Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

enzo — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 13:44:38 GMT

Back in my day…(ooh, how I hated it when my grandparents used that phrase)

…I attended a blue-collar neighborhood parochial school that did not even have a cafeteria, or prepared lunch service. The mother's prepared and packed their children's lunches, which included a thermos of white milk. If you lost, or forgot your lunch pail you either mooched from others, or went hungry that day. No bully could steal lunch money, because no one ever carried any money. Through it all…we survived and were pretty healthy considering the times. It was fun comparing lunches, and trading food items with others. And, man!…we had really cool lunch boxes in the 1950's.

The amazing thing was there were maybe one or two fat kids (I know mom…they were "heavy set") in a classroom of about 50-60 classmates. Today those heavy-setters would be considered average weight. There was no such thing as an eating disorder. There were a lot of skinny kids, but they weren't so by choice. They ate at every opportunity (breakfast, lunch and dinner), and snacks were rarely available. Soda pop, (sold in 6-1/4 to 12 oz. returnable bottles), was reserved for special occasions, and never permitted at school. Most skinny kids at that time were thin because that was their body type, not because they were bulimic, or anorexic. We never even heard those terms prior to the late 1960's. That was when British model, "Twiggy" made fashion news. I thought she looked hideous…she had about a 26"-18"-24" body…(ugh!)

We had no gym, but we enjoyed a fifteen minute morning recess. The one hour lunch period allowed us 30-45 minutes of freedom in the highly supervised school yard, provided we cleaned up our lunch messes, and didn't misbehave during lunch. We always ate fast so we could get outside quickly. Nobody sat, or stood around the school yard. We ran non-stop until the bell was rung to line up to go back to class, and we'd be covered in sweat.

I think parents should shut down their schools junk-lunch programs, and personally pack healthy lunches for their children…and not give them money to take to school. The result would be amazing.

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

mmc88121 — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 00:58:37 GMT

This is another reason to home school your children. Even if you send a lunch to school with them there is nothing that keeps them from trading an apple for the desert or some other processed item that claims to be food.

mmc88121

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

proatc — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 20:20:53 GMT

The only positive I can see is that if the Health Inspectors didn't inspect these schools, then the kids should have better immune systems, assuming they eat better at home and they have enough beneficial bacteria to combat the bad. But assuming they eat the same garbage at home with the same toxic additives, then they probably get sick more frequently. Is there anyway to educate the educators? You would think logic would play a bigger role here than anywhere else. If the food was of better quality, ie. Jamie Oliver's attempt at British school lunch program improvement, then the kids would be healthier and reduce sick time which equates to more money for the school. In California, and I assume in other states, there is a daily attendance fee for each student that goes to the school. If someone is sick, ill or whatever the reason doesn't show, then no money for that student. Surprised the Teacher's Union doesn't throw a fit just from the lost dollars per day, oh yeah, I forgot, they probably don't use the same logic because they are smarter than the teachers, probably fatter and like to eat the same crap!

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

LM36 — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:49:29 GMT

Just another reason why my children will not be eating food provided by a public school. And no, I won't be sending my kids off to school with a pre-packaged lazy mom's lunch (also known as Lunchables). I have currently witnessed even pre-schoolers bringing those types of food to school. No wonder alot of these children have ADHD just look at what they consume on an average day. They are eating alot of HFCS, nitrates, nitrites, trans fat and various FD & C artificial colors. These chemicals are adding up to a world of trouble. Just look around and you will see agressive, out-of-control, angry children mainly because of what they are consuming on a daily basis.

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

Russ Bianchi — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:35:31 GMT

"Prepackaged Garbage" was the term used, by students, for central commissary distributed lunches, under Federal School Lunch Programs, in the mid 1960's, when real food, cooked in real cafeteria public school kitchens, was done away with, in California Elementary & Secondary Schools.

The argumentation, at the time, was the higher cost to produce the REAL & wholesomely cooked food, for the kids.

The real motive was a well orchestrated bait and switch, to food industry food service producers, wanting a cut, or Lion's share, of the action, of feeding so many institutional mouths.

"Make that an order of super-sized HFCS laden soda, or nutrient stripped fat free milk, with a double cheese burger or deep fried chicken tenders, and don't forget the fries, with some chocolate pudding, or gelatin, based artificial fruit dessert"....yeah, that's the ticket, to optimum BRAIN WASHING, but not health.

Once Big Food Service got a hold of these contracts, the hen house was open to the foxes and wolves, and from the early 1970's on, the VOID of BIOAVAILABLE nutritional values in the daily intake of children has been on a steady decline (despite bought off school district Registered Dieticians going along with phony dietary guidelines on RDI or RDA).

There is no surprise that diabetes, hypoglycemia, AADH, obesity, lack of exercise/and physical education classes, in the public schools, have left the younger generations now with an actuarial prognosis of LESS LIFE SPAN for the first time in America's population/history.

Check out the massive and lucrative revenue generated in junk food campus (captive audience) vending machines in most of these school districts, harming children's health, with the feeble WHORISH response from most administrators, "well we don't put the machines in the elementary schools" (where the kids generally don't have the cash anyway).

re: Your Child's School Cafeteria May Be Toxic

Josh Rubin — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 17:12:00 GMT

This was taken from a study in NZ that I use in my Power Point presentations:

A review the contents of a child’s lunch on a typical day in a New Zealand school (62):

Sausage: DDE, Chlorpyrifos-methyl, fenitrothion, Pirimiphos-methyl

Tomato: Alpha-endosulfan, beta-endosulfan, endosulfan-sulphate, chlorothalonil, dithiocarbamates, iprodione, procymidone, vinclozolin.

Butter: DDE (Authors Note: DDE is a derivative of DDT)

White bread roll: chlorpyrifos-methyl, dichlorvos, fenitrothion, malathion, pirimiphos-methyl.

Apple: chlorpyrifos, captan, iprodione, vinclozolin.

And we wonder what is wrong with kids these days???