food pantries is really a good idea and i think even it must be adapted by the non professional or habitual gardeners like me,considering the higher prices of food processing and retail prices the self growing is a good and affordable option.
Here is an easy way to let your senators and representative know that you support a Child Nutrition Act with more funding for school lunches and support for a farm-to-school program. Slow Food USA has a letter you can email. You supply your zip code, and the e-mail is sent to the correct people automatically. You can personalize the letter in any way you wish. E-mails, when lots of them are sent, do influence our legislators.
I dunno, Greg. Couldn't be a Minnesotan. We're not like that. Thanks again for good information and context - and especially for being such a great leader on this issue in town.
School Lunch Lady, thank you so much for taking the time to lay out the issues, the heartbreaking work you do, and the reality we face. Several others have been right to point out that it's not right to throw a whole group of people "under the bus." Thank you for the small things you do to improve kids' lives and health, for doing the best you can with what "falls off the truck," and for caring enough to do good work and educate the rest of us.
I am thankful to be part of a site and community where this kind of discussion takes place, and to be surrounded by smart, thoughtful, caring, and opinionated people. We don't need to agree on everything; we need to be able to disagree and work together anyway. Hopefully we're getting there.
Now you know the ugly side of Minnesota Nice. If public shaming doesn't work and you don't shape up we will start shunning you. If you still believe your lying eyes, we will have to banish you (probably to Iowa, but Nebraska is not out of the question).
Read the NYT link from Shari's post. It is a true story. Now tell me how good the USDA commodity food for school lunches is. I was handed the same article by a school food service worker. She was hoping for a miracle so she could afford to buy local bison or beef. Budget constraints force them to use a lot of USDA surplus commodities.
Mary and I have gone to Olivia's grade school for lunch. Only once and we didn't eat. The hot lunch did not look so good. The other kids' bag lunches ranged from home made to Lunchables.
Face it, people in this country eat a lot of, ahhh, industrial products that look like food. And it shows. Cheapness and convenience have serious and expensive consequences.
Working as a middle school lunch lady - 400 kids in school, usually 220 kids eat lunch. Two thirds are reduced/free lunch. We have three main dishes, lunch salad, lunch sandwich, three raw veggies and two fruits available. We have one full time administrator (who has no culinary food service training), one cook, two part time cooks, and two cashiers.
Think about the last time you had friends over for dinner - you served 200 right? How many people helped you make the meal? Think about it - one cook, two part time cooks - to unpack the truck, cook the food, serve the food, put food away, clean the dishes, and clean the kitchen - for 200. Daily.
Cooking healthy and/or organic/whole requires more staff. More trained staff.
Know any school districts who have extra money to hire trained full timers?
Which is why all our food is frozen. Put it in the oven, put it in plastic, and serve. We hate it.
The USDA website says that school lunches are designed to be served from the freezer because most schools do not have adequate kitchens. The solution becomes the problem.
(We have seven ovens. Two work.)
Our last line ends at 1:10. We pull the two steam table lines, count the tills, put away the "a la carte" items, the fruit and sandwiches, clean all the serving dishes and cooking dishes from the last line, store everything, clean all the surfaces. How long did it take you to clean up from your last dinner party? We stop getting paid at 1:30. Two or three of us stay past to finish cleaning.
If we got real food in we couldn't cook it. Not enough time. Not enough people. Not enough training. Not enough refrigerated storage.
Each month our "kitchen" makes between $4000-6000 selling potato chips, fruit snacks, juice boxes, and bottled water. The administrator's administrator talks about nutrition. But her bottom line is the monthly profit. That is what her monthly meetings are about.
Four of the five lunch ladies do not get health insurance or benefits.
We know good food. We want to serve good food. What falls off the truck is what we have to serve. Serving mediocre food to children is a difficult job. It makes us sad. We do what we can. We would love some help from the top. We are changing as much as we can from the bottom.
Good discussion; I'm learning from everyone's comments.
For me, I continue to be surprised at how many options my kids have for lunch. When I was in school, we had one meal choice until high school, where we had two choices plus an a la carte line.
Now, my kids have lots of options at school. They often choose fruits, veggies and salads. Thankfully, they opt out of the "greasy" meals like hamburgers and pizza.
(When they were younger, I packed them lunches. Now, they're old enough to make their own choices, sometimes packing their own & other times opting for school lunch.)
This makes me wonder about two things:
1. How much does all this variety cost? If schools reduced the number of options, would it improve funding for higher quality? I wonder.
2. What is the parents' role in raising kids to make healthy food choices? It's not all the school's responsibility -- encouraging healthy eating starts at home.
I've hung back too long, here, and need to jump in to the fray to defend my friend and colleague.
I have eaten lunch at my children's school -- one of the supposedly better suburuban districts, that has (thankfully) found a milk supplier that doesn't use rBGH and a local bread baker that uses whole grains. (However, most of the milk sold is ultra-pasteurized and flavored with sweeteners -- Emily is right -- and the bread is only offered one or two days per week.)
But almost every day of the week includes the USDA-sanctioned chicken scraps (otherwise known as nuggets, strips, patties, tacos, drummies, and something called “popcorn chicken") and beef (in the form burgers and meat sauce) that is of such poor quality that it can't be sold to retail establishments. USA Today, probably the most mainstream newspaper in America, recently wrote that McDonalds, Burger King and Costco, for example, test their meat for pathogens "five to 10 times more often" than the USDA tests the meat made for schools. "And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef."
Now, the USDA has recently declared that this has to change -- and hooray for that. But I pack my kids' lunches every day, not only because I'm concerned about the nutritional value of school lunches, but also whether or not they're even safe to eat. In my conversations with food-safety attorney Bill Marler last year, I learned a lot about how institutional food is processed -- and it's not a pretty picture. (The best article I've read about this subject is this NY Times piece that ran last October, featuring Minnesota resident Stephanie Smith who almost died after eating an E-coli-infected burger.)
There are a lot of passionate points being made in these comments. And the fact that you're all here reading about this tells me that you care about children and you care about food. Can we all agree that school lunches can be more nutritious, more delicious, and yes, safer for kids to eat? Then let's start there and work together to make it so.
Problem as I see it is most parents are apathetic re: school lunch. Most are just happy not to have one less meal to prepare.
Don't think that true?
Well, I have yet to see a School District propose a School Lunch Funding Levee. I've suggested it to a number of the food service directors and the response is "oh, no one would go for that." Personally, I'd vote for it if the levy $s raised went to good, clean, local proteins only. (sorry greg) This would free up remaining lunch budgets for higher quality veggies. And inject tons of cash into local food systems. Increasing demand and tax bases for the districts. Maybe a new farmer/rancher would be created - Hey that sounds like "green jobs!"
p.s. I have school lunch with Thing 2 about once a month - he eats his home lunch and I have a St. Paul school lunch - they aren't terrible - until I really think about what I'm eating - yuck.
food pantries is really a
food pantries is really a good idea and i think even it must be adapted by the non professional or habitual gardeners like me,considering the higher prices of food processing and retail prices the self growing is a good and affordable option.
Here is an easy way to let
Here is an easy way to let your senators and representative know that you support a Child Nutrition Act with more funding for school lunches and support for a farm-to-school program. Slow Food USA has a letter you can email. You supply your zip code, and the e-mail is sent to the correct people automatically. You can personalize the letter in any way you wish. E-mails, when lots of them are sent, do influence our legislators.
Write your legislators about getting better food in schools:
http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch/
This is a beautiful blog
This is a beautiful blog post, I very much enjoyed the image of that family.
Greg -- I am so happy we're
Greg -- I am so happy we're getting our CSA from you this year. You rock!
I dunno, Greg. Couldn't be a
I dunno, Greg. Couldn't be a Minnesotan. We're not like that. Thanks again for good information and context - and especially for being such a great leader on this issue in town.
School Lunch Lady, thank you so much for taking the time to lay out the issues, the heartbreaking work you do, and the reality we face. Several others have been right to point out that it's not right to throw a whole group of people "under the bus." Thank you for the small things you do to improve kids' lives and health, for doing the best you can with what "falls off the truck," and for caring enough to do good work and educate the rest of us.
I am thankful to be part of a site and community where this kind of discussion takes place, and to be surrounded by smart, thoughtful, caring, and opinionated people. We don't need to agree on everything; we need to be able to disagree and work together anyway. Hopefully we're getting there.
Lee, Now you know the ugly
Lee,
Now you know the ugly side of Minnesota Nice. If public shaming doesn't work and you don't shape up we will start shunning you. If you still believe your lying eyes, we will have to banish you (probably to Iowa, but Nebraska is not out of the question).
Read the NYT link from Shari's post. It is a true story. Now tell me how good the USDA commodity food for school lunches is. I was handed the same article by a school food service worker. She was hoping for a miracle so she could afford to buy local bison or beef. Budget constraints force them to use a lot of USDA surplus commodities.
Mary and I have gone to Olivia's grade school for lunch. Only once and we didn't eat. The hot lunch did not look so good. The other kids' bag lunches ranged from home made to Lunchables.
Face it, people in this country eat a lot of, ahhh, industrial products that look like food. And it shows. Cheapness and convenience have serious and expensive consequences.
Greg
Working as a middle school
Working as a middle school lunch lady - 400 kids in school, usually 220 kids eat lunch. Two thirds are reduced/free lunch. We have three main dishes, lunch salad, lunch sandwich, three raw veggies and two fruits available. We have one full time administrator (who has no culinary food service training), one cook, two part time cooks, and two cashiers.
Think about the last time you had friends over for dinner - you served 200 right? How many people helped you make the meal? Think about it - one cook, two part time cooks - to unpack the truck, cook the food, serve the food, put food away, clean the dishes, and clean the kitchen - for 200. Daily.
Cooking healthy and/or organic/whole requires more staff. More trained staff.
Know any school districts who have extra money to hire trained full timers?
Which is why all our food is frozen. Put it in the oven, put it in plastic, and serve. We hate it.
The USDA website says that school lunches are designed to be served from the freezer because most schools do not have adequate kitchens. The solution becomes the problem.
(We have seven ovens. Two work.)
Our last line ends at 1:10. We pull the two steam table lines, count the tills, put away the "a la carte" items, the fruit and sandwiches, clean all the serving dishes and cooking dishes from the last line, store everything, clean all the surfaces. How long did it take you to clean up from your last dinner party? We stop getting paid at 1:30. Two or three of us stay past to finish cleaning.
If we got real food in we couldn't cook it. Not enough time. Not enough people. Not enough training. Not enough refrigerated storage.
Each month our "kitchen" makes between $4000-6000 selling potato chips, fruit snacks, juice boxes, and bottled water. The administrator's administrator talks about nutrition. But her bottom line is the monthly profit. That is what her monthly meetings are about.
Four of the five lunch ladies do not get health insurance or benefits.
We know good food. We want to serve good food. What falls off the truck is what we have to serve. Serving mediocre food to children is a difficult job. It makes us sad. We do what we can. We would love some help from the top. We are changing as much as we can from the bottom.
Good discussion; I'm learning
Good discussion; I'm learning from everyone's comments.
For me, I continue to be surprised at how many options my kids have for lunch. When I was in school, we had one meal choice until high school, where we had two choices plus an a la carte line.
Now, my kids have lots of options at school. They often choose fruits, veggies and salads. Thankfully, they opt out of the "greasy" meals like hamburgers and pizza.
(When they were younger, I packed them lunches. Now, they're old enough to make their own choices, sometimes packing their own & other times opting for school lunch.)
This makes me wonder about two things:
1. How much does all this variety cost? If schools reduced the number of options, would it improve funding for higher quality? I wonder.
2. What is the parents' role in raising kids to make healthy food choices? It's not all the school's responsibility -- encouraging healthy eating starts at home.
Thanks Lee for sparking the conversation!
I've hung back too long,
I've hung back too long, here, and need to jump in to the fray to defend my friend and colleague.
I have eaten lunch at my children's school -- one of the supposedly better suburuban districts, that has (thankfully) found a milk supplier that doesn't use rBGH and a local bread baker that uses whole grains. (However, most of the milk sold is ultra-pasteurized and flavored with sweeteners -- Emily is right -- and the bread is only offered one or two days per week.)
But almost every day of the week includes the USDA-sanctioned chicken scraps (otherwise known as nuggets, strips, patties, tacos, drummies, and something called “popcorn chicken") and beef (in the form burgers and meat sauce) that is of such poor quality that it can't be sold to retail establishments. USA Today, probably the most mainstream newspaper in America, recently wrote that McDonalds, Burger King and Costco, for example, test their meat for pathogens "five to 10 times more often" than the USDA tests the meat made for schools. "And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef."
Now, the USDA has recently declared that this has to change -- and hooray for that. But I pack my kids' lunches every day, not only because I'm concerned about the nutritional value of school lunches, but also whether or not they're even safe to eat. In my conversations with food-safety attorney Bill Marler last year, I learned a lot about how institutional food is processed -- and it's not a pretty picture. (The best article I've read about this subject is this NY Times piece that ran last October, featuring Minnesota resident Stephanie Smith who almost died after eating an E-coli-infected burger.)
There are a lot of passionate points being made in these comments. And the fact that you're all here reading about this tells me that you care about children and you care about food. Can we all agree that school lunches can be more nutritious, more delicious, and yes, safer for kids to eat? Then let's start there and work together to make it so.
Problem as I see it is most
Problem as I see it is most parents are apathetic re: school lunch. Most are just happy not to have one less meal to prepare.
Don't think that true?
Well, I have yet to see a School District propose a School Lunch Funding Levee. I've suggested it to a number of the food service directors and the response is "oh, no one would go for that." Personally, I'd vote for it if the levy $s raised went to good, clean, local proteins only. (sorry greg) This would free up remaining lunch budgets for higher quality veggies. And inject tons of cash into local food systems. Increasing demand and tax bases for the districts. Maybe a new farmer/rancher would be created - Hey that sounds like "green jobs!"
p.s. I have school lunch with Thing 2 about once a month - he eats his home lunch and I have a St. Paul school lunch - they aren't terrible - until I really think about what I'm eating - yuck.