School lunch comparison

[connyro]

Why are kids in the US fat? Maybe one reason is we feed them garbage at school:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3042318/take ... ssing-us-e

WTF? How embarrassing. We wonder why more than half of the population in the US is obese and why kids are falling behind the rest of the world in education. Those school lunches they show for Brazil and Finland look especially nice. I also like the lamb/brie in the French school lunch. Downright fancy!

[MikeK]

My wife works at an 'expeditionary' school and they had some big expedition last year about student nutrition. They base a lot of their stuff on science and every discipline works together to do a project related to the exped. I'll see if she has some info on it.

Many of the kids (urban, mostly lower middle class to poor) have changed the way they eat. The big thing she said for school lunches was cost - they go with the lowest cost supplier who sources the lowest cost foods. The same can be said for food outside of school. It's much cheaper to eat from McDonalds dollar menu than it is to get a balanced meal from the grocery store.

I can't recall if their school did something to change their supplier to try to get better alternatives... but it seems like they should have. Some of the projects were teaching kids how to decipher whats in their foods or to make their own meals being conscious of the ingredients.

The meal they show there for the US really doesn't look that bad. From the info I get it's generally A LOT worse.

Off that menu I'd go for the Greek, Spanish or Ukraine meals all day. French not bad either.

It's generally been considered that those of lower income have been eating more junk, mainly due to the cost thing I mentioned. But it causes rampant obesity and diabetes. There was some push recently to limit what type of food you can buy with food stamps. Mainly the idea was to cut out soda and candy (just like they do booze and smokes) for government assisted programs. There are surely ways to get around it but it's not the worst idea... education and availability of healthy foods is probably a better one (like the above)... but what can you expect?

[connyro]

A couple of points:

I believe you when you say " The big thing she said for school lunches was cost - they go with the lowest cost supplier who sources the lowest cost foods." That makes sense except many of the countries mentioned in that article don't have quite the wealth we do in the US yet they are not afraid to spend a couple of extra bucks preparing nutritious food for their school kids.

When you say " It's much cheaper to eat from McDonalds dollar menu than it is to get a balanced meal from the grocery store." I hear this a lot. I don't buy that argument. A bag of carrots, potatoes, etc, a 3-4 lb chicken, and some other fresh veges would cost what, like $10 at the grocery store? You can feed a family of 4 on that and still have the leftover chicken carcase to make soup out of for the next day. THat's around $2.50 a person. The only problem is that you've got to actually put forth effort and cook it. Or if you want to go cheaper, buy a big bag of dried beans, some brown rice, some seasonal veges and a little meat and eat for days!

When you said "The meal they show there for the US really doesn't look that bad." I have to ask, where's the fiber and fresh veges and meat? Canned peas, fruit cocktail, a cookie, some ketchup, some sort of nugget and instant mashed potatoes. Nothing fresh. All processed junk loaded with preservatives and sugar. Not even close to the other countries' lunches that are loaded with fresh veges, fruit, cheese, meat. It's like night and day! They can figure out a way to sponsor good school meals. Why can't we?

[MikeK]

A couple of points:
I believe you when you say " The big thing she said for school lunches was cost - they go with the lowest cost supplier who sources the lowest cost foods." That makes sense except many of the countries mentioned in that article don't have quite the wealth we do in the US yet they are not afraid to spend a couple of extra bucks preparing nutritious food for their school kids.

I agree and I don't really understand it either. Budgets are constantly stressed at our public schools and taxpayers are constantly complaining 'the rent's too gotdam high!'. My wife tries to explain to me the cluster fuck that our public schools are and I usually daze off somewhere in the middle. I think the key thing I get out of it is what a cluster fuck they are.

When you say " It's much cheaper to eat from McDonalds dollar menu than it is to get a balanced meal from the grocery store." I hear this a lot. I don't buy that argument. A bag of carrots, potatoes, etc, a 3-4 lb chicken, and some other fresh veges would cost what, like $10 at the grocery store? You can feed a family of 4 on that and still have the leftover chicken carcase to make soup out of for the next day. THat's around $2.50 a person. The only problem is that you've got to actually put forth effort and cook it. Or if you want to go cheaper, buy a big bag of dried beans, some brown rice, some seasonal veges and a little meat and eat for days!

No doubt. But you brought up the number one point. It takes EFFORT. It also takes knowledge. You would not believe the lack of knowledge there is about this stuff, especially among the poorer of our country. The reason so many of her students changed the way they ate is because they would have ate better had they actually known this stuff. Their parents didn't know - so how were they supposed to? Ignorance breeds ignorance.

When you said "The meal they show there for the US really doesn't look that bad." I have to ask, where's the fiber and fresh veges and meat? Canned peas, fruit cocktail, a cookie, some ketchup, some sort of nugget and instant mashed potatoes. Nothing fresh. All processed junk loaded with preservatives and sugar. Not even close to the other countries' lunches that are loaded with fresh veges, fruit, cheese, meat. It's like night and day! They can figure out a way to sponsor good school meals. Why can't we?

I was going to rant a bit about the processed foods. But not all processing is bad - adding high fructose corn syrup and other additives to stuff... yeah... bad. A sausage is processed - but a homemade sausage is probably a lot better for you than a hot dog. I think you get all this though... depends on the process and the ingredients. I think that is what they were trying to teach their kids - figure out what's in the food and what those things do. They also had a big lesson about engineering food to taste good and why junk food is so hard to resist.

I think I was surprised that they actually had fruits and veg on the plate. Some lunches don't even get that. Some kids don't eat the school lunches and just go to McDonalds or eat from vending machines. Some schools have regs on what can go in a vending machine (my hs wouldn't sell soda, only 'juices' - they weren't great, but better).

[connyro]

It sounds like your wife is doing some good work. I agree with you about the ignorance. It's just ironic that lower-income folks used to cook like I described above out of necessity and not very long ago! Eating out was a treat, but is now perceived as being the least expensive option in some cases. It takes effort, and we as a culture seems less and less interested in effort. Personal responsibility is all but extinct. We'd rather sit and whine about our predicament than actually getting off the couch and doing something about it. I wonder if educating people about how to cook basic healthy food for themselves would really make an impact. It's hard to break the addiction to processed junk food, but it is possible. You can even get to a point where you start to crave a healthy meal instead of over flavored shit.

[MikeK]

Yes it is ironic. Some of the best meals were made by peasants to make mediocre food delicious!

I actually made a conscious effort myself to get rid of a lot of processed crap in the past few years. Big thing is soda - I hardly drink it anymore. I try to drink water, tea, wine or beer. Real health nuts say no, just drink water - but traditionally this is what someone of my genetic origin would have consumed. All of those things are processed, but the amount of sugar in any of them is far, far less than soda. I can barely drink a soda these days because I feel like it's overly sweet. If you only drink low sugar drinks then beer starts to taste REALLY sweet. Your taste buds adjust.

I refuse to use artificial sweeteners - they give me stomach aches, taste terrible and can't be good for you...

I can say the same about lots of junk foods - most of them taste terribly fake to me... too salty, too sweet, too fake cheesy.

If I want a cheese that's bad for me I'd rather have a piece of Brie or Havarti. And really how bad is that cheese for you? If you eat it once in a while probably not so bad.

[MikeK]

PS connyro - it's not really my wife doing this - she is just a part of it. It's the model of how they educate kids. Some of it is a bunch of marketing BS to get kids to want to come to that school (our city school district works a little like colleges in that you have to apply and get accepted, it's not geographical). They actually do some interesting stuff - as much as they can while abiding by the ridiculous intervention that comes from the state.

I have a lot of 'ideas' on education. Most of stem from my own epiphanies in learning and how those came to be. Much of what I think actually goes back to Guilds in that I think we should start honing our strengths younger and recognizing different talents of individuals not grading them on some broad generic spectrum which inevitably causes a good portion to fail, feel alienated and reject education.

In our society this sculpting and recognition of talent has the potential to happen later in life, but doesn't always... possibly because of how children are treated at a young age - especially those made to feel stupid because they don't fit our current model of intelligence. I've had the pleasure of working with some very smart and talented individuals who by conventional educational wisdom, were far below average, but in other metric, were exceedingly talented. On the other end of the spectrum I've worked with people who would test off the charts that were absolutely worthless. Both of these individuals were examples were the system broke - both succeed in society, but one more than the other (guess which one?). Had each of those individuals talents been sculpted from a younger age I can only image what would have happened - and how much better they would have felt about themselves - one being recognized as something more than a dumb cave man, the other able to actually accomplish something useful.

So anyway... you can force people to try to fit a model that you think works, or you can adjust the model to the person. Which one is easier? But which one produces better results?

[CIMA]

Why are kids in the US fat? Maybe one reason is we feed them garbage at school:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/3042318/take ... ssing-us-e

That's an interesting article, but I wonder if it is right to generalize the diet of the school kids of each country from just one example. From my point of view, the example of the US is just showing an extreme case (possibly biased a little bit by the author), not typical one. Even in my country, I've seen different types of school lunches. Some look nice, and others don't. The menus largely depend on municipal policies in the case of public schools. Yes, I admit that more and more meals are relying on processed foods and synthetic seasonings due to the cost, but on the other hand I guess that we'll be able to find positive activities to improve the status quo in any developed countries, including the US. Also it would not be only the school lunch to be blamed. We need to check dietary balance of a day for the kids. Sadly we may have seen the crises of diet anywhere already.

[MikeK]

Oh... well seen as how I seem to be constructing a masters thesis on this I figure I might add a bit more information for anyone who may be concerned.

Part of my experience via my wife's experience has been of urban schools. I've also noticed this in the city I live in. Grocery stores do not exist in the city. They used to but most have closed in recent years. I live right at the edge of the limits and this is where most of the grocery stores have moved (it's uncanny how close they are to the actual edge, some right inside, some right outside). What you find in the actual city are corner stores and convenient stores. Guess what kind of foods they carry? People who don't have vehicles are then forced to take the bus or walk to their nearest Walmart to do their grocery shopping adding another hassle in trying to get real food. Walmart doesn't exactly have the best produce but has a plethora of Little Debbie snacks and soda. All for 'rollback' prices. Just another example of the uphill battle this country faces for nutrition.

[connyro]

100 years ago, the average American family spent 43% of their income on food. Today, it's less than 13% (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/arc ... et/255475/)

For whatever reason, we (in the US) want our food to be cheap and easy. That's fine and all except you are what you eat, so it's no wonder that as a culture, we are fat and lazy and can't be bothered to feed our kids good food.