Reaffirming: Los Angeles Students Roundly Reject ‘Healthier’ School Lunch Menu

Brown rice cutlets out. Pizza (back) in. Nannies lose.

CBS-Los Angeles reports,

The revamped school lunches at Los Angeles Unified School District have won awards, commending them for improving the menu at the second largest school district in the nation. Too bad the students don’t agree.

Rejecting healthful alternatives like vegetarian curries and tamales, quinoa salads and pad Thai noodles, students are throwing them in the trash by the thousands, bringing junk food from home and buying instant noodles and other decidedly unhealthy fare from the “black markets” that have begun to thrive at campuses across the district, according to the Los Angeles Times…

12 thoughts on “Reaffirming: Los Angeles Students Roundly Reject ‘Healthier’ School Lunch Menu”

  1. JB, I understand the first sentence, and the second I understand the ‘comparable effort’ as being, “Although you can learn enough to be ‘expert’ in others eyes, you come to realize that the more you know about a subject, the more you don’t know, and are thus not really expert in your own eyes”. But the ‘common sense’ part I don’t understand. Would you take a few moments to explain.
    Al

  2. “Los Angeles Students Roundly Reject ‘Healthier’ School Lunch Menu.”

    “Roundly”?

    How appropriate! The little tubbies are fighting back!

    Later, when they’ve been back on the standard school lunch fare for a while, and they start talking once again about how they can improve everyone’s kids’ lives with healthy foods, they’ll have to use this headline:

    “Support for new school lunch menu is very thin.”,

  3. I was once told that in order to master something, you must work hard for many years. In order to become an expert in something, you must forget common sense and no comparable effort is required.

    I have that up on my wall at work. Most people laugh with it, but don’t really connect the dots to what it means.

  4. Genetic disposition to weight and cholesterol levels plays a big role. To a point, diet and exercise will control weight, but the magic BMI use is ridiculous. I’ve fought the bulge and cholesterol most of my adult life. I did six months of a low fat diet to take a shot at cholesterol with the two results of a very slight reduction in levels and my wife muttering something about wanting a jury of her peers. I was in full starvation mode. I was in the Army Reserves for 25 years and my “feel good” weight was about 10lbs over their max weight for me. This one size fits all mold they seem to want to use, denies reality.

  5. Ben, I’m like you, I thought I had eaten a very wide variety of foods and had to look up quinoa salad. Sounds good, but I’m willing to bet they got a very low percentage of takers in the 6-18 demographic. First, the kids are going to eat what they like and what is somewhat familiar to them, not the trendy, good for you healthy food they’ve never seen or heard of. They’ll eat carrots and apples, but they had better be fresh. Heck, I’ll eat fresh, tart, crisp apples and won’t touch the older, mushier ones. Been that way for 65 years. I was a Scoutmaster for over 10 years. Menu’s were limited because that’s what the kids would eat. If I wanted to branch out, we had a “burn your own” weekend, and I could do exotic stuff. You’d think the educated experts would know what the rest of us find intuitively obvious to the most casual observer, but they don’t.

  6. And pizza is a great food!! Vegetables, bread and cheese with tomatoes………what’s wrong with this food! Oh, I know……..it’s bad for you.

  7. Aren’t we begging the question? Can you prove that quinoa salad will make the kids healthy? In general obesity is genetic as are most of the diseases we worry about. If pizza caused obesity then we would all be obese. If McDonalds caused heart attacks we would all be dead. The simple fact is if your dad died of a heart attack when he was 45 you probably will too. If you have a blood cholesterol of 300 you have a genetic problem not a diet problem. If your parents had diabetes you probably do too. 95% of what we believe about food and what the media tells about food is pure superstition. I am more afraid of what the government wants us to eat then I am about a pizza or french fries. Use common sense, eat a varied diet, avoid fad diets/trends and choose healthier parents.

  8. Yes, that’s the ticket. I don’t understand the thought process of these initiatives. Small steps would work wonders. Offer a good standard salad with a nice vinagarette dressing, and many kids would love it. Offer bananas and apples, and kids will grab them. However, while I am an educated and reasonably non-sheltered man, I had to look up what quinoa salad WAS. After looking at it, I’m certain it’s expensive, and I am 100% certain that my two year old wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

  9. Same thing happened in Congress of all places. When Pelosi controlled the House, she changed the lunch fare to expensive health food and attendance plummeted. When the Republicans won the House back, they returned to more standard fare, prices came down, and attendance came up. Apparently, the most popular line was labeled simply “Barbecue” (and that had little to do with Texas gaining three representatives).

  10. I don’t mind that they are trying to make a healthier lunching for kids. But this sort of…..strangeness is all wrong. Kids don’t drink the milk at the schools because it tastes like it’s one step away from spoiled (note: The cheapest!) and the sugar in Chocolate or Strawberry offsets that flavor.

    I was in High School a little over ten years ago, and a healthier eating initiative started up. You know what they did? They got rid of the sides and offered things kids could see themselves eating as sides to the main (“unhealthy”) courses. Instead of fries, carrot sticks or apple slices and such were brought in.

    For the first two years, it was a resounding success. Then a round of budget cuts happened, and the carrot sticks and apple slices started to taste like they were six days past date. After a third year of the experiment failing miserably, the fries were brought back.

    This is why common sense will never work in our schools. They don’t have the funding for common sense.

  11. GREAT, WE SHOULD NOT EVEN BE GIVING FREE LUNCHES AND COSTING MILLIONS OF DOLLARS
    I REMEMBER TAKING LUNCH TO SCHOOL EVERYDAY, WE DID NOT EARN MUCH MONEY AT THAT TIME
    NO CELL PHONES TO PAY OR DESIGNER JEANS

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