I saw in today’s Washington Post that there’s a House measure, supported by Republicans and pushed by food industry lobbyists and some school officials that would allow some districts to opt out of federal mandates passed in 2010 to reduce sodium and increase whole grains, fresh fruits, and vegetables in school lunches. This is something that makes me insane about politics and I try to steer clear of it; I’m not even going to read the whole article and get my blood up.
Before the schools had to pay closer attention to what kids were buying for lunch, a kid could buy four orders of French fries for lunch. Now sometimes kids are throwing some of their healthy food away and it’s wasteful. It’s not easy to train an old dog, or a bunch of teenagers that have been eating crap since they were old enough to buy lunch. It takes all of us time to learn to try new foods and incorporate them into our diets. I read somewhere a long time ago when I was adopting, that sometimes kids will try a food 5-7 times before they start to like it. Unfortunately a lot of food goes in the trash in this country, but let’s give these kids however long it takes to adapt back to healthier meals.
One time the county had an open house at the distribution center for the public school cafeterias. I went to it, along with less than ten other parents representing over 150,000 students. The woman in charge of the warehouse was giving an introductory speech to the parents before the tour started and she was definitely a proponent of letting the kids eat whatever the hell they wanted while saying how healthy the school food was, and this was prior to the 2010 mandate to serve healthier foods. At the time, my daughter’s school sold ice cream to kids as they were going into the cafeteria for lunch. When I brought that up at the meeting, the woman stressed how the chocolate chip cookies had whole wheat flower in the mix. I asked why the kids could go through the line and choose only unhealthy sides without there being any guidelines and I said, “The lessons learned on how to eat growing up in the public schools are lifelong lessons,” and she replied, “NO, they are not.”
Sometimes when you get involved in the schools or anything you feel strongly about, it really is fighting an uphill battle. But the bottom line is that our whole economy is still based on supply and demand. The more people that care what goes into their bodies and purchase their food accordingly, the more we can improve our countries’ food situation. In the meantime, there may be some backwards steps while fighting large corporate interests, but in the end everyone can choose to eat what’s best for them.
