Why did I bother? - Page 2

[choli]

Originally Posted by TheSavedQuarter

I do this for my son. Their school lunch is crazy. There is no cafeteria; instead, hot lunch is catered by an outside company. It's all healthy, local veggies, real fruit, no-hormone dairy and anti-biotic free meat, compostable containers. Really lovely. But only if you pay, and it's $5 per kindergarten lunch. If you get free lunch, it's a brown bag cold sandwich brought in from another district.

The paid meal is brought to the lunch area, but the free lunch kids have to go to the front office to pick it up. The disparity is rotten.

Milk is brought to the lunch area, though, so my son brings healthy packed lunches (and fortunately really likes them!) and gets milk at school.

That's disgraceful.

[CherryBomb]

Originally Posted by Norasmomma

I also agree with the fact that there are many children who's most nutritious, healthful meal comes from free school lunch, even if it is processed crap, there are MANY children who wouldn't even eat if it weren't for that. It's heartbreaking really.

Kind of OT, but this is so true There are kids who eat breakfast and lunch at school, and that's IT. Here in Indiana a man and his wife started a program for their area that sends a weekend of meals home for needy children. They started it after learning there were kids at the school who would eat lunch on Friday and then have nothing to eat till breakfast at school on Monday.

[Ellien C]

Originally Posted by UberMama

NO kidding. I was wondering the same. My mouth dropped open. In our school district, they don't even use different colored meal tickets (for low income) anymore - as kids were getting picked on.

This! Everyone gives a number to the cashier at our school. Then we get a credit/dbit if no on free lunch.

[Mackenzie]

Originally Posted by TheSavedQuarter

I do this for my son. Their school lunch is crazy. There is no cafeteria; instead, hot lunch is catered by an outside company. It's all healthy, local veggies, real fruit, no-hormone dairy and anti-biotic free meat, compostable containers. Really lovely. But only if you pay, and it's $5 per kindergarten lunch. If you get free lunch, it's a brown bag cold sandwich brought in from another district.

The paid meal is brought to the lunch area, but the free lunch kids have to go to the front office to pick it up. The disparity is rotten.

Milk is brought to the lunch area, though, so my son brings healthy packed lunches (and fortunately really likes them!) and gets milk at school.

That is absolutely appalling that they separate kids like that...

[Norasmomma]

Originally Posted by CherryBomb

Kind of OT, but this is so true There are kids who eat breakfast and lunch at school, and that's IT. Here in Indiana a man and his wife started a program for their area that sends a weekend of meals home for needy children. They started it after learning there were kids at the school who would eat lunch on Friday and then have nothing to eat till breakfast at school on Monday.

How great that they do that, but how sad that they even have to. It's seriously messed up.

[vannienicole]

Here in OK, they have a program that provides meals to students through the summer at centers across the city. The idea is that these kids would go the summer without adequate food. FS stretches only so far sometimes. I am sure these centers are life savers for parents. I am lucky that my kids are in daycare in the summer so they get decent meals there. Like I said, being fed there helps make the FS stretch for the rest of the meals and so the meals at home are healthy.

[2lilsweetfoxes]

Originally Posted by vannienicole

Here in OK, they have a program that provides meals to students through the summer at centers across the city. The idea is that these kids would go the summer without adequate food. FS stretches only so far sometimes. I am sure these centers are life savers for parents. I am lucky that my kids are in daycare in the summer so they get decent meals there. Like I said, being fed there helps make the FS stretch for the rest of the meals and so the meals at home are healthy.

And that is if the family even qualifies for food stamps. So many make "enough" on paper, and because the qualifications are different and they use different deductibles (ex. military living on post, housing allowance isn't counted for free/reduced lunch, so my kids get reduced lunch; when we lived off post, the housing allowance was counted, so we were over the limit for reduced lunch. Not by much, but we were. They count it towards food stamps, so we don't qualify. Sometimes if a parent is paying child support, one or the other will deduct that. The lunch program doesn't care what you have in savings. FS insists on a very low level of assets--liquid and non-liquid.) And WIC only goes up to 5 years old, when the families otherwise qualify. I have no qualms about playing the game. More money in my pocket, and my kids buy school lunch anyhow.

There needs to be a child-nutrition WIC-like program for 6-17 year olds (it expires the day before their 18th birthday).

[Hey Mama!]

Our school menu is pretty crappy too. We qualify for free lunch but I still try to pack the girls a lunch 3-5 days a week. Our school used to send backpacks full of non-perishable food home on Friday afternoons to certain kids. They also had free breakfast and lunch for anyone under age 18 for a month during the summer. I used to work in a place that was a "Kids Cafe" site to feed kids lunch during the summer. It is appalling to me that for some kids their whole nutrition comes from school food.

[shayinme]

I run a small npo and in this summer we participated in the USDA's summer food program which is the same program that schools participate in. To be honest the reason the food is the way it is in many cases is because the federal government reimbursement rate is low. For breakfast it's a $1.81 and that includes the milk that is mandatory and for lunch its $3.18. It varies by a few cents based on whether a school is rural or urban.

There are guidelines you must follow as far as the components that make up a meal but to be honest with such low reimbursement rates its very hard to make a healthy nutritious lunch that includes the mandatory milk. By the way that rate includes the salaries of the actual lunch folks who work in the cafeteria. So unless you have a school where they can add in extra money you need to keep the cost per meal very low.

Last summer I used fresh fruit in my breakfast program and we were going over budget and we had no money to make up the difference. I loved being able to feed kids fresh fruits they were not exposed to normally but money is a factor. This year I went with mostly canned fruits.

The school district I contracted with to provide lunch did offer things like fries and nuggets but they were baked which made them marginally more healthy.

I guess what I am saying is for food service directors especially in these tough economic times its hard. Most want to feed kids fresh tasty food but with such low rates of reimbursement you do the best you can.

[phathui5]

There needs to be a child-nutrition WIC-like program for 6-17 year olds (it expires the day before their 18th birthday).

When I worked at WIC we were told that WIC benefits stop when children hit school age because that's when the free school meals kick in. And the free breakfast/lunch at school on school days adds up to far more than WIC would have been providing.

[Usually Curious]

Originally Posted by shayinme

I run a small npo and in the summer we participate in the USDA's summer food program which is the same program that schools participate in. To be honest the reason the food is the way it is in many cases is because the federal government reimbursement rate is low. For breakfast it's a $1.81 and that includes the milk that is mandatory and for lunch its $3.18. It varies by a few cents based on whether a school is rural or urban.

There are guidelines you must follow as far as the components that make up a meal but to be honest with such reimbursement rates its very hard to make a healthy nutritious lunch that includes the mandatory milk. By the way that rate includes the salaries of the actual lunch folks who work in the cafeteria. So unless you have a school where they can add in extra money you need to keep the cost per meal very low.

Last summer I used fresh fruit in my breakfast program and we were going over budget and we had no money to make up the difference. I loved being able to feed kids fresh fruits they were not exposed to normally but money is a factor. This year I went with mostly canned foods.

The school district I contracted with to provide lunch did offer things like fries and nuggets but they were baked which made them marginally more healthy.

I guess what I am saying is for food service directors especially in these tough economic times its hard. Most want to feed kids fresh tasty food but with such low rates of reimbursement you do the best you can.

I saw in a documentary, maybe Food, Inc., a school that went to yummy fresh fruits and vegetables, fabulous salads and home-cooked main dishes and the director said it did NOT cost more than the USDA foods. I wonder if they did not pay their cafeteria staff out of the reimbursement funds?

[shayinme]

Originally Posted by Usually Curious

I saw in a documentary, maybe Food, Inc., a school that went to yummy fresh fruits and vegetables, fabulous salads and home-cooked main dishes and the director said it did NOT cost more than the USDA foods. I wonder if they did not pay their cafeteria staff out of the reimbursement funds?

I wonder about that too. Again if the school/program has access to additional funds its completely possible to make fresh tasty food within the reimbursement rates but once you add salaries (my local district for instance pays the kitchen staff $16 per hour plus benefits) it really does become much harder to do. Or if you can get local farmers to give you some deep discounts, or if you can find some other way to pay the staff salaries. But for schools that only have that reimbursement money from the USDA it is hard to do.

[Usually Curious]

Wow. What a difficult choice - $16/hr plus benefits to the cafeteria staff or quality food. Shouldn't we be able to have decent wages and decent food?

[mnnice]

Originally Posted by Usually Curious

I saw in a documentary, maybe Food, Inc., a school that went to yummy fresh fruits and vegetables, fabulous salads and home-cooked main dishes and the director said it did NOT cost more than the USDA foods. I wonder if they did not pay their cafeteria staff out of the reimbursement funds?

You might be thinking of Supersize Me which profiles Appleton Central High School. That must be some sort of pilot program or funded by grant money.

My kids attend public school a couple miles away and I ate lunch there just last week (not school lunch) it was all the regular junk (that day baked chicken nuggets and baked fries) They had frozen peas and canned fruit cocktail to go with it, but most of the kids didn' bother to put those on either plate.

Anyway hugs to the OP and anyone else in her shoes. And until it get a lot better my kids will continue to eat PB&J with their brown bread, homemade jam and organic PB

[JudiAU]

Have you talked to the school? There is a real revolution going on in the school lunch program and it sounds like your school is lagging. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php...ls/in_schools/ There is also a bill to be voted on soon that increases funding and makes it easier to get local good food into schools. Call your congressperson!

[TheSavedQuarter]

I did complain about the disparity between bought and free lunches. I was told that the PTO is trying to make it so the free lunch kids get the same lunch, probably next year, but couldn't get out of the contract with the other district to stop the brown bags. I don't believe it, but there you are.

This is a topic I recently blogged about, and I'll post here what I posted there:

The Child Nutrition Act is up for reauthorization, and while I am rarely one to bring up politics in my blog, this is a cause that I think is worth contacting your representative about. If you’re not convinced, take a few minutes to read the Child Nutrition section of Sustainable Food, where I learned that Congress hasn’t increased the federal reimbursement rate on the free lunch program since 1973, school lunches are a great place for big food manufacturers like Kelloggs to find kickbacks (not to mention lifelong consumers), and this fascinating article from Mother Jones about commodities (namely beef and dairy) and their connection both to the school lunch program and childhood obesity. From the article:

School lunches routinely fail the government’s own nutritional standards. By law, schools are supposed to restrict fat content in lunches to 30 percent of the calories served each week. But according to the USDA, 81 percent of schools exceed that limit. Worse, 85 percent fail the standard for saturated fat, a leading contributor to coronary disease. Half of all schools serve whole milk, which further drives up the saturated-fat content. On any given day, less than 45 percent of schools serve cooked vegetables other than potatoes — which are often prepared in the form of french fries — and less than 10 percent serve legumes, a healthy, low-fat form of protein.

As the blogger at Fed Up With Lunch posted, “180 days a year for 12 years is NOT moderation.”

[Usually Curious]

Originally Posted by mnnice

You might be thinking of Supersize Me which profiles Appleton Central High School. That must be some sort of pilot program or funded by grant money.

My kids attend public school a couple miles away and I ate lunch there just last week (not school lunch) it was all the regular junk (that day baked chicken nuggets and baked fries) They had frozen peas and canned fruit cocktail to go with it, but most of the kids didn' bother to put those on either plate.

Anyway hugs to the OP and anyone else in her shoes. And until it get a lot better my kids will continue to eat PB&J with their brown bread, homemade jam and organic PB

Yes! But the admin at the school said they come in under the reimbursement figures.