Pizza As A Vegetable | Is The School Lunch Program And The Government Making Children Obese

The image is an actual school lunch that is served nation wide to public school children. Although corn may appear as the vegetable there is another one present. Can you see it?

To be more specific, it is not the pizza that counts, it is the tomato paste that accredits the vegetable category. To count as a vegetable there has to be 1/8 of a cup of tomato paste on the slice of pizza, when in fact it takes 1/2 cup of paste to meet the USDA standards.

Also take note that there are 5 little sections and 3 of these are complex carbohydrates. So is the school lunch program making children obese?

Congress Passes New School Lunch Bill

The USDA along with the Obama administration tried to change the 15 year old school lunch nutrition standards by eliminating flavored high fat dairy, excess sodium found in french fries, and saturated fat in pizza, even corn has been added to the no no list. So when you look at the lunch image above all five compartments all contain some source of saturated fat, complex carbohydrates, and excess sugar, but this bill would still allow this type of structure for school meals.

Although in efforts to cut the spending budget congress has passed a bill to keep pizza on the menu. You may even remember when the Regan administration attempted to include ketchup as a source of nutritional value to cut spending. Congress argues that the government shouldn't tell children what to eat and the bill would prevent "burdensome and costly regulations" and improve the quality of nutrition for school lunch meals.

Huh? Maybe we should invite Congress for lunch at their local public school for a week and see if that changes their minds about "burdensome" government involvement.

Is the National School Lunch Program threatening our national defense?

In 1946 Congress enacted the National School Lunch Act due to men being rejected from entering the military during World War II due to nutrition deficiencies. Today the NSLP, national school lunch program, feeds over 30 million students nation wide to public and non profit private schools.

Children will spend approximately 13 years in school, and are expected to meet the national requirements for educational standards, and they are failing. Is the school lunch program to blame? If kids consume a high carbohydrate, high fat meal that is loaded with sugar how productive will their minds be after loaded with empty calories?

Some extremists see obese children as a threat to out nation's defense as over weight kids will not be fit enough to join the military thus weakening our military defense. So now 50 years after Congress passed a bill to nourish the children now they are willing to risk the dangers of what our kids consume today to save money due to their over spending.

Is The USDA A Special Interest Group?

While the USDA has tried to push healthier options for the NSLP, they are the very ones that are responsible for the fries and pizza. In a sense. The food pyramid that the school lunch programs refer to, created by the USDA, is flawed in the sense it favors the agricultural industry and the fat content is off the charts. How and Why? Let's dip deeper.

Science based, Federal Nutritional Standards:

All schools meals and snacks funded by the NSLP,have to meet strict nutritional values set by the federal government. No more that 30% of calories can come from fat and no more than 10% is to be saturated. As of 2008 there is a ban on foods that contain trans fat except in regards to foods served to patron's in the original package seal by manufacturers (vending machines)

So while the basis of a school lunch means well it does not rule out that some schools offer a la carte items kids can choose that do not follow the guidelines.

What Is The National School Lunch Program

The program is a federally assisted meal program that operates in over 100,000 public and non profit private schools as well as residential child care facilities. The basis of the NSLP is to provide "nutritionally balanced meals" for reduced or free lunches to the 31 million children each day that quality.

In reality the schools roughly make less than .50 cents per full price school lunch, so how does this involved the USDA? Well in addition to the reimbursement schools obtain for a portion of the free lunch program the USDA also "gives" the schools overproduced meat and dairy products for free which mostly are full of fat and sugar.

The USDA is paying huge corporations for their over produced goods, so if french fries and pizza, the top picks for USDA, were banned from school lunches then it would crush their profit margins and would they have to spend more to provide healthier options. As the requirements stand now in the fiscal year of 2010 the NSLP costs were recorded at 10.8 billion dollars.

For More Information

Yes and No. The National School Lunch Program is filtered down starting from the Federal level, then it is administered by the individual State education agencies, and down to the school food authorities for each district.

In a sense the lunch ladies' hands are tied. While they have to meet the NSLP requirements, they also have to operate with in their own budget, and tend to balk at the USDA for their attempt to enforce pricey healthy options when the costs are through the roof.

As it only takes a GED or high school diploma and a food certificate to become responsible for feeding our nations future generation, most "lunch ladies" are not very experienced in food preparation for the masses nor knowledgeable in dietary health. They have a limited amount of time to prepare lunch so most of the food is merely heat to eat, furthermore they only make about 80 dollars a week.

The lunch lady is a bit of a pop culture icon here in the states, usually portrayed as a bitter, old spinster who despises children. For the most part, a very big one at that, this is not at all the case. These food service workers are quite passionate about their job and feel helpless when it comes to following strict guidelines and budgets.

Lunch Lady Q & A: Get the inside scoop from a lady who works in the public school district. She does not hold back and tells it like it is.

It really does take a village to raise a child. I think Ben Franklin said it best, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." If we cultivate our children thinking that pizza of this kind of stature is healthy then are we not also making children obese?

Obesity is the number one killer among Americans so when do we start teaching our future generation about healthy eating?

Get involved with your local PTA and voice your concerns about the SLP.

If you are a farmer then why not designate a couple of acres for fresh vegetables to donate them to your local school district.

In the culinary arts and know how to cultivate healthy innovations at a fraction of the cost? Why not seek out your local school superintendent and ask to volunteer your expertise to teach the food workers how to cook healthy alternatives. Or better yet volunteer 10 hours a week helping out the lunch staff with prep and help teach kids about cool healthy alternatives.

And most importantly if you are a parent then practice healthy food choices at home. Don't give into a child's sugary requests. Get them excited about healthy food and make a sugary or fatty food options less frequent.