealing with all things gardening in an organic healthy way. They would at least get out of school with some practical knowledge, have some daily exercise and sunshine. Hey Mrs. O has a garden at the White House, though I doubt she every gets her fine manicured hands dirty.
But no, our children have to be “programed” into controlled little government subjects.
How many programs are there in the U.S. to feed the hungry? Several. This is just outrageous that our tax dollars are being spent on food the kids won’t eat, and is tossed out.
Hopefully in a few years these kids will have enough brain power to figure out what a bunch of Cr.. the government has shoved down their throats and act accordingly.
Heads up folks. This is a warning of how the liberals want to run the country. The slaves will eat what we feed them even if we don’t feed them.
This is for school lunch. Just imagine what will be going on with health care. The Pres. talks about the economy not being from top down but from middle out. If that is truly what he believes then why not apply that logic to everything else. Trying to gov. lunches from the White House makes about as much since as running Health care from there. Let the waste and rationing begin!
The company I work with has redone their cafeteria menu to the point maybe 1/3 or less of the employees still eat there (they must eat healthy). Most now bring their lunch but a few of us will also go out to eat lunch, occasionally. If I rode a motorcycle, I would be forced to wear a helmet (I would anyway, but I hate being treated like a child). I am threatened with a fine if I do not wear a seat belt (there again, I do anyway but I hate being treated like a child). In a year or so, I am forced to buy insurance that will undoubtedly be increased in price even if I haven’t the money to do so (fortunately, I have enough money to buy insurance, I planned ahead). Now we have some Evita Peron type woman telling me what my kid can eat for lunch? Is this what people actually want? To be told what to do in almost every area of their lives? This is no longer America, it has become an obamanation.
Dismantle public schools, get the government out of education completely and forever, and watch this silly issue go away overnight. Guaranteed.
When will this insanity end?
I often thought the same question to myself and the answer I come up with is never. One people who run office have this need to make a change to want to make a difference. Now they may be come jaded they, as with all intention start out well. Then with every problem the government tries to “solve” more regulation is needed to solve the problem the government created in the first place. Then you add the politician who make a promise to bring back the bennies aka. Robert Byrd, still the most egregious example I have seen, if you doubt me take a trip through West Virginia. Sidebar: Senator Sarbane of Maryland, of the Sarbane-Oxley Act, never brought a dime back to the state of Maryland and still was reelected. This is my partial take on why the sanity will never end, until, until, the money runs out.
Cause there no such thing as a free lunch…
And with the low flow toilets you know where it goes. And I just thought about it butt with Obama care the government is looking into the problem from beginning to end.
Waste is right, more food is being thrown away than eaten.
When I was in school we had eggs,a meat,grits,toast and milk. My kids breakfast…
Cinnamon roll
Fruit blend juice
Low fat milk
Prices are gone through the roof over the years…there is no way were paying “Just for the Food” something stinks. The money being spent is not making it to the lunch table….
A portion of it makes up the $1billion that Obama gives to our “not friends/not enemies” in Egypt. Yes, our kids eat PC c.ra p in school and the Obama’s ship our money away by the truckload to other countries.
As a citizen, less govt is best.
Unfortunately, the waste of food is horrible and has grown worse due to govt mandates and lowering the income requirements
to receive reduced or free lunch.
The mandate- children must take the food that is served, thus even though they consistently toss a good portion of it away, the school must continue to cook and dispense same amount each day.
Isn’t govt wonderful?
A janitor
HOPE AND MANGE….
DOPE AND STRANGE
Our federal government has gotten completely out of control with sticking their nose in every last area of the citizens’ life. The govt SUCKS THE JOY OUT OF EVERY THING into which they stick their nose. Really?? The government/school admins have the TIME to worry about the hours for selling candy bars? REALLY? And we are going to just sit back and take the complete takeover of our lives, down to not allowing adults in the school system to make COMMON SENSE decisions about student lunch trays???
Paraphrase from Oliver Twist: “Please, m’am, can I have some more?”
Any allusion to Moochelle being a cheap, cruel head of a state-subsidized orphanage is purely intentional.
My kids are grown but if I still had school kids at this time, they’d sure as hell would be taking their lunch and the government would NOT get it’s soiled hands on it. As a matter of fact, when my children were in school, they did take their lunches and they’ve grown into three beautiful young women. There’s more than one way to to not comply!
The bright side of this whole debacle (and I do I hate the idea of hungry children anywhere, but)is that hopefully parents will hate “Obamalunch” enough so they won’t vote for him again!
Silly Obama. Pretty sure schools can figure out how to feed kids without “help” from Washington, D.C.
I imagine it is different everywhere, but where we are in Northern California, the local elementary school charged $2.75 for lunch, and about 90% of the children being on free or reduced lunch (mostly free) would be a pretty good guesstimate. There is very much an entitlement or it’s out there for the taking so you should take it attitude here. Our income level is beyond qualifying for free or reduced lunch, and yet, I was encouraged to lie and apply for free lunch for my child anyway, because “no one checks” and hey, free lunch right? my child was actually a novelty among the other children for awhile because he took a packed lunch most days, and even then, we were told what could or could not be in it, to a degree. My child, don’t tell me how to feed him.
During summer school, you can take any child down to the elementary school for free breakfast and lunch, whether they attend that school or not, whether they are attending summer school or not, even if they are not yet school age. This is where the money goes. Foode stamps are sold 50 cents on the dollar to pay cell phone bills, more of where the money goes.
At least here, they seem to make an effort to follow standards and for the children to like the food. the practice of encouraging people to falsely apply for free lunch, cash aid, food stamps, whatever, and the people that decide to do it themselves that don’t need it, it’s disgusting, and so much more prominent than people seem to think in general. The majority of fols we know that are recieving aid, don’t need it. Thet aren’t counting an income, falsifying an income, you name it, they’re doing it. why? because they can. How many times can you get busted out for welfare fraud before they keep you? At least three.
Consolation? Several aquaintances have popped out that second baby while on welfare, they didn’t know there wouldn’t be cash aid involved. Should have researched all your free crap better. booyah!
The Obaamas don’t care what we want. We don’t know what is good for us, they know better than we do. Pleeze keep the Nanny State out of our lives. When I was a child we ate school lunches and were sim because we palyed fro,m the time we got home until dark. It is not the food that makes children obese–it is xboxes and video games.
The problem people are forgetting is if you do send your child’s lunch with them the schools are now going through those as well to deem if they are to the state’s standards. They get you coming and going.
Just because schools get federal money doesn’t mean the Fed should CONTROL THEM at every turn. Let the locals decide how to best utilize their monies, including school lunches. I’m sick and tired of gov’t controlling everything just because states, cities, etc. get federal monies. SO WHAT? It doesn’t mean we have to be their beck and call, like we are now. It has to stop.
I cannot believe some of the arguments here. Many of you are arguing as though the government has the right to be a nanny state. No where in the constitution is the Federal Government authorized to determine what is in school lunches. This is a state and local government issue. As long as you continue to vote for people who want to exercise control over your life, your liberties will be taken from you.
MAKE YOU CHILDRENS LUNCHES AND PUT WHATEVER YOU WANT IN THEM, STOP RELYING ON THE GOVERNMENT TO FEED YOUR KIDS, If the school complains about the contents of the lunches you make, go up there and crack their freakin heads open.
This is a small peek behind the curtain to what’s coming up in Obamacare.
Count on it.
I can see them “tweaking” the Constitution now….
We the People of the United States government, in Order to form a more perfect Union membership, establish Socialism, insure domestic Entitlement, provide for the common deference, promote the general class Warfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberals to ourselves and our Posteriors, do ordain and establish this new and improved Constitution to the United States of America….
Goodness.
(1) School food can be fabulous. Any of the New Orleans public schools prior to the flood had the best food in the city, if that school was near a housing project. My dad would bring visitors to the city to the public school for lunch and then a name restaurant for dinner. The school lunch would be better, every time. The schools might have been graduating illiterates- but they were well-fed illiterates.
(2) Football players, as a category of athlete, are famously hungry. The 30 year old single clerk at the Costco saved up for a month for a one week visit with her brother, the football player. She was listing out what he ate, and when- it went on all day and all night.
(3) Yes, my kid gets low-price home-cooked food. At home. A pound of dried black-eyed peas gets cooked up nearly daily. Meat and three veg at dinner, other snacks, heavy breakfasts and snacks on weekends. All healthy. The daughter just learned to make jello, so now we have dessert for the first time, ever. I have a garden. They eat from it, as well. What I was griping about was that I planned on a certain high-calorie hit in the middle of the day- between two separate work-out sessions- to keep my kid going. He also has classes, so he can’t go to sleep, which is what happens when he hasn’t got enough food in his system. Caloric density matters. Right now- he’s working out 3 hours a day, and growing like a weed. So absolutely every last dietary prescription that has ever been in a women’s magazine is being turned on its head. High-fat, high-protein, constant eating, the works.
as for protein and irritation- come on, wheatbelly is climbing up the charts. Wheat, corn and peanuts, arguably shell-fish- are irritants. That’s not even a question. So Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwiches have the distinction of being too much sugar, too much wheat and peanut proteins, and not enough calories, for a growing, athletic boy. His sister eats them, fine. She’s not in sports and she’s not explosively growing, and she’s different. When she’s grown and pregnant, she’ll avoid all four, just like I did. Soy,too. And she’ll, God willing, have enormous, healthy babies.
They have enough friends with epi-pens, sudden allergies sending them to the emergency room, and skin rashes, that I’m not being stupid. I’m being observant. It’s easier to control at the front end, than go through six months of a rotation diet, visits to spooky chinese medicine clinics, and rides to the hospital from closed breathing airways.
Football, in Texas, is an outdoor sport done in very high heat, under stressful conditions: last year a near-perfect physical specimen found out what “near” meant- he collapsed on the field with a heart attack, at age 18. He’d been signed to a full athletic scholarship, to UTA. Mack Brown honored his scholarship- but imagine being that parent that does everything- and raises a great kid- and has that kid collapse and have a heart attack right in front of you. He was defibrillated- but still. It’s a sport with a death rate, if you aren’t paying attention to every little detail- dehydration has killed kids, too.
My high-school boyfriend blew out a knee- that was the end of his scholarship. One friend tried the “not allergic” and “high heat” and collapsed in the middle of her game- not football- just outside and hot- b/c her esophagus swelled up, cutting off her breath for ???minutes. She was in a coma for a few months. She emerged with considerable damage.
You get the government you vote for America. Congratulations.
You haven’t seen anything yet. When Obama wins his second election, you will see many things mandated. You will have no choice or freedom.
This was all so predictable, it’s just dumbfounding. I can even remember as a kid in elementary school observing how NO ONE ever ate the vegetables served with school lunches, including myself. I can even remember thinking back then how wasteful it was to see all that food thrown straight into the garbage. Schools actually finally wised up in the 90′s and 2000′s and started bringing in food from outside vendors like Taco Bell and Pizza Hut. But we can’t have THAT anymore!
Next step on Michelle’s agenda– FORCE kids to eat it…or else face punishment.
FORWARD COMRADES!!
Moooochelle is of the socialist elite and she will do anything to get any bit of power she can including pushing “her” beliefs on what “she” thinks is best for our children. Well Moooooooooooochelle aka sasquatch you can put your string beans where the sun doesnt shine…
I get up and pack a lunch for my 4 kids every morning. I don’t want anybody dictating what they eat.
My food is better and cheaper!
Get used to it folks – it’s just the kids now… but you’re next.
It has already happened. Soda restrictions in NYC.
Point blank…..the Government has NO BUSINESS in the school lunchroom.
Take your own lunch to school, kids, like we all did when we were at school.
Patrick, you write: “… students, particularly at the grade school level, cannot refuse anything on their trays — but, of course, cannot be forced to eat it.”
You forgot to add “yet.” Rules and restrictions first. Force will soon follow.
What qualifies Mrs. Obama to oversee this issue? We know she’s been eating government food (hah) for way too long — that’s no endorsement, in fact – here’s hoping she’ll be slingin’ chow for her own brood after Election Day.
If you’re truly interested in this you need to do some research. I’m conservative by nature, and will vote Republican, but this article is full of misinformation. For one thing, schools were not able to fund raise with candy since 2004. For another, HHFKA, distilled to its essence only increases fresh fruits, vegetables, and whole grains in kid’s meals.
One problem with is that a lot of school food service directors don’t understand the new regs and are not implementing them correctly. I’d have no problem with HHFKA for the most part because the net result IS healthier meal options at school. The problem I have is that 1.) it’s another excuse to grow government and 2) the cost of implementation is staggering. For the most part though it should be a non-story politically. The imploding economy, massive overspending, government mandated healthcare, our joke status with the rest of the world, and loss of sovereignty should be the real issues. This is a distraction, like Obama going on Letterman.
That is not, in fact, true. Schools themselves were not able to fundraise using candy, but student groups were. Clubs and the like. That is no longer true under these regulations.
While there are more important issues in this election, most of them are abstract to the average voter. What happens to one’s children on a daily basis is concrete to all caring parents. This is an issue that brings home to the average voter exactly what is wrong with the nanny state.
Food police lead by an overweight First Lady, yet another violation of our rights. The gov’t constantly violates our rights.
They violate the 1st Amendment by caging protesters and banning books like “America Deceived II”.
They violate the 4th and 5th Amendment by allowing TSA to grope you.
They violate the entire Constitution by starting undeclared wars.
Impeach Obama, support Ron Paul.
Last link of “America Deceived II” before it is completely banned:
http://www.amazon.com/America-Deceived-II-Possession-interrogation/dp/1450257437
How much more will it take for REAL AMERICA to rise up against government insanity such as this?
This is fine (not) for the kids that get free lunch, but for the parents who are paying for it, this is a bunch of horse puckies. Let’s start a “parent revolt” and take our kids a big greasy hamburger at lunch time and dare the food-nazi’s to take it away!
welcome to the let them eat cake lady named moochelle. it is insane and typical of the nanny state to make you eat what they want. another right taken away. by the way who eats beans and humus can we all say illegals and arabs. people you are being conned on a daily basis. and it seems some are to dumd to see it looking at the polls!
Instead of some sort of useful legislation which might, for example, bring overseas jobs back to America, Michelle O and Congress want to push this food cop nonsense which is nothing more than a form of evil. Childhood obesity will take care of itself as Americans continue to become unemployed they won’t be able to feed their kids.
Teach a man to fish and he’ll feed himself; give a man and his family free food and they’ll vote democrat fo’ evah.
Who elected this megalomaniacal, Marxist totalitarian control-freak to mandate ANYTHING? Folks, you don’t have to take this! The Obama’s are not our rulers!! FIGHT BACK!!!
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C. S. Lewis
Patrick, your subtitle is in need of some repair. Here, let me fix it for you:
There – that’s better.
This story is not new. This kind of thing has been going on for years with the free/subsidized meal program.
My wife is a teacher in a mostly black grade school. about 70% of the kids are receiving government subsidized lunch (while their mothers drop them off at school in her Lexus) and the kids throw away their free food then turn right around and BUY the snack food that is on the lunch line.
This is one of the most abused systems in the public school sector. It is a money maker for the business (and their union) that provides the meals and employees (most who do not even speak english).
I saw several posts below essentially asking “Why don’t these kids get fed before school”. Well there you have it. Another government system that absolves it’s citizens from being responsible. Why SHOULD they feed their own kids when the liberal politicians insist that we should do it.
I absolutely understand that nutrition helps the learning process but if you think that is going to fix the problems in our schools you are delusional. What needs to happen is the cowardly, politically correct administrations need to hold the parents responsible for raising their kids. The reward system sure as hell hasn’t seemed to work maybe it’s time to dish out the pain.
Another factor that is hampering kids is the actual meal times. My kids get to school at 8:30 and my youngest has lunch at 11:30 which is not so bad. But she has only 20 minutes to eat her lunch. We pack her lunch, but she is routinely coming home with uneaten food because she doesn’t have time to eat it. Kids who buy lunch have 20 minutes to wait in line and then eat. Then these second graders have to go 3.5 hours before school lets out. It means that they don’t have time to eat what they can get, then have to wait for a long time before eating again.
Seriously, it is pretty ridiculous.
She wants you to eat less so that she can eat more! The kids are given the choice of eating the GMO, factory produced, food that she would not eat or go hungry. Don’t go hungry in silence; Through the uneatable food at the wall to make a statement!
okay. so. the school lunch program was federalized, after having been successful at various local levels. That’s what the initial PTA’s did, in the 1900′s. Patriotic art for classrooms, gravel on the playground so that it wasn’t a big mud-pit, school lunches. Jane Addams, and her social worker buddies at Hull House, proposed it for poor kids, so they could keep up with wealthier, better fed children. It was still local.
After World War I, Francis Perkins- a graduate of Hull House- proposed subsidized food for children, to President Roosevelt, b/c 25% of the men showing up for their draft physical were being turned down b/c of the effects of malnutrition. Subsidized food was a way to guarantee that when the next war came, the next allotment of soldiers would come as much from poor families as from middle class or rich. Between World War 1 and World War 2, the Americans and the Germans subsidized school food for children. When World War 2 rolled around, a greater percentage of Germans and Americans were fit for service. Among the ones fit for service- the Germans and the Americans were also taller, heavier, higher IQ, possessed of more teeth, and, in general, in better health and of more pleasing mien- again, an indicator of health. The British did not subsidize any food for anyone, and their soldiers were shorter, of poorer health, with shoddy dentition, and in general, more shabby-looking.
I am going to suppose that Johnson decided “more is better” and basically wrecked the whole intent of the program, but I don’t know.
I know I keep mentioning to the reading comprehension challenged- that I pay for my kids’ lunch. A significant percent of football players come from poor families. They are, possibly, the “food insecure.” They are also the kids who worry about grades, attend class daily, and work out. I’ve mentioned public schools in Texas, and public schools in New Orleans. The only estimable men from the wretched New Orleans public school that I know of (there might be more, I don’t’ know) were football players- that- attend class, use manners, get passing grades routine. They also seemed to end up with the best employers in town- oil-field companies, electric companies, and the military. Their mothers might have been public housing denizens, but their sons were the blue-collar and military workers that our nation depends on. For them, Frances Perkins has been vindicated.
I don’t know how it works in other locations. Here? I thought I was fine checking at the elementary, and then assuming it continued on. They’ve got 25 minutes,total to eat lunch. The cafeteria serves pizza, burgers, roast chicken, fish sticks, macaroni and cheese- I think it’s from scratch- they start cooking at breakfast. Adults eat there, too- teachers, staff, volunteers- the kitchen is open to see- it’s clean, there’s no mysterious “pink slime”- so, having seen this for years, why would I think that MO would find a way to mess up a system that works?
And, second, we have public education b/c the Puritans and Pilgrims thought every person should be able to read the Bible, since every person had a priesthood of their own soul. The slave states opposed this, and reading, and printing presses, b/c they did not believe in universal literacy. Just because some places hash it up by the numbers is not a reason to get rid of it entirely. Charter schools, homeschooling, private schools, public schools- that’s a bunch of safety nets. We have all of them in this state. They all work together, more or less. Getting rid of public schools is just shredding one part of the educational safety net.
I am a fire-breathing conservative, and I assure you I do not consider this matter of highly-regulated nutritional requirements for student meals trivial. It goes to the very core of freedom of choice, and CONTROL of children’s bodies.
That said, it angers me that you have all ceded control of and responsibility for your children’s education and curriculum to government, and previously thought nothing of it. Indeed, you take public schools for granted — I guess that’s how we as a society educate our children.
But now you scream to high heaven because your kids can no longer get pizza and french fries in the cafeteria, or sell each other candy bars in the hallways?
Your outrage is misplaced. You put you kids in the government’s hands to be indoctrinated and lost control in the process — and now you go berserk over this: unpalatable lunches.
Private schools listen much more closely to parents, because DOLLARS are constantly at stake. BUT THAT CARD IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE FOR YOU TO PLAY — because no one pays tuition. And that’s how you wanted it, right?
Point me to the nearest bucket — I need to puke.
Schools were never meant to be federalized. That’s a Jimmy Carter project. Between Iran falling to Khomeini, giving away the Panama Canal, and the Federal Dept of Education, and the housing rights bill – America got rebuilt on a particularly unstable platform.
Texas and California are the two main textbook markets. They have two very, very different approaches. Mr Victor Davis Hanson quite ably delineates the destructiveness of California’s educational approach.
Texas, district by district, allows charter schools, home-schools, private schools, online schools, public schools. They test and publish the test results. I can tell you the reading scores, in aggregate, for every last single school in this district, broken down by race, gender and who knows what else. Parents print out the results for schools here, to see where they want their child to attend. Geographic waivers are common. My son lost his best friends to (1) a move to another state and (2) moving to another school in the district.
I am not helplessly sending my kids off to the big mean factory of mediocrity. The teachers are not fabulously well-paid. The maintenance on the school is done by committees of parents. The beautification projects are done by the PTA. The sports program is self-sustaining.
The state has its own educational standards that are at variance with what Obama wants. That’s why Texas is called a fundamentalist nut-house. The high-school science and math teachers usually have masters in whatever science and math they teach. The chemistry department from my old school would draw straws on which teacher would go to the International Science Fair each year- they were that confident, and that good.
Right now, for the elementary- teachers retire, and then come back to volunteer teach. Teachers advise the use of Khan Academy. They buy their own books for the kids to read.
I can get upset about some small detail, because the big details are being taken care of by competent professionals. Michelle Obama is not competent, and not professional, and she’s messing up a good system. I thought I was still dealing with the good system, not the O-broken system.
You seem to miss the point. Why are we even *talking* about Michelle or geographic waivers?
If YOU want a school where, to save money, parents assume responsibility for maintenance and beautification — or where kids are required to pray twice a day, participate in extracurricular activities, learn Mandarin Chinese, do volunteer projects off-campus, or hold debates in American sign language — YOU should be able to have that!
But since virtually *all* of us unquestioningly send our children to the government-run one-size-fits-all big-box we’re “supposed” to, that will never happen. In contrast, think about how much more accountability, competition, and CHOICES there would be if schools knew YOU could pull YOUR kids out and enroll them where YOU want, on a moment’s notice?
We have ceded our responsibility to educate our children — exactly as WE see fit — TO THE STATE. You’re from Texas, so I expect you will recognize the saying:
“You gotta dance with the one whut brung ya.”
Now shut up and dance, everyone! And don’t let your eyes wander.
You totally have my sympathy. I understand that New Jersey is not so big on school-choice reform. The East Coast had the greatest public school system in the world- I read about the Bronx High School of Science, and I read about Edison engineers in New Jersey- and then I read about Columbia Ed messing it up. You really do have my sympathy.
Matt in North Carolina sounds like he’s in an awful position- his parental rights keep getting violated. Others, too.
I am not looking for sympathy. I am trying to emphasize a core principle, which — surprisingly for an apparent conservative — you either reject or cannot grasp, owing to your unshakable commitment to public education as an institution.
So let me restate my point: our priority should not be excellent *public schools*. It should be excellent *SCHOOLS*, period. It is flat-out illogical to assume government-provided education is the only feasible way to broadly accomplish this mission; that such schools are necessarily academically or morally superior; or even that such an arrangement is natural.
As to the subject of where great schools are to be found in New York City — or anywhere on the East coast, for that matter — there is a general rule:
Where you find functioning, solidly middle- and upper-middle class communities, you will likely find high-performing schools. Even in New York City, where mixed neighborhoods are common, kids are tracked according to their inate ability, with smart kids academically isolated from their less ambitious counterparts.
All of which goes to show, it is PRIMARILY the responsibility of FAMILIES, starting with
• the students themselves
• their parents
• and their larger support networks
to ensure a proper *EDUCATION* is received, rather than placing the responsibility and burden on *SCHOOLS*. Simply put, families with the right values will not ALLOW their children to fail, REGARDLESS of the condition of the schools available to them. To confuse these two aspects — often assumed to be synonymous — is to fundamentally misunderstand the issue.
That said, we have been betrayed by the current system. Teachers can strike at whim, God is outlawed in the classroom, an increasingly radical curriculum is enforced, and now even in the *cafeteria* the children are not safe from liberal moralizing and indoctrination.
Ultimately, *we* are to blame, because we let them *do* it. Unless *we* the parents are the ones paying tuition DIRECTLY, true control of the situation is impossible — and while I do not intend to offend, your precious PTA does not *remotely* qualify as such.
Oh, gosh. I think we are talking at cross-purposes. I don’t have an unshakeable commitment to monopoly public schools. I don’t have to. Texas, I’m assuming the whole state, but I could be wrong, is committed to school choice.
The family across the street sends their kids to a charter run out of church. There are at least four religious schools within five miles that I can think of. I’m pretty sure there are more. One is a hybrid homeschool/classroom set up. There are secular charters as well. There are chains of charters- KIPP moved to town a few years ago. There’s a huge, huge, huge home-school community. Most of their friends from pre-school homeschool. The guy who wrote the first book on it has relatives in town, so he’s around, visiting and influencing.
I don’t know how God fits in officially, but the kids day starts with a pledge of allegiance to the American flag, a pledge of allegiance to Texas, a pledge for the school, and a minute of silence. The teachers are pretty open that that minute is usually used for prayer. They wear visible crosses, if that’s their thing. My kids have brought home readers about going to church on Easter, the Christmas story, creation, all that. Some teachers will pray with them, if asked. There’s at least one church that has a ministry praying for teachers, one by one, week by week. I don’t know how it works- my neighbor is involved, something pentecostal- and the teachers know about it. I
The district gives out books, but I don’t know if any of the elementary teachers follow that curriculum. Their first grade teacher has her own set-up, that she’s run kids through for decades. The second grade teachers have their own thing, too. I don’t look too closely, mostly b/c I don’t have to- it works. They get tested three times a year, we have conferences, they do what they say they are going to do. It’s like buying jeans- they fit, they don’t fall apart, I don’t need to repair them.
I don’t have to re-do their work- they are competent, and they don’t have monstrous egos. I found Khan Academy from a Wired magazine article, and the teacher that I mentioned it to suggested it to other parents. The older grades, three classes are now run from on-line textbooks. We can sign in and look at what our kid is doing, day by day. It’s really transparent.
I haven’t looked, but there’s a Fellowship of Christian Athletes group that’s pretty strong, and at least one high school where the front-line athletes are all in Boy Scouts. The coaches are pretty up-front about wanting that sort of character.
So, I think I’m in the situation that you are trying to work towards. The high schools have moved to specialty models, for the most part- there are two FFA intense high schools, all sorts of different magnets, a school that grads future police and nurses and I want to say- can’t remember- hairdressers- and a few suburban generalist schools. I mean, there is at least one high school focussed on runaways, and grads of juvenile hall. It’s not the juvenile jail school- they teach the kids construction, and I think automobile repair. I’ve met grads of the place running departments at Lowe’s and Home Depot, so they really are learning to function in a competent fashion in the real world. That’s how focussed it can be.
The middle schools are getting like that. There’s one that’s an all- girls school. They are opening an all boys’ one next year. These are all public. I get advertisements for online learning from some public school in Houston, when I sign on to the computer. We are in a Spanish focus elementary. There’s an autism/developmental delays focus elementary. The kids next door attended that one. There’s a really communitarian one, in the middle of town. There’s an all-waiver, high-academics one. There’s an academic intense one on the wrong side of town that beats most of the others, on the standardized tests, for instance.
So, I think I’m in the situation that you are working towards. Really, I think the whole country could have moved towards this if Perry had been elected. He’s the guy that pushed the $10K Bachelor’s degree, which relies on a mix of online classes, tablet computers, community college and regular college.
It’s not all sweetness and light. The bad schools are really awful. There are two high schools within five miles of each other. One is in the top 100 high schools in America, and the other is in the bottom 100 high schools of America. The top school isn’t accepting waivers, and we’re zoned for the bottom school. So we’re likely going to have to sell our house, and move into an apartment in a better section for the kids high school years. We know three families that have done that already- intact families with advanced degrees, well-compensated professional careers, the works- in apartments, to get access to particular schools.
With apologies for the delay, Ari, the site has been holding my comments for moderation for a day now, apparently because they have triggered some flag.
I am recomposing my post and will attempt to resubmit it, hoping to discover, amend, and remove the offending portions as I go along.
At least two of my brothers were enrolled in and graduated from this magnet program, which happened to be housed in the high school they would have been attending anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science/Engineering_Specialized_Learning_Center
While we were not aware of this program’s existence when we chose to move to the town, we knew the area’s schools had a solid reputation. The demographics almost *dictated* it, including substantial numbers of Jews, Asians, and white Roman Catholics, all of whose families (like ours) sought better and safer lives than New York City could provide.
As you can see from the Wikipedia page, the required course load there was substantial, even more impressive than what I had undertaken as a student myself back in the city. Consider the following:
“If this center was ranked as a separate high school, they would rank #2 out of more than 27,000 U.S. high schools based on SAT scores alone.”
Newsweek: America’s Best High Schools, 2011
There is no question that this most impressive school-within-a-school plays a tremendous role in the future academic and professional success of its students. That said, for such an intense academic program to be viable, an ambitious STUDENT BODY is an absolute prerequisite. For without the latter, that ultra-advanced course of study would be of utility to no one: a symphony without an orchestra to perform it.
I submit that the very hardest-working students of this area achieved a degree of critical mass, and essentially self-selected such academic rigor. The district, to its credit, simply did its part by developing a curriculum matched to the kids’ potential.
Continuing, note throughout my comments the repeated emphasis on the importance of the families’ commitment to education, which must be the *rule* rather than the exception within the community served.
Without this, the local schools will likely be mediocre at best; and even where good schools are available, without high expectations on the families’ part those schools will struggle mightily to provide even an *adequate* education.
Good middle class and upper middle-class communities collectively reinforce those expectations for all involved — and identifying such communities serves as an indirect way to find solid schools.
In contrast, parents (or more likely, single mothers) in poor neighborhoods often display the attitude that it is the SCHOOL’S responsibility ALONE to educate, with no parental involvement necessary other than token conferences with teachers once a year. Whether this approach is attributable to ignorance, laziness, or plain neglect, when such families become the norm in a community, the schools obligated to serve it are doomed — they are swimming against the tide.
This is a primary reason to withdraw support from our current system of education: less-fortunate families who actually *want* their children to escape these failing, dangerous schools have little chance of success.
But you keep throwing around relatively innocuous concepts like “charter schools”, “home schooling”, and “geographic waivers”, as if we should consider these the avenues to victory. You further offer that God may have informally found his way back into some of these classrooms!
Am I to consider that latter point some grand concession the professional “educators” have made, when at least a MAJORITY of Americans *already* believe in the importance of school prayer (or at least do not object)?
As conservatives, we need to STOP negotiating with the politicians and the bureaucrats, START rejecting what they care to offer us, and most importantly, begin DEMANDING a return to core principles. Schools must be SEVERED from federal funding and -control as a start; and the Democrats need for yet another political football be damned.
Furthermore, *VOUCHERS* must be awarded against the PRE-EXISTING BUDGETS of these schools — and liberals should not take it personally: it’s buying out a child’s “right” to an education at a discount, at a time when budgets *at all government levels* are strained to breaking point.
Eventually, the goal must be to ELIMINATE *all* ties between our schools and government, and RECLAIM education as a personal, familial, and community responsibility — like parochial schools and higher education are NOW.
To explain, requiring families to pay their children’s tuition DIRECTLY is the only way to end our financial insulation from these costs, and bring them under control permanently.
These schools’ runaway budgets have made local property-tax assessments in excess of $10,000 commonplace. In some towns here in New Jersey, annual cost per pupil exceeds $40,000 — with DISMAL results! See the interactive charts here:
http://www.csinj.org/schoolspending/
It’s no different from healthcare — the other part of the economy where government is heavily involved: unless WE are the ones DIRECTLY financing our children’s education, inflation in this sector is guaranteed to outstrip the general rate, as it has now for *decades* — and threatens to break our budgetary backs.
We must return to core principles. In other words, how things worked BEFORE the Department of Education, the AFT, and the NEA. When government minded it’s own damn business. When a more *vigorous* people ASSUMED RESPONSIBILITY. And when COMMUNITIES decided how to educate their children — whether those communities were defined geographically, religiously, or otherwise.
Lastly, and most of all, if it’s the quality of education our children receive you primarily care about, I would state the following:
When, come that first day of school in September, there is a check
• stuffed in every child’s backpack
• worth many thousands of dollars
• and made out to the school SPECIFICALLY CHOSEN BY HIS FAMILY
– and whether in the form of a government-provided voucher, a debit drawn from his parents’ bank account, or both — the level of concern schools demonstrate for the opinions of parents will, shall we say, be *considerably heightened*.
Good luck with the education of your children, Ari.
I’m still surprised The First Queen didn’t give Michael Phelps a well-deserved scolding about his horrific died and for being such a negative example to all aspiring athletes.
If only Phelps had followed Her Wisdomness he’d probably have 170 medals by now, instead of a measly 20-something.
Michelle Obama was totally patronizing and rude to Gabby Douglas. The tiny little gymnast said she celebrated getting her first gold medal by going to McDonald’s for a breakfast sandwich with her team, before heading to the next part of the competition. Michelle Obama dressed her down for this.
Can you imagine being rude to such an shining, positive young lady?
But M’chelle has chastised Gabby Douglas, after winning an Olympic Gold Medal, for splurging on a single fargin’ EGG MCMUFFIN.
Qu’elle Horror!
http://articles.latimes.com/2012/aug/14/news/la-pn-michelle-obama-gabby-douglas-backlash-20120814
I can’t wait to see both of their backsides on November 8th.
her kids are eating pizza today at the posh private school the obama’s send them to instead of the public schools they champion…
https://www.sidwell.edu/mobile/index.aspx?v=c&mid=375&t=Lunch%20Menus
This is another classic case of the government taking over the rights and responsibility of the parent. And who is MEshelle to get a bill passed? I don’t remember her running for co-president. Her efforts for her pet cause would be better placed elsewhere; such as, tending to her own business. I don’t need for a ****** in the White House to tell me what and how much my child should eat – at school or anywhere else.
I don’t know about you guys, but when I was a kid (15 years ago) School lunches were barely edible. What ever plans Michele has must be an improvement over sub-standard, highly processed food they sold us in the 90s. Kudos, Michele!
Our local school district is considering opting out of the federal lunch program because of this well intentioned but not well thought out program. I believe they said the feds reimburse the district only 6 cents per meal for the priviledge of participating in the now more costly lunch program. There is also the same problem of the kids not being willing to eat food offered. Our district plans to develop a healthy menu the kids will eat and let the feds keep their pennies and rules to themselves.
Did someone beg and plead Michelle Obama to get involved
with food lunches because I think this is one
case when first ladies should just but out.
I forgot that athletes need those big meals
at lunch to give them the strength and stamina
to do well in sports. Eating a vegetarian
meal is fine for adults but kids between 8-12
I think that is a horrible idea.
If you want a vegetarian feed them
that way at home but at school
a nourishing meal doesn’t have to
be just vegetables, legumes and nuts
fgs.
This is nothing new. Many years ago, during the early 1950′s when at grammar school, I was served a entire plate of state run school food…cauliflower. I refused to eat it. The principle found out I refused to eat my cauliflower and he called my mom. She had to leave her job come to the school and proceeded to sit by my side cajoling me to eat the cauliflower. I refused. The lunch hour turned into 3 hours and I still refused to eat it. The school day was over and I still sat in the lunch room with that plate of cauliflower sitting their uneaten. The final bell rang and it was time for me to go home whereupon my mom was told she could take me home. I was all of 7 years old. It was then I learned to hate authoritarians and have counted myself against all tyrants. To this day I will not eat cauliflower. So much for dictators like the Obama’s. Let them try to get me to follow their edicts and I will personally tell them face-to-face, if ever given the chance, to go stick it where the sun don’t shine.
A few years ago, the school informed us that our boys had to get pertussis shots before school started. So I called our clinic to arrange a visit, but was informed that they couldn’t give the shots. Why not? Well, their rules stated that they had to have a pediatrician on duty to give kids shots. OK, why is that a problem. Well, there are no pediatricians. You mean on duty. No, none at all. Why not? Well, they all got mad and quit. On to plan B.
I called public health. Could they give the boys shots? Sure, just show up at the clinic. I drove the boys 8 miles to their facility. The first thing you notice in the waiting room is that you’re the only ones speaking English. Interesting. I go to the desk. Please fill out this form, identifying which free program you are part of. Well, I don’t qualify for any of the programs, so I offer to pay cash. The nurse gets angry and tells me to just designate one, they won’t check. I say I can’t do that. They say why not, it says right on the form nobody will check. I say because it would be a lie. Well then, come back Thursday. On Thursday, all shots are free. I don’t want to come back Thursday, I want to pay for a shot. Well, it’s unusual, but OK. That will be $1.50. $1.50 per shot? No, $1.50 for all of the shots you want. Wonderful. We must be in wonderland, I think I just saw a White Rabbit hop by. Welcome to socialist paradise.
My husband and I are now retired. We were talking this morning on how in the world did we ever survive in our younger days without all the restrictions on our food, our playground games, car seats, bikes, sports., etc.,
Amazing that the govt think they have to be the nannies of our lives.
Pay attention people this is what Communism/Socialism/Marxism looks like. If you think it will stop here you will see. It will happen in every aspect of your life. Go ahead and vote Obama.
Years ago, Highland Park asked to be incorporated into Dallas. Dallas didn’t want them. Highland Park and University Park formed the Park Cities School District. They took no federal money. Minnie, the cook at Armstrong Elementary, made the best pies ever. Mothers were on a waiting list to work in the cafeteria. Millionaire dads came to eat with their children, as much for the food as to spend time with their children.
Brings back memories! Yum!
Exactly how can a wookie give human dietary advice? Doesn’t seem right for some reason.
“students, particularly at the grade school level, cannot refuse anything on their trays — but, of course, cannot be forced to eat it.”
This is an outrage! Why should the government not have the ability to force children to eat mandated, healthy foods? Three or four cafeteria staff could easily seize recalcitrant children and force-feed them with a injector funnel, like the French do with their Strasbourg geese.
What a great learning opportunity. All those teachers of history, civics, govt, economics, debate, what better way to illustrate our system than with something that affects kids every day. Research into voting records of houses of congress, letter writing, peaceful protests, organization, lobbying, size of govt, fed vs states, debates over policies. I’ll bet kids would be engaged in the process.
It’s been a while since I had a kid in school and a very long while since I was in school myself but can’t kids still bring lunch from home?
Yeah, we’re still allowed to. Unless brown paper bags are outlawed for being too wasteful or something. The lunch lines have dramatically shortened this year after my school initiated the nutrition bill.
If Michelle ever decides to dump Barack and get a divorce, she should marry Mayor Bloomberg.
Has anyone considered that this school lunch power grab could be extended to the entire population or at least selected parts of it, if Obama and the Dems gain control (again) in 2013. Ways and means will be found, e.g. register receipts for the IRS 1040 proving that the person or family purchased a sufficient amount of “recommended” or mandated food items.
One might expect the TANF (food stamp) people to find that their purchases of food with TANF funds would be limited to “healthful” and “nutritious” items, as determined by the Ag dept. or the “Secretary” (of HHS), as mentioned so often in the 2000 plus pages of “Obamacare.” Perhaps “Obamacare” provisions and regulations could be adapted for the purpose of “mandating” food items and preparation for complete coverage for the person or family by Obamacare.
Big Brother is watching (and Big Sister)and will make sure we Proles make the right decisions (Orwell’s 1984).
All other things aside, my concern here is this: When did commom citizens start ‘requesting legislation’, and getting it passed (“Michelle Obama went to a lame-duck session of Congress with a request: pass a nutrition bill”)? Mrs. Obama may be the presidents wife, but she was neither elected to any executive or legislateve office nor appointed to any other branch of government that initiates laws of the land.
I bought one of the new school salads last week and they told me I had to take another item because I didn’t have enough fruit. I looked at the cashier, at the huge tomato slices, and then back at her. Really?
But that’s beside the point. If people are going to eat unhealthy, that’s their problem. Government shouldn’t be controlling what we eat.
It’s kids like you that give me hope for the future.
Georgia or Arkansas peaches yes…
Kansas peaches?
No wonder they were trashed.
I really don’t care about any of the opinions posted. What Michele, her husband and the rest of the government are telling us is that we are not capable of raising and taking care of our own children. Are they worried about the kids health and weight because the new health care system will ration care as well. I am being some what tongue in cheek, but i would think most of you people would be insulted by people you don’t know, and for that matter don’t do the jobs they have well, feel like they know what’s best for all of us. Big government is so disconnected from the people, that they think what is good for one is good for all. How about if on social issues we let communities decide for them selves what they want. We should all be helping each other but it should be our choice, not politics that will lead to ultimate power for an elite few, i.e. most of the politicians in Washington, Democrats and Republicans. Maybe if people are not doing what the government thinks is good for their children they should be taken away from them and then they should be fixed so they don’t have anymore.
As an aside, Michelle Obama seems to have solved the hunger problem for the homeless. They can now dumpster dive behind the schools and gnosh on all that healthy food discarded in the trash. Brilliant!!!
I am 65. Today, up to 85% or more of urban kids get “free” food. For them, not me, since I pay for it. This did not exist, anywhere, before. It is not my job to pay for your kids’ lunch etc. Football practice at 6:15 am? Are you out of your mind? Driving 230 miles round-trip, spending your whole weekend, so your 11-year old girl can go play lacrosse somewhere? Are you out of your mind?
Only a minority of children bought truly awful cafeteria food when I was a kid. Michelle Obama is an angry, race-hating dope with way too much free time. You are mostly bovine creatures, can’t see your nose in front of your face. Football before sun-up, for little boys? Can you explain? You are NUTS!
AND it doesn’t help that the kids are NO longer allowed to actually play and run during recess.
Let alone them trying to play outside without goofball parent’s telling them they can’t do any real running and all. Sports for kids are now a joke.
This is very intrusive of the government. I’m a retired person (so not young!) and was sent to school every day grade school through high school, with a lunch packed at home. I had a teacher once tell me that my lunch was not healthy food (cheese sandwich, small bag of chips and milk). My parents couldn’t afford the school lunch prices but we got plenty to eat at home and I enjoyed my meal. For whatever reason I never liked meat so my mother always made either cheese or peanut butter sandwich. We were always active. I won a couple of ribbons in track. Plus we lived on red beans and cornbread at home for many of our evening meals….we all survived and thrived!
Hitler did the same thing. Provided only enough calories to starve to death slowly. I would like to know how this number of calories was determined. Allowing the government to do one thing for the people, eventually allows the government to do everything. This is an example of that.
Yes Ronnie he is indeed, and all three of us know how and why. On information and belief that child’s life regime ought be reviewed by a state social worker. From here it looks abusive.
Michelle Obama said it best at the DNC when she stated, “Being the President of the United States doesn’t change you, no it reveals you.”
Ann Romney looked at Michelle Obama’s video and answered, “I second that motion, but I want to state that running for the presidency of the United States also doesn’t change you, no it also reveals you.”
“The district’s principal, Jim Bolden, said that at the beginning of the year, food service put fresh peaches on the students’ trays, only to helplessly watch them be thrown away by students who didn’t want them.”
How did the district become so spineless? Make the kids sit there until they finish their food.
So. Is King Putt’s wife really concerned about nutrition, or is did she just shill for another concealed farm subsidy program?
Hey, Beefman!
Who am I supposed to be cheering this weekend? Your kid has a fan, here. He’s the dream- great kid, great team, loving family. College! So he’s really good! And smart!
I’d ask privately, but the link doesn’t work! It’ll be cool knowing someone who knows someone on the team, sort of electronically!
We need gov’t to go to DC, do THE BARE MINIMUM REQUIRED BY CONSTITUTION, then the entire rest of their time, UNDOING previous legislation! One by one, day by day, they should go through ALL PREVIOUSLY PASSED LEGISLATION AND GET RID OF EVERYTHING THAT IS NOT ESSENTIAL AND/OR DOES NOT WORK, ETC., until they’ve gone ALL THE WAY BACK TO FOUNDING! Then pass a bill that gives rules to follow for any/all legislation passed, like first and foremost it must be OBVIOUSLY constitutional or it cannot be brought to floor, it MUST DEAL WITH ONE THING AND ONE THING ONLY, so nothing can be attached, IT CANNOT BE CHANGED, so they can’t play that (illegal) trick they did with healthcare where they took an unrelated bill, gutted it, and put in healthcare all while calling it the same thing, etc. etc.
UN-DO IT!!! MAKE US FREE AGAIN!!!!
Lots MORE push-back from students since this article went up!
Me, I have an allergy to peaches, but they are good for throwing. Silly to throw them out.
I just have one thing to say I AM GLAD I am not in school at this day and age! I was in CC, wrestling, basketball, and powerlifting. There is no way I could have made through my afternoon athletic workout on 800 calories and if I would have brought the specific amount of calories I needed to consume (3000!) the school would take it away and would have fined me ( I lived out on my own) for keeping my body in shape, and keeping my scholarships for athletics