No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches

[alp227]

Oh, the rationalizations of idiocy teenagers make. Given 'em an Internet connection, a mobile phone with camera, and the websites, and you'll get to hear them making emotionally appealing, logically fallacious arguments for their ill-informed, narrow-minded worldviews. (I've heard of grown adults who get a similar outlet, this time on your local "News/Talk" radio station.) The NY Times now reports on the latest mass STUPIDITY among our young people:

Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch — healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.

Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.

Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.

“Before, there was no taste and no flavor,” said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn, who likes fruit but said his classmates threw away their mandatory helpings on the cafeteria floor. “Now there’s no taste, no flavor and it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse.”

Yes, Malik Barrows really said that, this is not from the Onion. Read it again: "...it’s healthy, which makes it taste even worse."

Hey Malik! Good luck with the medical bills after a lifetime of eating junk food just because you think it tastes better.

REALLY? In a crummy economy where millions of children in the nation actually go to bed with nothing to eat, THIS is what middle class American kids are outraged about, over not being able to eat fatty nachos and burgers for school lunch? (#firstworldproblems) I wonder if their parents will vote based on their kids whining "OBAMA TOOK AWAY MY SCHOOL LUNCH NACHOS!"

TYT covered the Kansas video last week. The song is parody of "We Are Young" by Fun.

The NYT reporter quotes a student behind the video:

Callahan Grund, a junior who stars in the video, said, “My opinion as a young farmer and rancher is that we produced this protein and it’s not being used to its full advantage.” He wakes up early every morning to do chores, stays after school for two hours of football practice and returns home for another round of chores. If it were not for the lunches his mother now packs him, he said, he would be hungry again just two hours after lunch.

Oh my, it sounds like the National Cattlemen's Beef Association talking points are rotting his brain.

And then a 12-year-old (yes, 12 years old) picky eater:

“I just throw them out,” said Danielson Gutierrez, 12, carrying a slice of pizza, which he had liberally sprinkled with seasonings, and a pear. He also offered his opinion on fruit: “I throw them out, too. I only like apples.”

Maybe Danielson should be an exchange student to a Third World country sometime and test his "throw out what tastes bad" mentality over there. He'll be crying mommy in two seconds.

[Ian David]

1. How about instead of giving the lunch contracts to the lowest bidder...

... we let the teachers and students choose their lunch contractor based on who provides the best meals, according to the people who have to eat it?

Healthy food doesn't have to taste bad. But I guarantee that it WILL taste bad if it's being supplied by the lowest bidder.

[LoisB]

2. None of them look as if they're starving.

If they don't want the food, why not just brown-bag it every day and have their portion of the federal dollars spent on their lunches sent to a school where lunch at school might be the only meal some kids get each day.

Ungrateful little pipsqueaks.

[bunnies]

3. This is what happens when kids grow up thinking...

that the crap they've been eating all their lives is food. I was thinking about this a lot today, after reading the thread about the 'obese' news woman. They way people have been conditioned to eat is so completely. Bigger portions, more sugar, more salt, more fat and more chemicals. These kids aren't hungry. These kids dont know what hungry IS.

"Big food" wants them to be "hungry". Wants them to want more crap in their system. Its just as bad as big pharma - as far as Im concerned. They might as well join up openly since theyre joined at the hip already.

[SheilaT]

4. I think there is some kind of requirement that high school kids

complain about the lunches. My kids went to a small school that served really good lunches. And still the kids complained.

Except maybe Brad Bonney during his seventh grade year when he grew eight inches. The kids could eat as much as they wanted, and poor Brad was hungry all the time. The lunch room ladies had to remind him when the lunch break was over that he really needed to go back to class.

[ThoughtCriminal]

5. Healthy, Tasty, Cheap

Choose two.

[Odin2005]

6. Kids are socialized to hate healthy food.

They are inundated with TV ads saying junk food is cool and healthy food is lame. The notion that healthy food tastes bad and kids must be forced to eat it also pervades American culture.