If that food shown was what that family ate regularly? It's not about their weight or size. It's about poor nutrition.

But the "solution" was for Jamie to buy them a week's worth of groceries and leave them a bunch of recipes. No mention of how long the grocery shopping took, whether he had to go to multiple stores or just one, how long the cooking took, or how much everything cost. And then he visited later in the week and told the camera that he's suspicious about whether they're actually following his rules, while the camera zoomed in on fast food soda cups and ominous music played.

Oh yeah, there was a little honey in there too.

Is that still vegan then?

The USDA regulations are treated as some silly rules that he's trying to get around, not as federal rules that the school has to follow or else they don't get food at all.

What, besides the absurd number of carbs per meal, are they requiring?

Is that still vegan then?

No one tell JZ!!

Is that still vegan then?

Oops! I fucked up her Catholic thing.

Let's just say it was Agave Necter. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Too many potatos (and if the gov is regulating too many carbs per lunch that's deffinately bad), probably meat on the fatty side... but that's not sounding mind-bendingly horrible to me.

This issue is that that stuff takes up a whole lot of the budget, leaving not much room for fresh food. Once you cover the things needed to make that stuff into meals -- the oil to fry stuff in, the breads for sandwiches, whatever else is needed to complete the recipes -- there's not much left to add salads or fresh fruit or things like that. And if the government is already giving you canned peaches in heavy syrup, you're probably not going to also buy fresh peaches.

Ok, so not the perfect solution. But c'mon. No livestyle change is. It's tv. DRAMA. Manufacture it. Sign up for it.

And the thing is, what I'm hearing is good food eatings arguing that promoting good eating habits through the medium of drama television is bad. Hell, Biggest Loser is all about the shame and that and while it may not be my cup of tea, it seems to be reaching a lot of people. And people keep signing up. Maybe I am missing something.

Reality tv has the power to fire people up, ask for something. I can't complain about it being something good, rather than arguing about who is the biggest coniving asshole over the water cooler.

I edited to say you'd need to include other things besides the subsidized ones.

And if the government is already giving you canned peaches in heavy syrup, you're probably not going to also buy fresh peaches.

See, that's the sort of thing where there could be traction.

Canned green beans, say, not so bad (which is what I was thinking). Fruit in heavy syrup, otoh, really could be petitioned against. That's a regulation that could be used within a heavily susidized program. Ground beef with under a certain percentage of fat could be too.

Is that still vegan then?

Not super-strictly so, but vegan enough for me. I still haven't settled on a firm stance on honey (though I probably would have asked Hec to skip it if I'd known ahead of time).

ION, after the horrible beginning to the morning and the one time-out Matilda put away her cranky pants and we had a mostly splendid day. Went to my office to pick up a package to mail to an eBay buyer, collected candy treats from various co-workers along the way, went to the post office, noodled around with her new scooter (a Christmas present from Emmett), and used a bit of the last round of eBay money to go to a cheap but cheery noodle house in the basement of a nearby apartment building, where much fun was had.

Also, we were in matching dresses and nail polish. After that first bad blip, the whole day was just stupid fun.

I don't have as much problem with Biggest Loser, because that show actually is talking to individual people about individual choices. This show it talking to individual people about federal regulations. If they were only looking at what people ate at home, that would be different, but he's looking at school lunch programs, which have to be analyzed within the context of funding and regulations. At the end of the week of Jamie making the cafeteria food, they told him that they couldn't continue with his program because it cost twice as much as usual and he still hadn't submitted the required nutritional analysis showing that his meals satisfied the USDA requirements. And they didn't actually break down the costs or the funding anywhere, but I would bet that one reason for his meals costing more was that he didn't use the commodity foods that the school doesn't have to pay for.