Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, and are school meals really that bad?

While I don't have children in the public schools anymore, I know from my personal reading that most of the food served in American schools is atrocious! High in fat, sugars, junk. They have, in many districts allowed McDonald's and Pizza Hut serve food within school cafeterias, for God's sake!

I do not have the source readily at hand, but I read of a research project in England which studied the effects of diet on kids and delinquency. They found that when the crap food was eliminated, replaced with whole and organically grown fruits and vegetables, incidents of aggression, truancy, even learning disabilities decreased dramatically!

Take a look at the obesity epidemic among children. Where do you think the calories come from?

Finally, bashing the carrier of a message just because he is not American, seems to me to indicate that you are really not interested in the truth...

My son starts kindergarten next year and I will probably be sending a lunch for him. It's been a while since I was in school and things may have gotten better but it was pretty bad while I was growing up. Greasy messes. Pizza, pizzaburgers, tator tots... Nothing all that healthy.

I'm a horrible eater, unfortunately, and I've been trying hard to not let my kids inherit that. I know I can lead best by example and am trying to turn my eating habits around. In the mean time, I'm taking advantage of the fact that I still have control over what they eat and they don't get nearly as much junk as I eat.

Michelle

They have that in middle school now.. I can't believe the crap my daughters (6th and 8th grade) ARE EATING.

I have eaten sushi and don't really care for it.. I could eat it if I had to, but I don't prefer to. I LOVE squid rings.. haven't tried actual squid, but I'm assuming it tastes the same way as the tentacles. never ate crubs or crickets, but I have eaten cow tongue as sandwich meat (yummy) and frog legs (yummy), so yeah.. some kids though just won't try things.. my youngest is really good about it.. I taught him from day one that he has to never eat anything he doesn't like, but he has to try it. So if he doesn't like it he's allowed to spit it in my hand or in the garbage.. and he WILL try new foods.. and sometimes repeatedly even if he didn't like it the first time he ate it. My grandson on the other hand won't even try... he rather sits at the table the whole time eating nothing.

My daughter's pretty good so far with the eating. She eats all vegetables, lentils, beans, etc. but then again those are really standard foods here in Greece. Most kids will eat them. Her completely free, public kindergarden has a good menu: meat 2x week, fish once, vegetables every day, lentils once, beans once, fresh fruit and yoghurt every day...

But kids can change at a moment's notice, so I know that tomorrow she could suddenly start refusing everything but spaghetti. I don't know how I'll react if that happens. They say you shouldn't make a big deal out of it, otherwise the kid can start using food for attention, but I can imagine myself being very intolerant.

Michelle, if you're a picky eater yourself, how are you going to push the issue with your kids without them crying double standards?

I've noticed with having the Daycare, that if you consistently serve foods they know and like and foods they haven't tried at every meal, sit down as a family and eat those foods yourself, and they see others eat it and you don't make it an issue, those little guys will try the foods themselves sooner or later, especially if you gently encourage... that said, my grandson on the other hand will not try anything he thinks he doesn't like.. I don't know how my son handles this (maybe that's where the problem is) or if that's just the way HE is, but he's pretty hard to convince to eat when his mind is made up. 2 year olds are picky eaters to begin with and I don't think that changes until they start Kindergarten... but not cooking extra meals for them is a start.. making sure they have the option to spit it out if they don't like it is good too..they're much more likely to experiment that way.

That is really frustrating.
What kind of stuff don't they like?

You may find this link interesting... or not. This is where my kids go to school. They have a fairly decent nutrition program. No, it's not ideal but it's a lot better it was where I went to school on-the-edge-of-nowhere, PA in the 70's.

Agreed there is more emphasis on nutrition. The interesting thing to note that I failed to in my above post is that... When I have gone to school to have lunch with my kids I noticed that they don't actually cook much in the cafeteria. Almost everything is frozen and prepackaged.I'm not a nutritionist and I can't say from empirical knowledge that there is not nutritional difference between process versus foods if the nutrition is there. My gut tells me that having all the qualities of a food item present in it's rarest form is better than something that has been processed. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that my kids school district at least pays attention to this kind of thing. I just wonder where the breaking point is where the cost/benefit starts to hurt.