School lunch Wednesday 6/2: Macho Nacho

The menu reads as follows: Crisp Tortilla Rounds, Meat & Cheese, Cilantro Brown Rice, Lettuce & Tomato, Fruit Cocktail

What they got: Crisp tortilla rounds, fake meat and cheese, brown rice, lettuce & tomato, fruit cocktail, juice and lowfat milk.

A lot of different components were offered to the kids today....maybe too many. Not sure the kids really need juice AND a fruit cocktail AND milk.

Of course the thing that bothers me is the Cheez Whiz and the commodity beef. In fact the beef infuriates more than I can even express especially in light of the recent news. 

Here are some of the headlines:

Government Report Finds Dangerous Residues in Meat- Source: Alternet.org

Dirty, contaminated beef fed to children through school lunch programs - Source: NaturalNews.com

This is totally unacceptable. Why are parents allowing this to happen? Why are our schools not  putting their foot down and saying 'NO! We will NOT feed this to our kids'  Somehow feeding our kids veterinary drugs, pesticides and heavy metals had become okay. 

The activist in me wants to do something radical, like break into the kitchens and destroy all the meat...or I'd like to walk into the kitchens and dump out all the meat products being served on the floor in front of the kids, teachers, cooks and lunch ladies! Yes, drastic! Seems to me drastic times call for drastic measures. When will our government step up and put a stop to this farce of an FDA??

Where do we go from here??

Wednesday: 3/24 Pizza Sticks

Menu reads as follows: Pizza sticks w/sauce, green beans and Apple Sauce.

What they got: Pizza sticks w/sauce, green beans, a pear and milk.

I was quite excited today to be going to her school to finally meet the 'Pizza sticks' face-to-face! Yes, I had never seen one and all I had to go on was my 4 year old's description:  'It's like bread'. And she was right. It is bread. White bread baked- well I think it was baked, couldn't really tell- with white cheese in the middle.

The kids get to dip 'the stick' into a marinara sauce. I might actually like this had it been made with whole wheat flour, cheese and baked till golden brown :)  Today's side of green beans was not received well. Not one green bean (okay, maybe one) made it into the mouth of a child, instead they were tossed away along with the all the styrofoam plates! Speaking of, I'm going to mention the styrofoam plates in every blog from now on because I think it's tragic that we are even using them in the first place!

Consider this: Styrofoam is made from petroleum, is non-biodegradable and can take up to 500 years to break down! It is environmentally unfriendly and releases toxins which are proven to be harmful to our health! Why on earth would you let kids our kids eat on it!? Oh, I know, its cheap and requires no clean up! Well I guess there's one less thing for the food service provider to do, and hey, they don't have deal with the sick people or the landfills!  Is no-one paying attention?  Stop the styrofoam. Please.