[WirelessGigabit]

I love this policy. If it's free then no-one brings their own, and no-one is looked down at.

BUT... I checked the menu of a school where I used to live...

Pizza, hot dogs, fries... We can make the most delicious vegetables, roasted, ...

And they get carbs. Nutrition taken from nature decomposed in its elemental components put back together for the perfect addictive meal...

[steve_adams_86]

I’m not opposed to the carbs. I think if they’re in a whole food form, the kids are so much better off than if they’re eating processed… Anything.

Not teaching kids to eat whole foods is one of the greatest assaults on public health we’ve done in the last century, from what I can see. They become adults who normalize eating these perfect addictive meals, who allow their own kids access to the same junk, and then they their own kids as well, and so on. Until today when grocery stores are quite literally predominately food that you shouldn’t eat. You just shouldn’t.

Most common diseases in north America are highly correlated with diet. I find that so profound. We’re all eating ourselves to death in some form or another, it seems. To have that start in a public school is a real affront to individual and social well-being.

[armchairhacker]

We teach kids to eat whole foods, we just don't teach them well.

I remember in school we had a lot of programs for nutrition which were basically health-food propaganda. Yes it was the "Food Pyramid" so not ideal, but there was a clear message to eat minimally-processed foods (fruits, vegetables, dairy, grains) and avoid junk. We watched "Supersize Me" and a documentary which explained all these "vegan / whole foods" diets. But kids still eat junk because they're kids and they don't really understand or care, and everyone around them eats junk; and then grow up and continue to eat junk because it's cheaper/easier and they did as kids.

Also, we had fruits and vegetables in every school lunch, as well as salads and wraps as alternatives to the hot meal. But the fruits were often wilted or bruised, and vegetables canned and/or overcooked. If we had good-tasting healthy food, I'm sure more kids would eat it; but the school lunch was school-lunch quality, and bad quality degrades healthy food more than it does junk food.

The problem is, if we want to teach kids how to eat unprocessed food so that they actually listen, we need nuance and funding. To teach them "healthy <> bad tasting", we need to give them access to good-tasting healthy meals, which are hard to cook. Or if we just keep scaring them into eating less junk, we need to change society so that it's more ingrained that junk food is bad outside of school; right now they get mixed messages, where 1 semester of health class says "junk food bad", but few people care anywhere else. But nuance, funding, and affecting culture are things the government is really bad at, especially when it's an issue as "insignificant" as eating healthy.

[WWLink]

We shouldn't let perfect be the enemy of good. I'd rather see kids get free pizza and hot dogs for school lunch, than I would a system where it costs $8 per student and only some kids get free lunch, but it's 100% vegan fair trade certified healthy food.

Now if you can pull a boiling frog meme and make the pizza be healthy, haha more power to them!

[dopidopHN]

I agree with you, I really do. Some meal is better than no meal.

But we forgot how to make decent food at scale.

[Kon-Peki]

Many schools, especially newer ones, do not have the facilities to cook real meals.

We should definitely encourage schools to renovate and make use of the kitchens when they have them, encourage kitchen facilities be included in new construction, and maybe even encourage creative solutions when no other options exist.

[dopidopHN]

Absolutely. Yes. The local part goes a long ways

Some hopeful example :

Quebec hospitals started cooking all their food internally on the same budget.

More and more French municipalities stopped their frozen food subscription to hire a handful of cooks and gardeners with a similar budgets. ( those are minimum wages jobs than can be sourced locally )

To conclude : human have been cooking food in batch for quiet a while. That what I mean when I say « we forgot » : some communal facilities like school don’t even have kitchen anymore.

[krapp]

We didn't forget. It would just be expensive, and Americans simply don't want their hard-earned tax dollars to pay to feed other people's kids, so schools have to resort to cheap solutions. It took radical activism (mostly by the black community and groups like the black panthers) just to get school lunches to begin with, and Republicans/Conservatives have been trying to tear it down ever since.

[dopidopHN]

I get your US context. That’s a handful. Thanks for providing that ( irony : 0% )

I just want to play devils advocate on the cost : How would be paying people minimum wage to batch cook food from scratch with local produce be more expensive ?

We did that for centuries without conserve, fridge and NPK to grow our food.

We now have access to cheap energy ( historically speaking ) and a variety of preservation methods. That should be considerably easier.

( and in fact i think it is, I’m in Quebec now, public hospitals switched to cook all their food on the same budget as previously frozen crap. A lot of French municipality are doing the same. Basically you have to pay the yearly salary of à cook, some gardener and a CPA to handle what can’t be grow ( 50% )

A frozen hotdog is pretty expensive for what it really is.

Question : how would be our Republicans friends do lunch for schools? Every kids bring a box ?

[krapp]

>How would be paying people minimum wage to batch cook food from scratch with local produce be more expensive ?

Local produce is more expensive, as is cooking from scratch[0]. Another problem is that won't scale. You can't feed millions of kids twice a day every weekday from the local farmers' market.

[0] https://www.vox.com/videos/2018/3/22/17152460/healthy-eating...

> how would be our Republicans friends do lunch for schools? Every kids bring a box ?

Make them pay for it. If they can't pay, they don't eat.

[dopidopHN]

Thanks for the vox link, I can’t load it now, I’m traveling and have no bandwidth.

I’m ready to change my mind once I’m reaching a wifi.

In interval :

how did we do it for millenniums before frozen carbs?

Random: Let’s say the Roman army. Ok. They were relying on canned food a lot. ( garnum )

But for sure they were not eating frozen hotdog

[giantg2]

Interesting, most places I've seen are increasing the food restrictions, including in food brought from home. This is probably something you can address with your district if your state doesn't already some healthy school food law.

[fallingknife]

How on earth do they have the right to make rules about what food kids bring from home?

[giantg2]

My local district restricts what a kid can bring in for thier personal snack during classroom snack time. It has specific types of approved food listed. In some cases, they even restrict what brand of food it is.

[fallingknife]

This is why I could never have kids. I hated the busyboides who run schools enough as a kid. As an adult I would probably come to blows with them.