Giving a new meaning to "cat food'
Despite studies showing there is no correlation between school cafeteria junk food and child obesity our local PTA groups are gearing up to force tofu on our kids. They want to implement a “sustainable food menu”, whatever the hell that means, rid the halls of, horrors, frozen fruits, meat and vegetables and substitute “fresh” tomatoes for canned ones. This for a school system that can’t teach math or produce college graduates.
“Better healthy and dumb than brilliant and stuffed with trans fats”, says Heather MacAlister, PTA’s Vice President for Stupidity and Useless Gestures. “We’ve seen what happens when we send bright, poisoned children into the world,” she continued, “they ruin it! So why spend any more time doing that when we can devote the school day to activities like Diversity Week, acting classes for the Mediocre and Talentless and sustainable backyard gardening? Let the Chinese rule the world; we’ll be the healthier and happier for it.”
Just out of curiosity, where does one find a fresh tomato in Connecticut during February? Blueberries? Foie gras? And who, other than a hack who’s figured out how to scam well intentioned, bored and over educated mommies, is John Turenne, “consultant and president of Wallingford-based Sustainable Food Systems”, the food guru who, for a fee, will attempt to substitute chicken drum sticks for their cousin, the chicken nugget? Everyone loves a fraud artist and Greenwich attracts them by the dozen, but do we need this particular one in our schools?
As a parent with children in one of the elementary schools in Greenwich, I’d like to see them improve their school lunch menu. I only let my son buy his lunch once a week, because the options are pretty pathetic. When I ask him what he had for lunch, he usually says “a waffle with syrup, chocolate cookie, and chocolate milk.” Seriously? That’s terrrible. I know we need to teach our children to make good choices, but we also need to remember that they are children and need some guidance. The options should include at least some fresh fruit and vegetables. We teach them to eat healthy at home and then send them to school and give them slop or junk food. That’s ridiculous.
feeding our children less junk isn’t a horrible idea but when it means hiring a consultant to advise the school, that is a waste of school’s money. i am sure the company that provides the school lunches is hired via annual contract and that the menu was long-ago vetted, so why all the kerfuffle now? i’d be curious to find out how many parents pack lunch for their children. and what does a hot school lunch cost today? i will say when i grew up back in the day, we never had hot dogs or pizza. we had things like meat loaf, mashed potatoes, frozen veggies, ice cream cups.
http://www.greenwichschools.org/page.cfm?p=1270
Here is the link to find costs and menus, etc.re: school lunch.
Our kids chose to take their lunch to school from home pretty much all the way through the system except for the last year or two of high school when they went out for lunch most days (if only for pizza….). We allowed quite a bit of leeway in what they ate, but more often than not they made reasonably healthy choices.
To “New in Town” : let me suggest you provide the fresh fruit and veggies you want your kids to have at school. The quality of the fruit and veggies you buy will without doubt be substantially better than what the schools can buy in the bulk needed for the prices they can afford to pay. Not only that, you can select the fruits and vegetables you kids actually like (if any) and you can prepare them the way the kids will eat them. Too often fruit and vegetables in institutional settings, provided with the best of intentions, get tossed out by the kids.
My guess, Cato, is that the organic, hand-picked by well-paid local farmers apple so carefully selected by a doting parent will end up in the trash bin alongside the school-supplied one that was mechanically harvested, doused in pesticide and rushed foaming from the orchard to a waiting semi. But that’s just my guess.
Sounds disturbingly analogous to many of the “big government knows best” programs foisted off on our citizens by Obozo and Mouchelle. Cos Cob’s Chicken Joe’s (“Helps build bodies 12 ways…and good for you, too”) will enjoy a huge spike in lunch hour revenue once GHS begins pushing such allegedly healthy crap on an unreceptive audience.
New in Town:……
Just wondering…..
Is it really the school’s fault that your kid makes these unwise choices? You and I know that the lunch menu for that day was not cookes, chocolate milk, and waffles……where does your responsibility come in to tell your kid what he is allowed to eat?
Is the school really supposed to manage hundreds of kids’ lunch selection?
I’ve seen the lunch menu—OK, perhaps its has more salt or fats than is ideal, but how is having healthier options help a kid that still only chooses, at his own volition, the junk food?
Sound Beacher: what an informative link. Looks to me like the kids have ALOT of healthy (and reasonably priced) options. Salad bars, soup stations, wraps…wow. And the a la carte menu, yogurts, nutrigrain bars. i’ve stayed at hotels with not as good a menu. What the heck are parents complaining about???
They’re selling it as a new utopia, the new world order, where everything
will be wonderful once we get rid of a few billion unneeded people. You’ve
got to love it — sustainable food? What does that mean? Whenever I see
the word sustainable, to me it means taxpayer funded, get rich at
someone else’s expense, money-grubbing scam. I guess putting the word
sustainable on your letterhead insures you a spot on the Obama big cash
gift list. Jamie Oliver’s Food revolution? When they tried Jamie’s idea of
healthy eating on LA schools, the kids threw their lunch in the trash,
preferring to go hungry over eating his healthy crap. The health and
wellness committee — they’re not well. So they think we should all be
eating tofu now? Wonder what could be behind that? Let’s take a look at
what menshealth.com has to say on the subject of tofu, you soon to be
girly men (soy based products have their dangers for women too).
“Soy protein today is an ubiquitous, profitable, and often buried ingredient
in a bewildering number of packaged foods.”
“….a strong association between men’s consumption of soy foods and
decreased sperm counts.”
“Participants over age 68 who were regularly eating the most tofu had
double the risk of dementia and memory impairment as those consuming
a more moderate amount.”
[Tofu eating] “…males produced less testosterone, had softer erections,
and experienced biochemical changes to their penile tissues that left
these tissues less elastic and less capable of complete blood
engorgement.”
“…beard growth had slowed, he’d lost hair from his arms, chest, and legs,
and he’d stopped waking up with morning erections. “My sexual desire
disappeared,” he says. “My penis—I won’t say it atrophied, but it was so
flaccid that it looked very small in comparison with the way it used to be.
Even my emotions changed.””
“….diagnosed him with gynecomastia, or the abnormal enlargement of the
mammary glands in men. Tests further revealed that estrogen levels in his
bloodstream were eight times higher than the normal limits for men,
higher even than the levels typically seen in healthy women.”
“The gynecomastia that eventually developed became deeply
humiliating…. He stopped wearing T-shirts even on the hottest days,
fearing his friends and neighbors might see the telltale bumps beneath
the fabric. His breasts by this point resembled the buds of a pubescent
girl.”
Could the idea behind serving our children tofu be to turn them into
submissive, compliant, nonresisting, over-feminized, non reproducing,
little morons? Is it a preemptive strike at putting an end to your bloodline?
If any of you Gates Foundation worshipping twits want to kill off your
offspring to save the planet (humans are the enemy), then be my guest.
I’m not going to eat the stuff, and I wouldn’t worry too much about your
kids either because no self-respecting person I know would ever allow
bean curd to touch their lips.
Source of quoted excerpts:
http://www.menshealth.com/nutrition/soys-negative-effects
Is it too much to ask for healthy food choices ?
Chris, you are a pinnacle of health and smart diet / lifestyle choices. Perhaps we should follow your lead.
Little kids shouldn’t be served crap in the cafeteria, and it’s about time that things changed.
The link Sound Beacher posted was to the GHS menu. Yes, there are a lot of healthy options at the high school – I remember the salad bar was very popular, and I’m sure it still is with teens who care about their weight and understand the importance of making healthy choices. But do you know what the lunch is at Riverside elementary today? Mozzarella sticks w/pasta. You really think a 5 or 6 year old will choose a salad when they’re offered mozzarella sticks and chocolate chip cookies? Get real. The lunch served in elementary schools needs to be healthier.
and WTF does this mean? “They’re selling it as a new utopia, the new world order, where everything will be wonderful once we get rid of a few billion unneeded people.”
You sound like a complete whack job. Not everything’s a conspiracy! I can’t believe how some people can turn healthy eating into an election issue, give me a friggan break.
It is the parents’ obligation to make sure their kids make the right choices and if the choices are there, then the issue should be educating the parents who, for the most part, are already overly educated. That said, the private schools revamped their menus years ago and only have healthy selections. That has led my kids to only want healthier food overall. Oh, and I help them make wise choices too.
Gee I dunno, when I was at Riverside we had a French chef so we all nibbled on cheese sticks and frog legs and washed it down with vin ordinaire. Guess times have changed.
http://www.greenwichschools.org/uploaded/district/departments/food_services/Menus/Ele_Feb-12.pdf
On the link I put up if you clicked on the left side you could go to elementary school or middle school menues, all 3 from that one link, fyi.
So the food police are coming to Greenwich! Michelle Obummer now has the government controlling what we feed our kids, so much for being “pro-choice”, she knows best. These are the same people that forced the use of trans-fat because that oil was supposed to be much healthier for you, how did that work out? This has gone beyond common sense improvements to school menus to now inspecting lunches brought from home! The number of students enrolled in lunch programs is tied to how much grant money schools get, another way the government exerts influence over our local schools. To use the lastest liberal feel good word – until Obummer is out off office I don’t think this country is sustainable….
Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets” http://bit.ly/wakB3f
Letter: Feds are hard lunch graders – Springfield, IL – The State Journal-Register http://bit.ly/yA8npE
L.A. schools’ healthful school lunches panned by LAUSD students – Los Angeles Times http://lat.ms/zvNGh4
Sorry about that second video link, somehow I screwed up and paste the same link twice. It’s not easy to see what I’m doing in the little copy box and I can’t go back and fix it once it’s posted. Here’s the correct link for the Merck’s vaccine scientist video:
Look at the state of that menu! No wonder there is such an obesity problem in America. Haven’t they yet realized that a person’s diet has a direct corrolation to health issues, energy levels, lethargy, etc.
Georgie – you need to get real. If you put crap on the menu – of course the child is going to pick it. So take it off!
In fact, Anon, you’re exactly wrong and the data proves it.
Anonymous: Lets be clear—I totally support food to be tasty and healthy. They are not mutually exclusive—so I think they can and should be both.
The schools have found it cheaper and more expedient to get rid of [expensive union] lunch personnel—and in that rush for cost savings, the food has become more processed, higher fat, and less fresh to deliver lunch with fewer workers.
Having said this…..you don’t see anything odd that in that kids’ selection that didn’t include one fruit, vegetable, or protein? Something else seems to be going on that can’t just be blamed on the menu……perhaps, “forbidden food deprivation” going on when your kid makes not 1 or 2 bad selections—but the entire lunch a junk food extravaganza.
Burgers, pizza, fries – really good food for the brain. Next thing they’ll be introducing strippers, massages and happy endings as part of physical education!
To Georgie,
As I said, I only let my son buy his lunch 1 day per week because I know that he isn’t yet mature enough to make healthy choices. He’s 7 years old, for heavens sake. But I do think it is pretty pathetic that he can select a full meal that includes nothing but chocolate and syrup. I do support an effort to provide healthier, less processed options in our schools. It doesn’t have to cost a fortune. Other school districts have done it successfully, so there is no reason we can’t do it here in Greenwich.
You mean they’ve discontinued those? Sheesh, glad I’m not still in school.
Have to disagree with you on this one. I work p/t and can’t be as involved as some other parents. I appreciate their involvement in our schools, and though there might be some that behave as you imply in your heading, there is no doubt in my mind that the majority make the schools (in my neck of the woods) better for their efforts.
Also disagree about the quality of food in the schools. Pancakes with syrup and graham crackers as a lunch choice is a nutritionist’s nightmare. Breaded chicken nuggets with pretzel rods isn’t much better. Ice cream day and cookie day are so clearly marketing gimmicks (to this middle-aged gal, but not necessarily to 6 year olds).
Where I do agree is that parents can pack their own lunches. Pretty sure many do considering the inability of food services to break even in some years.
Is the logic behind sustainable foods in Greenwich that they are a cost effective way of getting healthy foods in schools? If so, I support the effort. But if it is just because it is in vogue, I’ll keep packing.