Food Politics

So, why are we spending the extra money to process these foods if they would be better served in the unprocessed state, i.e. why can’t we send out plain chicken pieces instead of processed chicken nuggets?
Is anybody accountable for making the appropriate changes to have the USDA commodity products reflect the USDA nutrition pyramid? Would seem to be a no-brainer to me to make the changes promptly rather than simply document the problems and continue repeating them.

I don’t even have kids but I am OUTRAGED about school meals. It’s like we’d be better off if schools didn’t offer meals at all, and everyone was forced to bring food. Then at least parents might see what their kids eat every day. It also makes me wonder what they serve in other institutional cafeterias, like jails.

@ Sheila – I may be wrong but I think many of the reasons for processed foods are business and profit-based. Real food spoils, processed food keeps.

I suspect one of the reasons for the commodity imbalance is that meat and cheese are large-scale commodities, produced by large-scale producers, and fruits/veggies less so.

My kids go to a school where they don’t have school lunches. They bring their lunch every day, and the class has access to an oven for reheating. Lunch becomes part of the education, as they are responsible for recycling, composting and ensuring that each other’s lunches are nutritious and balanced.

It takes extra time, and sadly is probably more expensive than buying lunches to do this….exactly why we are in the mess we’re in!

School lunches are horrid, no doubt about it. I’m curious about the the report though. Isn’t it possible that so much money is spent on meat and dairy because they are simply more expensive?

I’m very concerned about school lunch as well but my gut tells me that the school lunch has little to do with obesity, although reports and discussions about the state of school lunch often place a hypothetical link between the two.

The food is low quality, ie, highly processed and containing way more processing ingredients than a wholesome lunch ever should, but you know what? It doesn’t taste very good. I’ve spent quite a bit of time at school during lunchtime. The kids who eat the school lunch rarely eat all of it, and if they do, no one is going back for seconds. The portions are acceptable and fruits and veggies are always available. Milk is the only beverage available other than the occasional mini cup of juice.

Many packed lunches, on the other hand, appear to be way too high in calories for a young child. I see kids coming to elementary school with bags (not single serve either) of chips, sodas and other 20 ounce sweetened beverages, candy, and even full sized fast food meals. Most of it pre-packaged and processed as well. Which lunch is the most likely to cause obesity?

It is indeed a travesty that the meals we feed to our schoolchildren are of such poor quality generally. What is especially galling is how little of the money budgeted for school meals goes towards the actual food, while a majority of the allocation gets eaten up by administrative costs.
However, Child Nutrition Reauthorization is coming up next year. Hopefully, that will give people a chance to tell their elected officials to challenge the status quo by pushing for less red tape and more attention to nutrition.