@ lunchables in school lunches

[loira]

DD's school was featured on a program about innovative lunch programs, but it's not the norm here. Most elementary schools in my city don't have cafeterias. Parents are expected to send their child with lunch. At DD'S school, which is a K-12 public school, the lunch program is tied to a culinary arts program for the high schoolers. Younger kids are served only one choice of protein, or the vegetarian meal. Older kids can choose one of 3 protein options. Sides and dessert are the same for everyone. An example of a typical meal would be lamb brochettes, couscous salad and fruit for dessert. The school also provides assistance to families who need it and will cover the cost for kids whose parents are struggling. High schoolers in the culinary program can obtain some sort of food prep certification - DD is a long way off from that so I haven't looked into it.

I wish all schools had similar programs. I don't know if other provinces have a better system but here in BC it seems to be based on the school or maybe the school district?

[karinothing]

Dec 14, 2023 2:13:11 GMT -5 loira said:

DD's school was featured on a program about innovative lunch programs, but it's not the norm here. Most elementary schools in my city don't have cafeterias. Parents are expected to send their child with lunch. At DD'S school, which is a K-12 public school, the lunch program is tied to a culinary arts program for the high schoolers. Younger kids are served only one choice of protein, or the vegetarian meal. Older kids can choose one of 3 protein options. Sides and dessert are the same for everyone. An example of a typical meal would be lamb brochettes, couscous salad and fruit for dessert. The school also provides assistance to families who need it and will cover the cost for kids whose parents are struggling. High schoolers in the culinary program can obtain some sort of food prep certification - DD is a long way off from that so I haven't looked into it.

I wish all schools had similar programs. I don't know if other provinces have a better system but here in BC it seems to be based on the school or maybe the school district?

wow, that is really neat. Is your school small though? I just keep thinking if our school was K-12 it would be almost 4K kids. I can't imagine the high schoolers being able to cook all of that! I feel like even just the 700 elementary school would be a challenge. I do think that having a school that can cook the food is a better option in general (than relying on outside vendors). Our school relies on vendors and the cafeteria essentially heats of the meals (which I guess 700 students) but I think when I was growing up items were made in house (I know they were for HS because we had multiple choices and could customize them).  

[rhian]

Dec 13, 2023 18:54:36 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Dec 13, 2023 16:27:30 GMT -5 rhian said:

I follow a pediatric dietician on Instagram who has really helped me think differently about food, including processed food, and how I talk about it to my kid. She says it more eloquently than I will, and backed up with research evidence, but one of her main points is that if we want to teach kids to have a positive relationship with food and listen to their bodies, we need to stop talking about food with moralizing language. No calling food "bad" or "unhealthy" or "crap," or calling kids "good" or "bad" eaters, because that type of language leads to higher rates of disordered thinking about food (and eating disorders), and teaches kids to put particular foods on a pedestal and eat more/less of it than their body is telling them to do. She regularly posts examples of the lunchboxes she sends for her kids (aged 1-5) and they *gasp* include processed food sometimes!

Am I advocating for Lunchables in all schools? No. Do I think we need some serious change on how we provide school lunches in the US? Absolutely. But I think that getting all riled up about Lunchables in school cafeterias specifically because of this incorrect notion that they're trash food that provide no nutrients is missing the larger issues, and reinforcing negative ideas about our relationship with food.

Articles always make titles to grab people’s attention. It really isn’t about lunchables, it’s just a small part of the overall problem - how the food industry influences what is in schools regardless of whether it’s the best option for kids and how health outcomes for kids have gotten worse over the years.

"The weak standards that govern federally subsidized school lunches illustrate the power of the food industry in Congress and the outsize influence of food companies on the School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 school lunch personnel. While many nations have adopted more-nutritious school meals and stricter advertising standards, pizza sauce and french fries still count as vegetables for schoolchildren in the United States, and U.S. food companies remain virtually free to advertise to youngsters any way they like.
Together, these circumstances contribute to the country’s harrowing childhood obesity problem: Nearly 20 percent of children are obese, a rate nearly four times what it was in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and much higher than those in most other countries. The rates are worse for Black, Latino and Native American children, who make up the majority of students in Robeson County classrooms, and for low-income children across the United States, who eat most of the nearly 5 billion lunches served by the federal program each year."

Oh yes I agree, and I think the article, aside from the headline, did a good job of pointing to the various challenges. I was responding to comments here that seemed fixated on the Lunchables.

[neverfstop]

There are tons of concerns I have around food, nutritious choices, school meal affordability & accessibility, corporate support of big ag pushing instead of subsidizing more fresh fruits & vegetables, etc. Lunchables being served at school is low on the list of things to be outraged about.

Is this where I admit to grabbing a lunchable at a gas station a few times a year? I travel for work & we are usually on a tight schedule. It's more appealing than another fast food meal, protein bar, or other packaged food at the gas station in the middle of where. Also makes a great single-serve charcuterie board in a hotel room at night with a glass of wine

[wawa]

Dec 14, 2023 7:29:16 GMT -5 rhian said:

Dec 13, 2023 18:54:36 GMT -5 wanderingback said:

Articles always make titles to grab people’s attention. It really isn’t about lunchables, it’s just a small part of the overall problem - how the food industry influences what is in schools regardless of whether it’s the best option for kids and how health outcomes for kids have gotten worse over the years.

"The weak standards that govern federally subsidized school lunches illustrate the power of the food industry in Congress and the outsize influence of food companies on the School Nutrition Association, which represents 50,000 school lunch personnel. While many nations have adopted more-nutritious school meals and stricter advertising standards, pizza sauce and french fries still count as vegetables for schoolchildren in the United States, and U.S. food companies remain virtually free to advertise to youngsters any way they like.
Together, these circumstances contribute to the country’s harrowing childhood obesity problem: Nearly 20 percent of children are obese, a rate nearly four times what it was in the 1970s, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and much higher than those in most other countries. The rates are worse for Black, Latino and Native American children, who make up the majority of students in Robeson County classrooms, and for low-income children across the United States, who eat most of the nearly 5 billion lunches served by the federal program each year."

Oh yes I agree, and I think the article, aside from the headline, did a good job of pointing to the various challenges. I was responding to comments here that seemed fixated on the Lunchables.

I disagree. I think the article itself fixated on the lunchables. How many words did it waste on repeated harping on the 15 ingredient turkey and the specific numbers of how they tweaked the contents to fit the current guidelines and the detailed description of their stupid booth at the convention?  If this article wanted to talk about the failures of the school lunch program caused by excess corporate involvement in lobbying and lax guidelines THOUGH THE LENS of the lunchable as a symptom of our times (and I agree, that's what they wanted to achieve) for me it missed the mark.

It felt to me like they got caught up in a fair amount of diet culture, food elitist fuckery of "omg, LUNCHABLES" as shorthand for "clearly this is terrible" and failed to expound on any of the real points they could have made, despite having a pretty significant word count and access to lots of graphics support. Like, how much of the school lunch budget is now going to lunchables?  how much would cost in comparison to fully staff a cafeteria with people who can cook whole foods and buying ingredients accordingly?  What about the places that aren't serving shit like lunchables - Is it working?  are kids in places focusing on exceeding federal guidelines less obese?  Do they have better health outcomes? All questions I would have loved to see explored rather than descriptions of trade booth conference swag.

Also I'd like to point out as a larger thing because it's been on my mind this whole thread, any discussion of health and obesity outcomes in the US vs. other countries has GOT to also grapple with the fact that our kids don't get as much active time because most of them don't fucking walk anywhere ever and in Europe and elsewhere that is much less likely to be true. Not all countries or cities or towns obviously, but kids used to walk to school.  Kids used to play outside.  They used to walk to their friends houses and play outside. But you can't do that when your street doesnt' have sidewalks and everybody drives everywhere and roads are all huge and terrifying.  Forced sedentary lifestyles as a (at least partial) function of terrible land use and transportation policy decisions has to be part of the conversation if we want to compare health outcomes in the US to anywhere else. Food is a huge part of it, probably even most of it, but it's not the whole story.

[pixy0stix]

Wawa - which leads back to the article I posted about kids not having unstructured time to just be kids.

[loira]

Dec 14, 2023 6:15:13 GMT -5 karinothing said:

Dec 14, 2023 2:13:11 GMT -5 loira said:

DD's school was featured on a program about innovative lunch programs, but it's not the norm here. Most elementary schools in my city don't have cafeterias. Parents are expected to send their child with lunch. At DD'S school, which is a K-12 public school, the lunch program is tied to a culinary arts program for the high schoolers. Younger kids are served only one choice of protein, or the vegetarian meal. Older kids can choose one of 3 protein options. Sides and dessert are the same for everyone. An example of a typical meal would be lamb brochettes, couscous salad and fruit for dessert. The school also provides assistance to families who need it and will cover the cost for kids whose parents are struggling. High schoolers in the culinary program can obtain some sort of food prep certification - DD is a long way off from that so I haven't looked into it.

I wish all schools had similar programs. I don't know if other provinces have a better system but here in BC it seems to be based on the school or maybe the school district?

wow, that is really neat. Is your school small though? I just keep thinking if our school was K-12 it would be almost 4K kids. I can't imagine the high schoolers being able to cook all of that! I feel like even just the 700 elementary school would be a challenge. I do think that having a school that can cook the food is a better option in general (than relying on outside vendors). Our school relies on vendors and the cafeteria essentially heats of the meals (which I guess 700 students) but I think when I was growing up items were made in house (I know they were for HS because we had multiple choices and could customize them).  

I guess it's small given its a k-12, but I think there are around 700 students total so definitely larger than a lot of the elementary or jr high schools around here.

[basilosaurus]

www.newsweek.com/gop-lawmaker-mocked-santa-claus-milk-speech-1852274

Congress, making excellent use of their last day in session. We must allow while milk in schools because Santa needs it

[rhian]

Dec 14, 2023 14:55:47 GMT -5 wawa said:

Dec 14, 2023 7:29:16 GMT -5 rhian said:

Oh yes I agree, and I think the article, aside from the headline, did a good job of pointing to the various challenges. I was responding to comments here that seemed fixated on the Lunchables.

I disagree. I think the article itself fixated on the lunchables. How many words did it waste on repeated harping on the 15 ingredient turkey and the specific numbers of how they tweaked the contents to fit the current guidelines and the detailed description of their stupid booth at the convention?  If this article wanted to talk about the failures of the school lunch program caused by excess corporate involvement in lobbying and lax guidelines THOUGH THE LENS of the lunchable as a symptom of our times (and I agree, that's what they wanted to achieve) for me it missed the mark.

It felt to me like they got caught up in a fair amount of diet culture, food elitist fuckery of "omg, LUNCHABLES" as shorthand for "clearly this is terrible" and failed to expound on any of the real points they could have made, despite having a pretty significant word count and access to lots of graphics support. Like, how much of the school lunch budget is now going to lunchables?  how much would cost in comparison to fully staff a cafeteria with people who can cook whole foods and buying ingredients accordingly?  What about the places that aren't serving shit like lunchables - Is it working?  are kids in places focusing on exceeding federal guidelines less obese?  Do they have better health outcomes? All questions I would have loved to see explored rather than descriptions of trade booth conference swag.

Also I'd like to point out as a larger thing because it's been on my mind this whole thread, any discussion of health and obesity outcomes in the US vs. other countries has GOT to also grapple with the fact that our kids don't get as much active time because most of them don't fucking walk anywhere ever and in Europe and elsewhere that is much less likely to be true. Not all countries or cities or towns obviously, but kids used to walk to school.  Kids used to play outside.  They used to walk to their friends houses and play outside. But you can't do that when your street doesnt' have sidewalks and everybody drives everywhere and roads are all huge and terrifying.  Forced sedentary lifestyles as a (at least partial) function of terrible land use and transportation policy decisions has to be part of the conversation if we want to compare health outcomes in the US to anywhere else. Food is a huge part of it, probably even most of it, but it's not the whole story.

That's fair, and I don't disagree that there was way too much space devoted to complaining about the long ingredient list. But I do think that they also used the examples of Lunchables to highlight other issues in US school lunches (e.g. corporate influence/advertising in school lunches, lack of facilities to make fresh food in schools, etc). I can't actually go back to the article to check because I don't subscribe and the link isn't working for me anymore.

[karinothing]

Maybe we should just serve kids a giant pot of those added protein butter noodles and call it a day (can through in some cucumber slices or peas on the side).