Food Frustration

Back in January I posted about THE LUNCH LADY, a teacher in Illinois who was eating the school lunch every day and reporting on it.

Now she's coming up on her 100th post, and has taken a moment to reflect on what she's learned HERE, the gist of which is that school lunches have declined at an incredible rate, 95% of the shit is frozen and packaged, and the USDA guidelines are completely fucking whack. To sum:

The project has taught me that our nation’s school lunch program is broken. I believe that it's not a matter of increasing the funds: the National School Lunch Program needs to be re-engineered. We need a renewed emphasis on fresh food. We must invest in our “lunch ladies” and teach them how to cook properly. The current USDA guidelines need to change so that they make sense. Finally school cafeterias have to “go green” by returning to metal spoons, forks and real plates.

Obviously I'm not an expert on school lunches, but the incredible thing to me is that every study I've ever read or seen comes to the conclusion that not only is fresh (let's say "actual" for now) food immensely healthier for the children and improves their behavior and academic performance, but is actually CHEAPER! So it's not even like we can say well, the kids are eating shit but we're saving a ton of benjamins. So it's a lose/lose/lose situation that seems, if I might use an industry term, needlessly fucking retarded. Outbidding ourselves with needless compromise.

A coupla weeks ago she had a guest blogger, Ed Bruske who writes The Slow Cook blog, who brings up some great points HERE:

Can you name a federal program that provides vital services to 10 percent of the U.S. population every day yet has not a single reporter from the mainstream media assigned to cover it on a sustained basis?

That would be the federal school meals $12 billion program, which feeds some 31 millions kids across the country Monday through Friday.

Finally, there must be a reason why school meal programs have been driven into a state of perpetual poverty where the average school loses 35 cents on every meal it serves. Unfortunately, there exists on the local level a kind of circular firing squad where everyone blames everyone else for the poor quality of school food, but complaining is frowned upon because "we're all trying as hard as we can." Meanwhile, lawmakers in Congress and in state capitals across the country sit blithely above the fray, tossing pennies at the problem. I don't normally subscribe to conspiracy theories, but the only people profiting from school food are giant food manufacturers like Tyson and ConAgra and big food service contractors like Chartwells, Sodexo, Aramark. The folks with fat lobbying budgets are making billions serving kids frozen pizza and chicken nuggets.

You know I'm a fan of big government, but it's hard to think of another federal program that, with their absurd regulations, is more damaging both in terms of public health and public finance than this shit. Even our stupid, wild over-spending for national defense can claim to give us some benefits, unlike this program which seems to serve no purpose other than making some private fat cats even richer from making your kids fat-fuck sugar addicts. Criminal.