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Republicans work to scrap lunch program (1 Viewer)

boots11234

boots11234

Footballguy
Mrs O

im all for kids eating healthy as I have two fit school aged kids. These lunches however are awful. 

Hope they come up with something better.  

 
School lunches aren't remotely healthy at the moment, so I'm all for scrapping the current program.  However, I have zero faith in government's ability to do it any better.

 
Rich Conway said:
School lunches aren't remotely healthy at the moment, so I'm all for scrapping the current program.  However, I have zero faith in government's ability to do it any better.
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Kids will eat the stuff they like & toss the rest. SHOCKING! If they aren't eating "healthy" at home, don't expect any different behavior at school. 

 
boots11234 said:
Mrs O

im all for kids eating healthy as I have two fit school aged kids. These lunches however are awful. 

Hope they come up with something better.  
Click to expand...
The regs definitely have made it tougher on schools to provide lunches that students like, but...

the crap in the pics from that link is not the fault of Michelle Obama.  No one but the kitchen staff (in particular the supervisor that does the ordering and menu) and the school admin that let that be served is to blame.  Schools can and do provide much better food than that, even under the Obama rules. My bet is those schools served crappy food before the regs and will still serve crappy lunches if they are rolled back

 
I've had lunch with my son numerous times.  While their are obvious potential improvement opportunities I found them to be better than what I had as a kid and a lot healthier.  

 
its crazy how this is so hard.   people feed their kids crap at home and don't get them any exercise so the school has to come up with the only healthy meal they're going to eat.  should be the other way around.   

 
I'm pretty familiar with school lunches.  I can say that 75% of the time the cafeteria food is much healthier than what the kids bring from home.

Every day, in addition to some sort of entree like pizza or roasted chicken or corn dogs, there is fruit and a salad.  Now I'm sure the school food could be healthier but you should see what these kids bring from home.  Big bags  of chips/takis, candy, sodas, etc.  Of course some of the kids bring healthy food as well but most of them include pure junk.

My only real gripe about the current lunch guidelines is the caloric limit.  Every lunch averages about 600 calories.  Now that may seem reasonable but we've got 12 year old girls that weigh 75lbs and 14 year old boys that are over 6ft and weigh 175+.

I think it's pretty silly that one of my 8th graders that plays club basketball and goes to PE every day get the equivalent of a Happy Meal for lunch.

 
So this is about 0.001% of the unconstitutional stuff the federal government does.

However, I guess we have to start paring the stuff back somewhere.

 
Reg Lllama of Brixton said:
I'm pretty familiar with school lunches.  I can say that 75% of the time the cafeteria food is much healthier than what the kids bring from home.

Every day, in addition to some sort of entree like pizza or roasted chicken or corn dogs, there is fruit and a salad.  Now I'm sure the school food could be healthier but you should see what these kids bring from home.  Big bags  of chips/takis, candy, sodas, etc.  Of course some of the kids bring healthy food as well but most of them include pure junk.

My only real gripe about the current lunch guidelines is the caloric limit.  Every lunch averages about 600 calories.  Now that may seem reasonable but we've got 12 year old girls that weigh 75lbs and 14 year old boys that are over 6ft and weigh 175+.

I think it's pretty silly that one of my 8th graders that plays club basketball and goes to PE every day get the equivalent of a Happy Meal for lunch.
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Pretty much the same at my kids school. We told the kids before they started school: if you want to eat the school lunch, you need to grab one fruit and one veggie on top of the main entree.

And they do this.  

Easy for me to say: my kids have two parents at home who strive to provide a balanced meal every night. At some point as a society we need to tackle these problems at their core: teach families how to feed their children. But this is a monstrous issue with no real solution. 

This part of America makes me sad and frustrated.

 
I used to work in a school nutrition department.  The meals they served were fantastic. It was much better than the crap they served when I was a kid.  It didn't look anything like the pictures in the article.  I guess it's just a local thing.

 
ChiefD said:
Pretty much the same at my kids school. We told the kids before they started school: if you want to eat the school lunch, you need to grab one fruit and one veggie on top of the main entree.

And they do this.  

Easy for me to say: my kids have two parents at home who strive to provide a balanced meal every night. At some point as a society we need to tackle these problems at their core: teach families how to feed their children. But this is a monstrous issue with no real solution. 

This part of America makes me sad and frustrated.
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It's the same way for most things.  We teachers/schools should be the ones that have to teach crap like nutrition, hygiene, sexual health and common courtesy.   Unfortunately we end up having to.

 
There is plenty I don't like about MO's school lunch plan. It is too aggressive. However, to blame that gross mush or bad food on her is nuts. Maybe she is responsible for small portions, but not low quality food. That is on your local districts selling their food services to the lower bidder. You can go to your board meetings and make this a topic of conversation, put pressure on, vote people out. Just don't act like Michelle Obama said schools have to serve mush or flavorless gross chicken sandwiches. 

 
BowieMercs said:
There are far too many kids who otherwise would go hungry without school breakfast/lunch to roll it back.
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I'm not for having kids go hungry, but there are other programs to help feed needy families.  Nothing else really needs to change in the delivery of the food to the kids, just that their lunches should be paid for - even if through government assistance.  Why can't welfare cover that (even if the net is the same amount of money)?  Why can't the kids/parents pay for the lunch/breakfast with their welfare debit cards?

 
Steeler said:
I'm not for having kids go hungry, but there are other programs to help feed needy families.  Nothing else really needs to change in the delivery of the food to the kids, just that their lunches should be paid for - even if through government assistance.  Why can't welfare cover that (even if the net is the same amount of money)?  Why can't the kids/parents pay for the lunch/breakfast with their welfare debit cards?
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If you give more money to the parents to feed the kids breakfast & lunch 5 days a week, how many of those kids will actually get breakfast and lunch?  /thread

 
BowieMercs said:
If you give more money to the parents to feed the kids breakfast & lunch 5 days a week, how many of those kids will actually get breakfast and lunch?  /thread
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They should have been born to better parents... kidding.

Like so many other government programs it's expanded too much.  EVERY kid in elementary, middle, and HS in my school district can get a free breakfast - seems a bit extreme to me.  Also, something like 80% of the kids at the elementary school get a free lunch.  One of the kids getting a free lunch actually made fun of my kid because she DOES NOT get a free lunch - super lame.  Many schools offer free DINNER to ENTIRE FAMILIES in my school district... just absolutely ridiculous.  Also, this actually happened; my kid got her lunch and when she got to the cashier realized she had no money remaining in her account and didn't have cash, so they THREW HER LUNCH IN THE TRASH and gave her a cheese sandwich.

I'm all for helping people, but I think we need to change the way the help is presented so that it seems like assistance rather than a right/entitlement/whatever. 

 
Steeler said:
I'm not for having kids go hungry, but there are other programs to help feed needy families.  Nothing else really needs to change in the delivery of the food to the kids, just that their lunches should be paid for - even if through government assistance.  Why can't welfare cover that (even if the net is the same amount of money)?  Why can't the kids/parents pay for the lunch/breakfast with their welfare debit cards?
Click to expand...
Nothing is wrong with this in theory.  The sad fact is that there are many parents out there that refuse to provide their kids with basic necessities.  Doesn't matter if they receive govt assistance or not.  

I teach in a pretty decent district as far as  income level is concerned.  But every year we have a couple of kids that obviously aren't being provided for (clothes, shoes, food, soap etc).  

At the beginning of this year the guy that teaches next door to me noticed that he had a kid that wasn't eating lunch.  He finds out that the kid's mother hadn't signed him up for the free lunch program.  Now our school offers a very basic peanut butter sandwich lunch for those kids who, for whatever reason, have no lunch at all.  I guess this kid was too embarrassed to take advantage of that.

So my buddy starts bringing an extra sack lunch every day to give to this poor kid on the sly.   After a couple of weeks the kid's mom finally signs him up for the program.  Seems like the problem was solved.  But then the kid lets my buddy know that the school lunch is typically the only decent meal he will have each day.  So my buddy continues to bring him an extra lunch so he can take it home.  

A few of us heard about this so we've been chipping in.  At Xmas I always get a handful of gift cards from students (mostly Starbucks but some from Subway, Baja Fresh etc).  I passed them on to my buddy so the kid could have some decent meals over the break.

 
Steeler said:
I'm not for having kids go hungry, but there are other programs to help feed needy families.  Nothing else really needs to change in the delivery of the food to the kids, just that their lunches should be paid for - even if through government assistance.  Why can't welfare cover that (even if the net is the same amount of money)?  Why can't the kids/parents pay for the lunch/breakfast with their welfare debit cards?
Click to expand...
Couple of things.

Being on welfare automatically qualifies you for the free lunch program.

The cost is reimbursed to the school, so it's already being paid for through government assistance.  In fact, school districts make more money feeding free kids than they do from charging kids full price. 

 
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Steeler said:
They should have been born to better parents... kidding.

Like so many other government programs it's expanded too much.  EVERY kid in elementary, middle, and HS in my school district can get a free breakfast - seems a bit extreme to me.  Also, something like 80% of the kids at the elementary school get a free lunch.  One of the kids getting a free lunch actually made fun of my kid because she DOES NOT get a free lunch - super lame.  Many schools offer free DINNER to ENTIRE FAMILIES in my school district... just absolutely ridiculous.  Also, this actually happened; my kid got her lunch and when she got to the cashier realized she had no money remaining in her account and didn't have cash, so they THREW HER LUNCH IN THE TRASH and gave her a cheese sandwich.

I'm all for helping people, but I think we need to change the way the help is presented so that it seems like assistance rather than a right/entitlement/whatever. 
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That means you live in a pretty poor school district.  The income requirements to receive free lunch are actually pretty strict, IMO.  Family of 4 needs a household income of less than $45K.  That's basically 2 parents working $10/hr jobs with 2 kids.

The school district I worked for had an all electronic balance system tied to the student ID.  A paid student who doesn't have money in their account can still get like a week's worth of meals below a $0 balance.  The system was set up to make sure kids were eating.  Once you went below that negative balance, the kids had to eat a cheese sandwich.  Of course they threw the lunch away at the register.  You can't just put served food back for someone else to eat.  No telling what the kid did to the food between the time they got it and made it to the register.  That's just sanitary common sense.

 
SacramentoBob said:
You can't just put served food back for someone else to eat.  No telling what the kid did to the food between the time they got it and made it to the register.  That's just sanitary common sense.
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I get it.  But she was like 5 cents short or something for one day and they tossed the lunch.   At that point someone should have pulled a nickel out of their pocket and let her eat the damn lunch.  OR, you know, give her the lunch for free until tomorrow when she could pay for it.  This school district doesn't have a week worth of negative days or whatever you described - she was short one day and boom - cheese sandwich.

I'm done complaining about this now - thanks for the information guys.

 
Steeler said:
I get it.  But she was like 5 cents short or something for one day and they tossed the lunch.   At that point someone should have pulled a nickel out of their pocket and let her eat the damn lunch.  OR, you know, give her the lunch for free until tomorrow when she could pay for it.  This school district doesn't have a week worth of negative days or whatever you described - she was short one day and boom - cheese sandwich.

I'm done complaining about this now - thanks for the information guys.
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That's on the person working. We give kids free lunches all the time. We aren't ever going to let a kid go hungry.

 
Reg Lllama of Brixton said:
I'm pretty familiar with school lunches.  I can say that 75% of the time the cafeteria food is much healthier than what the kids bring from home.

Every day, in addition to some sort of entree like pizza or roasted chicken or corn dogs, there is fruit and a salad.  Now I'm sure the school food could be healthier but you should see what these kids bring from home.  Big bags  of chips/takis, candy, sodas, etc.  Of course some of the kids bring healthy food as well but most of them include pure junk.

My only real gripe about the current lunch guidelines is the caloric limit.  Every lunch averages about 600 calories.  Now that may seem reasonable but we've got 12 year old girls that weigh 75lbs and 14 year old boys that are over 6ft and weigh 175+.

I think it's pretty silly that one of my 8th graders that plays club basketball and goes to PE every day get the equivalent of a Happy Meal for lunch.
Click to expand...
:confused:  My daughter is about to turn 12 and weighs like 90 at least, and certainly not overweight.

The average height -- 50th percentile -- for a 12-year-old girl is 59 inches and the average weight is 93 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts. At this age, boy are very similar and have an average height of 58 inches and weight of 90 pounds.Apr 14, 2015

 
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Long Ball Larry said:
:confused:  My daughter is about to turn 12 and weighs like 90 at least, and certainly not overweight.

The average height -- 50th percentile -- for a 12-year-old girl is 59 inches and the average weight is 93 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts. At this age, boy are very similar and have an average height of 58 inches and weight of 90 pounds.Apr 14, 2015
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I think he just meant that 600 calories is not enough for a 12 year old.

 
Long Ball Larry said:
:confused:  My daughter is about to turn 12 and weighs like 90 at least, and certainly not overweight.

The average height -- 50th percentile -- for a 12-year-old girl is 59 inches and the average weight is 93 pounds, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention growth charts. At this age, boy are very similar and have an average height of 58 inches and weight of 90 pounds.Apr 14, 2015
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So you're saying that it is impossible that there is a female student at my school that weighs 75lbs because the average is 93?

 
ChiefD said:
Pretty much the same at my kids school. We told the kids before they started school: if you want to eat the school lunch, you need to grab one fruit and one veggie on top of the main entree.

And they do this.  

Easy for me to say: my kids have two parents at home who strive to provide a balanced meal every night. At some point as a society we need to tackle these problems at their core: teach families how to feed their children. But this is a monstrous issue with no real solution. 

This part of America makes me sad and frustrated.
Click to expand...
No doubt but if I'm honest I'm more frustrated that we can't as humans feed people globally.  Yes we should teach our kids good habits and the government could do better given the funds available but I'm happy we are able to give breakfast and lunch to a lot of kids who need it - even if it's not the healthiest .

 
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