Food & Drink Apr 22, 2010 at 4:00 am

Discussing Student Food, Chicken Nuggets, and Reality TV with the Head of Seattle Public School's Nutrition Services

With $2.25 of nutritional goodness. Kelly O

Comments

1
... oh, how can we afford to feed kins better when the war machine needs so much money?

I believe this woman - and it is all about the money. Kids get more junk at home, by the way.

Do a story about the crap your mom served you as a kid. I dare you.
2
@Cahed, SOME parents serve crap at home. Too many. I grew up on Velveeta and Miracle Whip myself. I taught myself to cook and now serve my three kids kickass meals with lotsa veggies and garlic. We don't have pop in the house. Do they love it when they're out? Hell, yes. Nothin i can do about that. But schools shouldn't just cave because kids like McDonalds. And get rid of the bread requirement and save some $$$. It's just filler... and stupid.

I love Jamie's show, and how he calls those bitches in the kitchen "dahling."

Here's trick... when your kids starving, give 'em the salad first instead of with dinner. They'll eat the whole dang thing.
3
ggg, I like your thought of when your kid's starving to give them the salad first then the dinner. And it trains them subconsciously to look to the healthy foods first before shoving down the garbage.
4
Basic potato - in all its forms - is good food.

Wonder why we have downgraded it in favor of junk food and much more expensive food.

For families, spuds three times a week - just great. Cook with skins.

Research has even found vit. C in spuds ... plus fiber galore ...
5
Your school lunch program is a model for the country then. I'm in farm country and chicken nuggets are one of the best things on the school menu. The worst? "cookie dough", specifically "oatmeal raisin chocolate chip cookie dough". It's served in a disposable plastic container and is like a tough pudding.
6
@4

Your average Russet type Potato is excessively high in starch. Fiber is simply a function of the human body being unable to fully process the food. Growing underground they lack many of the nutrients found in other vegetables. Plus they are quite high in the glycemic index and lead to overproduction of insulin by your pancreas and a bad cycle of glucose-insulin-glucose repeat.

Not that a potato every so often is that bad a thing, but they are definitely not good in any form. French fries and chips barely contain any nutrients whatsoever and are coated in vegetable oil.

A better alternative is a sweet potato, which is only distantly related to a potato and contains far more nutrients.
7
I've visited the downtown kitchen for Seattle School districts, their fridge is filled with processed food. BUT, Anita Finch is working hard to get healthier foods into the kitchen, kudos. Seattle should do a fundraiser to get more money for the schools. Let's help Anita get food back into those kitchens.
8
"We also serve Somali spaghetti with fresh carrots and potatoes."

OMFG! Are you effing kidding me? It sounds like the ultimate appetitie suppressant.

Oh well, how about we start the kids on a journey of food education by dropping the cutesy toddler-speak euphamisms; "Veggies" are out, vegetables are in. And "drummies"? Oh Christ, is that simultaneously retarded and disgusting. If it requires an idiotic name, it probably isn't real food...it's actually compressed amalgamated processed chicken parts. It's nauseating AND harmful. Yum.
9
This mealy-mouthed hack is full of crap. At my kid's school I watch the kindergarten kids eating soggy brown unidentifiable logs of the sort that you might see on the hot food counter at 7-11, (but scarier and wrapped in more plastic packaging.) Some parents pack lunches for their kids, but the free-lunch kids eat these microwaved-looking brown log things and wash them down with chocolate milk. There is no cook, just a lady who takes things off big trays. It's awful. This month's menu includes generic "Hot Pockets", "Pancake on a stick", various "Nuggets", Nachos (as an entree), Mozzarella sticks (entree?!). We'd be better off making a big pot of beans and rice every day like they do in third world countries.
11
I agree with Anita there is not enough money to purchase better food, we do serve alot of processed food. High schools at one time did alot of cooking from scratch, now it's coming from the central kitchen. We do serve fresh fruits and veggies daily. Yes the war and recent economy is taking money from our pocket book, hopefully some day our kids will come first. Diabetes and obesity is on the rise, healthy food choices should be taught at home, in alot of situations, the parents lack the money and knowledge to make a differnce. Yes, I am a lunch lady.
12
"a healthy and delicious lunch for the city's school-aged youth, which is then prepared in a sparkling, stadium-sized kitchen in Sodo"...

Sounds so wholesome, clean and good, doesn't it? But does this really mean what it sounds like it means - that the entire city's school lunches are preapred in one central kitchen and then shipped out (probably frozen, and not daily)? That's disgusting.

Texas10R, do you really think saying "veggies" is cutesy toddler-speak?? And how is it euphemistic? It doesn't mask or avoid the proper word, just abbreviate it. I say veggies all the time, I am a grown adult and I don't think that word implies otherwise. You're just overreacting.
13
"we serve them partially because they're cheap and partially because students enjoy them. They remind students of McDonald's chicken nuggets. It's sad but true."

Good eating habits start in the home. THese kids were fucked over by their parents long before they hit the school system. The only way government can cure stupid parenting is by sterilizing them.

"the parents lack the money"

Bullshit. Cooking and eating fresh food is cheap and can be done cheaper than a meal at a fast food restaurant. What this country has an epidemic of is fucking laziness and unwillingness to cook.
14
@12 The meals are shipped out of the central kitchen daily, and they're not frozen. They make the food in the central kitchen in SODO because the kitchens at many of the individual schools are out-of-date.
15
My child's Seattle Public school has a beautiful kitchen with a lunch lady who does no cooking -- just reheating. A lot of the food IS processed. And really, the food in the end is quite expensive because most of it ends up in the garbage bin. Well, actually, the compost bin.
16
HEY! There is no 'c' in DIETITIAN. A dictionary may think "dietician" is okay to use as an alternate spelling, but the American Dietetic Association does not.

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