I think Jamie is just working with one cafeteria to be able to put a face on it. It seems clear to me that he knows it's the federal guidelines that are at fault, and not the people working in the cafeterias.

But it's totally framed as "Can Jamie change Huntington?" not "What needs to change at the federal level to change Huntington?"

I have dried beans like woah.

They make excellent packing material. Just make sure to put them in Ziplocs, since their own bags are so thin, but otherwise, they're great for filler.

The British show really was about teaching lunch ladies how to cook from ingredients, but I think he had to get the local government on board. It wasn't all national like here.

Yeah Jesse, I think some may be too old. I should just toss those, right?

Or make beanbags! Uses up fabric, too! (Of course, then you'd have beanbags.)

what are the federal regs messing up Huntington?

Maybe he's hoping that if he takes it to the citizen level, a call for changes to the federal level will be made.

I think he has good intentions, even if he's a bit naive about the budget and time limitations for school lunch programs. And I think he only chose Huntington because it showed up as statistically the most overweight city in the country. Either way, he's helping to educate some of the citizens there about what eating so much processed means.

But it might be getting people to ask their local cafs to do the same. Pushback.

Honestly, the only time my mother eats in the caf is the once in a while when the caf ladies say fuck the guidelines and make enchiladas. It doesn't happen often, but it's a big day at the school. I remember them doing that in elementary too.

Oh, and getting the kids to eat the food, and pay for it with the budget, and etc. It was definitely not easy. I haven't watched this show, because I imagined it was like that one, except with more OMG, WTF, and polar bears, due to being a US TV show.

what are the federal regs messing up Huntington?

The subsidies that make processed food cheaper than fresh food, the way that funding is distributed so that farm conglomerates are taking over local farms, and the way the school lunch program is funded and supplied so that they have to use processed foods and have to supply milk (usually chocolate milk for little kids) with each meal. He was also getting frustrated with the rule that required two carbohydrate servings with each lunch, and ended up having to add a hamburger roll to a meal that already included rice. But the person he was yelling at about this was the cafeteria worker who told him that his meal didn't obey the rules.

But it might be getting people to ask their local cafs to do the same. Pushback.

That's just not going to work. When my sister and I were in high school, my mom tried to get the cafeteria to have skim milk as an option, along with the whole, 2%, and chocolate. It took her months of phone calls up the administrative ladder, she had me report to her each day about whether there was skim milk available, and after doing this for a while, there was still skim milk only maybe two or three times a week. She was an upper-middle class stay at home mother who had a whole lot of experience working through bureaucracy, and she was just trying to get them to order skim milk from the dairy that they already bought milk from, and it took a ridiculous amount of her time and patience. The average public school parent is not going to be able to get a whole cafeteria to switch over to fresh food.

Seriously, getting changes to the curriculum was easier than getting changes to lunch.

Well, there's this, anyway: [link]