Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => Politics => Topic started by: Ben on June 20, 2011, 11:42:05 AM
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I caught this while I was catching up on DVR'd episodes of Red Eye, so no link, but one of the stories they covered was that L.A. Unified School District has banned flavored milk.
The reason given by the head ban-head? "It's a social justice issue." If it's a social justice issue, shouldn't they have banned the white milk?
On a saner note, it seems incredibly stupid to me, even if they want to claim it's an obesity issue. I know PETA and other organizations hate milk, but I think there is still a pretty good segment of the educated scientific community that believes milk is good for you even if it does have fat, or at least not bad for you. I can't believe that any sugar put into flavored milk is worse than any sugar they put in the flavored fruit drinks that are still allowed.
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I'm pretty sure my 3 year old would go all Molon Labe on them if they tried to take her chocolate milk. I've done it before, it's a rather inhuman and incessant noise. Damn, can we not be kids anymore? I remember in the '80s the school cafeteria got the newest craze, jello pudding pops. We had kids injuring their tongues by freezing them to the pops. Who knew, we should have sued for great justice.
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Damn, can we not [let] be kids anymore?
We've been regulating and outlawing childhood for most of my life.
I'll bet it still exists in most small towns across the country. I get to fight for my little one to have a childhood here in NoVA. (And dream about moving to a small town.)
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Yeah, at least with milk there is some nutrition delivered with the calories and fat.
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its silly what they do in schools. i almost had a stroke when they removed the swings "because they are too dangerous"
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its silly what they do in schools. i almost had a stroke when they removed the swings "because they are too dangerous"
.... THEY REMOVED SWINGS!?!?!?!? :facepalm:
I was angry about the removal of merry-go-round and monkeybars.
SWINGS?!!!?
Maybe I'm wrong and this country is already doomed.
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I guess they never heard of skim milk or sugar-free Nesquick . . .
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.... THEY REMOVED SWINGS!?!?!?!? :facepalm:
I was angry about the removal of merry-go-round and monkeybars.
SWINGS?!!!?
Maybe I'm wrong and this country is already doomed.
yea swings. i can assure you they did not go quietly and no one answered "who the f came up with this idea?" i think they were a lil put off by vocabulary at the pta meeting. its mostly skirts
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I don't know offhand about swings (the playgrounds in my neighborhood and the local parks have them), but I know for a fact the school my daughter attends in Manassas has monkeybars because she fell off them this Spring and broke her arm.
Mak, you need to get out of Reston. We still allow childhood here in Manassas. It ain't as chi-chi as Fairfax County, but we're not quite full on Brazil (the movie) yet.
Chris
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Ms. MillCreek 1.0 is a dietitian who has been running a school nutrition services department for a large school district for about 20 years now. She does not think it funny when I call her the head lunch lady, but I digress...
In a nutshell, a lot of school districts are doing this in order to achieve compliance with the nutrition regulations by the USDA. In order to achieve the required calorie counts while adhering to the required limits on sugar, fat, sodium and other nutrients, requires a balancing act. This is all geared towards reaching public health goals which has identified childhood obesity as something that must be addressed. The commercial dairies that produce chocolate milk for the school lunch program already use skim milk. It is up to each district to decide if they wish to offer chocolate milk or not, as long as they meet the overall USDA requirements for the school lunch program.
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Okay wait.
Did they ban the schools selling flavored milk, or the kids from bringing it in?
There is a huge difference.
Considering that school lunches are highly subsidized by the taxpayer, you damn well better believe that if I'm being forced to feed poor kids (and subsidize the lunches of those who buy it at full price), that they better not be feeding them junk.
Most off-the-shelf flavored milk is jacked full of added sugar.
I'm fully against subsidizing the obesity epidemic. IMHO If I'm going to be forced to feed the poor, they should be eating healthy. Because you damn well know that we'll be paying thier health care down the road.
And when you take money from the government, you should no longer be free to make those decisions for yourself.
Banning kids from bringing it in....now there's a reason to get one's dander up.
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I don't know offhand about swings (the playgrounds in my neighborhood and the local parks have them), but I know for a fact the school my daughter attends in Manassas has monkeybars because she fell off them this Spring and broke her arm.
Mak, you need to get out of Reston. We still allow childhood here in Manassas. It ain't as chi-chi as Fairfax County, but we're not quite full on Brazil (the movie) yet.
Chris
to pull off the swing purge here they bought one of those 50 k monkeybars on steroids deals. and they don't scap the swings outa hand they just remove the old ones and fail to replace them claiming the old ones were in need of repair and too tall let kids go too high and get hurt and then theres no money left in budget after 50 k new age equipment is bought. its all bought by the pta so the skirts are in control and thats never good
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School food is prison food. Grasp that and you've grasped it all.
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some of the grub at schools near here is right good. the local catholic school has a girl who was a chef at the
greenbriar INN AT LIL WASHINGTON in charge. all fresh every day ordered ahead
corrected food reference sorry
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School food is prison food. Grasp that and you've grasped it all.
Freedom is slavery...immediately after Recess.
Chris
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Maybe if we really remembered what freedom was all about we wouldn't be confusing freedom with junk food. Freedom starts from a much earlier place. By the time it gets to the public school system, with all that implies, it's a whole different animal. Schools are just holding pens for most of their inhabitants. Kids need to be integrated into the real world much earlier, learning alongside adults.
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I know "social justice" can mean anything, but how do they justify calling it that?
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http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fitness-food/diet-nutrition/story/2011/06/LA-school-district-bans-chocolate-milk/48458176/1?csp=34news
Found it. Much as I suspected. Again, back to my original point.
I find myself strangely in agreeance with the LA Unified School District.
If I'm being forced at gunpoint to feed other people's children, they should be getting fed appropriate foods. Fattening the little bastards up is just going to lead to more expenses for the taxpayer down the road.
I know "social justice" can mean anything, but how do they justify calling it that?
Fattening up the poor, I presume. They get fed junk food while the wealthy eat fresh organic produce.
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http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fitness-food/diet-nutrition/story/2011/06/LA-school-district-bans-chocolate-milk/48458176/1?csp=34news
Found it. Much as I suspected. Again, back to my original point.
I find myself strangely in agreeance with the LA Unified School District.
If I'm being forced at gunpoint to feed other people's children, they should be getting fed appropriate foods. Fattening the little bastards up is just going to lead to more expenses for the taxpayer down the road.
Unintended consequences. Why was chocolate milk introduced in the first place?
And, if I may note from your article:
She noted the district serves fruit juices containing 27 to 29 grams of sugar per serving, more than the amount of sugar in flavored milk — 20 grams in 8 ounces of fat-free chocolate milk and 27 grams in fat-free strawberry.
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Uninteneded consequences. Why was chocolate milk introduced in the first place?
In the article it says that the kids drink more milk if its flavored. To which I say, no *expletive deleted*it, its jacked full of sugar, of coure they'll drink it.
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http://yourlife.usatoday.com/fitness-food/diet-nutrition/story/2011/06/LA-school-district-bans-chocolate-milk/48458176/1?csp=34news
If I'm being forced at gunpoint to feed other people's children, they should be getting fed appropriate foods. Fattening the little bastards up is just going to lead to more expenses for the taxpayer down the road.
I can agree with that too, just as I don't believe if you're on welfare you should be buying gourmet food, almond joys, or whiskey.
But does this only affect those on a taxpayer funded school lunch program, or does it also affect those kids paying for their cafeteria lunches? Because maybe it sounds unfair, but if I'm paying for my kid's lunch, maybe I want them to have the option of chocolate milk over soda. And possibly that's where the "social justice" thing is coming into play -- if the supported kids can't have it, then the self-supporting kids can't either, because it's "unfair".
Because though I can agree with Jamis' point, I'm still not sure that's the greater motive as to why they're doing this -- it seems more like an ancillary effect from their social engineering.
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I can agree with that too, just as I don't believe if you're on welfare you should be buying gourmet food, almond joys, or whiskey.
But does this only affect those on a taxpayer funded school lunch program, or does it also affect those kids paying for their cafeteria lunches? Because maybe it sounds unfair, but if I'm paying for my kid's lunch, maybe I want them to have the option of chocolate milk over soda. And possibly that's where the "social justice" thing is coming into play -- if the supported kids can't have it, then the self-supporting kids can't either, because it's "unfair".
Because though I can agree with Jamis' point, I'm still not sure that's the greater motive as to why they're doing this -- it seems more like an ancillary effect from their social engineering.
An average school lunch runs under $3. Whens the last time you got a meal for under $3? Or hell, even fed a school aged child for that much?
Fact is, the school lunches even for those who pay full price are subsidized by the taxpayer pool. So while others who are buying school lunches might also be taxpayers, we are all pooling together and subsidizing those lunches.
So I have no problem with the lunches being mandatoraily healthy, bland, sugarless, and boring.
If I don't want thier lunches controlled, I'l pack them myself (which I already do, so I can feed them healthy food that doesn't seem to be on our school lunch menu).
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An average school lunch runs under $3.
Not arguing with you, because if we're not on the same page, we're at least within a page of each other. :)
But I saw nothing in the article about if this was only at the Elementary school level or K-12. I have no kids in school, but back when I was in Junior High and High School, you had the option of eating the crappy "healthy" food in the cafeteria, or getting stuff from the school snack bar, where you could buy hamburgers (that already had a good heaping of soy in them back then), sodas, chocolate milk, donuts, and all kinds of junk food. That food was definitely not subsidized (other than possibly the snack bar employee salaries). Maybe the snack bars don't even exist anymore, but if they do, I see them clearly separate from the cafeteria.
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Ben, a couple of things:
The USDA regulations apply for any school lunch program receiving funds or commodities from the USDA. This would be virtually every public school. It matters not if the child receives a free/reduced lunch or pays full price for the lunch.
In many, many school districts (possibly the majority, but I am not sure), the school lunch program has to be self-supporting, if not actually make money for the district. In the program run by Ms. MillCreek 1.0, the revenue from selling food has to cover the staff salaries, benefits, food costs, etc. Her program receives no money from the district, and in fact the program is used as a cash cow for the district. Her 'excess' revenues over costs are put into the district's general fund, which really ticks her off, as she could do great things on improving the program with the money.
Finally, a lot of school lunch programs are now outsourced and run by commercial companies, such as Sodexho and the like. They come into the district and promise the school board that they will make money for the schools, so a lot of districts have gone this route.
PS edited to add: a lot of the snack bars, coke machines or what have you are now operated by the PTA or student government as fund-raising mechanisms, and as such do not fall under the jurisdiction of the USDA and do not have to follow the USDA regs. They are not a part of the school nutrition program. When my kids were in high school, the school store and snack bar sold junk food. This also caused gnashing of Ms. MillCreek 1.0's teeth, since these siphoned customers with their money away from her lunch program.
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That's interesting stuff I didn't know. Thanks for the rundown.
Also no offense to Mrs. M over the "crappy healthy food" comment. That was meant to be what 15 year old minds thought when they had the choice of Salisbury steak and milk from the cafeteria, or a burger and coke from the snack bar. :)
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If I'm being forced at gunpoint to feed other people's children, they should be getting fed appropriate foods. Fattening the little bastards up is just going to lead to more expenses for the taxpayer down the road.
The argument begins and ends with your first clause.
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Back when we were still married, and even afterwards, I would go into the schools and try the food and say howdy to the staff. It is not gourmet by any means, but not that bad. Even elementary schools have salad bars and the like. Of note, the most popular menu is the one that has chicken nuggets, tater tots, corn an apple and a cookie. The schools no longer have deep fryers, so the nuggets and tots are baked, the corn is a frozen USDA commodity and the cookie is high fiber and has prune puree in it to reduce fats and sugar. And I have to say that the cooks and staff that I knew took pride in producing as good food as possible consistent with the financial and equipment limitations. Because of the mandate to reduce labor costs as much as possible, they could not do as much scratch cooking as they would have liked.
It was amazing to me how politicized the program was. Primarily at the national level, where the USDA is lobbied to include or require various foods to be on the commodity program. If you are Tyson or Archer Daniels Midland, you want the government to be buying your products for the school lunch program and other institutional use. And boy, do they spend the money on lobbyists and members of Congress to ensure this happens.
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The argument begins and ends with your first clause.
Oh I agree and fully support ending all forms of welfare. But its not like I can just wave a magic wand and end it tomorrow. So if there is free and subsidized lunches, they should be healthy.
I'll do cartwheels down mainstreet when welfare of all types is ended.
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i hear ya. that said feeding kids is amongst the least objectionable forms. i just wish i dodn't see those kids parents driving niceer wheels than me and wearing better clothes and carrying i phones
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I was always sad when my ex told me stories about how for so many kids, the free school breakfast and lunch would be the only meals they would have all day. And this is in a fairly affluent suburb north of Seattle. Pockets of poverty are everywhere.
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when i drove cab in montgomery county md we had a contract to haul kids to counseling etc. you'd be amazed at some of the kids we hauled from some assistance program home to what seemed to me a mansion.
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i hear ya. that said feeding kids is amongst the least objectionable forms. i just wish i dodn't see those kids parents driving niceer wheels than me and wearing better clothes and carrying i phones
I developed a whole new attitude towards "poverty" after working in a housing project for a summer.
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FTR, I get tired of being lectured on nutrition by a First Lady with an *expletive deleted*ss as wide as an ox cart.
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On Sunday, we went down to the Seattle waterfront to catch the ferry over Puget Sound. We walked by a group of men on the sidewalk with cardboard signs soliciting donations: "disabled homeless combat veteran needs money for food and medicine". As we walked past, I was struck by how all of them were smoking commercially-made cigarettes and had cell phones. Huh.
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I developed a whole new attitude towards "poverty" after working in a housing project for a summer.
cynic!
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cynic!
Hey give him a break -- he was just jealous of all the Escalades parked out front. :P =D
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An average school lunch runs under $3. Whens the last time you got a meal for under $3? Or hell, even fed a school aged child for that much?
I got a meal for $3 [12 shekels] this morning. It was an omelette, a sandwich, and some salad.
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What's the general income tax rate in Israel? How much does gasoline cost?
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I got a meal for $3 [12 shekels] this morning. It was an omelette, a sandwich, and some salad.
I'm lucky if I get a meal for under $15 of any kind unless it's fast food (that's around $10).
School lunches make money for schools and cost less than commercia meals!? That's unpossible; government is inefficient
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I'm lucky if I get a meal for under $15 of any kind unless it's fast food (that's around $10).
School lunches make money for schools and cost less than commercia meals!? That's unpossible; government is inefficient
Which is why the meals are outsourced, nowadays. Like they are at the public school across the street from my house and the private school I send my kids to.
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Which is why the meals are outsourced, nowadays. Like they are at the public school across the street from my house and the private school I send my kids to.
Point, set, match- roo_ster.
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I'm lucky if I get a meal for under $15 of any kind unless it's fast food (that's around $10).
Where I am, fast food is much closer to $5 per meal. $10 would be "quick service," like Panera or Quiznos.
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$1 Filet-O-Fish sandwiches every Friday at McDonalds. Also Costco has giant hot dogs or slices of pizza with a free refill drink for like two bucks. If I were homeless, I'd live in front of the Costco, or beg for enough money for a membership so I could fill up on free samples of all the gourmet food they always give the free samples of... thereto.
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I can see a school being able to feed kids a lunch for $3 each by buying in bulk.
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$1 Filet-O-Fish sandwiches every Friday at McDonalds.
Yeah, you could definitely get a meal for $3 or less, at a lot of fast food joints.
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I'm lucky if I get a meal for under $15 of any kind unless it's fast food (that's around $10).
Uh?
How do you manage that? Do you mean restaurant meals?
For $15 - that's 60 shekels or so - I can get a very, very decent restaurant meal.
Is Australia suffering from some crazy food shortages?
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I can see a school being able to feed kids a lunch for $3 each by buying in bulk.
Actually, the secret is that the school lunch program gets large amounts of free or very inexpensive government commodities. They still have to buy food and supplies that are not commodities, and they usually get those from the commercial suppliers like Sysco. So all those crops and farm products that the government pays farmers to grow, as a form of corporate welfare or crop supports, get made into commodities and provided to government feeding programs, food banks, and the like. Lots and lots of cheese, dried milk products, vegetables, flour and fruits. The biggest problem is that you cannot predict the supply. The government may want to get rid of thousands of tons of canned applesauce, when you really wanted peaches, but cannot get them as a commodity.
PS: here is the current NSLP USDA food commodity list: http://www.fns.usda.gov/fdd/foods/SY12-schfoods.pdf
PPS: my ex tells me that the most popular vegetable is raw broccoli with fat-free ranch dressing for dipping. She says that the kids just inhale that, from elementary to high school.
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$1 Filet-O-Fish sandwiches every Friday at McDonalds. Also Costco has giant hot dogs or slices of pizza with a free refill drink for like two bucks. If I were homeless, I'd live in front of the Costco, or beg for enough money for a membership so I could fill up on free samples of all the gourmet food they always give the free samples of... thereto.
My game plan, for feeding myself if I become homeless, is to dress up in a suit with a 'Hello, my name is' badge. I then go downtown to the major hotels and the convention center. I go up to the meeting floors and feed myself on the snack and meal displays for the conventions and meetings. If anyone asks, I am Bill from Cedar Rapids, and this is my first convention here in Seattle. If you look halfway decent, you could pull this off easily.
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I developed a whole new attitude towards "poverty" after working in a housing project for a summer.
Mind sharing your thoughts? I'm curious. I tend to stay away from housing projects for obvious reasons, and wouldn't mind learning more. Could start a new thread if it's off topic.
As for a meal for $15, for $9 I can get a full meal the size of a turkey platter from the diner down the street. Including a side of bacon. For a trip to the grocery store, for $15, I could buy enough to feed myself (healthily, mind you, not just ramen) for a week.
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Which is why the meals are outsourced, nowadays. Like they are at the public school across the street from my house and the private school I send my kids to.
I'd be interested in a performance comparison between outsourced lunches and in-house programs, like Millcreek described. Any info on that MC?
Australia has high consumer prices.
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If anyone asks, I am Bill from Cedar Rapids, and this is my first convention here in Seattle.
Yeah, we've already got a Chris from Cedar Rapids...... =D
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I'd be interested in a performance comparison between outsourced lunches and in-house programs, like Millcreek described. Any info on that MC?
Australia has high consumer prices.
I don't know about that, because I don't know what metrics are used to measure performance in a school lunch program; probably cost per meal or something like that. But from what my ex used to say, the two ways Sodexho said they could save money was in food cost and salaries/benefits. They could get somewhat better costs on some of the food (everyone gets the commodities for free or low-cost) because they had national purchasing power, which was better than a single district.
But the real issue was salary and benefits. The school personnel would be terminated from the school position, with the seniority, union wage and benefit package, and invited to apply for the same position as a Sodexho employee. Most of the employees would be scheduled for a small enough amount of hours so as to not qualify for benefits, and the Sodexho wages were generally less than the unionized school position wages. The management personnel would generally have equal or better benefit and wage packages than when they worked for the school. But as my ex said, something like 75% of her employees worked only four hours a day: the classic lunch lady would come in and help set up, serve and clean up from lunch. They primarily did the job to get out of the house and because they liked kids, not really to earn money. It was the cooks, drivers and managers who worked full-time.
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I'm lucky if I get a meal for under $15 of any kind unless it's fast food (that's around $10).
School lunches make money for schools and cost less than commercia meals!? That's unpossible; government is inefficient
They get free or subsidized food from the Dept. Of Agriculture. Giant cans of vegtables, cheese, etc. The cost of the subsidies and such for this program is not figured into the "$3" figure bandied about.....
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They get free or subsidized food from the Dept. Of Agriculture. Giant cans of vegtables, cheese, etc. The cost of the subsidies and such for this program is not figured into the "$3" figure bandied about.....
Well, I kind of figured it in. When I say that a school lunch costs about $3, I'm talking about what the kids pay for it in the lunch line.
But when I said that we're subsidizing the $3 cost of a school lunch, directly and indirectly, the giant cans and stuff that are bought at a discount or provided to the districts for "free" are still paid for by the taxpayer class.
The eater class then gets what really amounts to a much more expensive meal for free.
And lets say you're in the taxpayer class, you make good money, and you have several kids that go to public school. They buy the lunch at $3. I, however, pay taxes into the same school system (and state and federal taxes), and have less or even no children attending the school. By default, I am subsidizing your lifestyle choice of having several kids and them attending public school.
No, if we calculated the actual cost of a school lunch, I'd bet its much more like $10. Administration, regulation, inspections, staffing, free lunch programs, etc etc. By the way, at my kids school, I think a lunch is like $2.75 right now.
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I'd be interested in a performance comparison between outsourced lunches and in-house programs, like Millcreek described. Any info on that MC?
Australia has high consumer prices.
Not sure about the public school (other than it is outsourced), but I know a bit about my kids' private school, since I am on the BoT.
Price per meal, without any sort of subsidy from anyone or anywhere, is $5. Food is prepared off-site and brought in in serving containers/trays, set up, spooned out, and then cleaned up. (If you have ever been in the military and had hot chow delivered to the range or out & about, it is similar to that.) One van with a couple employees on-site during lunch for a small school like ours. Parents get sent home a sheet with menu selections. Depending on the contractor, it can be a week or month ahead of time.
Yeah, in olden times, the school made lunch on-site, but it became a distraction. Main thing was the ratcheting regulations imposed on a kitchen for public food service.
Many kids' parents still brown-bag it (we do this for our kids).
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Mind sharing your thoughts? I'm curious. I tend to stay away from housing projects for obvious reasons, and wouldn't mind learning more. Could start a new thread if it's off topic.
Maybe I ought to. Lots of lessons learned and some juicy stories.
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$10-15 meals? :O And for kids? :facepalm:
I bet my lunch on a working day is under $2- a peanut butter sandwich, a bag of microwave popcorn (bought in bulk from costco), carrots or apple, and some water- and those are the days I'm taking leftovers to work.
Kids get the same thing as I do in their lunches (well no microwave popcorn) for school.
We won't let them eat any of the hot lunch garbage- is high in fat and salt, they stuff I ate as a kid for hot lunch was infinately better, even if bland tasting.
Not surprisingly, they are healthy, fit,and don't have any sort of attention/personality disorders.
I'm not really big on subsidizing someone else's crotch spawn either- if they aren't invested in their kid's future, I don't want to be either. Between my wife and I we probably put in at least 90-100 hours on any given week, and still find time to take kids to sports, cook them meals, make them lunches, and help them with their homework.
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$10-15 meals? :O And for kids? :facepalm:
I bet my lunch on a working day is under $2- a peanut butter sandwich, a bag of microwave popcorn (bought in bulk from costco), carrots or apple, and some water- and those are the days I'm taking leftovers to work.
Kids get the same thing as I do in their lunches (well no microwave popcorn) for school.
We won't let them eat any of the hot lunch garbage- is high in fat and salt, they stuff I ate as a kid for hot lunch was infinately better, even if bland tasting.
Not surprisingly, they are healthy, fit,and don't have any sort of attention/personality disorders.
I'm not really big on subsidizing someone else's crotch spawn either- if they aren't invested in their kid's future, I don't want to be either. Between my wife and I we probably put in at least 90-100 hours on any given week, and still find time to take kids to sports, cook them meals, make them lunches, and help them with their homework.
I pack my kids lunches and am very careful what they eat. #1 is ADHD. Can't blame that on the schools.
Lunch is typically a sandwich, junk-ish snack (cheese stick or tube yogurt), a fruit, a veggie (celery or carrots normally) and a bottled water or 50% capri sun. They still have snack time which is usually some gold fish or another fruit. I'd bet I average under $3 per kid per day on lunches. Not any real savings over the school lunches, but I don't trust the school to feed my children nutritious meals.
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there is still a pretty good segment of the educated scientific community that believes milk is good for you even if it does have fat,
Ooh, yeah, four percent if it's pretty darn good quality. IOW, 145 grams of fat per GALLON. 18 grams per pint, or about three eggs' worth. (and one ~45 minute bike ride to burn it off completely)
Realistically, the higher butterfat loads are worth more for other things, (.25% difference in butterfat makes a huge difference in how much cheese you can get from 60 tons of milk, for example) so what you get from Borden is likely pretty darn close to the 3.25% minimum content for whole milk.
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First they came for the chocolate milk...