I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be minimizing the amount of waste—cook literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then try to nudge toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low. Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune dishes kids either don't take or leave behind until you have a menu.
Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on the priority list than making sure they eat the "right" things.
Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school children is going to be any easier.
If you want a successful lunch program (and rations if you have a to-go bag) look no further than the US Navy's sub program.
Given the environment and danger (and having a bunch of humans in close proximity, deep under the ocean, with nowhere to go, hangry, is not going to inspire unit cohesion) they get really, really good food. Which is probably not a bad thing to give people tooling around with enough firepower to take out a few dozen cities.
Whenever I watch a video about American military nutrition, the only takeaway I have is "are these people incompetent?"
Sailors in the USA navy get fat after their first deployment, common knowledge. Why? Because half the time their food is frozen chicken nuggets, frozen tater tots, etc, chucked into the oven, served bulk at mess.
2025's most well funded army, that's the best they came up with? Why not just freeze non deep fried chicken breast? Why not use lentils for carbs? Why not fast-freeze dry vegetables?
In any case I don't see the relevance for schools. Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals.
>Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals.
Who's going to pay for all of that? Not the American taxpayer, who would consider it theft and waste, and not the poor kids who actually need school lunches, and probably not their parents.
You'll wind up with a Macdonald's kiosk in every school cafeteria, and vending machines full of Monster energy drinks.
I found a twitter thread years ago that talked about how the author had gone to school with a lot of (US) mafia children, and the school had unsurprisingly provided lunch via a local vendor with mob connections. Presumably some of the money wound up going to the mob.
But, the thread pointed out, since high-level mafia officials sent their children to that school, they had no interest in skimping on the lunches. And the lunches were excellent. After a big FBI bust, the mob-affiliated vendor was replaced with a major interstate school lunch vendor, and the quality of the food was rock-bottom.
I've tried to find the thread again, but I can't. If anyone else wants to dedicate an unreasonable amount of time to it, I'm pretty sure I originally found it through a links post on Marginal Revolution.
> The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety.
Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone to like everything they have, you can't do that without letting them trade away the stuff they hate.
>The CMNR reviewed many of these studies when they were initially completed and noticed that underconsumption of the ration appeared to be a consistent problem. Typically, soldiers did not consume sufficient calories to meet energy expenditure and consequently lost body weight. The energy deficit has been in the range of 700 to 1,000 kcal/d and thus raises concern about the influence of such a deficit on physical and cognitive performance, particularly over a period of extended use. Anecdotal reports from Operation Desert Storm, for example, indicated that some units may have used MREs as their sole source of food for 50 to 60 days—far longer than the original intent when the MRE was initially field tested.
>
>There have been successive modifications of the MRE since 1981. These modifications in type of food items, diversity of meals, packaging, and food quality have produced small improvements in total consumption but have not significantly reduced the energy deficit that occurs when MREs are consumed. This problem continues in spite of positive hedonic ratings of the MRE ration items in laboratory and field tests. The suboptimal intake of operational rations thus remains a major issue that needs to be evaluated.
Or to summarize it; soldiers weren't eating the full MRE's in Desert Storm, and it a widespread problem. Soldiers that weren't meeting their caloric intake requirements were suffering cognitive issues while in combat operations. Bit of an issue when you've got two groups of people trying to kill each other and not their own side.
So they figured the best option to get the soldiers to eat their rations was to keep improving and updating until soldiers were more inclined to eat the whole damn thing. I don't know if they've succeeded per say but they have been updating the menus pretty consistently since the 90's. I think only the beef stew and a few other meal items have stayed consistent over the last 30 years of MRE's.
Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in this case— a good nanny would likely take the same approach you describe here: meeting the kids where they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better along the way instead of making food just for it to be thrown away.
> literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then
Feeding kids sugar and hen nudging them to eat slightly less sugar while still providing inherently unhealthy meals seems suboptimal. Them cleaning their plates is not an inherently a good thing. Rather the opposite.
> making sure they eat the "right" things.
Certainly better than feeding them the wrong things? though.
It's not like starvation or malnourishment is the main issue when a significant proportion of children are overweight. Them eating crap is...
It's always a treat when the exact problem I'm describing shows up in the replies. Yes feed them sugar. Children have a significantly heightened sweet tooth until adolescence where it slowly declines and they develop more complex tastes and a tolerance for "adult" flavors. When I bake for kids I have to make it cloyingly sweet to an adult palate and it gets snarfed down. And it's also why Funfetti cake doesn't hit like it did as a kid because your tastes have changed. Trying to impose adult standards on kids is native at best and futile in aggregate—you can only serve it, you can't make them eat it and they won't.
You understand how moronic it sounds to prepare and serve food that kids won't eat in the hopes that they eat less, right? Plus free lunch programs are to deal with malnourishment and to make sure kids get at least one full meal a day.
My elementary school, which was a private school and so wasn't beholden to any government meddling, followed this formula and it worked out great. Every meal was carbs, protein, and sugar, and everything was sweet. It wasn't an apple, it was fruit cocktail in syrup, the pizza had sweetened bread and sauce, vegetables were sweat peas, carrots, and corn. Every student was put on a rotation to clean trays so I got to see first hand what the waste situation was. And it wasn't zero but you didn't see a tray full of food minus pizza coming back.
> serve food that kids won't eat in the hopes that they eat less, right?
Not hope as such. Ideally they eat it eventually. If they are not allowed to eat unhealthy foods they won't have much of an option. Even the most obstinate ones will change their mind after spending a couple of days being hungry.
This really does keep getting worse, first you were just wasting money for your ideals now you're suggesting we purposely let kids go hungry until they behave in the way
you want. We're beyond they just don't happen to like what's being served but you're trying territory and into they're going to eat it and like it or they don't get lunch. Please don't ever
run for your local school board.
And no we didn't all turn out overweight, it's been a minute but I think in my grade there were three "fat kids," two girls and one boy. I really don't understand why you take being overweight as the natural consequence of this. Kids crave sweets because it's calories and they're growing. In my early teens the size of my meals were on the order of two Chipotle burritos or the
entire taco twelve pack and I was a perfectly normal weight. I mean I was a girl in high school so I didn't exactly think that back then but I was fine. It wasn't until I was
post college and had depression that I put any kind of significant weight.
I find this attitude super weird. Adults are responsible for what kids eat and problem of kids taking multiple lunches can be solved by allowing them to go only once.
What is weird is that American kids seems to be taught to refuse "healthy" food. Somehow the problem of kids refusing fruits and real food is something that happens only once in a while with few kids elsewhere, but is apparently epidemic in america.
Yes we are responsible for what kids eat, it's why it's all
the more maddening we have adults who come up with a menu of how they wished kids ate, made it policy, and take literally no responsibility for the (I think very predictable) outcome.
Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on the priority list than making sure they eat the "right" things.