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.

Announcement: Our new patent agent is an ass.

No real analysis needed. Just an ass.

I remember reading an article about a school in Queens where the cafeteria workers were trying to make foods that the kids, mostly immigrants, would eat. Sloppy Joes and tacos were not going over so well. So they decided to try making a chicken curry, since a lot of the students were Indian. Within the NYC rules, they weren't allowed to use raw chicken, so they had to make the curry by tearing apart frozen rotisserie chicken. The cafeteria worker in charge of ordering the commodity foods was able to exchange and trade around a bunch of stuff to get a giant container of curry powder, but it took a whole lot of finagling.

Oh man, Matilda! She looks shockingly big all of a sudden.

nutritional analysis

That's a whole thing -- stuff in a box comes with it on the side. The lunch lady is going to calculate that?

Oh man, Matilda! She looks shockingly big all of a sudden.

SERIOUSLY

That's a whole thing -- stuff in a box comes with it on the side. The lunch lady is going to calculate that?

This was the reasoning behind NYC public schools banning homemade things at bake sales but allowing Doritos and Pop-Tarts. They can't regulate the calories in the homemade stuff.

Within the NYC rules, they weren't allowed to use raw chicken

OK, that's wack.

Those are the rules that seem particularly onerous.

nutritional analysis

That's a whole thing -- stuff in a box comes with it on the side. The lunch lady is going to calculate that?

sighhhh