lunch

How rebates and monopolies allow processed foods to dominate school cafeteria menus:

Here in the District of Columbia, children were being fed meals manufactured in a suburban factory until Chartwells in the fall of 2009 introduced something it called "fresh cooked." As I discovered while spending a week in the kitchen at my daughter's elementary school, what that entailed was reheating pre-fabricated meal components such as chicken nuggets and tater tots. For breakfast, children were often consuming up to 15 teaspoons of sugar in the form of processed cereals, flavored milk, cookies and muffins...The manufacturers of those sugar-laden products pay hefty rebates--some call them "kickbacks"--to giant food service companies as an inducement to purchase their highly processed goods. But I have now learned it's not just the lousy food that's fueled by rebates. Just about everything that goes into running a public school cafeteria comes with a rebate check that helps make sure the industrial version of food wins out.

This makes me furious because any nutritionally sane person would abhor these foods. But nutritionally sane people are few and far between. I've seen interviews with dieticians that excuse sugar in kid's food because they say kids wouldn't drink their low-fat milk without it. What's even more scary to me is that all these food service companies, from odious Chartwell to somewhat "sustainable" Bon Appetit Management company are owned by the same "Compass Group." Compass Group serves the world 4 billion meals a year. 

But the list of companies providing rebates is a great resource because if I could engineer a diet to make people sick, these are exactly the foods I'd pick: 

 $ 41,218.07 General Mills: breakfast cereals (mmm sugar flavored sugar)

$ 36,165.78 Kraft General Foods: salad dressings, condiments (mm vegetable oils!)

$ 34,991.20 Country Pure Foods-Ardmore Farms: fruit juices (it has fruit in the name, so it must be healthy right?)

$ 24,561.45 Schwan's: frozen pizza 

$ 21,377.88 Otis Spunkmeyer: muffins

$ 20,717.38 Kellogg's: breakfast cereal

$ 14,324.32 Frito Lay: chips and snacks

$ 13,974.08 JAFCO Foods: breaded chicken

$ 4,388.70 Cargill Meat Solutions: processed beef

The perfect foods to fuel all the fun standardized tests kids get to take:

I’m pissed that my students spend almost a quarter of the year taking tests and that the annual 30 hour test is longer than the Bar Exam, the MCATS, the teacher certification test and pretty much every other test required of adult professionals. And I’m pissed that when a teacher points out the flaws of the test, he or she is accused of “low expectations” and trouble-making.

I’m pissed that the laws are formed by transnational corporations who create curriculum, “advise” on standards, push for accountability and then provide the resources, tutoring and conferences that help people reach a standard that they cannot attain (as long as every question is re-normed for fifty percent). It’s more rigged than a casino and Chuck-E-Cheese combined.
 

I'm glad to see that the government has found a way to make public schools into corporate subsidies.