Amen! Good food made from good stuff!
2 Likes
3 Likes
4 Likes
Well said! This is so important and so overlooked. Healthy bodies are healthy minds 
Lunch ladies rule!
2 Likes
The more we can keep things local the better.
1 Like
We can also make efforts to encourage seasoned chefs to enter the school meal work force to bring that expertise to the school meal table.
2 Likes
The schools used to actually cook a meal when i was in school. The last 2 decades the school kitchens only heat up prepared foods and half of the kitchen isnt even used. Its truly feeding our children processed plastic fat. Every administrator over this program states they are complying with the guidelines and rules set forth by federal govt.
Female obama had her first lady goal of getting healthier foods in our schools. Packaged, canned, processed foods is not the correct method.
4 Likes
Revamping the current meal plan regulations and lifting them would give the needed flexibility to cook meal with geeling the pressure to be compliant, not being compliant puts the funding at risk unfortunately.
2 Likes
And that’s the problem exactly.
They could do differently now, but they’d lose funding.
And they shouldn’t get funding only if they do the unhealthy things.
so …
- absurd guidelines harm children
- funding is tied to meeting absurd guideline that harm children
- doing the wrong thing to maintain access to money for doing the wrong thing is both absurd and wrong.
Guidelines should be established locally.
IF taxpayer money is used to fund this, it should be under local control.
4 Likes
The more local the better!
1 Like
As a retired IT pro at an elementary school, I can’t agree more. Everything my school served was processed and packaged. In addition, they sold ice cream every day, with many children throwing away a tray full of food to go buy ice cream.
Children need good, wholesome food, with lots of protein and no sugar. And for heaven’s sake, serve them food they will actually eat!
6 Likes
I’d rather use a results based approach to nutrition in schools.
After a well-established physical health guideline is implemented; schools that meet this guideline will become the example case of proper nutrition in schools.
This of course will piggy back the great work RFK Jr. and the Means twins will do for our food supply.
But JFK’s fitness tests should come back, and our schools should be shouldering some burden on ensuring we have healthy children.
Children spend a vast amount of their youth in school, away from the home. We can’t correct what happens to them there, but we can ensure, under our collective tutelage we are meeting their physical needs.
5 Likes
Absolutely!
So many kids go without eating at school because the food is so bad.
2 Likes
I also find that cost is an issue. Parents and students are frequently struggling with the costs of school lunches. I would like to see options for all schools to offer healthy, balanced meals at free or reduced costs. No child should be worried about food while they are trying to learn.
1 Like
Very well said! As a mom to 4 in the heart of Amish farmland, I would love to see a healthy change in school meals and support our local small farms by bringing in fresh, local grown food.
1 Like
The meals my kids get at school are horrible and some days inedible, this would be great. Get rid of all the regulations and let schools create meal plans that fit their students and their preferences.
Agreed and I hope to bring back cooking meals in the schools with said local food sources. This will be jobs as well.
I am in idaho and i would love to see the waste of food go down. The children that we serve do not like the food that’s being served therefore we waste a lot of food it’s not the children being picky is that the food is repetitive because we have to stay within a nutritional value which makes the meals very repetitive so they’re tired of eating the same thing over and over and over and they would rather go hungry than eat the same thing over and over again. Another thing is part of the program is we cant force them or encourage them to eat so we waste a lot of food and they go hungry and then they are crabby throughout the day because their brains cant function on an empty stomach. If we were able to dismiss them after they had eaten even partial of their meal with encouragement we would be able to have less waste and they would be able to not go hungry. The other problem is that a lot of our families cannot afford to pay for food and they have to bring their own food which the children pack their own lunches and it’s full of non-nutritious foods and it’s just sugar and carbs that are not doing anything for their bodies and it’s going to burn through their bodies during recess and by the time they go back to their classroom they’re already burnt out and they’re not ready to learn. So if we could have free meals via the food program and it was free for everyone that would be helpful for All Families. There is the food program that provides free meals during the summer for all students ages 4 through 18 to eat for free why isn’t it like that throughout the school year? I’m just ready to have America be healthy.
1 Like
It would also be great if the food left over at the end of the day could go to feeding our homeless. Why should it go in the trash when we have so many people on the streets that are starving. OR allow the cafeteria workers to take home some of the food. We all know they don’t make much money. It would be an incentive for them. My mother works in a school cafeteria and the amount of food she has to throw away makes her sick to her stomach. It’s a complete waste. And where she lives/works they feed their children pretty good food. So it’s not like they are throwing away junk. We could be doing so much more to prevent food waste AND helping to feed Americans.
2 Likes