School lunches high on price; short on nutrition

Well, sensational "journalism" (not by you Andrew) by various media outlets of such information always leads with the "fact" that providing high calorie meals to children is evil and the worst thing since chemicals allowed the country to safely produce nearly enough food to feed us all without imports. The articles will quietly mention that kids actually do need a remarkably high calorie diet in order to grow and when this diet is provided in a nutritionally balanced way and coupled with exercise, we have a nice healthy group of kids.

Instead, the articles seem to focus on all the things that cannot be served in schools as causes for our fat kids while blaming the school nutrition departments and ignoring the facts that kids must be getting these items outside of school or via unregulated vending.

So, what do we do? I suppose a cry for individual responsibility would be a waste of time?

I brought lunch most of my early years, whether made by my mom or by myself. Towards the end of high school, I ate poorly off campus instead of on campus. I had the luxury of having my sack lunch or paying for an off campus meal. Many do not. Many also take advantage of free and reduced programs.

Much like the folks utterly convinced that only organic foods are clean, safe and reasonable, the folks pointing the finger at school lunch do not have solutions. How do government programs affect change on the life lessons we must teach among our kids, family and friends? Would eliminating school lunch programs create an opportunity for responsibility? Probably not.

So to fix it, I suppose we could evaluate each student based on a number of factors, not limited to body mass and phsyical activity and design a meal program specifically aimed to accomodating that student.

Let's start a list of dieticians and medical professionals with the free time to come into our schools and give that a run.

Other ways to help might be to work with grants or other funding options to make more menu options more appealing and promote health education. Educated students interested in their health can make better options. In theory.

So it sounds like I don't have a solution either. Maybe McDonald's needs to raise it's prices so we don't run by every time we are hungry. But I like a Quarter Pounder like the rest of you.

I like to think we all do the best we can with what we have, but it is not always good enough. And when it comes to the next generation, we need to dig a little deeper and try to provide a path for good decision making. And for me, that boils down to education.

What one chooses to do with education is the difference.

Ramble off.