Have you heard about the 7 million pounds of "pink slime" the feds are buying to feed your kids? You can't make this shit up. Here we are with a First Lady who claims to care about what you and your kids eat and the government is buying inedible, ammonia treated garbage to feed your kids! Talk about a reason to home school!
Now, I think it's kinda funny. I read a lot of articles about food and school lunch programs. It seems when the point of an article is to improve the nutritional value of the school lunch the writer highlights the lack of vegetables, lack of color (everything is a deep fried beige) and the reliance on processed, canned and otherwise unappetizing food.
But when the purpose of the article is to expand the school lunch program to include breakfast, and even dinner, then the writer will stress the importance of good nutrition and claim the school is providing proper nutrition for children who otherwise wouldn't get fed at home.
Um. Which one is it?
Never mind the fact that people who can't feed their children really shouldn't have had them in the first place. That opens up a can of worms that'll keep everyone arguing 'till the cows come home. The cows being the fat children who are fed crappy food at school and never go play outside. Either school lunch is good or it's not. And I think, if the feds are considering buying 7 million pounds of pink slime to feed the kids, it's not good. It's not good at all.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. And I'll keep saying it until someone fucking listens. Make lunch part of the curriculum! There's no reason every school can't have a garden. There's no reason every school can't have a compost heap. Aquaculture! Combining hydroponics and agriculture to grow veggies using fish.
Aquaponic greenhouse yields food for business: wtnh.com
If that isn't the coolest thing around I don't know what is. Can you imagine the powerful effect of seeing science at work and putting it into your belly? You can teach history through food. The possibilities are endless. Without food we have nothing! It's time we acknowledged that and passed it onto our children. And by our children I mean your children.-HH
Sign the petition to get the pink slime off the spork.
2 comments:
I'm playing devil's advocate here, and I know that we've had this conversation before, but this is why I think most schools don't have gardens: it's a lot of work! Who's gonna plant the garden and take care of it? Every year?? And who's going to harvest and weed it over the summer, when the cafeteria presumably wouldn't be in operation? Not saying it's not possible, but it would take a very dedicated group of staff members (including administration, teachers, and custodians), students, and parents to grow a garden that could regularly supply the cafeteria. And it ain't gonna be me in that group...
Not that kids should eat pink slime either... My parents always found time to pack me a lunch, in spite of working two or three jobs, going to school, etc... But they were/are exceptional parents. And once I got old enough, I packed my own lunch b/c I thought school lunch was disgusting!
Well, that's my contribution to the debate -- boo to pink slime!
I get your point - make it part of the cafeteria budget. Maybe every school can hire an agriculture teacher whose job it would be to oversee the whole operation. There has to be money saved by not buying pre packaged fake food.
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