~ HAS THE WORLD GONE MAD...? New madness ?? ~

[hikerchick]

I always make a white pizza. I just don't think the red sauce adds anything to it, especially with broccoli and tomatoes on top.

Yeah your crust sounds tasty. Anything with cheese baked in has to be good.

 

[old fashioned]

Maybe I'm not understanding & have spoken out of turn here & I apologize.
I was only trying to say that $20 would go farther for a family of four in the store when buying processed foods & very little if any meat.
Even at Walmart, block or preshredded cheese is around $5-$6 per lb (roughly) and mac runs about $1 per lb and the boxed premix is about .50 for cheapest to $1.50 for big name brand.
Fruit and alot of veggies is rarely sold for less than $1 lb and most meat starts @ $2 lb & goes up from there although whole chicken is usually around $1.50lb with cut up pieces being much more.
At these kind of prices, that $20 would only feed that family for one or two meals of raw whole foods whereas it could buy atleast 4-5 processed plus one or two small pkgs of meat.
And nevermind the initial cost for staple foods like flour, salt, oil or shortening, etc. Not all people have well stocked pantries or cupboards.
Was it in Food Inc or Supersize Me, that showed a family constantly eating the "value" menu at a drive up fast food place because it was cheaper to feed them all than to buy in the store?

I agree it does start in the home and I consider myself lucky to know how to cook from scratch, can, and to have a well stocked pantry & veggie garden because I see alot of people who don't and that usually comes down to--they don't know how or even where to begin.
I do think the gvt & school food system is messed up & I think there shouldn't be a choice for the kids to eat-I know when I was in school, there was no choices-all for one & one for all. And they still made most of the food-atleast I think so But I will say our menu was alot different than it is today.

Also I think the food industry is atleast starting to get a wake up call and it's being publicized more & more about the crap being passed as food & how to make healthier choices that doesn't have to cost an arm & a leg. An informed public will most likely be a better fed public.
(Just my 2 cents, so take it or leave it as seen fit)

 

[vfem]

I just got home from running to Kohl's and we passed Mc D's. I was talking to my husband in the car when our daughter cut us off with..

"Ewwwwww.... Mc 'A' Donald's is gross. Icky Icky!" (I do not know why she calls it Mc 'A' Donald's)

My husband gives me the evil eye and asked if I gave her some kind of signal to say that when he wasn't looking?!

Nope, I just told her that Mc D's makes people fat, and its gross how they make the food. And she asked why it was gross and I told her about the cows and how they put butane (which I said was like the stinky gas she smells at the gas station) in their nuggets... and she put the rest together herself.

However, she asks to PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE take her to Applebee's whenever we drive by. Which isn't much better, but we do that like 1 time every few months!

Oh well... she's pretty smart that one.

 

[journey11]

One thing that cracks me up... PIZZA keeps being called a junk food. Other than the crust, pizza is not bad at all. Put some fresh veggie toppings on it or add some veggies in the sauce and make it a thin crust, it is practically a health food!

That's so true! I worked at Pizza Hut for years and other than processed meats like the pepperoni and sausage, all the other toppings are whole foods, barely processed other than cutting them up. Even the dough is made like you would at home. Make it whole wheat instead of white, and it would be downright healthy. Pasta sauce is so good for you and all the veggies, and their cheese is real mozzerella too. Now the Pan pizza crust is not healthy...they heavily oil the pans, but handtossed and thin are fine.

Now boxed pizzas and the premade frozen school pizzas (put peppers on it and I guarantee you the kids won't want it anymore)--not so healthy. They add so much grease to them.

Starting from raw food vs. processed food, the raw is alway much cheaper. The problem is you are comparing apples to oranges. Most processed foods do not have meat in them or very little vs. turkey meal, sure the processed food is cheaper. But simple mac/cheese from scratch is much cheaper than box if you are comparing at same level. From scratch, people would use expensive cheese while box is cheapest cheese that is dehydrated or a fat called some sort of cheese name.

This is the problem we face that once packed in the cute box, people don't recognize what they are eating and are OK w/that. So therefore, mac/cheese is mac/cheese or as the old commercial use to say...parts is parts.....uh......no, they aren't.

Schools are feeding the kids what they will eat. Want the schools to stop feeding junk? Stop the masses from feeding themselves and their kids junk. It starts at home, not in the schools or legislature.

I agree with these comments too. Read the labels...how much food ingredients do you recognize on those boxes anyways?? What the heck is sodium benzoate, for example!

I don't think most of the parents consider it a problem because it's the same stuff they're serving at home (or picking up at the drive-thru). Even many things labeled on the box as being healthy are deceptively advertised, and while they may be low in fat, for example, they will be high in sugar or sodium and additives.

I would think too, that a lot of parents would complain if their kids are coming home hungry because they refused the healthier foods and didn't get enough to eat at lunch. ((Although I go by the theory that if they get hungry enough, eventually they'll eat it--and like it...haha.)) It's vital that parents model and teach good eating habits to their kids. The responsibility starts there. We here are up in arms about this because those of us in this discussion pretty well understand good nutrition. Not everybody does. Do you realize how many people think chicken nuggets are healthy??

 

[hikerchick]

I agree with these comments too. Read the labels...how much food ingredients do you recognize on those boxes anyways?? What the heck is sodium benzoate, for example!

A wee bit off topic, but a great source for answers to questions like that is a book called "Twinkie, Deconstructed."

Sadly, I cannot recall the author's name but he did a wonderful job of explaining what all these weird ingredients are, where they come from, and why food manufacturers use them. It was an eye-opener for me.

 

[journey11]

I'll be sure to check that out! Especially regarding what they derive them from. I know a lot of things are preservatives and flavor enhancers, to keep them palatable for longer shelf life.

Did you guys see the bit, I think it was on Oprah (not sure now) about the mummified McD's food? This lady has kept a cheeseburger and fries for over 4 years. Whatever they put in there, it still looks about the same after all that time. The bun had no mold, the fries were still golden! Really makes you think twice. Ewwwwwww.....

ETA: wasn't Oprah, here I found the video.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4IGtDPG4UfI

 

[vfem]

What the heck is sodium benzoate, for example!

Its a preservative derived from the left over husks of corn after they've been milled and grinded and then chemically altered about 4 times. The left over bits are used as preservatives for color, and flavor in most processed foods.

 

[Hattie the Hen]

I would like to add this two page article to the thread as it points out why everyone (not just parents & grandparents, or teachers) should be deeply concerned about what is happening in most schools at meal-times.

Children learn by example; let us set them good ones in their young lives because their parents are obviously not doing so (in most cases).

Hattie

 

[Hattie the Hen]

Here is a list of food additives & what they do:


http://chemistry.about.com/od/foodcookingchemistry/a/foodadditives.htm


Hattie

 

[Rosalind]

Starting from raw food vs. processed food, the raw is alway much cheaper. The problem is you are comparing apples to oranges. Most processed foods do not have meat in them or very little vs. turkey meal, sure the processed food is cheaper. But simple mac/cheese from scratch is much cheaper than box if you are comparing at same level. From scratch, people would use expensive cheese while box is cheapest cheese that is dehydrated or a fat called some sort of cheese name.

+1

It really is cheaper to make from scratch, and not significantly more kitchen time...IF you have kitchen space and utensils to make it easy and IF you know how to cook from scratch. It's much much MUCH cheaper and easier to throw a bag of lentils, a big can of tomatoes, chili powder, garlic salt, Italian seasoning, cut-up bell pepper and/or winter squash/carrots, water and a couple of bouillon cubes into a slow cooker and have enough lentil soup to feed a family for three meals, with cornbread from Jiffy mix (I know, I know, it's a blasphemy against cooking) on the side. If you are cooking chicken, roast a whole chicken and make the servings smaller--modern American serving sizes are about twice as big as they should be--and use the giblets and carcass for chicken soup. Roast potatoes and carrots in the same casserole dish with the chicken, make a big salad because there's always some sort of greens on sale and all of them taste decent with ranch dressing.

To make the equivalent of those prepackaged processed food suppers, bearnaise sauce (white sauce from roux) with a little cheese for flavor, a box of pasta, a pound of cheap ground meat and some seasonings cost less than buying the processed thing, and you can throw a bag of frozen veggies into the pot to add nutrients and stretch the meal. But not many people know how to do that, or realize that it only takes about 20 minutes to do.

Here's what I don't get:

Federal rules forbid competing food being sold alongside the subsidized meal.

But it's OK to have all these fast food joints in the cafeteria? How does that work?

If I was this teacher, I would team up with the math teachers on this part of the assignment:

You will meet with Susan Stevens, before the end of this school year, to better understand the realities of the economics of Elizabeth Food Services. Let me know when that meeting will take place and report to me your findings.

You will bring to me the data showing the economic costs of eliminating the Grab and Go line as you have proposed.

Because frankly most things masquerading as "economic cost-benefit" analyses are a joke and the people who write them clearly can't do math. They like to externalize anything that might be the least little bit complicated to calculate, and they assume that since they can't do math, no one else can either. But it does seem that a lot of this sort of thing is not about being right--it's about the administrators being embarrassed/angry that their failings have been brought to public attention and feeling the need to smack someone. So even if she demonstrated mathematically that the district is losing money to the various effects of this poor diet, I doubt it would help her much. They want to smack someone. She might have a better case with the PTA, if they have one in her district.