Erin Smith, writing for the Lafayette Journal & Courier has an article entitled “Many students not stomaching state’s healthy food approach.” Might I just say: shocker.
The article concerns SB 111-2006 which, among other things, required schools to develop local wellness policies and imposed requirements attempting to improve the healthiness of food made available to students during school hours. (For prior discussion of SB 111-2006, see here and here.)
Harrison High School junior Hope Gerlach responded as follows:
“What they’re trying to do is almost backfiring on them,” Harrison High School junior Hope Gerlach said, noting that more students have resorted to bringing their lunches or purchasing snacks from an in-school store.
“They try to force healthy food on us (and) it’s too gross to eat, so people just go to the Trading Post and buy chocolate and Pop-Tarts.”
Schools and government can only go so far. But I think it is good policy to make eating healthy food the path of least resistance regardless of whether students think such food is “gross” or whether they can get junk food elsewhere. Just make it easier to get healthy food, and if students go the extra mile to eat crap, then so be it. Children with poor dietary habits become obese, diabetic adults, increasing our health care costs and poverty rates. So, I think it’s worth the effort to at least make good food easily available in our schools and perhaps make junk food a little harder to get.
Ive had considerable experience with high school eating habits having often been assigned as cafeteria lunch supervisor. The goal should be to make hamburgers, hotdogs,fries,chocolate milk,brownies,etc as nutritious as possible. If a kid doesnt eat balanced at home he’s sure not going to eat balanced at school with his buddies.And even if he does eat balanced at home he’ll fit into whatever his friends do. Offer balanced meals to those 30% or so who would eat them,and then work to make junk food as nutritious as possible, otherwise the budget will be broken.High school food waste( by students) can be huge on a normal day. The goal of a high school cafeteria budget is to come out even ( at least it was in my experience).If kids are allowed to leave campus during lunch, balanced meals may push more out,and accidents happen during the rush of lunch.Its better for safety reasons not to let kids leave campus during lunch. They’ll bring candy bars and fritos from home ,if they have to,and can’t leave.Lunch is a high school social hour and thats what is the motivator..High school kids eat a lot and they eat fast,and they prefer stuff they can hold or carry in their hands.Knives and forks are for the ‘sissies’or used to catapult peas in some cases.ButI cant speak for all HS cafeterias.Also try to keep the student lunch hour to 30 minutes or less. That’s all the time they need.But crowding may be a problem.It’s best to have 3 short lunch periods rather than one big one.Less ‘stuff’ happens.
Amen, Doug. Our 12 year old just started going to a middle/high school combo here in Indy. Lunch is $1.50/day. She had some back-to-school money for the first few weeks so she was buying her own lunches. After the first full week she came home and demanded lunch money. A week’s worth of lunch would be $7.50 but she’d spent $15! Was she eating lunch twice?
No. She was eating junk food snacks instead of lunch. Then she’d come home starved and wanting to snack before dinner. We quickly let her know that Little Debbie cakes and a bag of Fritos was not lunch and if she chose to just eat snacks for lunch there wouldn’t be snacks again while waiting for dinner.
Almost makes you want to fix lima beans and spinach for dinner to make sure she got some nutrition during the day…
“In school store?” What is that about?
The school stores was just a fledgling operation in my school back in the late 80s, but it was just a store in the school operated by students with various necessary items — paper, pencils, and some not so necessary items — maybe some school T-shirts and the like. As I recall, ours was open an hour before classes started and an hour after they ended.
Folks show how times have changed. The school today has evolved into a place that is open DURING LUNCH that sells all that stuff mentioned before, BUT ALSO cookies, chips and other assorted junk.
Back in the 60s when I started teaching the standard high school lunch was a govt subsized plate lunch with 3 vegetables and sold for 25 cents for both teachers and students.( Later teachers were required to pay much more) There was a issue of waste because lots of the ‘balanced part’ of the meal got thrown out by substantial number of students.So the new trend was give ’em what they want and cut down waste.Then the private sector wanted to install vending machines and that’s always good school-community PR.
But I assure everyone that there will be great waste of food if each student is given a plate lunch with 3 vegetables.
As ever, people choose what they want to choose, regardless of what’s put in front of them by people who know better. I think Lou makes a great point about reducing wasted food. There’s certainly no virtue in wasted veggies.
Many school lunch programs are run by private firms. I know that one such firm had strict requirements about what constituted a serving of the main lunch items. A child could receive say, five chicken nuggets or one sandwich, a veggie, perhaps an alternate side and a drink, usually milk. Since the portions were pretty small, especially for the junior high/middlers and high school kids, the private firm provided all kinds extra food that could be purchased in the cafeteria such as large sweetened drinks, pizza, cookies, pretzels and nachos with cheese sauce, Little Debbies, ice cream novelties,etc. High school and junior high kids usually had plenty of money to buy the junk food, and it was readily available. As far as I know, there was nothing to stop the kids from bypassing the regular lunch altogether and going straight to the junk food stations.
I don’t know if the new state laws forbid the private firms and the schools from providing junk food in the cafeteria itself, but if the school is allowed to sell junk food somewhere else in the building that would defeat the purpose of the laws.
I’m also curious about what the healthy options are. If schools are offering overprocessed veggies and other tasteless food, then no wonder the kids are finding ways to avoid eating what the schools offer. Healthy food does not have to be unappetizing.
I realize I’m old – the school store when I was in HS just sold the paperback novels we needed for English class, and since I didn’t grow up in Indiana my textbooks were paid by my parents’ taxes – but even I think that Pila is remarkably naive when saying “Healthy food does not have to be unappetizing.” Although true in the general it is completely false in the case of school lunches. But that is still NOT a reason for letting kids opt out by giving them easy access to junk food. Yes, lots of veggies in my day were wasted, too, but after a couple of days of being hungry in the afternoon you either figured out to eat SOMETHING from your plate or started bringing PB&J to school. (Or are kids allowed to bring their own lunches? I truly do not know.) Giving them access to junk food simply ENSURES that they won’t eat anything healthy. Even worse, of course, is not giving them enough food so that they have to choose between junk and being hungry even if they eat school lunch.
Karen:
Sorry to get my back up, but I am not naive, nor do I think that it is pie in the sky to think that good, healthy food can be offered in school lunch programs. I worked in school cafeterias as an inspector for several years, so I’m pretty familiar with what they serve and why. Serving junk food so that the schools and/or the private companies that run the school lunch programs can make money is what has driven the decision to offer so much junk food.
There are people, such as Alice Waters, who have introduced healthy, appetizing food to schools with good results. I’m not saying that we need gourmet chefs, but a little ingenuity could make a difference.
For instance, does a taco salad have to contain greasy beef mix, loads of cheese and sour cream in a an edible bowl made from white flour? No. A similar salad could be made with grilled chicken (pre-cooked), frozen corn, black beans, lettuce (probably ice berg, but that’s better than nothing) and lower fat versions of sour cream and dressings served on a plate or in a whole-grain, baked shell. A lunch like this could probably be served at the same or similar cost as the greasy, low-fiber fare that is served at many schools. Pizza could have less cheese, more veggies and/or lower fat meats, and whole-grain or partially whole-grain crust.
Treats such as brownies or cookies could be offered in healthier versions that are tasty–and I’m not talking about making brownies from soy beans or anything that drastic. Most kids will eat apples, oranges, and grapes. However, if Pop Tarts and Little Debbies are offered in the cafeteria or down the hall, most kids will eat junk food instead of fruit, no matter how much they may like fruit.
Sorry to rant. Hope you are not offended.
As a once voracious high-school eater (and I sport a newly found girth to prove that the habit carried well into adulthood), I can honestly say that I understand the problem(s) involved and I think I have a solution:
Make healthy food taste better, people will eat it.
I know, it’s a tall order for lunch ladies in public schools to show any sort of imaginative culinary flare, considering the scale to which they are forced to operate, but I’ll tell you what, some seasonings and some fresh produce really could go a long way. You see, somehow school cafeterias have managed over the years to figure out how to take no-brainers like pizza and burgers and make them taste like dog food. If they can totally screw up these items, how on earth can we expect them to prepare spinach, cauliflower, wax beans and brussel sprouts to a level considered “palatable?”
Here’s another dirty little secret: If the food tasted better, they could charge more for it and people would gladly pay, whereby offsetting the added costs of doing something with more flare than boiling a burger or microwaving some soggy fries.
Mike,
You’ve always been able to choose what you wanted to eat at school – it’s called bringing your own lunch. The school shouldn’t be in the business of providing unhealthy junk food to children. If you want to send your kid to school w/ a can of coke and pringles for lunch well that’s your right as a parent. But if the school is going to be in the business of providing lunch, then they should at least try to make is somewhat healthy.
There’s plenty of virtue in THAT…
Jeff,
Make the school a private one, and a good Libertarian will likely change his mind. I suspect it could even be one funded entirely by government-subsidized “vouchers”.
The key to private enterprise is unaccountability to the public — the public being those among whom you are socializing your externalities.
Pila, no offense intended – I meant to imply what Andrew expressed more clearly in his 6:37 post. If you can make mac & cheese unappealing to a 7-year-old, I am pessimistic that you can be trusted with grilled chicken on a salad. But perhaps that is not fair, so I will just say that I hope you are right. And I definitely agree with you that if you give most kids the choice between anything healthy and something with large amounts of fat & refined sugar, they will pass on healthy (regardless of whether it’s well cooked or not). So part of the solution (IMHO) involves removing access to junk food.
It’s positive to see a libertarian, in post 13 above, state that private enterprise should be accountable to the public( public meaning in the broad sense ‘elected government’). I assume that means accountability for the quality of the service they are enlisted to provide and not the profitabilty of the service.I would never have an issue with private control if the measure of success was the quality of the service.
Karen: Sorry, as I said before, I didn’t mean to get my back up. I actually think we are pretty much in agreement. Despite the fact that Doug has provided a link to SB 111-2006, I haven’t read through it. (Maybe I oughtta do that!) Making the schools have wellness policies and healthy options in the cafeteria won’t work if junk food is still accessible on the school premises.
If a school lunch program is managed by a private firm, then the “lunch ladies” don’t have much say in what is served. I am aware that the food service manager near my hometown ended up quitting in frustration after a private firm took over that school system’s lunch program. Among other things, she was upset about having to push junk food, yet limit the servings of the main lunch items.
IIRC, the USDA has requirements that school lunch programs follow, but the guidelines are pretty loose. USDA doesn’t care if the school serves overcooked, tasteless veggies. Menus just have to show that the vegetables, fruit, protein, etc., were served. I don’t know if there are requirements regarding fat or fiber. Public schools often receive commodities, so they have to figure out what to do with the huge amounts of (usually) full-fat) cheese and other less-than-healthy items that they receive from the gov’t.
I am aware that at least one private firm that manages public school lunch programs also does so at colleges, universities, and businesses. The same firm that pushes junk food on school kids offers an array of salads, grilled options, and vegetarian meals for adults and college students.
Lou,
That was me in post #13, and I’m afraid I cannot reliably speak for the Libertarian Party — I was being sarcastic.
I’m pretty familiar with the principles underlying the LP, being born to it and all, and having read Bergland’s book, Browne’s book, and my fair share of Rothbard and Nozick — but I do not characterize myself as a big-L Libertarian.
My politics are eclectic, but I’m pretty responsive to anti-authoritarian critiques of Big Government and Big Business alike. I think it’s probably Bigness in general that I’m suspicious of. This may have something to do with the correlation between the size of an institution and the ability of the people working within in to suppress their consciences when making decisions that affect other human beings.
It’s no accident that people in all sort of institutions develop their own lexicons of terminology — some of it is necessary, but much of it is a useful cognitive screen against the consequences of one’s actions in an organizational context. The military is notorious for this (“precision bombing”), (“collateral damage), but hardly unusual.
Hmm, I’ve veered well off-topic now…
Branden,
Ive been trying to understand the tenets of libertarians.There are lots of libertarians who make comment in this blog,but never enough on any one issue,so that I can get a clear picture of thought processes. Particularly on how they would handle corruption,power,and self-interest which results in some people ending up with special privileges and some ending up with fewer and dininished rights. As a teacher I could at least make sure the world was ‘fair’ in my own classroom.Ive realized gradually over the years that only elected Government is close enough to the people and has the authority to intervene constitutionally to give back those rights taken away,so that makes me a ‘liberal’ I guess. I dont know what a libertarian would do,if anything.And why are all Libertarians in favor of CT zone?
I understand perfectly that ‘bigness itself'( like Wal Mart) causes ‘suspicion’ and the corrupt road of ‘supressed conscience’ leading to ‘decisions’ that undermine us ‘human beings’ .These concepts are difficult to finds the words to express and I want to thank someone who aids a person to ponder.
Lou,
You’ve been trying to understand the tenets of liberterians — good luck. :)
More seriously, generalizations can be tough to draw, but I think this is the case for any significant sector of political philosophy. The Left is so notorious for its fractiousness that Monty Python lampooned it in The Life of Brian. But the Right has its internecine spats too, and interesting it’s been the ascendance of one-party rule in the U.S. over the past 6-8 years that has brought the existence of these to a broader audience. It’s not just paleocons like Pat Buchanan butting heads with neocons like Douglas Feith.
My impression is that the only thing that imposes much in the way of ideological coherence on any political philosophy is party discipline — but for party discipline to work, you have to have a party with enough access to the levers of political power that it can plausibly get more. The LP doesn’t have that. Party discipline can be its own evil, however — just ask Leon Trotsky, the Gang of Four, or Ernst Röhm. (Röhm isn’t that well-known, but I feel compelled to include him to counter the knee-jerk characterization some would make that only parties of the “Left” practice murderous purges.)
Particularly on how they would handle corruption,power,and self-interest which results in some people ending up with special privileges and some ending up with fewer and dininished rights.
The type of libertarians with the least satisfactory answer to such a question (in my opinon) are what I’ll term the “right-libertarians”, that is, the loose body of libertarians comprising refugees from Goldwater conservatism[1], quasi-Objectivists influenced by the novels of Ayn Rand[2], Rothbardian anarcho-capitalists, college kids disenchanted both with the New Left and the Old Suits in Washington, and prescient movement conservatives who knew a useful tool when they saw one.
So, to try to answer your question, I think right-libertarians largely hail self-interest as a force for unalloyed good. As Robert Heinlein said, “the greatest productive force is human selfishness.” Right-libertarians tend to discuss “power” or “corruption” exclusively in the context of state power — it is as if it is impossible to be powerful (in any negative sense) or corrupt if one is operating in the private sector. In the ideal capitalist world, everything is negotiable, and there are no such things as anticompetitive practices or restraint of trade, unless the government does them.
As a teacher I could at least make sure the world was ‘fair’ in my own classroom.Ive realized gradually over the years that only elected Government is close enough to the people and has the authority to intervene constitutionally to give back those rights taken away,so that makes me a ‘liberal’ I guess.
I’ll quibble with your wording here. A philosophical tenet I happen to share with both libertarians and the policial Left, and which we inherit from the classical liberal tradition of Locke and Rousseau, is that the government does not “give” (or “give back”) rights. Our rights are inherent as part of our human identity, and it is the government’s place to uphold and defend those rights.
That aside, I want to generalize your point. I think any representative system works better
the closer it is to the represented, and this goes just as much for labor unions and business management as it does for government. I’m not a fan of hierarchicalism, so at the same time I distrust “Bigness”, I tend to look favorably on “Flatness”. For me, it’s all about individual empowerment in a practical sense. I want people to have lots of freedom, lots of options, lots of real choices. I’m suspicious of anything that restricts the individual’s power to control his or her destiny, and I’m outright hostile to deliberate efforts to frustrate that (if you do it, you’d better do it openly and with full exposure to public critique). I don’t care what the nature of the restricting agency is — a corrupt labor union as you see in On the Waterfront, an oppressive state apparatus, or a bullying private corporation.
Myself, I judge actions based on intent and consequence, and “the free market” is not an aegis that shields one from such scrutiny. This is far and away my biggest difference with right-libertarians, whom I perceive as dominating the LP.
Ayn Rand in particular was sharply critical of any imputation of rights to states, because she claimed that the State is a fiction; the State cannot have rights because it is a philosophical construction. In her view, the individual is not, and therefore the individual is the only place you can seat a conception of rights.[3] But Rand herself, and to a much greater extent her followers, seem to suspend this analysis when it comes to the operation of “the free market”. The free market, too, is just a construction we use as shorthand for the behaviors of many individuals taken in aggregate. But libertarian captialists seem to place the same naïve faith in “the market” to solve problems that they bitterly lambaste welfare-state liberals for placing in “the state”. I regard this as ghastly hypocrisy.
And why are all Libertarians in favor of CT zone?
I cannot be of much help here. Maybe a counter-example with raise his or her hand (though possibly not in this thread on school lunches :) ). My guess is that this has little to do with libertarianism per se (which, reasoning from their principles, would rather “the market” sorted out which time zone applied within any given political subdivision, and the wicked hand of the State would stay out of the issue altogether). I suspect it has more to do with personal preferences. Perhaps, for libertarians, the issue is also a means to wage war by proxy on Democrats and Republicans. In my experience, right-libertarians far and away prefer to excoriate Democrats, but like the Religious Right, they will turn their bile on a Republican if they haven’t been thrown a bone they want. But, with requisite substitutions of party names, this is true of interest-group politics in general.
I understand perfectly that ‘bigness itself’( like Wal Mart) causes ’suspicion’ and the corrupt road of ’supressed conscience’ leading to ‘decisions’ that undermine us ‘human beings’ .These concepts are difficult to finds the words to express and I want to thank someone who aids a person to ponder.
I think one of the most valuable things I’ve taken away from Noam Chomsky is that there is not, and should not be, any shame in applying our basic everyday principles of morality to actions taken on the grand stage of world politics. In other words, he completely rejects the Henry Kissinger school of political ethics, wherein it matters not how much blood as spilled as long you’re “seeing to your interests” (which seem to be confined to the further aggrandizement of wealth by those who already possess extreme amounts of it).
I’ve tried to structure this post a little better than a brain dump, but still, essentially that’s what it is. I hope that I have given you some pointers for further independent research. If I can be of any further help, let me know. I hope you and your students can benefit from study of the political landscape outside the tired old two-party system. Ralph Nader says we really only have one party, the “Business Party”, with two competing factions. While the differences between those factions are real, and often significant, I think he’s essentially correct.
(Hmm, really feeling the burn of no preview option on this blog right now. 8-) )
[1] “Refugees” might not be quite the right term. John Dean would argue that the conservative movement and the Republican Party simply left Goldwater behind. I think he has a point — the modern GOP seems to be running away from Goldwater’s conservatism at an ever increasing rate. Witness the recent demonization and repudiation of Justice Sandra Day O’Connor by the Right. Her appointment to the Supreme Court was once hailed — by the Right — as one of Reagan’s triumphs (not just because of her politics, but because of her sex, the idea being that Republicans do “real inclusiveness” better than Democrats). While Reagan himself is deified, many of his actions which were heralded as conservative successes at the time are now carefully forgotten, being too “moderate” for, or even counter to, the current goals of the Republican Party.
[2] Rand herself famously detested the Libertarian Party, and endorsed Republicans when she bothered at all.
[3] For what it’s worth, I agree with the poltical consequences of this reasoning, but not Rand’s philosophical underpinnings for it, which I have come to view as facile and underdeveloped. For all I know, “rights” may not have “objective” existence, but if they’re a social construction, they’re a valuable one, and worth upholding.
Branden,
Ive always had a problem with the role of govermment, and we can see why that might be true with republicans preaching LESS government,but when we look around feel even more constrained by forces that weren’t there before,(high insurance,poorer wages) and there is less government that is individual service oriented but more government otherwise.
The first campaign I ever got involved in was Barry Goldwater in my college days. He was like the new perfect leader, non-judgmental,all common sense and preached self-reliance,and was the first to warn against street crime. I’ve since evolved beyond that but maybe some day there will be another pure-thinking leader who will inspire.( But I dont think he/she could be conservative and maybe only 22-yr olds can be inspired ) Modern conservatives have largely discredited Goldwater because he left out the religious dogma which has forever spoiled the allure of anything political and named ‘conservative’.
I have never been able to come up with any scenario to proiect the individual against arbitary private power bases except ‘liberal judges’ and ‘government intervention’.Also I think lawyers of all kinds are very important to safe-guard indiviudal freedom.The poor and disenfranchised still have right to a lawyer being appointed on their behalf.Public school education is also very important and in jeopardy on many levels.
Also I am encouraged to read more by these posts.We must not get intellectually lazy when we enter into our ‘dotage years’.
Back to lunches… I have supervised the lunch schedule at Westside and find that in the junior high age– there is way too many carbs being consumed by students. Yes, they are offered baked fries, breadsticks, pizza, hamburgers and more, daily. But there is also salad and fruit. But let’s be honest– this is about children making choices — often bad ones– based on habits learned at home and taste.
We have to PROVIDE ACCESS to the nutritious stuff as well — doesn’t mean kids will choose that. Unless we remove all vending machines, go back to a one size fits all meal with no choices and (at Westside) require kids not to leave the building to get food… they will often make bad choices. A good way to control it is through money– PARENTS — and finding out what your kid is eating.
One note — I saw a kid one day with a large pretzel, two slices of pizza, fries, breadsticks and pudding (the gross slick kind) and I harassed him jokingly about it (as I do all the kids). Probably cost him $10. He ended up throwing part of it away — because the money meant nothing to him.
I don’t envy parents’ jobs — NOR the lunch ladies who take so much abuse.