I take great pride in my job and feeding the future.

Take a look at the USDA web site and it’s requirements for the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs. I think you’ll be surprised with what you read.

I’m new to blogging and hit the reply button to Joan Katinas. I meant to reply to the post of Meredith.

Meredith,

Thank you for posting your thoughts on the petition to the government. It is valuable to have a voice from the population that is faced with these food choices in the public school systems.

I talk with my children about appropriate food choices almost every day, three times a day, while they are happily or unhappily eating their fruits and vegetables. I buy no highly-processed food products, and when my kids do get them, it’s with the understanding that it’s a treat, not something their bodies can have too often. They play, dance, tumble, climb and do all the joyful movement activities a three- and five-year old boy can do. They get their treats too so that they don’t get too fixated on a forbidden food, but it’s mixed in with plenty of healthy food, activities and sleep.

Their little pre-school teaches a unit on nutrition which stresses fruits and vegetables and high-fiber foods as healthy snack choices. And then they go to their snack tables and eat donuts or brownies or M&M chocolate chip cookies. The disconnect makes me crazy, and confuses the kids. Foods they see at the top of the food pyramid, to be eaten sparingly, is in their experience consumed as much as fruits and vegetables.

My discussions with the school administration echo this larger nationwide discussion about the responsibility of our government to educate its youngest citizens on a lifetime of healthy food choices. Everybody has to walk the walk and not just talk the talk. Kraft, Archer-Daniels Midland, Nabisco — they all spend enough money on advertising to lure children and adults into consuming far too much enjoyable but unhealthy foods without our government providing its tacit approval of this continual all-throughout-the day junk-food snacking.

Those aforementioned corporations will certainly use their considerable resources to keep the sizeable sales territory the public school system represents to fight this petition. All we have are our voices, limited time, and a little bit o’ money for donations to support the fight to teach our kids a lifetime of healthy nutrition habits. And our love.

So, I’ve been seeing this on the news, getting forwards for petitions to sign it, parents rising against the food the “government” is feeding their kids… right… What a crock of BS. You wanna know who is at fault for kids getting fat??? That’s right.. it’s their parents fault!

If your kid is fat then it’s your fault. Not the school system. Growing up in public school myself I took both packed lunches for a long time and later started buying school lunches. Yes, there were vending machines at the school but the actual cafeteria did not serve the candy bar and etc as part of the actual lunch. You could as a parent not give your child money to buy stuff from the vending machine… and even if they had their own money to buy stuff from the vending machine, You could make them work/exercise/play it off! You could make a check out to the school and pay for a weeks worth of lunches at a time or longer, thus not actually handing your child the money…. You could pack your child’s lunch for him or her to take to school… You could make your kid get off their butts and go play outside and not let them stay inside and play video games after school was over… AND!!! once they are old enough you could push them into getting a job.. where there would be physical involvement!

The School System isn’t making your kid fat… YOU are letting your kid get fat! Now grow up and deal with it yourself and stop blaming the government.