Eat your Gruel!!!

[Blindgreed1]

The saga continues:

Londonderry is learning that the adage about free lunches certainly applies to the federal government.

School officials are trying to disentangle themselves from the National School Lunch Program.

The Obama Administration’s strict nutrition guidelines, the pet project of First Lady Michelle Obama, have made school lunches less popular with students. The Government Accountability Office last week reported student participation has dropped since 2011.

Small portions left athletes hungry. Limits on salt and butter left food inedible. Fresh fruit mandates left trash cans filled with discarded produce.

Londonderry school officials opted out, foregoing federal subsidies in order to make meals kids would eat. The move has been popular; the new frozen yogurt machine wildly so. The salad bar is coming next month.

“Last year, students ate less and complained more,” says Superintendent Nate Greenberg. “We’ve seen an increase in sales, and kids really like the food.”

Hot lunch is still a bargain at Londonderry High School at $2.75 a day. Parents may pay a little more, but their kids are actually eating.

Turning down federal subsidies threatens to bring down the hammer of federal regulators, as the U.S. Department of Agriculture may treat the school as a food processing facility. Greenberg says federal authorities now insist Londonderry schools upgrade their food storage facilities, and add new equipment in each cafeteria. Greenberg puts the price tag at $500,000. And he can look forward to increased federal food safety inspections, audits and paperwork.

Such heavy-handed coercion erodes local decisionmaking. The school lunch program should not be an offer we can’t refuse.

A friend of mine's mother was a lunch lady in HS. She advised him not to eat the school lunches (they weren't free for us back in the day) because the meats arrived in boxes stamped "Fit For Human Consumption" by the FDA rather than your typically graded meats you see in the grocery store. Turns out FFHC is the lowest grade that you can feed to people and the only guarantee you get is that it won't harm you based on what they knew back in the 80's.