Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Healthier school lunches
I dig the Obamas for their interest in practical, healthy meals. While there's still quite a bit of room for improvement, I think this is a wonderful leap in the right direction.
*************************************************************
Less salt and fat. More whole grains, fruit, veggies and low-fat dairy. This is what kids can expect in the school lunchroom soon, according to new nutrition standards for school meals announced today by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and first lady Michelle Obama.
"When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won't be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home," Obama said in a statement. "We want the food they get at school to be the same kind of food we would serve at our own kitchen tables."
And remember all the political shenanigans over pizza as a veggie? Yes, pizza can technically still count as one serving of veggies. But that slice of pizza won't be served alone. The new standards call for two servings of vegetables per meal. So the pizza will come with a side of carrots or green beans.
Chocolate milk made the cut, too, although from here on out it will be skim, according to a sample menu created to show what the new standards will look like once implemented.
"The new school standards are a terrific step forward," Margo Wootan of the Center for Science in the Public Interest told The Salt. "And they would have been even better if Congress had not meddled."
One example: French fries. Originally, the USDA proposed a standard that would have limited servings of the starchy potato. But Wootan explains that the potato lobby found friends in Congress to help scrap that provision. The result: French fries will likely remain a staple of the school cafeteria. But they're likely to be a little less salty.
Another change in store: setting limits on total calories for a meal. While there are still many children at risk of food insecurity or hunger, there's also the competing challenge of obesity. In trying to balance these concerns, the USDA decided to set a calorie range.
For instance, the USDA say elementary school kids should receive lunches between 550 and 650 calories, which is about one-third of daily recommended calories.
The price tag on the changes? $3.2 billion over the next five years, the agency says. But schools will get some help with those costs from the government ? included in the package announced today is an increase of 6 cents per meal in reimbursement funds for schools. This is the first increase in reimbursement funds in 30 years.
Nearly 32 million kids participate in school meal programs every school day. In addition to revamping nutrition standards, USDA also recently began encouraging schools to partner with local farms to get more fresh fruits and vegetables into the lunchroom.
Re: Healthier school lunches
My school sucked. And guess what vegetarians could buy as an alternative lunch? PB&J on white, wonder bread. Disgusting. OR a cold salad bar with soups that were usually chicken noodle, potato with bacon, vegetable with beef, or chili.
/end rant
Anyway, I remember way back reading something about schools who served healthier lunches did better on standardized testing. Our middle school had a program that would provide a fruit/vegetable snack three to four times a week randomly. It was a grant program and actually quite nice when that happened.
I'm a fan of skim milk, but fat free chocolate milk is really not any better since it still has a shitton of sugar.
But I'm liking a lot of the other changes. (boo, potato lobby) I do wonder about the food waste, though, if kids are served a side of unwanted veggie. We always got a scoop of veg on our trays, and I never ate it. That shits was nasty. I ate all my veg at home, though, so it wasn't just me being a non veg picky kid.
This is the first increase in reimbursement funds in 30 years.
I'm typically not one to want to increase funding willy-nilly, even if it's "for the children" but in this case I really feel like it's warranted. I believe that an investment in a healthy lifestyle earlier in life will help Americans in general later on when our health care bills are (hopefully!!) lower.
That doesn't surprise me. I'm sure plenty of kids will dump them if they don't have the salt that they've grown accustomed to. I encourage L to pick the fresh fruit and/or veggies over the canned stuff but I know she'll pick the fruit cocktail before going for the apple slices - and that's just what kids tend to do.
I went to a small school where lunches were hot dogs on Monday, Arby's on Tuesday, chicken sandwich on Wednesday, Domino's pizza Thursday and BYO Fridays. I would have loved a salad bar every now and then.
I don't see why schools have such an issue making lunches good for you. We need to get them away from prepackaged foods and back to making food from scratch. We need to get with our local farmers. So much food is thrown away every week because it won't sell in grocery stores because it isn't pretty enough. Kids don't know a carrot wasn't perfectly straight before it was cut up. It kills two birds with one stone.
I agree with you on the milk. I wasn't allowed to have school lunches growing up (we couldn't afford them) but it seems canned veggies are the most cost efficient. Canned veggies are gross (IMO), do not taste or even feel like the real deal, and are generally very high in sodium.
The sample menu included jicama. I'm not sure if that comes in a variety other than fresh, to be honest with you, but seeing it on there gives me some hope that at least the kids will be exposed to foods they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. If they can implement using more local foods, the cost could be cheaper than shipping canned goods, and the food would be fresh, therefore taste better.
That quote in the article about how it would have been better if Congress hadn't gotten involved...yeah, I don't think so. School lunches have been awful for decades and they showed no signs of improving any time soon. Yeah, it sucks that fries are still on the menu, but perhaps they'll leave the conversation open to serving a baked potato (or any potato dish that isn't fried or covered in cream and cheese). I'd love to see sweet potatoes in there. I don't think I had one until I was in my 20s. My mom only served them at holidays, covered in marshmallows, which freaked me out.
There was recent talk on P&CE about a show specifically about this issue. I think it was called The Great Waste, but I'm not sure. There's a BBC show about it too http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tkr88 I'm hoping to catch one of them eventually.
Because of our climate issue last summer, our root vegetables were all really ugly. Our carrots had three legs from growing in such compacted dirt. Those were the best carrots we've ever eaten and my dogs actually drooled for them. They like carrots, but we don't usually see that kind of reaction. They tasted more carrot-y than any carrots we'd ever had, even from the CSA in CA. I chopped them all up, blanched them and froze them for crock pot recipes, since the texture won't really affect a stew.
My brother's hs has already made most of these changes and brought the school lunch program out of the negative. Its the lunches for all levels in that district and the lunch lady has the kids helping. I think its awesome.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7388491n&tag=mncol;lst;1
I honestly have no idea if our veggies were canned. I think they were probably mostly frozen b/c I distinctly remember peas and carrots, and the peas in my memory are too green to be canned.
My experience with school food is different than most. I went to a private school, and lunch was included in tuition. You couldn't bring your own meal (until grade 7, when you ate lunch on your own) unless it was passover (although they provided matzoh) or you had a doctor's note. I pretty much subsisted on pb&j every day in grade school, although I went through phases of using the salad bar. So, I really have no idea what a normal experience is. Our food wasn't that good, but it was certainly more balanced and healthy that I hear from others' experience. Chocolate milk was only a friday treat!
As far as what my school lunches were like, I distinctly remember food that was overall pretty crappy health-wise. Tater tots, tostadas, possibly some type of pizza, and chicken nuggets. I remember choosing chocolate milk over regular whenever possible, but milk over orange juice because I was a little milk fiend. Anything that had actually been "cooked" so to speak was prepped at the district kitchen and distributed to individual schools.
I don't remember very much about vegetables and fruits, just that we would make up stories about the green beans being old and nasty ones that were mashed up and molded to look like fresh ones. I must have eaten them otherwise I wouldn't have the judgement that they were nasty, right?