Chicago school bans homemade lunches, the latest in national food fight

[Strike For The South]

here is what I was served

and back in my day it cst 1.50

http://www.neisd.net/foodserv/pdf/ElemMenuApr2011.pdf

I <3 pizza thrusday

[Louis VI the Fat]

here is what I was served

and back in my day it cst 1.50

http://www.neisd.net/foodserv/pdf/ElemMenuApr2011.pdf

I <3 pizza thrusday

Pizza! Yummie! That menu looks good.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

that French school menu looks like a Michelin star meal compared to what I ate in school! Maybe it's just the way it's formatted. The only cheese we ever got was American "cheese."

You must teach children to appreciate cheese! How else will they understand the fine things in life if not taught at a young age?


Cheese lesson at school, nothing fancy or elaborate, just a few simple selections for the youngest students:

[Crazed Rabbit]

School lunches are why I ate homemade PB&J for a majority of my school meals for over a decade.

Given how horrible our government is at determining what food is healthy, it's no safe bet that a "healthy" school lunch is actually healthy. Just get rid of the soda and candy machines.

In brief, I agree with ACIN and Beirut. Also, I must further admire Beirut's plan with the note.

Louis - please tell me that picture is of some rare occurrence where some millionaire paid to have a cheese tasting sampled for those kids or something.

CR

[Ice]

School lunches are why I ate homemade PB&J for a majority of my school meals for over a decade.

Given how horrible our government is at determining what food is healthy, it's no safe bet that a "healthy" school lunch is actually healthy. Just get rid of the soda and candy machines.


CR

Yup. Kids are rather ignorant or simply don't care about their health at that age. I remember being stupid and drinking a code red mountain dew every day at 8:30 in the morning after advanced gym simply because everyone did and I didn't know any better. Kind of counter productive, eh?

That being said, schools should focus on what CR said, and removing blatantly unhealthy stuff like fried chicken and pizza from their menu. Telling parents what they can feed their kids for lunch reminds me of something I'd say in North Korea or some other dictatorship.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Yup. Kids are rather ignorant or simply don't care about their health at that age. I remember being stupid and drinking a code red mountain dew every day at 8:30 in the morning after advanced gym simply because everyone did and I didn't know any better. Kind of counter productive, eh?

That being said, schools should focus on what CR said, and removing blatantly unhealthy stuff like fried chicken and pizza from their menu. Telling parents what they can feed their kids for lunch reminds me of something I'd say in North Korea or some other dictatorship.

Yes, and we've all seen documentaries that show the tragic consequences of the failing North Korean dictatorship, such as a generation of children growing up grossly malnutritioned.

[Ice]

Yes, and we've all seen documentaries that show the tragic consequences of the failing North Korean dictatorship, such as a generation of children growing up grossly malnutritioned.

Way to misinterpret what I just said. I meant the government telling people what they can and can't eat reminds me of a dictatorship. I used North Korea because its an easy example.

People in North Korea are malnourished because the government spends all its money on the military and hardly any of feeding its populace.

[Subotan]

Way to misinterpret what I just said. I meant the government telling people what they can and can't eat reminds me of a dictatorship. I used North Korea because its an easy example.

People in North Korea are malnourished because the government spends all its money on the military and hardly any of feeding its populace.

No, they're not malnourished because of that. Food production in North Korea never dropped below the minimum amount needed to ensure that everybody had the minimum amount of calories in their diet even at the height of the famine in the Nineties. The problem was the distribution of that food was utterly disastrous, as the economic system completely broke down as subsidies and fertiliser (North Korean agriculture was/is very fertiliser intensive) from the USSR/Russia dried up and the guaranteed market in the Eastern Bloc for North Korean goods disappeared. Urban North Koreans (Of which there are many - it is a heavily industrialised country) relied entirely on the "Public Distribution System" for their food, and when that disappeared in all but name, people in the cities just starved. Interestingly, people in rural areas generally did better as they had more ready access to food, so the North Korean famine is probably the only one in history where richer, urban citizens were hit harder than peasants.

[Louis VI the Fat]

Way to misinterpret what I just said. I meant the government telling people what they can and can't eat reminds me of a dictatorship. I used North Korea because its an easy example.

People in North Korea are malnourished because the government spends all its money on the military and hardly any of feeding its populace.

Oi! I don't misrepresent your point because I don't represent it! I tried to build on the debate by adding another angle. A government can supress by telling people what they can and can not do. This is the more common focus in at least American debate.

But what of a government which undermines the societal structures of people to organise themselves and learn and share knowledge. This is how many an indeginous society has been destroyed. Neither guns nor germs were necessary. More silent, more effective mechanisms were at work.

'Nobody is telling you what to eat' can be quite sinister...

Imagine, if you will, a four year old. He is handed the keys to a supermarket, has access to every food available. But nobody will ever 'tell him what to eat', as in, will educate him about food and nutrition. Neither parental guidance, nor simply showing by example, nor any formal nutritritional education. Not even television commercials, or the sightof other people eating.

I mean that as a thought experiment, not as a veiled critique. Surely, this boy is hardly free? Quite apart from him dieing pretty soon, surely he can't be said to be more free, receive a better deal, by nobody telling him what to eat? I would say the people who would inflict this on the boy are as twisted as anything North Korea subjects its children to.


On can easily build from this example a government, an educational system, a sytem of parenthood, that fails to protect children only slightly less than the theoretical example.

[Strike For The South]

School lunches are why I ate homemade PB&J for a majority of my school meals for over a decade.

Given how horrible our government is at determining what food is healthy, it's no safe bet that a "healthy" school lunch is actually healthy. Just get rid of the soda and candy machines.

In brief, I agree with ACIN and Beirut. Also, I must further admire Beirut's plan with the note.

Louis - please tell me that picture is of some rare occurrence where some millionaire paid to have a cheese tasting sampled for those kids or something.

CR

Americans heard that they had to reduce their intake of saturated fat by cutting back on meat and dairy products and replacing them with carbohydrates. Americans dutifully complied. Since then, obesity has increased sharply, and the progress that the country has made against heart disease has largely come from medical breakthroughs like statin drugs, which lower cholesterol, and more effective medications to control blood pressure.

Wait, Who here has said this before

Bueller?
Bueller?
Bueller?

O wait
It was me