Junk Food School Meals Banned By USDA

[Gingersnap]

Junk Food School Meals Banned By USDA
Schools across America will only be able to sell low-calorie healthy food, the Department of Agriculture announces.7:47pm UK, Saturday 26 April 2014 Junk food

By By Sky News US Team
The US is banning junk food in schools in an effort to cut the level of obesity in young people.

The ban by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) will start on July 1 and will be nationwide.

According to the proposed ban, schools across the country will only be allowed to sell healthy foods such as fruit, dairy products, whole-grain foods, lean protein products and vegetables.

The staple food of a meal must not exceed 350 calories and snacks must be less than 200 calories.

All food sold in schools should not contain more than 35% sugar or trans fat - a type of artificial fat linked to coronary heart disease.

The ban will affect 100,000 schools across the country. In the past, only the states of California and Connecticut had similar rules prohibiting carbonated soft drinks and junk food.

The USDA defines junk food as being foods with a high calorie count and minimal nutritional value, such as candy, chips and french fries, according to nutrition expert Katherine Tallmadge

Parents warned the policy may prove unpopular with children, while some feel the rules go too far by banning all drinks over a certain size.

Lance Ing, the father of Washington DC school girl Kaela, said: "I think when it comes to beverages, some of those healthy beverages anyway, they could have larger size. And if kids fill up on milk, there's nothing wrong with that."

As well as junk food restrictions, US schools have experimented with other methods to address growing childhood obesity.

Many schools offer nutrition courses and ask parents to read nutrition books with children.

When the ban comes into force in July, schools will also have to remove all vending machines selling junk food.

I don't know what "junk food" means in terms of biochemistry. A hamburger has grains, veggies, and protein. So do most normal entree items. I'm fine with restricting hot lunch items to 2 entrees (one veggie, one not) and it's fine to remove all vending machines from schools including "healthy" vending machines.

But schools have to be "fine" with getting off the Federal tit. If the object is to provide nutrition to those children with neglectful parents who cannot put together a sandwich, a fruit, and a treat then dial it down to a more normal level. Two choices, a fruit, a treat and milk for everybody on the hot lunch program.

Some or many kids will decide to take a sack lunch. That's fine!

Sky

[phillygirl]

When I grew up....

I know. I know. I'm old. But we had a choice of the hot entree, or soup. In high school, we could also get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you didn't like those choices, pack a lunch!

In high school we did have a table at the other end of the cafeteria selling pure junk...tastykakes and hostess, etc. Sure, they can get rid of that. Get rid of vending machines (we only had that in senior lounge). Go back to one entree, soup, and pb&j. You don't really need to worry about the calorie counts then. I'm certain our portion sizes were lower then.

Oh...and we did have ice cream for a dessert in middle and high school. I got a quarter for lunch...so it was either an ice cream, or a tastykake, or possibly a "platter" if I had the fifty cents. Mostly it was ice cream.

[Gingersnap]

When I grew up....

I know. I know. I'm old. But we had a choice of the hot entree, or soup. In high school, we could also get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. If you didn't like those choices, pack a lunch!

In high school we did have a table at the other end of the cafeteria selling pure junk...tastykakes and hostess, etc. Sure, they can get rid of that. Get rid of vending machines (we only had that in senior lounge). Go back to one entree, soup, and pb&j. You don't really need to worry about the calorie counts then. I'm certain our portion sizes were lower then.

Oh...and we did have ice cream for a dessert in middle and high school. I got a quarter for lunch...so it was either an ice cream, or a tastykake, or possibly a "platter" if I had the fifty cents. Mostly it was ice cream.

My "poor" school just had two choices for hot lunch and we were wild to get the hot lunch on "pizza" day or "taco" day but it wasn't a big deal otherwise. Some kids had a hot lunch every day. Most of us just had sack lunches.

In high school, no girls seemed to eat any hot lunch or sack lunch. I know I didn't. I ate breakfast at home, bought a soda or went to a fast food place, or had nothing. Now, I wasn't running track or playing football. Swimmers at that point were oblivious to the mini meal mantra. Like most girls my age, I was normal-weight. Not big and not skinny. We would all be considered very thin by today's standards.

[Adam]

I guarandamntee you that the increase in childhood obesity has zip to do with school lunches and instead has everything to do with the explosion of food stamps. And I guarandamntee you that the fat-fascists in the White House know that this is the case, too. They don't dare clamp down on food stamps because that's the very best possible to keep people on the plantation: the "bread" part of "bread and circuses."

[phillygirl]

My "poor" school just had two choices for hot lunch and we were wild to get the hot lunch on "pizza" day or "taco" day but it wasn't a big deal otherwise. Some kids had a hot lunch every day. Most of us just had sack lunches.

In high school, no girls seemed to eat any hot lunch or sack lunch. I know I didn't. I ate breakfast at home, bought a soda or went to a fast food place, or had nothing. Now, I wasn't running track or playing football. Swimmers at that point were oblivious to the mini meal mantra. Like most girls my age, I was normal-weight. Not big and not skinny. We would all be considered very thin by today's standards.

I was always thin. Some might say skinny. And then I went into "Annie Anorexia" mode where a friend and I had contests to see how little we could eat. I was down to an oatmeal creme pie a day for a few weeks. It wasn't really that difficult as I was never much of an eater as a kid anyway.

When I did have regular money for lunch it was hit or miss in terms of whether I brought lunch or bought. It wasn't so much that the hot lunch was great (although I did like pizza day...it was the square kind like Elios), it was just that it was there. And my mother put us on some weird diets. A frozen yogurt for a couple of years (the kind with fruit in the bottom and it thawed in my locker all day...blech) or pickled eggs...yeah..those were the days that I used the quarter to buy the ice cream for lunch instead.

But I have absolutely no problem with the federal subsidized lunches meeting decent nutritional standards. I do have a problem with them going so overboard that kids waste it all. Why make food that isn't going to be eaten at all?

Oh...and pizza day came with corn as the vegetable. Canned corn. I loved that stuff.

[phillygirl]

I guarandamntee you that the increase in childhood obesity has zip to do with school lunches and instead has everything to do with the explosion of food stamps. And I guarandamntee you that the fat-fascists in the White House know that this is the case, too. They don't dare clamp down on food stamps because that's the very best possible to keep people on the plantation: the "bread" part of "bread and circuses."

It's a combo of everything. I don't think you can point to just one thing. Food stamps can be used for good food as well as junk food. Middle class kids are fat too. It's a societal issue of big gulps and super size and candy that glows in the dark and is available at times other than just Halloween and Easter. As a society we are obsessed with bad food.

[Michele]

Go out to dinner and look around to see what people are drinking. More often than not, it's soda pop..with refills. Then there's the increase in size of not only food portions but individual food items, too. Add to that all the processed garbage and finish it off with the inability to eat only when you're hungry. Who's surprised that some kids have obesity and other health issues. But who shouldn't be surprised? The parents.

[Adam]

It's a combo of everything. I don't think you can point to just one thing. Food stamps can be used for good food as well as junk food. Middle class kids are fat too. It's a societal issue of big gulps and super size and candy that glows in the dark and is available at times other than just Halloween and Easter. As a society we are obsessed with bad food.

Probably not, but school lunches are most definitely the smallest possible target. Maybe school lunches weren't qualifying for sale in your local Greenwich Village health food store, but they certainly weren't that bad from a nutritional standpoint. Not next to big bags of Doritos and heaps of Ho-hos. Yeah, a slice of fairly greasy pizza and a carton of Jungle Juice isn't exactly fulfilling the food pyramid, but kids could have a lot worse diet.

Yes, people can buy decent food on food stamps, but the simple reality is that relatively few actually do. Let's just face reality here: you just don't see a whole lot of skinny people whipping out the food stamp card at Harris Teeter. People like to pretend that people wheeling shopping carts full of junk food up to the register and then paying for it all on food stamp cards is somehow rare or apocryphal. The reality to anyone who pays attention is that it isn't rare or apocryphal at all.

There is absolutely no reason, with today's technology, to not restrict food bought on food stamps to be healthy foods and nothing else: lean meats, vegetables, real fruits, real juice, etc. No snack foods, no candy, no ready-made cookie dough, no sugary drinks (fruit-flavored crap or soft drinks), none of that garbage. This is not hard, and it's politically palatable to everyone. It has been demonstrated time and again that one can readily eat very well on the SNAP allowance if one just buys good, basic, nutritious staple foods that ensure that one gets reasonably-balanced nutrition, which is far and away the best way to get to a healthy weight.

Do that, and obesity, most especially childhood obesity, will make a drastic disappearance from the American spectrum.

[RobJohnson]

In general I think a lot of shoppers are just lazy no matter if they are using EBT or paying cash.

They load up on prepared & processed foods as no one seems to actually cook at home any more, they mostly reheat. There are several reasons for this and I am sure some of them can't be helped.

As a person that processes Medicaid claims and deals with EBT cards it's a ridiculous waste. The safety net has turned into a hammock with an automatic lift.

When I was a kid soda was a treat and candy was rare. Now it's what families have at every meal! I fall into that trap myself once in a while. It sucks.

[scott]

Great, so now school lunches are going to be just for those who have to eat them - the food stamp crowd, who are just going to sell these lunches to the athletes that want the calories.

It's 1982 all over again.

[Novaheart]

I guarandamntee you that the increase in childhood obesity has zip to do with school lunches and instead has everything to do with the explosion of food stamps. And I guarandamntee you that the fat-fascists in the White House know that this is the case, too. They don't dare clamp down on food stamps because that's the very best possible to keep people on the plantation: the "bread" part of "bread and circuses."

Food stamps aren't fattening. But you're almost correct- the government will not restrict SNAP to healthy foods, or even exclude the worst foods.

WIC is restricted, so there is no reason bet can't be.

[Novaheart]

It's a combo of everything. I don't think you can point to just one thing. Food stamps can be used for good food as well as junk food. Middle class kids are fat too. It's a societal issue of big gulps and super size and candy that glows in the dark and is available at times other than just Halloween and Easter. As a society we are obsessed with bad food.

I think it's the hfcs. Schools should have fitness instead of phys ed.

[RobJohnson]

Food stamps aren't fattening. But you're almost correct- the government will not restrict SNAP to healthy foods, or even exclude the worst foods.

WIC is restricted, so there is no reason bet can't be.

Restriction is a very good idea. I don't mind a child having a treat once in a while but when they are having pop tarts for three meals a day that gets a little out of hand.