Most people eat some combination of food that is good for them and food that tastes good. Finding the balance between the two is a lifelong journey. This is the story of that struggle.
The USDA waived any requirements during the pandemic, allowing all school children to get a free school lunch. As Full Frontal with Samantha Bee points out, that policy expires at the end of this school year.
We found during the height of the pandemic that many children rely on their schools to give them food and nutrition they weren't necessarily getting at home.
Lunch debt has been a real thing. The program explains nuances such as subsidies not reflecting the cost of food and financially strapped school districts really need the money.
We see samples of children raising money to help their fellow kids get out of "lunch debt." While those stories are heartwarming, their efforts should be unnecessary.
One way for schools to reduce the money to spend on school lunches is scratch cooking. Unfortunately, a lot of schools can't make that happen due to a lack of facilities.
California and Maine have passed universal free lunch on a state level. The federal waiver expires June 30. Bee makes a strong case for universal free lunch.
One more school lunch related note mentioned in the segment: give these kids a proper amount of time to eat lunch. The segment mention that some school lunches are served at 9 am.
Full Frontal with Samantha Bee airs on TBS on Thursdays at 10 pm Eastern.
photo and video credit: Full Frontal with Samantha Bee/TBS
"Children should learn about vegetarian options as part of their curriculum. Learning is all over, not just in the literal classroom."
"Where in the school day is there time to include vegetarianism in the curriculum?"
"Children eat lunch; They learn in the cafeteria by eating vegetarian options."
This was part of a Facebook exchange. The first and third sentences come from your humble narrator. The second sentence is from a woman in the exchange.
The context was Plant Forward Thursdays, a program in the Chicago Public Schools to encourage vegetarian alternatives. Our friend Monica Eng has been reporting on this for Axios Chicago. One of the items is the Lentil Joe sandwich. Not a fan of actual Sloppy Joe's but somehow a lentil version might be more appealing. At least I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.
We've seen Jamie Oliver go into a classroom, asking young students to identify vegetables. Most classrooms don't have that opportunity to have a camera crew with a famous British chef asking them questions.
There are a few schools that have gardens as a way to introduce vegetables to children. Field trips to a garden or a farm offer educational possibilities.
The woman in the social media exchange has a valid point. The school day is filled enough already. This was true even before the pandemic did a number on education.
The stories we have heard is that children have to rush through their lunch hour. Eating in shifts, the process feels more like a pit stop in a NASCAR race where time is crucial.
Offering a day of vegetarian options at school lunch with even a bit of instruction can go a long way, especially in a school system where they can't throw in extras during the school day.
We get so caught up in the literal classroom as if that is the only place children learn what they need to know. Children can learn about vegetarian options in the cafeteria. The school could put up a basic sheet kids can read in line while waiting for school lunch. Lentils, peanut butter, avocados, beans, tofu, seitan, tempeh, quinoa, yogurt: some of the many ways to get protein without eating meat or fish.
That same sheet could be e-mailed to parents to help their children understand why lunches one day a week will be different.
Your kids watch enough fast food commercials full of hamburgers, chicken sandwiches, fried chicken, and sub sandwiches filled with meat. One day of alternative proteins is a way to introduce the idea to slightly counterbalance the images they see outside school.
My introduction into the meatless concept did not come from a school cafeteria. My mother mistakenly used a jarred spaghetti sauce with meat for a meal that wasn't supposed to have meat. She shrugged, citing that the sauce had so little meat that it wouldn't matter.
I was filling in on a radio show where I was supposed to do an interview with Casey Kasem, yes that Casey Kasem. He was an advocate for meatless options. I got a bunch of reading material to learn about the subject. I do remember being very cynical, eating Burger King hamburgers while reading the research. This was my introduction to what essentially was Meatless Monday (as I remember it).
Kasem spent much of the interview talking about slaughterhouses in a time of day just after my radio audience just had lunch. I steered the conversation more about healthier options.
Other than listening to a few vegetarians at college, I knew nothing about the vegetarian options, much less those who went vegan.
This was about 3 years before The Simpsons came out with the Lisa the Vegetarian episode from Season 7 in 1995. Lisa bonds with a lamb at a petting zoo and vows to give up meat. She gets guidance from Apu as well as Paul and Linda McCartney, real life vegetarians.
Your humble narrator has learned a lot about vegetarian and vegan options over the years. Learned about complete proteins. How nutritional yeast is good for vitamin B12 and is a complete protein.
"Where in the school day is there time to include vegetarianism in the curriculum?"
Lisa Simpson and real people such as your humble narrator didn't learn about vegetarianism in school or even through school lunches. We learned this outside the classroom. Learning about vegetarianism won't, in itself, turn your kids into vegetarians. Most likely, they will learn a more balanced system of foods where they can incorporate vegetarian and vegan options into their diet.
photo credit: Chicago Public Schools video credit: ABC
Today is Election Day in the United States. A chance to get a conversation going on food policy. A chance to have a reasonable, likely useless Secretary of Agriculture. A chance to get food processing back into the United States instead of sending previously live animals to China for processing.
We discussed a lot of that last Tuesday between the presidential candidates. The pundits often say the vice presidential candidates are really important but isn't always so. Fair to say in 2020, for once, they might be right.
Age and/or COVID-19 risk make Mike Pence and Kamala Harris a lot more relevant.
The picture (above) and video (below) is from a September 22 campaign stop in Flint, MI where Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) were touring a farmers market. If there is any major politician on a major party ticket who gets the need for good food, Kamala Harris is that politician.
Harris is from Oakland in the East Bay where they have access to some amazing food at markets in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley. The area around the Bay Area has amazing soil and growing seasons. I know this from many visits and meals.
The farmers market visit in Flint is also more significant because of the fight to get access to poor communities and communities of color. Harris understands this plight.
We would love this to be a reasonably balanced battle. Republicans arguing for increased nutrition but asking how that gets paid for out of the budget. Dems responding with creative solutions to do both. We are not there.
We would like to get equal time with Mike Pence. Pence was a Congressman and Governor of Indiana, a state definitely into farms. The side of the political equation that is into babies being born aren't as concerned about their nutrition factors once they are in school.
We've seen the divisive and petty squabbles over making kids eat for cheaper and with lesser nutrition standards in school lunch. They are the people who will lead our country in the future. They will be better people with school breakfasts and lunches.
Republicans are into large farms, corporate farms where cows are closer together than people piled into a Volkswagen in the late 1960s. Small farms are being bought out by larger farms since farmer debt has climbed in the last 4 years.
There is only a single VP debate as opposed to 3 (scheduled) presidential debates. We do have a good sense of how Pence and Harris approach food policy if they get a promotion.
As we've noted, your job isn't done once you voted. Good that you voted but you have to continue the fight for a better food policy. Our future will be better shaped with an improved food policy.
The U.S. election is on November 3. Many have voted early. Hope that voting democracy isn't too damaged where you live.
Food policy hasn't come up in the campaign. We don't know where Joe Biden stands on food policy or how he thinks about food. We do know he isn't Donald Trump and won't make things worse.
Earlier this year, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service allowed the sale of chicken meat made from birds that have had diseases for human consumption.
Rollbacks on the nutrition standards of school lunches from where they were under Barack Obama.
The horrible tariffs that impacted farmers for no logical reason. The American Farm Bureau points out that debt in the farm sector is projected to increase by 4 percent to a record $434 billion. Farm bankruptcies continue to rise.
This is not the whole list by a long shot. This would be a 30-minute read with the whole list and the Internet does not want a 30-minute read.
The Democratic Party has had control of the House of Representatives, the Senate, and the White House for 4 years between 1981 and the present. Bill Clinton had that level of control from 1993-1995 and Barack Obama from 2009-2011. During the Obama time, there was a lot of political work that went into a 6¢ school lunch increase, the first such non-inflationary increase to school lunches since 1974.
Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) worked so hard to reduce the increase to 6¢.
The Dems taking back the Senate is possible but will be a difficult task. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris might get elected but without the Senate, they won't be able to get much done, especially on the food supply.
We would love to have a policy debate with a pair of parties that cared about the impact of nutrition and food policy. We barely have one at times.
We don't make endorsements here at BalanceofFood.com. Our "endorsement" of Michelle Obama in 2012 was more about her efforts than her husband's efforts.
We know the famous rose garden in the White House was destroyed recently. We don't know what happened to Michelle Obama's organic food garden on the White House property.
If Biden and Kamala Harris get elected, perhaps Dr. Jill Biden will incorporate Michelle Obama's help once again.
We mentioned in May 2019 that Higher Ground, Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, is working on a half-hour series for Netflix called Listen to Your Vegetables & Eat Your Parents. The program will “take young children and their families around the globe on an adventure that tells us the story of our food.”
That program is still in development. As we have noted, government can do some good but other forces need to be part of the process. We hope some adults learn along with children about the value of vegetables.
The Obama Administration brought in a "nutrition czar." Sam Kass served as a senior policy adviser for nutrition policy and executive director of Let’s Move! Kass was there from the administration start until December 2014. Debra Eschmeyer, co-founder of Food Corps replaced Kass in those roles.
Biden served as vice president in the Obama Administration. A "secretary of nutrition" would be a vital resource as opposed to a secretary of agriculture. The United States hasn't had a significant secretary of agriculture in a positive sense in a very long time.
We hope to have more positive coverage of school lunches and overall food policy in the next 4-8 years.
Being a classic regular milk drinker, if you suddenly had a milk option come into your local market that was significantly cheaper, would you automatically switch to the cheaper milk?
Milk is already pretty cheap in the United States. The cost level depends on your interest in organic, regular, UHT, shelf-stable milk.
Canadians have rather good milk. They pay a hefty price for milk, but they get quality milk.
The newest trade deal between the United States, Canada, and Mexico (CUSMA | USMCA) means Canadians will get access to cheap American milk. Depending on the import costs, the savings could be $1-$2 for 4 liters (slightly more than 1 gallon).
There is one distinct difference between the standard milk in both countries: recombinant bovine somatotropin (rBST), the artificial growth hormone allowed in American milk but banned for Canadian milk.
Canadian milk is already very good milk. Unfortunately, as we've noted in other stories, food budgets in the two countries are tight thanks to wage shrinkage and job growth in certain industries.
If you live in Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes, your milk could come in a bag. The individual liter-sized bags are placed in a pitcher; the user cuts a diagonal slice into the top corner closest to the spout in the pitcher. The process (pronounced PRO-cess in Canada) is easier than it sounds. You won't find American milk in a bag.
The American milk will need to be labeled in English and French, since Canada requires bilingual food labeling.
American dairy companies might try to get around this by shipping its products to be used in cheese, yogurt (yoghurt in Canada), and butter. The milk products should be identified as American; as we've seen from meat classification between United States and Canada, country of origin labeling has been a concern. Consumers should know where their food comes from, especially with rBST.
Canadian milk is more expensive because Canadian dairy farmers get better compensation. The U.S. government encourages overproduction of American milk so trade deals are engineered to dump cheap American milk onto other countries, such as Canada.
The supply management system in Canada is politically protected. Liberal, Conservative, NDP: all behind supply management.
Given the number of U.S. dairy farms that are going under, Americans should consider a smarter dairy management system with better compensation.
Consumer cost of milk, cheese, butter, and other dairy products needs to be weighed (whey-ed) against the quality of the product and the compensation for farmers.
"I thought you guys were all trying to force me to eat healthy. But I've learned that a lot of this stuff is made in a factory and processed with tons of salt, just like all my favorite foods. Spaghetti O's, Rice a Roni. Here I was thinking what you wanted was stuff from a farmers market. I just didn't want my food to change. School cafeteria meat is processed crap that comes in a box. And this is just processed crap that comes in a box. I don't have a problem with it. All I wanted was to be able to eat the same garbage I always have. And this is definitely garbage. And hey, if it happens to be more ethical and sustainable, well, I guess I'm fine with that too." — Eric Cartman, South Park, Let Them Eat Goo
The message from South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone is that fake burgers are heavily processed. Eric Cartman keeps having heart attacks just from the idea of eating plant-based foods. After his first heart attack, the school goes back to eating meat. After his second heart attack, a mysterious man comes to town to set up plant-based replacements for all the meat in town under the label of Incredible Foods.
The substance is green goo that is shipped through pipelines, hence the episode title Let Them Eat Goo. The goo man is serving "synthetically modulated plant protein" where "shitty food" is served by people who already eat "crappy food."
The secondary arc in the episode is Randy Marsh's Tegridy Burger from Tegridy Farms using the waste products from marijuana production to make a plant-based burger. They start selling their Tegridy Burger outside the Burger King and its Impossible Burger.
The Tegridy burger tastes really awful but the more you eat it, the better tasting the burger gets. The implication is that eating the Tegridy burger gets you high. The actual Tegridy Burger slogan is "Tastes like shit, you won't care."
We did talk about the processed level of the Beyond Burger and Impossible Burger. Our argument was that if you ate the burgers every so often, you would be fine. Most of the ingredients are pretty obvious, which is why we labeled them as processed not ultra-processed.
You could take a portabella mushroom, remove the stem, marinate the mushroom with balsamic vinegar and some garlic powder. Put the marinated mushroom on the grill, outdoor or indoor, and place on a hamburger bun. Not processed and makes for a nice sandwich.
Processed food from better ingredients is better than processed food from lesser ingredients. There are plant-based foods that are minimally processed and processed to the hilt. Make a choice but make smart choices within that choice.
Cartman fought the battle over plant-based meat 2 seasons ago when he fooled his vegan girlfriend Heidi into eating Kentucky Fried Chicken under the guise of Beyond KFC.
Parker and Stone are mocking the whole plant-based experience but more specifically the idea of replacing processed foods with processed foods. The taco meat filling at Taco Bell is also processed. Eating more simple can involve meat, vegetables, and mostly a bit of both.
The news on American school lunches has not been good since January 20, 2017. Roy Wood Jr. and The Daily Show team along with Margo Wootan, vice president for nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, compare and contrast the school lunch approach under Barack Obama and Donald Trump.
"Flavored chocolate milk" returned to the menu.
The segment allows Wooten to paint a picture of what lunch was like not so long ago. Food "is supposed to help you learn, not make them fall asleep," Wootan explained. "We give kids choices but all of those choices need to be healthy."
She notes that the previous lunch program would reduce childhood obesity numbers by 2 million kids and save $800 million in health care costs.
"Three-quarters of kids who get school lunches come from low-income families," Wootan noted.
Wood takes on a drill sergeant motif to convince the kids to not eat the junk food. Wood's mantra of "nutrition now, nutrition tomorrow, nutrition forever" is a homage to "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever" from George Wallace's 1963 Inaugural Address in Wood's home state of Alabama.
This illustration gives a sharp contrast filled with subtlety. The color of the bun indicates more whole grains and leaner meats have less visible fat. Carrots vs. French fries is a bit more obvious, even if Wood points out the potatoes also grow in the ground. Carrots are high in natural sugar compared to most vegetables but checks off more nutrition boxes than French fries.
The pictured chocolate milk in the segment is skim milk, robbing kids of fat from milk that can make them feel more full.
Just so this story isn't completely depressing, Higher Ground, Barack and Michelle Obama's production company, is working on a half-hour series for Netflix called Listen to Your Vegetables & Eat Your Parents. The program will “take young children and their families around the globe on an adventure that tells us the story of our food.”
Since the show is aimed at kids, this might be an animated series though that is purely speculation.
We have said, even during the Obama Administration, that government can only do so much to instill better eating habits. A Netflix show can help more than the current regime.
The Daily Show with Trevor Noah airs Monday-Thursday on Comedy Central.
video and photo credit: The Daily Show with Trevor Noah Twitter capture: @CSPI
Kids still in their snowsuits trying to hurriedly eat their brown bag lunches. The noise is rather loud and rambunctious with very little adult supervision.
We've seen a lot of press in Canada lately about the push for a national school lunch program. This imagery is shown to be an improvement over previous requests for a federal school lunch program in Canada.
Traditionally, Canada hasn't had a national school lunch program because kids would go home for lunch. Clearly those school lunch patterns have shifted.
There are schools that have school lunches, but that funding coming from provincial and territorial governments, municipal governments, and charities.
"What we'd like to see is a national school food program where all kids from across the country know that they can go to school and get access to healthy food and eat it in an environment that teaches them about what healthy food means and about nutrition," said Sasha McNicoll, coordinator at the Coalition for Healthy School Food, organized by the advocacy group Food Secure Canada.
McNicoll and Diana Bronson, executive director of Food Secure Canada, have been behind a lot of this press, including this op-ed column in the Toronto Star.
That is an ideal, as are the policies of numerous countries such as Japan, France, and Brazil. The fear is that a Canadian federal school lunch program might be more like the United States. A recent UNICEF report has Canada at 37 of 41 high-income countries over the lack of access to healthy food as compared to rates of obese or overweight children. Canada ranked below the United States and only ahead of Bulgaria, Malta, Turkey, and Mexico.
This clip from the 2015 film Where to Invade Next from Michael Moore demonstrates the gold standard for school lunches. Should Canada shoot for this ideal standard in setting up a federal school lunch program?
Canada wouldn't quite have the hostility toward a federal school lunch program that exists politically south of the 49th parallel. However, there would be some conservatives that don't want to spend federal money on the nutrition of young children. The other countries have a better sense of food, where teaching about nutrition in the classroom or lunchroom is more viable.
So if Canada is going on this route and implement a federal school lunch program, here are some detours to navigate:
Kids need time to eat lunch. This has been an ongoing issue in the United States where children simply don't have enough time to eat lunch.
Schedule field trips to hydroponic and aquaponic farms. Canada is a cold climate in most areas so school gardens like you find in Berkeley, CA aren't as prominent. Children should see food being grown in some fashion.
Parents and caretakers have to be part of the nutrition education process.
Start out with high standards. This may seem obvious, but you don't want to have to negotiate quality over time. The standards can't be too high if the children aren't used to eating food that is less sweet and processed. They still have to want to eat the school lunch.
Be ready to improvise with remote communities. Canada has a lot of areas that are difficult to get to, whether that be in Labrador, the territories, or northern communities in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba.
I would love to have the research time and money to answer this question: Is Canada still better off without a federal school lunch program than the United States is with a federal school lunch program. Yes, Canada has problems with school children not getting enough nutrition for breakfast and lunch. Food insecurity is a little too common in Canada. The hope is that a federal program in Canada would be able to do better for kids than the U.S. system does for its kids.
We have seen some good anecdotal evidence over what Canada can do with a school lunch program. We wrote about a program in Edmonton where students can learn culinary skills. First Nation formed its own Natoaganeg Community Food Centre last fall to educate children about the importance of healthy food. The community food centre even has wild meat and fish provided by hunters from the community. Canadian Feed the Children has worked with the community on its school lunch program.
Canada offers a lot of advantages over the United States. The population is 11% of what the U.S. has. The society respects that school lunch is important. Canadians are more trusting of government. They can learn from the mistakes that other countries implemented with a federal school lunch program. If the Canadian can surpass the United States, that would be progress.
Unlike in previous years, the people fighting for a federal school lunch program has a clearer image of where we are and where Canada should go than we've seen in past years. Canada is the only country in the G7/G8 without a federal school lunch program. The Liberals under Justin Trudeau have a lot of their plate (pun intended). This would be an ideal time to get Canada on the list of countries with a federal school lunch program.
photos credit: Sweetgreen video credit: YouTube/Where to Invade Next
Betsy DeVos, who amazingly is the actual Secretary of Education in the United States, made a recent crack about "free lunch." Given the GOP speed at proposing to eliminate the gains in the school lunch in the Obama Administration and go beyond, the "free lunch" joke didn't go over well in the Twittersphere.
By the same logic, the classrooms, teachers, library (if you have one), gymnasium, chalk, and desks are also "free." School programs are subsidized by taxpayer dollars. The government, in all forms, have worked really hard to make sure as little money is spent on those school lunches. Republicans and conservative Democratic politicians, in particular, have worked hard to make sure the food served is as non-nutritious as possible.
The GOP is also looking into making qualification into the program more difficult and reducing nutrition standards.
If you are going to use taxpayer money for education, then you should get the best return. Healthy school lunches can be efficient in making that happen.
The lack of a solid immigration policy has hurt farmers in recent years in terms of workers to harvest the food that ends up on American plates. We are hearing rumblings of that situation being that much worse this summer. How much damage will need to happen before the MSM starts to pay attention? You would think the answer would be "a lot" but this may be a trick question since they likely will never pay attention.
Food prices would go up with food left unharvested, but that connection is difficult to find in the thinking of major media.
Perdue's paperwork hasn't even reached the Senate, the body that would confirm his nomination. One of those senators is his cousin, Sen. David Perdue (R-GA).
Perdue has worked in agriculture, a rarity for those in the chair of the Secretary of Agriculture. He once ran a grain and fertilizer business. Environmental groups are concerned about his record.
Whether Perdue or someone else ends up being the Ag Secretary, we won't know until they are confirmed as to how policy will change. No one expects improvements; more about lessening damage.
However symbolic the White House organic garden may be, the garden is staying. Michelle Obama took steps to ensure the garden will stay and Melania Trump has also said the garden will stay.
We are still very early on in the process of this new administration. Given his love for fast food and disdain for vegetables, combined with the GOP narrow view of quality in the food supply, we have to keep an eye out for what may happen next.
Michelle Obama will leave behind an incredible legacy as First Lady of the United States on food, nutrition, childhood obesity, and school lunches. Let's Move made an impact on trying to get kids to spend less time on screens and more time playing.
The First Lady used television well in a natural manner to spread the message. iCarly fit in well to attracting young people to hear the message. The Biggest Loser was a natural fit with people trying to lose weight. Let's not forget the many talk show appearances from Ellen to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.
You might think that her natural grace and flair comes easy. Some of us still can't shake the image of Nancy Reagan on Diff'rent Strokes talking about drug abuse. Nancy Reagan used to be an actress.
Like Batman, Michelle Obama had her list of enemies: Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh, Chicago Tribune, Basil Marceaux, James Sensenbrenner, those against federal school lunch programs. Instead of being constructive, they were destructive. Obama played it cool every time, even when the other side won significant victories. As she noted during the 2016 election campaign, "when they go low, we go high."
The White House organic garden started out as a powerful symbol but also proved beneficial to people in the capital city with bountiful produce.
Regardless of who the next president of the United States was going to be, Michelle Obama's legacy needs to be applauded. Michelle Obama, private citizen, will still have a platform after January 20 and we hope she takes advantage of that opportunity. The Obamas are staying in Washington until Sasha graduates from high school. The organic garden isn't too far away from their new home, if the new tenants will let her.
Her enemies, who fought hard and mostly without facts, will work to destroy anything Obama accomplished in her 8 years in that role. They can't take away her legacy, the idea that someone with power wanted people to eat better and exercise more. Obama talked about "vegetable feasts," not "federal food nannies." Her positivity can't be shattered.
Since there will be significant changes in the government, keeping the legacy of Michelle Obama alive requires the help of the people. We have touted the need for government to help where it can. The American people need to help out that legacy. Fight for school lunch reform. Encourage people to grow gardens. Focus on new food labels with an emphasis on added sugars.
The fear is that her legacy reads more like an obituary. Let's not make this an obituary.
Here are a few stories we have written over the years about Michelle Obama. The articles are in reverse chronological order so you can go back to the beginning.
There is no right way to finding the balance of food, just your way. My typical breakfast is whole wheat spaghetti with homemade sauce, sautéed mushrooms, and a naturally low-fat Italian cheese sprinkled on top. Works for me.
