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]

And here's my other ish: free/subsidized breakfast and lunch are a HUGE proportion of the students where I grew up. I knew a lot of kids for whom those two meals were their primary source of food. And if that is a lousy example and nutritionally bankrupt? Yeah, not so good. So I am perfectly happy with aiming the cannon scattershot if it at least raises awareness. Diabetes is a huge issue in my home(s) community. Access to decent grocery is also a huge issue in my current community. If you have to grocery shop at 7-11?

I've actually been impressed at the produce section of the SuperWalmart in the far-out burbs of Birmingham where my brother lives.

Talk of the Nation on Thursday had a segment on "reconsidering Wal-Mart" -- not just because of the economy, but also because a lot of the stores sell local organic produce at really good prices. I had no idea. I still dislike Wal-Mart, but I do find the organic produce thing interesting.

That's just not going to work.

I'm sorry, I just can't agree with that.

Let's Move is also talking about food availability. It's not like the administration doesn't know what the issues are.

Well, requiring milk is unlikely to change any time soon. That it tends to be chocolate certainly can. Lobbying for fewer carbs in the required gov. lunch seems feasable.

Local farms supplying federal lunch programs is probably, at this point, un-doable. What processed foods are required? The regulations are that if you take any gov. subsidies you can't buy any foods that aren't?

It sounds like an unholy mess.

OK, let me rephrase. I have never seen anything that's convinced me that school lunches can be changed on anything other than a federal level, and the meat and dairy lobbies have a lot of influence on making sure that does not happen. This show seems much more about shaming the parents and schools than about making actual changes.

That's just not going to work.

I'm sorry, I just can't agree with that.

My school always had skim. There was no battle at all. I don't think that's a regulations thing so much as local crap.