The Federal Government Is Now in Charge of What Goes Into All Public School Vending Machines
Or, as the Fort Myers (Florida) News-Press helpfully headlined the pre-write of today's White House bill-signing, "School meals get good, healthy boost from feds." Thanks, benevolent feds! (Read Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's victory dance here.) Some of the article's paeans to centralization:
Dawn Houser, Collier's director of food and nutrition services, is looking forward to having a national nutrition standard for school cafeterias. The guidelines will be released by the federal government's Agriculture Department in January.
"Instead of having each state do a nutrition standard, we're going to have one standard," Houser said. "We're also excited that they're going to streamline the process for students to qualify for free and reduced price meals." […]
"If we can get children to eat correctly early on, we're going to set some good life habits," [said Wayne Nagy, Lee's director of food and nutrition services].
"We believe in stealth health," Nagy said. "That's where we give a kid what they like but it's full of healthy materials. We'll give them a corn dog but it has whole-grain bread and lean poultry meat."
Serving fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks is another option. Six Lee schools and nine Collier schools participate in the federal government's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, which makes fruit and vegetable snacks available at no cost to all children in participating schools. The program will be expanded with the new legislation.
Reason on school-lunch policies here, including this video:
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Soviet industry is buildink more traktors!
Next they will be in our voting machines.
we give a kid what they like but it’s full of healthy materials. We’ll give them a corn dog but it has whole-grain bread and lean poultry meat.
Soylent corn dogs!
Lunch Lady Doris, stirring up a pot of stew fortified with bull testicles:
” More testicles means more iron”
http://www.hark.com/clips/hbgjcljdfw-testicles
We’ll give them a corn dog but it has whole-grain bread and lean poultry meat.
So a corn dog will have neither corn nor a hot dog. Noted.
You know how liberals like to redefine words to mean something they never meant before…
Corn meal is indeed whole grain
Hooray! Fat kids are a thing of the past.
Now if we can only teach the little bastards to read and do arithmetic.
Education professionals have moved beyond such unenlightened ideas of pedagogy, J sub D. Today it’s all about instilling the right worldview and stoking children’s “critical thinking” faculties rather than teaching old-fashioned and outdated skills like factoring a quadratic equation or diagramming a sentence.
You say that like it’s a bad thing, jeffersonian.
I always thought that was Jefferson’s thing, actually.
Actually, anyone want to take bets on how fat the little bastards will be in 2020?
Given that America has apparently already peaked in obesity rates before allthe nannyisms kicked in, probably not any fatter to slightly more trim (which the statistic abusing nanny’s will use to claim success)
Wow, and she thinks that makes the corn dog healthy? Really?
Ain’t it grand to know that we have the Top People in charge?
We should round up the fatties and send them to government sponsored fat camps where the eat restricted calorie diets and engage in 18 hour days of physical labor. To speed up weight loss we could site these camps in cold climates and only allow them thin uniforms to wear. Plus we could set them to fixing roads and infrastructure.
Just replace the income tax with a BMI tax. Once a year within a week of your birthday you go to the nearest post office, take off your shoes, and get your height and weight measured. It’s a two-birds-one-stone sort of thing.
News-Press knows the best journalism writes itself.
I wonder how hard they would study if we just gave them a bowl of rice a day?
I wonder how hard they would study if we just gave them a candy bar for passing a test?
You need a gun in their back to make them eat the rice.
Brown rice, maybe. These little fatties will gobble up any Uncle Ben’s you shovel into their trough.
Slave for teachers until you starve, then your head skewered on a stake.
And it was the back of the bootleg Cherry Red version, where they replaced Viva Las Vegas with Police Truck. I suppose Cherry Red is more nutritious than Alternative Tentacles calamari.
This is yet another step in the Federal take-over of public schools. Before No Child Left Behind, the public schools, for all their ills, were one of the few examples left of local control (municipal and state) and decentralization.
Mark my words, within 20 years, the Department of Education will mandate a national curriculum.
I’m not foolish enough to bet against you.
Now class before you go out to recess… boys? do you have your “horn dog wrappers” on… girls do you have your “OMG i forgot” patches on… o.k., have fun, and make good choices!
Recess? Recess is so very dangerous! What if one of those pedophiles hiding under every rock and behind every tree snatches one of the children? What if some disgruntled student violates the sanctity of our “gun free zone” and kills them where they can run away?
No, no. Better that they be kept safely sequestered under the watchful eye of properly credentialed educators, who will monitor their every activity and thought.
It’s for the children.
They have to shore up the food choices at private and parochial schools first. It’s not fair that kids in public schools have all these wonderful healthy new choices while kids at Catholic schools suffer under the totalitarian culinary dictatorship of hamburgers, pizza, milkshakes and Doritos.
Good. Why should kids get different educations based on where they happened to be born? Do facts differ depending on your residency?
I suppose there’s always a danger of government propaganda insinuating itself into the curricula, but from where I sit the private alternatives to public school are the ones teaching the most nonsense.
If you’re going to spoof Tony, don’t make it so obvious.
Why should kids get different educations based on where they happened to be born?
Why in hell should they get educations at all? You want your brat educated, pay for it yourself. Keep your hands off of my stack, jack.
Ah yes, so someone will be educated depending on whether their parents could afford it. That would surely make for a fair marketplace once they’re grown up.
Tony thinks Harrison Bergeron includes some fair and sensible public policy ideas.
…so someone will be educated depending on whether their parents could afford it.
How about: so someone gets born and educated depending on whether the parents can afford it?
Get government out of our schools and into our reproductive organs!
NCLB was a stupid, intrusive and unconstitutional law, to be sure, but the premise that the federales have a role in American education was set long before that.
Not that I agree with it, mind you.
In the long term, it threatens the safety and prosperity of our nation, as fewer 18-year-olds are fit for military service
And, as we desperately need a steady supply of cannon fodder for a perpetually belligerent American Exceptionalist State, this is unacceptable.
Seriously, in this era of drones, missles, cameras and computing, how many physical people would really be necessary to actually “defend” our nation?
Now, subduing locals in some faraway country to our will. I understand how that would require a personal touch.
If they keep eating the way they are, they’re just going to uselessly kill themselves with diabetes and cardiovascular disease. At least if they die fighting for our nation, it will be a useful death and bring about less medical costs.
Boring.
If we can get children to eat think correctly early on, we’re going to set some good life habits.
FTFY
To ensure that these efforts are not undermined by foods from vending machines, a la carte lunch lines, and school stores, USDA will help make the healthy choice an easy choice for our kids by setting nutritional standards for all food sold in schools.
WTF?
When I look at the Presidential Suit’s cabinet appointments; people like Geithner, Napolitano, LaHood, and Vilsack, I cannot help wondering why he has not yet been impeached.
What are you, a racist? You can’t impeach a black man. Hell, you might as well just put some shackles on him and set him to work your plantation. Why do you hate Equal Opportunity? (…and so on…)
(Never a plump intern around when you really need one, dammit.)
They impeached Bill Clinton, America’s first black president.
That was pre-postracial America, where Clinton was still technically white, and so technically it wasn’t racist to impeach him. Only in postracial America is he granted the racial recognition he deserves.
Why would I do that? There are so many Brown and Yellow people willing to “terk dur jerbs” on my plantation for pennies on the dollar.
How does all of this square with the whole fat acceptance thing? I imagine a significant demographic within the progressive movement isn’t all too pleased right now.
No, because even if you accept fat people, you accept them because its an external force that made them fat, not their own choices (DNA, society, parents, etc). This means that what the government is doing is perfectly acceptable because its blaming the availability of low nutrition sweet foods for the rise in obesity (once again not the obese’s fault). So really, the only “people” who would complain are the sweet tooth kids and they have no say in the matter, so the point is moot.
That almost made sense.
I’d like to know where I went wrong. For science you know…
Bravo, LIT. Bang on what they think.
It’s not what people eat that is making them fat. It’s air conditioning. Just as wild animals gain fat in cool environments and drop it in the summer, so too with humans – except humans in the US are no longer subject to hot environments. Get rid of the AC.
I’d say artificial heating is even worse from that point of view. The specific heat of water is pretty high, so trying to keep 100-200 lbs. of water at 98 degrees takes a lot of energy.
Wild animals gain fat prior to the cold, so they have a both a store of energy to deal with the cold, as well as some “insulation” from it.
They impeached Bill Clinton, America’s first black president.
Unfortunately, incompetence (despite what some people might wish to believe) is not an impeachable offense, whereas “gettin’ a little on the side” apparently is.
Is it just my imagination, or is everybody in Washington DC insane?
There’s actually some truth to that. The Beltway has become isolated and separated from reality.
I don’t remember the impeachment charge for gettin’ a little on the side. I do remember the ones about lying about it in sworn testimony, tampering with witnesses to a federal trial, abusing power by claiming executive privilege, etc.
As with all scandals political, the cover-up attempts are usually as bad or worse than the underlying malfeasance.
Never understood why Bill didn’t just say “Hey, look who I’m married to.” The entire world would just shake their heads in recognition and move on.
“”abusing power by claiming executive privilege””
As if that’s a crime.
How about subverting the constitution? Of course, by that standard we’d have to get rid of most of Congress and the federal judges.
…and in other news, the White House announced today a new feature at press conferences, guest hosting! Fridays kickoff with none other than Mr. Slick Willie himself, Bill Clinton, was met such a positive response that aides have been scrambling to fill up vacancies left by current President Obama now that he and First Lady are very busy with Holiday Parties.
We don’t need no high nutrition,
We don’t need no fat control,
No dark tofu mix in the burgers,
Hey! Teacher! Leave them Cokes alone!
Does anyone deny that child nutrition is an atrocious problem in this country? How fat and diseased do we need to get before it becomes a problem?
Is it all down to personal choice, and Americans just choose to be the most obese and diabetic group of people in the world?
I remember high school. If you didn’t want to bring a sack lunch, your options were essentially pizza and fries every day. Add to this the fact that young people are gonna eat pizza and fries anyway, especially if that’s the easiest option and they’re not trained to be health-conscious.
Not that I’m surprised that libertarians would defend an abominable status quo, even though changing the standards doesn’t reduce choice at all, it only increases the quality of the choices.
Then perhaps the simplest and most effective solution to childhood obesity is…..bringing sack lunches to school?
Straw man, file dichotomy, etc etc etc.
Total score: 0/10
Straw man, file dichotomy, etc etc etc.
Total score: 0/10
I don’t like seeing fat people, therefore, the Central State must compel them to eat things they’d rather not.
Is this what you’re saying, Tony?
Yeah, so if ya’ll were all eating pizza an fries every day, how come we all didn’t start getting skinnier when school lunches got more nutritious in the 1980’s? I’m in my late 20’s and the school lunches we were served included a tiny main portion of meat with two or three sides of veggies and fruit. School lunches are not making kids fat.
Does anyone deny that child nutrition is an atrocious problem in this country?
Yes. Next quesiton?
+1
Is it all down to personal choice, and Americans just choose to be the most obese and diabetic group of people in the world?
And here we see the inner workings of a Statist’s mind.
Given that government-run schools are doing such a bad job at providing decent food now, why would you continue to entrust them with the task?
And do you really think that establishing “national guidelines” is going to change everything? Shit, if the people running these schools don’t already know what healthy food is, they ought to be fired immediately, union rules be damned.
I went to government run schools fairly recently. It’s not like they were selling us Big Macs. Americans are fat from lack of exercise and everything they eat OUTSIDE of school.
I guess the Democrats don’t have the balls yet to start demanding non school children conform to the State’s set nutritional standards. At least not outside LA…
Doesn’t all this go back to the army complaining about recruits being overweight? Americans have been fat for awhile but now that it “endangers national security” it’s suddenly a problem. I can’t wait until I have to do morning exercises in front of the telescreen.
Doesn’t all this go back to the army complaining about recruits being overweight? Americans have been fat for awhile but now that it “endangers national security” it’s suddenly a problem.
That’s doubly funny when I think back to the crud I was fed when I was in the Navy. Not all lifers were fat, but fat CPOs were common enough to make it a worthwhile stereotype.
I didn’t mind the food at all when I was in the Navy, aside from what I got in bootcamp at San Diego. Granted that was forty years ago. And fat CPOs were common back then as well – probably because they didn’t have to do much but sit on their asses, but also because middle age often brings overweight.
The whole “People are too fat to join” was a trope that go trotted out when recruiting was sucking for the Army back in 2005-2007ish (I know, that was when I was recruiting). It was part of the “Hey Congress, this is why we need more money” push for recruiting dollars.
Weight, and even health in general, isn’t the thing that keeps people who want to join from being able to join though. Education and law violations (hello MJ possession!) do.
Well the bill beefs up funding–nobody ever said that healthy food was cheap.
LOL, that’s always the reason that government programs fail, isn’t it? “Lack of resources”.
“Does anyone deny that child nutrition is an atrocious problem in this country?”
Yes. If fat little fucks are a problem, and I’m not saying they are, then give government control of the fat little fucks’ lunches and don’t take a chance on fucking up the nutrition of the kids whose parents give a shit what they eat by putting the corrupt Ag-bribed assholes that made the carb-heavy food pyramid in charge of the meals of healthy kids.
Why do you want Monsanto to murder our children Tony?
There is some merit to criticizing school foods. Kids are forced to be there. While parents can correct for any errors on the schools part, I don’t think it should its unreasonable to feed the little prisoners reasonably healthy food.
Also, fuck this comment system.
even though changing the standards doesn’t reduce choice at all, it only increases the quality of the choices.
Courtesy of All-Knowing AgSec Vilsack:
To ensure that these efforts are not undermined by foods from vending machines, a la carte lunch lines, and school stores, USDA will help make the healthy choice an easy choice for our kids by setting nutritional standards for all food sold in schools.
“In order to be certain the children choose ‘wisely’, we will eliminate all unapproved alternatives.”
ps, fuck you, you little goose-stepper.
That which is not required, is forbidden.
The mantra of the Total State.
Don’t forget..That which is not forbidden…is mandatory
Though maybe it just goes without saying…
Contrapositive. Goes without saying.
That which is not expressly allowed is forbidden.
He’s increasing the diversity of their options.
Then perhaps the simplest and most effective solution to childhood obesity is…..bringing sack lunches to school?
Better yet, let’s make the little shits walk to school.
Uphill, in the snow, both ways, in the middle of summer.
Damned global cooling..wait what?
They’ve been in charge of everything that goes into the minds of the vast majority of the nation’s children for a long time now; why not let them be in be in charge of what goes into their stomachs?
After all, only the federal government knows which food is nutritious!
Bwuhahahaha! I can’t believe that statists make ridiculous arguments like that with a straight face!
Eggs are good
Eggs are bad
Whites are good, yellows are bad
Whites are sometimes good, but so are yellows, but don’t eat too much
BIRD FLU, OMG WTF, CHINESES!?!?!
Yeah, the same federal government that’s been publishing wacky food guidelines for decades due to industry pressure is suddenly responsible enough to plot out a healthy diet for kids. I laughed so hard my balls hurt.
Butter is POISON!
Or possibly not.
Here’s a question: could you set up a food truck and sell delicious meals just off school grounds?
Or would that be a federal offense?
If it’s not already, they’d make it if you were successful. Wouldn’t want it to cut into the profits of whatever company sells food to the school cafeterias.
We’ll give them a corn dog but it has whole-grain bread and lean poultry meat.
Fucking chicken weenies? What the hell is wrong with good beef franks?
Chicken is federally subsidized, cows are not?
Just wait until ADM hears about their plan to ban cornmeal from school lunches. I look forwardto Presidential wannabes waxing eloquent in Iowa about American’s God-Given Right(by God) to real corndogs.
National security threat…?
Yeah, if you drop them out of airplanes onto population centers and/or infrastructure, I guess lol
Someone needs to tell this shameless hypocrite to shut her pie-hole
Her own rear end resembles the back of a bus
Nice video, doesn’t go nearly far enough. Fact is, the entire obesity epidemic is nonsense from top to bottom. Kids (and adults) haven’t gotten fatter since the 70’s. And even if they had, so what? Try to actually find specific studies showing that this or that disease kills heavier people more than average weight folk; you can’t. Virtually everything that’s studied, from heart disease to cancer to alzheimers to even just the chance to survive risky surgery, shows that overweight people do better. Only at the extreme end, the fattest 1% of the population, do things turn the other way. However, what DOES kill is being underweight, and eating disorders are on the rise (which can flat-out kill you in just a matter of months). Combine all this with the fact that in over 50 years, we have never found a single diet that works over the long term, and it’s pretty obvious that the science on the issue is pretty settled; eat enough, and try to eat a variety of food, and you’re fine.