is a great documentary if you have a chance to watch it.

in the world who after attempting to watch ten minutes of it, found it incredibly boring and incredibly stupid.

with a beer to wash it down.

tried to improve the nutritional value of school lunches?

A lot of the high school faculty got the school lunches--we paid full price--if we just didn't want to pack a lunch for that day or forgot to. Suddenly, that cup of coffee from the dept. office was all they needed for lunch on such days. Or maybe a can of soda. (Until it was determined that students could access the faculty lounges too easily, then the faculty lounges became 'centers of healthy beverages.'

In fact, a lot of kids did, too.

I suddenly had kids in my class that, come the class period before lunch, discretely opened their backpack-based 'business' of selling chips, donuts, cookies, crackers, cans of soda (the kids could get free ice in the cafeteria), gummy worms and candy bars--a whole crapload of high-salt, high-fat, ultra processed and low-fiber 'foods'. The kids getting free lunches would take them, eat some of the things--perhaps the french fries, perhaps whatever passed for dessert--but the 'nutritional' part of the meal, whether breakfast or lunch--was just tossed in the trash or, often, just abandoned wherever the kids had wandered to eat.

When the Obama-era guidance vanished, you know, so did the backpack-as-convenience-store model of doing business.

Worse, a couple of pizza chains near my high school had free raffles. If a teacher had a class period that s/he wanted to reward--it aced a test, improved its behavior, whatever--there were weekly or monthly raffles. Say the class period, time of day, number of students, dietary issues, on your ticket for the free drawing and if you won you'd get a phone call to say when the free pizza party + soft drinks, plates, napkins, etc., would be delivered to your classroom. Suddenly the district banned this--as well as teachers buying a "class set" of donuts or whatever for their students. Why? They'd constitute a meal and would cause the district to run afoul of the nutritional 'guidance', compliance with which was required for continuation of the free/reduced meal funding.

It’s the heroin , BobKjr




✌🏻

But most just liked to mock ... whichever (R) president was in the WH when that bit of administrative weirdness happened.

Food stamps--WIC, SNAP, whatever the program was--did not cover "condiments." Ketchup was a condiment. Therefore, if you wanted ketchup on whatever people put ketchup on (hot dogs, hamburgers, french fries ....) you had to have non-government $. Vegetables, though, could be paid for with federal 'income'. So it was a vegetable. (It never made it into nutrition guidelines as a vegetable, by the way.)

. . . in an 82d Airborne Division mess hall when RFK Jr. introduces tofu, raw milk, and bean sprouts.

This was on a deployment to Fort Drum several years before they put 10th Mountain up there. Colonel McGuinness, my battalion commander, hand-wrote on the deployment packing list "$20 bill." Somehow he knew about the Fort Drum base regulation that all visiting units will be served one meal of liver and onions and didn't want us to starve. NO ONE ate it.

RFK Jr.'s health food in the mess hall campaign will probably result in the chow halls closing due to lack of interest.

Of believing that you can change the recommendations and people will change their eating habits immediately.

But then they have to look busy doing something, don't they?

A lot of them just throw out the entire tray and run to buy chips or an ice cream for their lunch. And we can't make them sit down and eat the food before it's thrown out.