That's right, it didn't rot, it didn't mold and it still looks pretty good after sitting on this intrepid author's shelf for an entire year. Yes, a year. It just sat there for a year and it didn't decompose or smell or anything natural, organic matter should do.
Treehugger has the suspicious meal of happy that really makes my stomach turn. And this is what we want our kids to eat? And this is the kind of food we want in the lunch rooms?
My Happy Meal is one year old today and it looks pretty good. It NEVER smelled bad. The food did NOT decompose. It did NOT get moldy, at all.
This morning, I took it off my shelf to take a birthday photo. The first year is always a milestone. I gave it one of my world famous nonna hugs as we've been office mates for a year now! (Okay, maybe my sanity is in question.)
SO, now what? What does this have to do with School lunches? A lot. The schools are serving over processed food that's not healthy for our kids. It's not just a guess either, it's a fact.
New study says school food may make kids fatter
A new study from the University of Michigan finds that kids who eat the food served in schools are more likely to be overweight or obese than peers who bring lunch from home, and also are more likely to suffer from high levels of "bad" cholesterol.
The study, which examined the eating habits of some 1,300 Michigan sixth-graders over a three-year period, found that children who get their food at school eat more fat, drink more sugary sodas, and consume far fewer fruits and vegetables. The findings, presented last week at the American College of Cardiology annual scientific session, are said to be the first to assess the impact of school food on children's eating behaviors and overall health.
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The University of Michigan study comes as Congress considers re-authorization of the Child Nutrition Act, for which President Barack Obama has proposed splitting an additional $1 billion annually between school meals and other food programs. Some advocates say that amount is not even enough to put an apple on kids' cafeteria trays. Ann Cooper, the "renegade lunch lady," in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, says what schools really need is another $1 per day for each child in the federal program, which would work out to something like $5.4 billion a year.
According to Slow Food USA, the Child Nutrition Act is coming up very shortly and we have little time to act!
Senate unveils draft of Child Nutrition Act
Posted on Wed, March 17, 2010 by Gordon Jenkins
Today, Senator Blanche Lincoln unveiled her version of the Child Nutrition Act and announced that the Senate Agriculture Committee will begin marking up the bill next week, on Wednesday, March 24.
Lincoln’s draft boosts funding for child nutrition programs by $500 million per year, and includes stronger nutrition standards and some support for Farm to School programs. She called it a “record investment in child nutrition programs,” which is technically true – but only because Congress has consistently under-funded school meals in every Child Nutrition Act until now. It’s encouraging to see that there’s any new funding, but Lincoln’s draft only has half of the $1 billion proposed by President Obama, which isn’t enough to transform school lunch in a time when nearly 1 in 3 children is obese or overweight.
If your Senator serves on the Agriculture Committee, you have a short window of time to make an impact. Please take three minutes to make a phone call to your Senator’s office in D.C. and ask them to support:
• Helping schools serve healthier food by making the full investment of $1 billion per year for child nutrition programs.
• Including $50 million for Farm to School programs, which link schools to local farms and support the local economy.
Email staff member Gordon Jenkins if you have questions. When you’re done, reach out to friends and colleagues – especially parents, teachers and school meal providers – and ask them to make a call, too.
Send an email to your Congressperson and let them know you want better food for our kids in schools, not something that can sit on a shelf and be promoted to the next grade.
Want to learn more about what you can do? Visit my new hero, Chef Ann Cooper, her website is a plethora of information.
Why is this important? Because the school lunch program feeds 31 million kids on a daily basis, many of which depend on this one meal for their daily nutritional needs. WE can do better than this for our kids, they deserve better than a happy meal.
And many have been transfixed by the work of one anonymous teacher who's been eating school lunches since January first and blogging about it.
Fed Up With Lunch: The School Lunch Project, here is a very interesting post.
When I asked the students for their thoughts regarding school lunches, they said things like:
It’s not good, but I eat it.
It is not very nutritious.
It sucks [expletive]. You cannot hide the truth!
It needs real improvement.
It’s nasty.
I encouraged them to elaborate:
I pay $1.85, and it’s not worth it. [Note: this is the full price, not the reduced price.]
The food tastes old.
We have no willpower. If they put cookies out, we’re going to eat them.
They serve the same thing all the time. [This is true. There are four school weeks in the month of March. The menu for the third and fourth weeks is just a rehash of the first and second weeks.]
We would love to have healthier options. If they gave us healthier options, we’d eat them.
It’s hard when you’re trying to lose weight. I wish there was something healthy.
There's more