i am fairly certain triscuits are good for you.

so in case you haven't heard, all the usa's kids are fat-fatties. just rolly polly fatty fat fat FAT. big ol' heads, big ol' feet, big ol' bellies full o' meat.

and the caretakers of these children are wringing their collective hands and shaking their collective head. what to do? where did we go wrong? what is the cause? what is the solution?

(excuse me, but i am craving some triscuits. brb!)

okay, where was i? right. school lunch leads to fat kids. what, i hadn't got there yet? well, it's the logical conclusion. it's what all these kids have in common. the vast majority of the nation's children are in public school and the vast majority of these public schooled children eat the lunch provided and the vast majority of lunches provided are high calorie concoctions.


part of the issue is the difficulty making healthy food in large quantities. having cooked (well, watched people cook) for a summercampful of kids at brigadoon, i can tell you firsthand: cooking large quantities of healthy food is difficult! it's much easier to pop open a can of spaghettios and toast up some smilie fries, than to broil chicken and chop bits for salad. so, it's the institutions's fault, right? they should put forth the effort to make good food.


pluswise, the kids don't want broiled chicken, do they now? no, they want the junk. it's easier to give them what they want in the institutional setting than to fight hundreds of little food battles. it's the parents's fault, right? they should have taught their kids to love broiled chicken.

looking at the school schedule, there's generally about 30 mins for lunch, which melts down to 15 or fewer mins when you consider the kids are going to their lockers, the restrooms, all that diligent hand warshing time, standing in line for their food, finding a place to sit that's not too close to the nerds. lunch isn't about eating at all!


okay, but it is about eating, and when you get down to the eating part, you've got like 10 mins. you can chew up an apple, chew, chew, chew, or slurp down some applesauce - DONE! you can chew a salad or swallow some mac & cheese. carrot sticks or french fries. broiled chicken or mashed up chicken stuff with noodles in sauce. it's quicker across the board to eat the processed food because it's pretty much already chewed up.


so there you go. it's the parents's fault for not teaching the kids to love healthy food and for not taking the time to prepare individual, nutritious, and entertaining meals for their adored kiddos to eat at school, and it's the schools's fault for not spending more time on food prep, for taking the easy way out with the cans and the mashes, and for not allowing enough time for the kids to eat a raw lunch.

and, don't even get me started on the snack machines. better all the kids just eat their looseleaf.