This video was made by students at Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kansas, in reaction to new school nutritional rules that limit the amount of calories served. The lyrics are at the YouTube ppage. The guidelines may work well for younger children, but high school students are both set in their tastes and require more food overall. Students at Cut Bank High School in Montana are resorting to a second lunch at McDonalds or bringing brown bags to supplement what the school serves -bcause it's not enough for growing teenagers, they say.
New USDA school lunch guidelines, part of President Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, require doubling the servings of fruits and vegetables, with less sodium and fat and no meat for breakfast. The rules limit calories, so as First Lady Michelle Obama has said, school lunches don’t undo parents’ efforts to ensure their children eat healthy meals.
The problem, however, is in the limit of protein — meats, cheese, sour cream, yogurt (but not milk) — and grains to 2 ounces each for young children and 3 ounces for high schoolers. The new rules set the minimum at only 1 oz. of protein per meal, said Salley Young, a Montana School Nutrition Association executive board member and food service manager at Greenfield Elementary School.
In rural communities, some students get on the bus at 7:15 a.m., have school all day and then participate in activities in the evening, pushing dinner time to 8 p.m. or later, meaning they need more food than the minimums set, she said.
Teenagers can easily pack away twice as much food as a middle-aged person without gaining weight. There are four high school students in my family, and they are the envy of their friends because they bring lunch from home. Link -via Buzzfeed
Not everyone is fat, overweight and unable to make decisions for themselves.
While some of the kids may benefit from it, most would benefit more from a decent meal and good exercise. Protein needs to be high if you are limiting calorie intake and failure to do so means you are more likely to grab and snack on the quick filler that is not healthy once you are able too.
Can't imagine how some of the kids in athletics can get by at this district, even in Jr High our kids are sometimes dropped off early and stay late the same days for band and athletics. Could you eat breakfast at 7am, go to school all day eat so few calories at lunch and then run two miles before dinner while only being 100lbs?
Plus some families are broke or too stupid to provide protein bars and extra meals for their kids. If you are starving and need something quick you are far more likely to not eat healthy especially if you did not plan a healthy item in advance to grab.
Not to mention that for some kids the meal at school is the most or best food that they get in a week. It should not be the school that puts everyone on the same diet because not everyone needs the same diet.
My kids liked school lunch just fine until this year, and all the sudden it's awful, so they prefer to take sandwiches and leftovers from home.
Of course, that's just me. I suppose some kids might need 850 for lunch, but that has to be the exception, not the rule.
What I don't understand is why these kids, who are surely complaining about an overreach by "big government", seem to want government to give them more. Surely they want to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and bring their own food in, right?