schools' healthful lunch menu not welcomed

For many students, Los Angeles Unified's introduction of healthful lunches — part of a campaign against obesity, diabetes and other problems — has been a flop. The district says the menu will be revised.

Students line up for lunch in the cafeteria at Van Nuys High School. Many… (Bob Chamberlin, Los Angeles Times)

December 17, 2011|By Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times

It's lunchtime at Van Nuys High School and students stream into the cafeteria to check out the day's fare: black bean burgers, tostada salad, fresh pears and other items on a new healthful menu introduced this year by the Los Angeles Unified School District.
 
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http://articles.latimes.c...me-food-lausd-20111218

<message edited by MikeS. on Thu, 12/22/11 5:47 AM>

Reap what you sew, you've created at least two generations, if not 3 that have no idea how to cook, what to eat and have only emulated their parents when it comes to food, fast quick and from a box or a drive thru window.  No surprises here, fat dumb or drunk...and stupid is no way to go thru life son, said the expat to the American.

I'm sorry, but... I love food. And I love healthy food, too. Give ma a nice chef's salad, or grilled chicken wrap, or whole wheat spaghetti with turkey meatballs and a low sodium sauce, and I'd be thrilled. I don't even mind a good quality veggie burger, and in a pinch I have been known to eat tofu.

BUT... Black bean burgers? Vegetarian curries? Quinoa salad? Lentil and brown rice cutlets??? I don't think so.

Who in their right mind came up with this menu???

If you want kids to eat healthier, find out what kids like and enjoy eating and create recipes to make those dishes with healthier ingredients and cooking procedures! You can't go from corn dogs and pizza directly to jumbalaya and tofu pups and expect kids to get excited about lunch!

The science of meal prep is 40% about the food and 60% about the psychology of eating. Dang, these educators got it wrong!

This is just another story of so-called educators showing they don't have enough sense to get out of the rain. 

Are young people or their parents incapable of making a sandwich and putting a piece of fruit and a bag of chips in their backpacks in the morning? Sheesh.

Barry:
I am sure they are capable of making a sandwich, but that would be no guarantee that it would be a healthy sandwich.  And they very likely would not include enough fruits and vegetables to meet the federal guidelines "that fruits and vegetables make up half the plate".  And, by the way, those chips you mentioned are considered a no-no.
 
California has always been the home of "nuts and berries" ideas.  The present-day teen-age preferred diet was not created overnight.  And the California school system is just fooling itself thinking they can overnight revert back to the menus of 50 or 60 years ago.  It could easily take 20 years to gradually get the kids to eat in a healthy manner.  That is part of the reason that the federal government issues guidelines, rather than making it the law.

The big problem is that kids are not totally stupid. They are capable of making healthy choices. A hamburger is not the end of the world, healthwise. Take the same burger, make it leaner and put it on a whole heat bun.  Add some fresh lettuce and tomatoes, a few onion slices. How about the french fries... could they offer sweet potato fries a few times a month?  And what is so terrible about chocolate milk? Milk is nasty tasting stuff. Gotta cover up the taste somehow.  They don't have to go hogwild but make small changes. Teens and children like the familiar over the exotic. the familar can be made slightly more healthy. I opt for less sugar and soy. But that is MY dietary situation. There is a hidden problem as well. For too many people, what is "healthy" for one person is deadly for another. But overall, food can be made with far less sugar, much lower salt, less overprocessed nutritionally "dead" foods (like white flour, white rice,etc), cut back on the transfats (or even better, cut them out), wipe soy off the menus (only good for biodiesel anyway). Add in more stuff made with whole grains, whole foods (less fruit juice, more whole pieces of unpeeled raw fruit and veggies). Use just a little restraint and more common sense. No wonder California is broke and closing down their public state park system.

Barry Digman


Are young people or their parents incapable of making a sandwich and putting a piece of fruit and a bag of chips in their backpacks in the morning? Sheesh.

 
For many working parents, it is a question of time. When my kids did go to SC public school, I made their lunch and I worked with my husband at times. In SC, bagged lunches were discouraged by the school system. At least they were when my kids were in school there.
 

This exchange went a different direction than I expected. 
 
I thought about all the restaurants that offer healthy food in our area and I don't see them doing so well. They keep going out of business. Then another opens and 6 months later they close.
And my other thought was and always has been your odds of having a heart attack are in your genes not what you put on your plate.
 
I don't want to live an extra 2 or 3 years if it's going to be in a nursing home. I'd just as soon go younger and in a hurry. LOL

People, for the most part, know how to eat healthy.
They will eat healthy at home.
When we go out to eat, we treat ourselves, we do not go out to diet.
That is the reason most healthy restaurants fail.
Also, we do not need some bureaucrats telling us what we need for a healthy diet, we can get better information from a Sunday morning infomercial than we can get from a, holier than thou elected official
 
al
 

agmccall
.. Also, we do not need some bureaucrats telling us what we need for a healthy diet, we can get better information from a Sunday morning infomercial than we can get from a, holier than thou elected official

al

Ever noticed that the bureaucrat telling us that we need to eat healthier is, to put it politlely, a "tad" over weight? Of course there is the rare bureaucratic skeleton who thinks everyone should look like they have been starving for decades.