A recent Congressional decision has snuffed regulations concerning parts of school lunches. Aside from blocking limits on the amount of starchy vegetables (french fries) that school lunches can contain, two tablespoons of tomato paste continues to count as a serving of vegetables. The pizza that children eat in schools allegedly contains a meal’s worth of vegetables.
There is no way in this universe that the sauce on a slice of pizza has anything close to the nutrients contained in a serving of whole, fresh vegetables. Evaporating or otherwise thickening pureed tomatoes makes tomato paste, yet cooks out many valuable nutrients. Something tells me that the sauce used in school lunches is not your usual heat-reduced tomato paste. I smell corn syrup.
Does this mean that pizza will be the only source of vegetables in school lunch? No. However, the fact that this is how a government agency is defining a food makes me think we have some serious problems.
Only somebody who knows absolutely nothing about nutrition (or is getting some serious kickback from certain food industries) could create such lax regulations like this. This is not the way I want the government to make decisions, especially when there are children in this country who depend on school meals for a significant portion of the food they eat.
Driving arguments against regulations of school lunches rail against “government control” of American diets. With childhood obesity and diabetes skyrocketing, I’m confused as to how these critics think that the government (or some kind of regulative authority) has no business in at least suggesting (and mandating in public schools) healthier diets for children.
I agree with some critic’s arguments against government dietary regulations, claiming food industries have too much lobbying leverage with lawmaker’s decisions. So unless they start to wise up and stop feeding off corporate interests, then it might not be such a bad idea for schools to take matters into their own hands. School districts, PTA’s, and communities at large are now implementing fresh, whole foods into their cafeterias. It’s not like the food industries can lobby blue-collar Joe and Jane like they can a career politician.
Public schools (elementary in particular) are tasked with teaching students the foundations of everything they will learn for the rest of their lives. If school meals are their primary source of nutrition, how are children going to learn life-long knowledge in eating well when that slice of pizza on their tray supposedly has all the vegetables they need?
Students need to be more involved in the food that they eat every day in school. They need to learn what is in their meals, and how to make healthy decisions concerning what they eat. Not all kids are as lucky as I was. My parents taught me what actual vegetables are. If schools are the only place some kids can learn about food and nutrition, then a lot of them aren’t.
l
elinko@mavs.coloradomesa.edu