America's School Lunch Problem Solved

[minniejack]

Seeing the effects gluten has on individuals, am I the only person out there that has a solution to America's obesity problem?

Too much gluten in our school lunches!

Read the headlines yesterday about the retired military personnel that say that there are too many soldiers that are disqualified because of their obesity and it's all the school lunches.--I'm thinking, "yeah, too much pizza, spaghetti, and other starches."

Heck, even before we needed to be gluten free, I had been working at lunch at my kid's middle school. A substitute teacher, who was a teacher retiree, came up to me and the other parent and asked us to go look at the lunch because it looked like vomit. Sure enough, it was breakfast for lunch. biscuits, sausage gravy--pretty much your classic high starch meal--not one redeeming green thing on the plate. I called the county dietitian to tell her the story and she got down right nasty about how she was following federal nutrition guidelines for the amount of starches, etc.

My neighbor told me that even before this incident, that her daughter who was a freshmen in high school, had a petition to make the schools healthier and got the same response from the same woman.

Then last year, I was at a track meet and went to get my son something from the closest restaurant, she was in line behind me and I asked about the salad dressing brand because of the need to be gluten free. Yes, I literally saw her irritation on her face and then she nastily informed me that any dietary restriction had to be on a school form that you had to get from the county board office along with a doctor's letter explaining why. Yupp....I just make sure that he never forgets his lunch or run it to him.

And then they wonder about America's fatness.

[TrillumHunter]

I see you're from WV-my dh's home state. Any chance she's sensitive because of the Jamie Oliver visit to WV. I heard that really pissed people off in Huntington.

[sa1937]

I've been watching Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I think it's absolutely shocking what schools are providing for school lunches as well as breakfasts for their students. I think the guidelines schools must follow absolutely suck!!!

Of course, then there's also the food pyramid guidelines, which are nothing more than a big joke.

[mommida]

I think you might want to add the "experiment/study" for the gluten free diet for the mental health patients. The study showed a gluten free diet helped . (I believe they had been diagnosed as pyschotic.) The patients were able to decrease the medications. The patients were also found to be vitamin B12 deficient.

There was also a story of a very notorious inner city school. It's working budget was sooo no one could understand how it was to function. The principal put a fitness equipment in and made the food healthy. Actually fresh vegetables. The violence problems went down and the test scores and grades went up.

Is the government going to change the food pyramid? Obviously it is not working and the obesity and diabetes problems are just increasing.

[minniejack]

I see you're from WV-my dh's home state. Any chance she's sensitive because of the Jamie Oliver visit to WV. I heard that really pissed people off in Huntington.

i wish this were so, but this was a couple of years ago.

Actually, we live in the upper Northern Panhandle, smashed between southeastern Ohio and Southwestern Pa--with Pittsburgh exactly 45 mins away. Usually, people in this area see themselves as somewhat separate from the rest of the state--we tend to think politically different, have more education, and have more access to healthcare because of our proximity to Columbus/Pitts. So, it's a little surprising the stonewall with her and unfortunately she is the coordinator for ALL of the food distributed in the county. And it's not as if she's old and ready for retirement--she's only in her early 40's.

I think there are people just too ingrained to see what's in front of their noses.

I haven't seen that show--just haven't had time to sit and watch tv lately. But, my nephew, just turned 24, is on the six-year plan at Marshall and he turned into one big, and I mean big, boy. After Christmas me and my kids just kept saying did you see how big he his? Nothing but pizza joints there. I know there is an Uno's, but probably the gluten-free pizza isn't a big seller.

[mommida]

I only saw a segment on a morning news show. He cut up the chicken bone cavity, added chicken skin, flour spices and placed it in a food processer. Then he asked the kids to raise their hands if they would like to eat the chicken nuggets he was making. Pretty much all the kids raised their hands. By that time I really felt like vomitting. Those kids watched him making "nuggets" from chicken garbage and still wanted to eat it. NASTY!

[AlysounRI]

There was also a story of a very notorious inner city school. It's working budget was sooo no one could understand how it was to function. The principal put a fitness equipment in and made the food healthy. Actually fresh vegetables. The violence problems went down and the test scores and grades went up.

Is the government going to change the food pyramid? Obviously it is not working and the obesity and diabetes problems are just increasing.

I saw David Lynch speak at my university a few years ago. He was touring to speak about the benefits of transcendental meditation. Turns out he's also a HUGE quinoa fan

He talked about some experimentation with bringing TM into urban schools and the amazingly beneficial results it caused as well with better testing scores and a reduction of violence and conflict.

It's the old mind-body connection thing over and over and over again.

Though I also read (forget where, though) that if a school healthies up their meals, the students just go out and buy junk food. And, I fear, a lot of those students will be the gluten intolerant/allergy filled adults of the future.

~Allison

[WheatChef]

Without sidetracking the post about how completely awesome Jamie Oliver's new show is, he really does have an excellent point about the absolute filth we are feeding children. Then SURPRISE! The kid who grew up eating nothing but slop now eats nothing but slop as an adult. I'd like to see exactly which grains board it was that convinced the government to say that we should get 60% of our calories from carbs. If even the conservative estimates of gluten problems are correct at 10% of the population then it's ridiculous that we still allow those specific grains into our diet.

Sorry, small sidetrack. Jamie Oliver at TED talks:

Open Original Shared Link

[bridgetm]

I have fallen in love (again) with Jaime Oliver. I think the main issue the schools deal with is cost. And they only care about immediate cost; not long-term. These processed foods may be empty of any nutritional value, but they go farther than fresh fish and greens.

Why spend $80,000 (the amount Jaime has to raise to keep his program running in the Huntington schools alone) on employee training and supplies when a few kitchen workers can feed hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of kids with a couple bags of food flakes and water?

School districts and local governments aren't easily comforted by the fact that real food will cut obesity-rates and increase attention and discipline in the classroom in turn raising grades in turn raising the graduation rate in turn increasing rates of students going on to higher education, etc, etc, etc, though they obviously should be.

My mom works in a high school cafeteria and she and all her coworkers are keeping an eye on Jaime's progress. None of them like what they're feeding the kids, but they're paid to preheat the ovens and not fuss with the gears that keep the politics running. It's all politics, always.

On a similar and quite timely note, I just caught the documentary Food, Inc. on TBS. All this GMO junk is just a plot for the handful of food companies to rule the market and, in turn, the world. I was starting to get tired of watching like a hawk everything I put in my mouth, but now I'm loving those ingredient labels.

...Maybe I'll start a garden and hatchery in my dorm room

[Juliebove]

I think my daughter's school does a pretty good job of food, nutritionally speaking. They don't get a lot of food though. The day that I visited, they served what appeared to be canned ravioli. Each kid got three pieces. There was also salad and fruit. Took the kids about 5 minutes to eat it. Their school does not currently have a cafeteria. They are building one so perhaps next year they can expand the menu.

[sa1937]

With obesity so rampant, kids today are really getting off to a terrible start in life. I guess I'm fortunate to have grown up in a time that my Mom cooked, had a garden with lots of yummy vegetables, our meats were not hormone-laden, etc. etc. Sit-down family dinners were common. Portions were not humongous. Eating out was a special treat, not a several-times-a-week occurrence. Moms were stay-at-home-moms, not having to work to have every latest gadget to come on the market. We did without (without realizing it), we used our imagination, rode our bikes and played outdoors a lot.

Of course, way back then very little was available in already prepared foods filled with lots of ingredients you can't even begin to pronounce. Like mother, like daughter...I always cooked good meals for my family, too. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. That makes it even more worrisome when the kids of today become the parents of tomorrow.

I've read that this generation will be the first to have shorter lifespans than their parents not to mention the diseases they will get at very early ages (high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes). This is scary stuff!!!

OK, I'll get off my soapbox now...