Food Politics

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[...] Check it out! While looking through the blogosphere we stumbled on an interesting post today.Here’s a quick excerptKentucky and Oregon have initiated reasonable school food policies, according to the latest report from Center for Science in the Public Interest, but two-thirds of the states still get bad grades on their report cards. … [...]

Yes, and once again, saturated fat is fingered as something important to reduce, yet scant attention is paid to the high sugar and starch content of the “new and improved” school lunches that are labeled “healthy”: lard-free bean burritos, zero nutrition mac n’ something- suggesting-cheese, pizza, something-like-chicken nuggets, fruit juice, packaged fruit products, Jello, chocolate milk, supersweet yogurt, etc. There isn’t even one school lunch item at my son’s school program (supposedly one of the better ones) that isn’t either fat-free, low fat, or really high in sugar/starch. Nothing they serve is truly fresh and wholesome or anything like real food, not even the fruit – it comes diced or pureed in plastic sealed cups and extra sugary juice. It is any wonder the teachers can’t really count on really teaching after lunch? The kids bounce, then crash from the sugar high, then the sugar low from all the insulin.

This is why my kid only has a school lunch once in a blue moon. If they sold whole milk, real pieces of chicken, real meat, real veggies, real cheese, a less starchy burrito, and pizza once week instead of daily, I might consider it. But it is food made off-premises at a centralized location for all the elementary schools (which don’t even have a proper kitchen anymore), and far too processed, IMO. And there simply isn’t enough good saturated fat in it. It has been stripped out so that the food isn’t wholesome anymore.

Yes, that’s what I said. Old fashioned, naturally saturated fat (go lard and butterfat!!!!) like our great-great-grandparents ate was stable in storage (reasonable lengths of storage) and cooking (unlike modern industrial seed oils) and was healthy for growing kids and their growing brains and nervous systems (which are made of 60-70% saturated fat). The body stores excess carbohydrates as saturated fat for a reason.

Saturated fat is not making kids (or anyone else) fat, nor, do I suspect that excessive calories are causing the obesity, either, unless they are excessive sugars/carb calories. But sugars (including the massiv amounts of fructose) and starches have profound effects on insulin production, the fat-storing hormone. Fats do not trigger an insulin (fat storing) response. This is found in any college level biochemistry book. Is it any wonder that T2 diabetes is showing up in kids now? These days kids eat a lot of sugary/starchy non-foods, but hey, someone is watching the saturated fat content. It’s time to look somewhere else.

These CSPI jokers are just plain scary…..what a waste of resources.

I am not sure why so many people are against a non-profit group that is doing great things to protect the health of others, in this case school children.
The school foods served are just ridiculous. Too many fried foods, refined grains/white flour, too much sugar. In general just too many ingredients and too much processed junk.
I’ve seen on the menu things like (fried)Cheese-nuggets for lunch (this is their entree??), a corn dog or pizza for breakfast. Do we care what our children are putting into their bodies? CSPI does.

The saturated fat levels in school foods are a problem. Diets high in a saturated fat are correlated with an increased incidence of heart disease, atherosclerosis and stroke. Foods containing these fats are also a source of many calories–of concern for many. People over the age of two should follow a low-saturated fat diet, not to be confused with a low-fat diet.

CSPI makes a show of caring about kids, but I don’t think they care at all. They exist to serve themselves and their low fat vegetarian agenda; they are using school lunches as a forum (no one can argue that we need to look after kids, after all). CSPI has pushed the food supply in the wrong direction before (to more trans fats) and they’re doing it yet again (to higher starch and more unhealthful lab-created oils).

Daniel, you are clearly a smart fellow. Don’t take my word for it about saturated fat, but don’t ignore what I and others are realizing, either. Do a little digging *past* the politically correct info about saturated fat. The conventional advice is built on scientific quicksand (the unspoken truth is that at least 90% of all science will eventually be disproved – that is the way pursuit of knowledge works).

Saturated fat is not the problem in disease. We evolved with a diet of saturated fat; it makes our brain the way it is. Every day the saturated fat theory is melting away a bit more, but a lot of damage has been done in the meantime – massive wasting of research resources chasing the wrong data, negative trends in disease, making diabetes go from 28th cause of death in 1900 one of the top five at present), and ultimately millions of lives with reduced quality and premature deaths. That is what our war on saturated fat has done. If the truth about the conventional fat advice doesn’t get out, it will continue to happen to the next generation.

The over-processing of food, the sugars, the starches (those things I’m sure we can agree on), and the industrial seed oils (too high in omega 6s compared to the depleted or deficient omega 3s) are the major problems, not the saturated fats.

There’s hardly any saturated fat in school lunches anymore, and there hasn’t been for some years, yet kids are worse off, fatter, more hypertensive, more diabetic, and more prone to diseases that shouldn’t develop in kids!!!. I don’t blame that all on school lunches, though. Nearly all Americans have been reducing saturated fat in their diet, including the kids, yet the health of the nation continues to plummet. That isn’t proof of course, but doesn’t it give pause to consider that perhaps it wasn’t the problem after all? The data was there all along, but it has been buried in politically and commercially biased weak science for several decades. Finally, now some scientists are getting funding again for studies that are more fully exploring how the high sugar and starch content are further excelerating the incidence of modern nutritional diseases the last few generations.

We have been sold a bill of goods on saturated fats and their supposed role in disease. Anyone who looks at this with a open mind should see that something went wrong a few generations ago.