Editorial: Big Food spoiling school lunches
Publisher’s note: This editorial is from the June 7, 2014, Sacramento Bee.
School lunches shouldn’t be a partisan political issue, but congressional efforts to keep kids hooked on pizza and tater tots have turned them into exactly that.
It’s a shame, given all the hard work that has gone into fighting childhood obesity and Type 2 diabetes in this country. And it’s heartless, given the lifelong health risks that beset the one out of three American teenagers and children who are overweight or obese.
Just four years ago, Congress wisely passed a law requiring stronger federal school-lunch standards – leaner proteins, lower-fat dairy, and more fruits, vegetables and whole grains.
The standards weren’t handed down from on high by food Nazis; they were based on recommendations from the Institute of Medicine and imposed by the Department of Agriculture. They made sense.
How did we all survive before the government schools started feeding everybody’s kids?
The school I went to didn’t even have a cafeteria. We brought a pbj, or balogna, or tuna sandwich from home. An apple, a couple of cookies maybe, and that was that. We COULD buy a small carton of milk if we wanted. Most of us did. There were no vending machines, either.
There’s no reason on earth families couldn’t do that today except that they’ve grown too lazy to bother planning that far ahead.
Don’t tell me it’s too hard with both parents working; mine both worked. Parents used to TEACH their kids how to pack a lunch, how to be responsible, and maybe one day be self-sufficient ADULTS. That’s what was expected of grown-ups.
Depending on government keeps people perpetually juvenile.
You prove your ignorance every time I stop by this site. Times have changed you have not.
Back up your statement. WHAT has changed? Anybody can come in and hurl a personal insult. Address the issue. Be a grown-up.
My daughter gets a lunch packed everyday. Even as a fourth grader, she says the school food is gross. Parents need to to take responsibility for their kids. So what happens when they don’t? So what happens to the huge majority of kids who MUST eat this stuff because their parents dont have it together? Where is their voice? I’ll tell you where. It is drowned out by corporate greed and pathetic beaurecrats who are bought and paid for by junk food pushers. So Dogula, just let this scenario play out? Let Big Food make these kids obese and diabetic? These are children, allowing this market perversion to take place is a bad investment. I say fight this fight, otherwise we all pay a bigger price down the road in exploding healthcare costs. Funny how the Right always seems to take the short sighted , myopic version of things. Freedom, they say. Don’t tell me what to do, they say. Let the kids get fat and let the corporations get fatter. Not a world I can understand or one I want to live in. You can act like we are separate all you want but we are not separate and we are all in this together. How about we make Dog eat this mess everyday because she was born into a family without the means or the will to feed their kids properly. It’s random Dog, you were lucky, many are not.
Yes Dog, let’s all go back to 1955. Back when grown-ups were grown-ups. Men were men. Women were barefoot in the kitchen(Planning menu’s and making their children’s lunches). The U.S. population was 171 million people. Businesses paid their taxes. Black people couldn’t ___________(fill in the blank). Sugar was SUGAR. Ayn Rand was schtupping her friends husband. Tell me what HASN’T changed. Be specific. Be a grown-up.
Whole lotta straw flyin’ this morning.
Who knew one little opinion could rile up so many conformists?
Do they still make lunch boxes?
It’s somewhat obvious that most did not click ‘read the whole story’, as it merely points out the common sense in what “policy” was attempting to ‘correct’ in what has changed in this country , which is & will keep costing us all dearly, in our personal, & our offspring’s, long-term health. . .
Simply put, corporate processors are now trying to cut -out safeguards that implement needed change absent the profiteering they think THEY need, more than our children’s health. . .and most, as usual, are not paying attention. . .if all Congress can do is debate how or how much profit will be lost, rather than how much health is to be gained, then some will get what they deserve (!), and some won’t get what they need (?)
Neither will do any of us any good. . .
@dog…your “opinion’ was in truth a judgement with a thinly veiled insult attached. That is what you do, then you cry foul.
@gary, good points, though I would add the the supposed safeguards have been historicall weak.
Poor eating habits of adolescents = eventual increased health care costs for all. Pay now or pay later.
Let’s not forget that the baby boomer (most lawmakers fall in this category)
generation has the worst eating habits in the history of the US. They were the original canned processed food generation.
You’re all so locked into the new socialist order of the day. “Increased costs for all. Pay now or pay later.”
Why is it accepted that if one is sick, ALL MUST PAY? When did collectivist thought become the accepted notion over the right of the individual? Who made the determination that it’s okay to let the people who work hard and succeed cover for the wasteful and the lazy? In what world does anybody think that’s a recipe for a successful society???
And yeah, nobody actually read the article. They all saw my first comment and decided to pile on ugly.
Dog, try hanging around a city emergency room during midnight shift, or drop by a homeless encampment in Reno or Sacramento or San Francisco – even with all the levels of social services available, many of the chronically sick still flush out the bottom or overflow the top of the system. And you and I, without a bit of socialistic fervor, pay for law-enforcement, courts, rescue programs (that only work sporadically and never efficiently) and public works to remove them and clean up after them.
Complain all you want about “social” programs designed to prevent folks from sliding into society’s sewer, it costs a lot less to try and help children grow into healthy, productive tax paying Republicans who can spend their time on the internet bitching about the losers they’ve had to step over (or on), than to cover the damages caused by a growing underserved unproductive under-class.
It’s still just a matter of when you want to pay and how much. Barring, of course, a sudden attack of conscience.
You cannot ‘guilt’ me into approving of this over reaching, all-encompassing, failure of a socialistic system we have adopted here. How can you defend the outright failure of it? We’ve been putting out more and more social programs, more and more safety nets, we have a record number of people taking stuff they didn’t earn from people who DID earn it, and are we even SLIGHTLY better off now than we were when Lyndon Johnson started his ‘Great Society’? Nope. We’re in worse shape, we have more poor people, and government now takes close to half of what most people earn in the form of taxes, fees, etc, of one kind or another.
THIS IS NOT WORKING. Throwing more money at it will not make it work.
Yep Dog, this country would be much better off with an uneducated, unhealthy, non voting populace.
Well, at least that’s what folks like you and your ilk seem to be working towards.
Here is one of Thomas Jefferson’s thoughts on the matter:
1818 January 14. (to Joseph C. Cabell) “A system of general instruction, which shall reach every description of our citizens from the richest to the poorest, as it was the earliest, so will it be the latest, of all the public concerns in which I shall permit myself to take an interest.”[10]
Dog. The National School Lunch program was started in 1947 under Truman. But, more the your point. Where exactly is the “over reaching, all-encompassing, failure of a socialistic system?” I assume you are living in America living and breathing under those opinions you make. Name a better country or continent run by the Ayn Rand philosophy (past or present) and I will consider it. Until then, your comments seem to be ignorant at best and inflammatory at worse.
@Dog-what the hell is wrong with you? Socialist system??-you are insane! What is NOT working is the theory of trickle down economics. What is NOT working is the obscene, repeat, OBSCENE concentration of wealth in the hands of the few who then have the balls to complain about the BURDEN of having to throw crumbs to those who have next to nothing, upon whose backs their wealth has been amassed. And those who suck up to them are also obscene(that would be YOU). Dog-the political beliefs you hold disgust me. Worse than that, though, is how dangerously ignorant and willfully arrogant they-and you, are.
Bad Dog! Bad Dog!
LOL!
” and government now takes close to half of what most people earn in the form of taxes, fees, etc, of one kind or another.”
Seems like there should be numbers to back that up.
And you don’t have them.
Elizabeth Warren, my early favorite for my presidential vote, probably doesn’t read Lake Tahoe News (there you go, Kae, another source for you), but this is what she has to say regarding this thread:
“You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads that the rest of us paid for. You hired workers that the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for.”
Elizabeth Warren
So we have to ask Dog, what do you have against roads?
‘Whole lotta straw flyin’ this morning.’
No one used a straw man, you were just mocked.
‘Back up your statement.’
That you are ignorant? Well they got you to comment again and the consensus is that you are ignorant. There is are volumes of supporting evidence. How many rain drops do you have to feel before you accept that it is raining?
“I am for doing good to the poor,but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I traveled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer.”
~Benjamin Franklin
@ Copper: Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.
caso it is quite posible to pay over half of someones income in taxes. The top federal tax bracket is 35% plus Californias 12.3%, sales tax, real estate taxes, dmv taxes ect, ect. Mind you there may be deductions, but for a single high income w 2 earner that does not own a home they could very well be above 50%
Hey Dog, the road to hell may be paved with good intentions, and Walmart, in its capitalistic fervor, apparently paved the road to their Gardnerville store themselves (somewhat the same concept).But if I want to get to South Lake Tahoe, or anywhere further away, I need to travel on roads paid for by my collectivist government. Or put differently, “me and my friends.”
Like it or not, and screwball internet forums
notwithstanding (no offense intended, Kae), we’re all in this together.
‘aso it is quite posible to pay over half of someones income in taxes.’
Except that it rarely ever happens. The effective tax rate remains around 20%. Good for them.
So tell us Dog-is it Ben or Jesus that you follow?