Trump Administration Rolls Back Obama-Era Nutrition Standards For School Lunches (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just a week into his position, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced Monday a rollback of nutrition standards for school meals, previously championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama as part of a larger initiative to improve the health of America's children. Under Perdue's new rollback, schools across the country can now delay a requirement to reduce sodium levels, can serve kids fewer whole grains, and can provide one percent flavored milk in addition to flavored skim, unflavored skim, and unflavored one percent. In a news release that declared the move would "make school meals great again," Perdue said: "This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals. If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition -- thus undermining the intent of the program." Specifically, under Obama-era nutrition rules, schools were supposed to decrease sodium from meals in three phases. For instance, 2012 school lunches had average sodium levels between roughly 1,400mg to 1,600mg, with elementary school lunches on the lower end. Federal dietary guidelines, which schools must follow, recommend kids get 1,900mg to 2,300mg or less of sodium per day (depending on age). Currently, schools have dropped down to "Target 1," which is a range of about 1,200mg to 1,400mg or less. Schools were supposed to get that down to about 900mg to 1,000mg this year ("Target 2") and then to between 600mg and 700mg by 2022 ("Final Target"). The USDA will now waive the requirement to reach Target 2 until 2020. The USDA will also grant exemptions from the current requirement for schools to serve only whole-grain-rich foods.

Comments

Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Octorian]

That actually reminds me... One thing I remember from when I was growing up, is that my parents had whole milk in the refrigerator for the kids, and skim milk for the adults.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[lucm]

True. These "nutrition standards" are based on the same principles as the USDA food pyramid, which has been for the most part shaped by lobbyists, not nutritional experts.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but the reason they are doing isn't cause they children need more fat to have healthy diet, it's cause the food industry through SNA lobbyist want give kids cheap processed foods that tend to be high in fat, sugar, additives, and sodium.

It putting corporate profits over children.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jenningsthecat]

To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

True. But the low sodium requirements should have been kept in place as is. That likely would have happened, if this move had been designed to favour students' health; instead, it was designed to simultaneously cut costs, boost the profits of the crap-meisters who peddle highly processed foods, and take yet another cheap shot at the previous administration. When they say this will "make school meals great again", it's pretty hard not to laugh. Where's Sinclair Lewis when we need him?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[aevan]

*nods* and people here wonder why the coffee cream goes fast. Well..if the alternative is that 2% stuff...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

the thing is, the kids will still get far too much fat, sodium and other 'bad' stuff in everything else they eat, even with a low fat, low sodium school lunch. those 'essential' nutrients (in measured quantities) are not in short supply in the typical american diet.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[RatPh!nk]

This gets into the definition of healthy. Whole grains are universally accepted as healthy. However, while full fat might not have the cardiovascular risk that was one believed, more fat = more calories (also as I am sure you know the source of fat is pretty important) and we are not doing so great with obesity. Also pretty much everyone agrees the western diet contains to much sodium. Bottom line, heart healthy, growth health, weight healthy do not necessarily line up squarely.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[KiloByte]

skim "milk" is not milk, it's water with white colouring. So is that "1%" stuff. Even that 3.2% stuff what's the best of what's readily commercially available is nowhere close to actual milk.

Around my place, a couple decades ago, farmers tried selling milk directly to consumers, which got wildly popular but got cracked down on hard. As at the time it was still customary to boil milk before use, it wasn't unsafe, either.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[zieroh]

Obesity (along with diabetes II) is caused by carbohydrate intake. Not fat.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Low-sodium diets also have some pretty serious problems with lack of any repeatable evidence of efficacy.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[xeos]

I don't agree that there's too much sodium. And while my opinion isn't worth much, the current science on the topic suggests that sodium is mostly harmless (and certainly has little effect on blood pressure). Your Dr. probably doesn't agree, but Dr.s are often pretty far behind the state of the art. Do a pubmed search and come to your own conclusion though.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

Low-sodium diets also have some pretty serious problems with lack of any repeatable evidence of efficacy.

Indeed.

Too little sodium --> You die
More than the recommended sodium --> you live
Lots more --> There is a very very weak correlation with a minute increase in blood pressure that is heavily confounded with the many things that go along with high sodium diets and is more than offset with for example walking for 10 minutes a day.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

>Whole grains are universally accepted as healthy

No they are not. Anyone who has paid attention to the science for the past decade should have serious doubts about whole grains being healthy.
Since I do not accept whole grains as healthy, then your statement of universal acceptance is untrue. But it's not even close to being true.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[ShanghaiBill]

the thing is, the kids will still get far too much fat, sodium and other 'bad' stuff in everything else they eat

Some will. Some won't. My kids eat healthy at home. I don't appreciate the government feeding them garbage at school.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because if there's anything Donald Trump knows, it's how to have a healthy diet.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

more fat = more calories

The missing factors here are appetite and satiety. If you reduce carbs, and eat more fat, you feel fuller for a longer time. Even though the fat contains more calories per gram, you'll eat less of it, and reduce calories overall.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Unless you're disingenuously counting seed and vegetable oils as "fat"

Of course vegetable oils count as "fat". The kind used in industrial food (mostly palm oil) is the worst, the kind that clogs your arteries the same or more than animal fat.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

You do realize that all milk is skim, right? They skim it, then pasteurize it, then homogenized the cream, then add it back in. So "whole" milk is skim milk with added chemically treated fat that doesn't float to the top.

There's no more "water" in skim than whole. I like unhomogenized whole milk, but the greasy texture of homogenized whole milk is disgusting. So I drink skim, because it's the only non-homogenized milk that's widely available here now.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

There is no evidence that high-carb no-sugar diets are bad. There are plenty of people who believe in the religion of "no carbs" but that's a religion that's anti science, so "belief" doesn't define fact.

The "carbs are bad" diets are all rigged to be high sugar. A no-sugar high carb diet is consistently the "best" in studies not paid for by those that make/sell food or those who have already declared fat to be healthy.

And sodium isn't bad for you unless you are dehydrated, or have a salt sensitivity. So the older studies didn't correct for this, so they show salt is bad, because it can activate latent sensitivities, not that it's bad for healthy people without sensitivities.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[KiloByte]

Uhm, no. Skim "milk" is made by separation, "whole" milk undergoes filtering but no separation. Here's a simplified graph.

And around here (a 50k town, Poland), shops don't even carry skim water anymore, and often don't carry 2% demilked "milk" either. Even poor people don't buy that crap. On the other hand, I wonder why UHT milk imitation products still exist...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Homogenization isn't done through chemicals, it's a mechanical process where milk is put through a filter at high pressure. Personally I think it's better, and it's done for taste/texture/consistency. People don't like lumps of butter in their whole milk, etc.

Pasteurizing is done to all parts of the milk that you drink, of course. It wouldn't make sense to just make some of the milk germ-free and then mix it back together with unpasteurized portions of the milk. Also not a chemical process (heating).

All milk is skim only in the sense that all lemonade is water. I mean I know tastes are subjective but let's be honest: skim milk is vile. And there IS more water in skim milk....it has less fat per volume, so consequently it has to have more water per volume to make up for that.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

As opposed to the Paleo nuts who claim 6000 calories a day will cause weight loss, while 2000 calories a day will cause weigh gain

As if that's the only alternative to the food pyramid.

My diet: eat real foods, including fresh meat, dairy, nuts, fish and vegetables. Avoid processed foods, including sugar, and grains. Not too much sweet fruit. Eat when hungry.

Nothing crazy, but much higher in fat/lower in carbs than recommended by the food pyramid, and similar to what people ate before the obesity epidemic, except that I probably have more variety (such as year round fresh vegetables).

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fat and sodium are essential to children's health. They're not smoking, they're not eating trans-fats. As long as they get some veggies in there they're fine.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[sexconker]

Greasy texture? You're insane.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[sethmeisterg]

Finally someone who actually knows what they're talking about. I wish I could upvote you 10000x.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[serviscope_minor]

Obesity (along with diabetes II) is caused by carbohydrate intake. Not fat.

Diabetes? Yes, probably, but there's initial evidence it may not be the case. Obesity is caused by eating too many calories.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[dwywit]

It's not quite that simple, even though what you say is true.

If you get used to a high-salt diet, i.e. from childhood, you'll have difficulty cuttiing down because things just taste bland without the amount of salt you're used to, and it can be difficult to switch to other flavours instead. BTW, you can miss out on a lot of wonderful flavours if your food is overloaded with salt.

Then your taste buds lose sensitivity with age, and you add more salt, lather, rinse, repeat. And that adds to your kidneys' workload. As you lose kidney function with age, you *have* to take steps to lighten the load, e.g. decrease the salt, increase the water.

Personally, I enjoy experimenting with flavour profiles that minimise salt. Roasted potatoes? Definitely benefit from a sprinkle. Boiled egg without salt? Unthinkable. But curries, salads, other roasted vegetables, and even many cooked meats can taste fine when using something else to season them. Try powdered coriander, or ginger, garlic, etc.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

As if that's the only alternative to the food pyramid.

It's the one that's been given on Slashdot. Not in the one I was replying to, but in other threads under this article. It's expensive, and it doesn't work.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

I never said anything that could even be considered to conflict with that. Paleo-idiot triggered. Silly snowflake.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[dehachel12]

>Fat and sodium are essential to children's health
don't worry, they get plenty of that.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[davester666]

Yeah, my parents knew a family with a dairy farm, and we would regularly drive out there and get a big pail of milk, fresh out of their cows (well, from a large holding tank). Between that and lawn darts, we barely made it out of adolescence.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Ihlosi]

As opposed to the Paleo nuts who claim 6000 calories a day will cause weight loss

It will, if the rest of the day involves paleo activities like "20 km mammoth chase" and "1 km sprint from sabertooth tiger".

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Ihlosi]

Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

Except for essential fatty acids, the body can synthesize the fat it needs.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

It's expensive, and it doesn't work.

Eating real food saves a lot of money on doctor bills. Some of the food is actually very cheap, especially the fatty cuts of meat, organs and bones, while providing superior nutrition. Plus the high fat content makes it a lot more filling, so often I only eat 2 meals a day, and I almost never eat snacks. I can prepare a healthy dinner for the price of a big starbucks beverage.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jandersen]

To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

The US has the highest proportion of obese children of any rich nation, so lack of fat is probably not what holds back brain development in children in America. And it is not fat in gneral that is essential - it is specific, fatty acids, such as omega-3, not the saturated or hydrogenated fats that processed foods are full of. What most children in the West need more than anything is much less food of a much better quality, and outdoor activities. For Heavens' sake, there are children that die of heart attacks and strokes because of this absurd overeating epidemic that plagues the West - especially the US.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

They get plenty of trans fats, and lousy industrial oils, yes.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Joce640k]

What's next? Putting the lead back in gasoline?

Make American cars great again!

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

Obesity is caused by eating too many calories.

And eating too many calories is caused by hunger, which is caused by insulin, which is caused by carbohydrate intake.

Good explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

Except for essential fatty acids, the body can synthesize the fat it needs.

Citation required.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

The in-between days with 500 calories help to balance the paleo lifestyle, too.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Also pretty much everyone agrees the western diet contains to much sodium.

The Japanese live the longest, so I'd take their opinion over places where people live shorter lives.

And Japanese eat more sodium than Americans.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

And then you will be nice and thin when, like your paleolithic ancestors, you die at the ripe old age of 28.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

Well, it will make school students great again - and by great I mean large.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

In my much younger years I developed an interest in cooking, I was also earning minimum wage. So I had to make sacrifices - one of which was to completely stop adding salt to my food (mostly because I couldn't afford to buy salt).

Thing is, I came to like it - now it's nearly 20 years later, I cook with much better quality ingredients and have turned it into a craft. My wife loves my cooking. My kid loves my cooking. I cook lovely and elaborate foodie kind of meals with interesting flavor mixtures and prepared in interesting ways... and I still almost never add salt to anything I cook.

The vast majority of fresh foods already contain more than enough salt for your health needs, you don't need to add more to be healthy. And you only think you need it for flavour because you've been overdosing on it for decades. Stop adding it, and very soon not only do you stop missing it - the food tastes BETTER without it.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Opportunist]

You dietary nuts! I just watch out that all my meals contain the four important food groups, i.e. fat, salt, sugar and caffeine, and I'm doing fine.

On a completely unrelated note, what's that coppery taste in my mouth?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[thegarbz]

Increasing the fat content of food makes it far more expensive to produce, because animal products

Let me stop you there. "Fat" here is not the white stuff on the outside of bacon. "fat" is a nutrient present in most organisms.

Go read the nutritional label of a bottom of rapeseed (or canola, I'm not sure what you call it in the states) oil. I'll save you the effort: Per 100ml, Fat: 94g
Also not all fat is equal. Unfortunately the stuff you get in processed food, and the stuff they are trying to get out kids meals is also the worst of the bunch.

As for being "disingenuous" the definition of "fat" is widely recognised in science. It would be disingenuous to redefine it just for the sake of your own incorrect argument.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[thegarbz]

Fat and sodium are essential to children's health.

Which fat? What type? The lovely crusty part of the bacon? Or the trans-unsaturated fats that many countries other than the USA are trying to progressively ban because they aren't healthy in any quantity and also constitute the majority of fats found in fast / processed foods?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Those are mean averages that include child mortality. People surviving to adulthood had similar lifespans as humans today.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[thegarbz]

Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

What type of fat? Polyunsaturated fats? Monounsaturated fats? The "this will go straight to my belly" saturated fats? Or the one most likely to cause obesity and cardiovascular disease, that many countries around the world are slowly trying to ban due to their complete lack of nutritional value trans-fats?

Trans-fats also happen to be present the most in fast food and processed foods.

I think you're kids are not going to be healthier because of this. Feed em lettuce at school, and a slab of bacon when they get home.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[geekmux]

To be fair, the regulations are trying to push a low fat whole grain diet, which I don't believe is actually healthy. Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

They shouldn't be eating the amount of sodium in the processed fast-food grade shit they serve either, which applies to all humans regardless of age.

Chances are it was the new sodium requirement that was the real bitch to deal with. You can make healthy food taste good, but dealing with bland food is often answered with three days worth of sodium overkill because it's a cheap flavor enhancer.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Ihlosi]

Citation required.

No, it's not. Hint: The reason is in the meaning of 'essential'.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[TheRaven64]

If you get used to a high-salt diet, i.e. from childhood, you'll have difficulty cuttiing down because things just taste bland without the amount of salt you're used to, and it can be difficult to switch to other flavours instead

It takes about a month to do this. Tastebuds have a very high turnover and are mostly replaced after a month. You become gradually more sensitive to salt over this time until the food that you used to eat becomes too salty (the same applies to sugar).

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

Obviously I meant the other part of your claim, that the body can synthesize the other fats in sufficient quantity.

Also, what's missing from your statement is a percentage of synthesizable fats vs fats that must be obtained from the diet, especially in relation to brain development.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[cheesybagel]

I wonder why UHT milk imitation products still exist...

Because they last a long time without a refrigerator. Not everyone may have a refrigerator or they may only drink milk occasionally.

The only other alternative is dried milk.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

What type of fat? Polyunsaturated fats? Monounsaturated fats? The "this will go straight to my belly" saturated fats?

People need a bunch of different fats, both saturated, monounsaturated as well as polyunsaturated, in different carbon chain lengths, and with double bonds at different places. A variety of natural fatty foods is good. Saturated fats don't go to your belly, unless you overeat them, or you eat them in combination with too many carbs.

What kids don't need is hydrogenated seed oils that are commonly used in cheap processed food.

Feed em lettuce at school, and a slab of bacon when they get home

Or take good food to school. Lettuce is crispy water, and doesn't provide the energy that kids require.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[blind biker]

That must be a thing in the US, but it definitely isn't in Finland: here whole milk is indeed whole.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[cheesybagel]

Try being a diabetic with such a diet. You won't live long. There is no high-carb no-sugar. Carbs are sugar. The only difference is if its a slow absorbed sugar vs a fast absorbed sugar.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[cheesybagel]

That's because they live close to the sea and they eat a lot more fish. There's plenty of evidence that having a high sodium intake isn't a problem as long as you eat plenty of fish, especially fish loaded with fish oils, with it.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[DarkOx]

Well I can tell you I did Atkins for several years, and I lost a lot of weight eating 5K calories a day and often more!

After I reached a weight I was happy with I gradually transited back to a more typical diet with some input from my physician, but I have had to get the calorie count down to around 1800 a day to keep the weight off.

So anecdotal it may be, but it sure as hell worked here.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[argStyopa]

Do you have a link to where you got this insight into the minds of the people changing this rule?

Because if you don't, then you're simply interpreting a motivation according to your political preconceptions, of course?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[omnichad]

How do you gain weight? By your body using insulin to store blood sugar as fat. Dietary fat never becomes blood sugar. Dietary fat cannot be stored as fat. It's all simple chemistry.

I'm not on such a diet, but these are facts.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[omnichad]

Why? How many kids do you know that have sodium-sensitive hypertension? There are no other reasons to worry about sodium content.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[omnichad]

Removing the fat usually means adjusting the flavor by adding more carbohydrates. Just compare the labels of 0% yogurt with full fat. The former almost always has more sugar.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[zifn4b]

This gets into the definition of healthy. Whole grains are universally accepted as healthy. However, while full fat might not have the cardiovascular risk that was one believed, more fat = more calories (also as I am sure you know the source of fat is pretty important) and we are not doing so great with obesity. Also pretty much everyone agrees the western diet contains to much sodium. Bottom line, heart healthy, growth health, weight healthy do not necessarily line up squarely.

There is not a one size fits all set of dietary needs. As you might be aware of there is a range of metabolic profiles: Ectomorph, Mesomorph and Endomorph. Each of the variations of those metabolic profiles is going to require different customized dietary plans to achieve ideal health, body fat percentage and weight. Ideal weight also varies because even though people joke about being "big boned" people do in fact have different size skeletons. Those with larger frames are capable of supporting more muscle mass and as result are capable of carrying more weight. Those with smaller frames are not capable as much.

If the American government really cared about health and wellness, they would use tax dollars to do free evaluations of a persons health profile and then give them access to resources and information to help them manage that health profile. The problem is, no one ever seems to want to get serious about REAL HEALTH in this country. It's a joke.

Everyone, no matter what shit you've been told, if you want to be healthy focus on body fat percentage. Weight and BMI are crap. Ideal body fat percentage is different for men vs. women. Do your research. Also, regularly get blood work done. For diet, while you can start with a base diet for your metabolic profile. Everyone is different. What you do is you tweak your food intake and check the results over time to find one that works best for you based on the metrics you get from your OWN body. I was in serious peak physical shape at one point in time by doing precisely this. It's what professional and Olympic athletes do.

If you don't believe me, hire a reputable personal trainer to fact check me. Good luck!

By the way, in America, a lot of obesity problems are very exacerbated by sitting at desks in office jobs working too many hours. Not only that, it leads to tight muscles that atrophy.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Schools don't pay the medical bills. They pay for the food, and junk food is often cheaper than real food.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[zifn4b]

Obesity (along with diabetes II) is caused by carbohydrate intake. Not fat.

It would be more correct to say improper balance of blood sugar due to improper carbohydrate consumption. Proper consumption varies by metabolic profile. I am an Endomorph, so if I look at a carb, I gain weight practically. However, if I eat low carb and do resistance training, I pack muscle on like a fiend. An Ectomorph does not have this experience.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[serviscope_minor]

I'm with you on the low salt thing: I don't add it to any food I cook. Some things are a little harder and simply taste bland if you have exactly the same recipe and technique busy minus the salt. However work some practice, the food is every bit as good, arguably better. In fact I find a fair bit of food too salty now, especially if I eat it 3 meals a day for a while (business trips).

Kinda curious about how you couldn't afford salt though. My local supermarket sells salt at 53p per kilo and you can buy a bottle of 750g for the princely sum of 40 of the Queen's pennies. And that would last ages even with high salt cooking!

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[parkinglot777]

Indeed.

Too little sodium --> You die
More than the recommended sodium --> you live
Lots more --> There is a very very weak correlation with a minute increase in blood pressure that is heavily confounded with the many things that go along with high sodium diets and is more than offset with for example walking for 10 minutes a day.

Partially true. However, it would be...

• Too little sodium >> you die
• Around recommended amount >> good
• Double amount of recommended amount >> your body attempts to adjust itself to the situation by getting rid of sodium through, e.g. urinal, sweat, etc. Not good and rather harm your body in a long run.
• Too high sodium >> you die

In other words, too little or too much is BAD for our bodies. Everything should be done in a moderate way. Extreme solutions won't solve a problem but rather swing the issue to the other side...

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[garry_g]

It putting corporate profits over children.

Isn't anything Trump and the GOP nuts are doing (or want to do) putting corporate profits over the people? And yes, there are enough politicians from other party(/ies) that will put corporations before their constituents as long as the one paying for their re-election is happy ... but GOP and Trump are just extreme ...

From a scientific standpoint (which, of course, for Trump and the GOP is fake), the SAD (standard american diet) it's pretty much universally accepted that what causes all mayor causes of early deaths and poor health ... the solutions may vary somewhat, but most nutrition experts will agree that the processed foods should be avoided as much as possible ... which will not only reign in the growing amount of obesity, but will drastically improve health, reducing things like high blood pressure, heart disease, etc ... I myself switched to mainly fresh produce, with very little animal products, and lost ~75 pounds, down to a healthy 165-170. health check done when I was almost down that amount gave me a perfect bill of health (apart from slight B6/B12/D deficiency, which is mainly taken from animal products, and can easily be fixed with some supplements). ... and then the GOP/Trump complain about health care being too expensive ...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

This started during my first job ever, when rent was 2/3rd of my income and most of the rest went to textbooks (I was working by day, studying by night). I would buy a week's supply of fresh food at a time, veggies and some cheap meat (mostly chicken) but that was it. There wasn't even milk in my cupboards.
I could have had a bit more if I didn't go to weekly poetry nights at the local rock-bar where I consumed vast amounts of cheap red wine and read bad poetry while listening to other people reading THEIR bad poetry. But I honestly think that was worth more than salt, I made some truly great memories at that bar (and got laid a couple of times too).

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nucrash]

Don't knock it until you try it.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[dcw3]

New research is showing that the science isn't so settled when it comes to sodium.

https://news.vanderbilt.edu/20...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Falconhell]

"People who read their own poetry in public may have other bad habits"
Lazarus Long. :)

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[xvan]

He's not the healthiest 70yo I know, but he's clearly doing much better than the average.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

Dietary fat cannot be stored as fat.

When you eat fat, the body produces Acylation Stimulating Protein, which causes the fat to be stored. Also, dietary protein causes an insulin response, which will cause dietary fat to be stored when eaten in combination.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

the food tastes BETTER without it

I would mostly agree but there are plenty of times when adding a little salt can bring out the flavor. Also I am a firm believer that you should never taste the salt which is a big part of why I so rarely eat out as so many restaurants over salt their food.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

Cutting back dietary fat, while keeping total energy intake constant, means increasing carbohydrates, even without adding sugar.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[ausekilis]

I don't remember being forced to eat school lunches, even though I did really like pizza day.

Sure, not everyone will have the luxury of time/money to pack lunches for their kids. Those that can, probably should.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[omnichad]

Not in the example of yogurt. Just increasing the portion size to fill the void would mostly be an increase in protein. Almost all of the sugar is added.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[ausekilis]

Exactly this. The Japanese diet has a lot of rice and fish, many vegetables, and chicken/eggs to a smaller extent. Greek diets have a lot of green veggies, lamb and chicken. American diets have McDonalds/Wendy's/Taco Bell - much more fatty protein, loaded with salt and/or butter.

The reason restaurants like Chile's food tastes good? They cook *everything* in butter. Steaks. Steamed vegetables (covered in butter). Fish. You name it.

Eating habits start young and are learned from parents and the environment. If we as parents eat healthier, our kids will too. If we are garbage disposals, our kids will be too.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

Your comment is just about the biggest load of horseshit I've ever seen on this site, and I've seen some horseshit in my days.

A can of Morton's iodized salt or its generic equivalent, which should be more than enough for an entire year's cooking for an individual, costs less than $1 at many US supermarkets. You say you spent all your money on "fresh fruits and vegetables." Well to put that in perspective, a year's supply of salt costs about what a single apple would at most supermarkets. You also say in one of your followups that you were spending your money on wine at rock bars. A can of salt costs less than the customary tip for a single drink of alcohol at a bar. And EBT/Food Stamps (resources available to truly poor pepole) actually cover salt, unlike all those drinks of booze you threw back at the bar. Heck, if you were in such bad straits, you surely could have asked your bartender to give you (or simply taken without consequence) one of the salt shakers at the bar and had enough supply to last you for months.

Come off it. Poverty did not "force" you to go without salt. You made a lifestyle choice to not put salt in your diet. This is perfectly fine and valid and has probably helped your health in the long run. But to claim that you somehow were forced into it by poverty is utterly laughable. It is basically the only foodstuff that everyone in the world, no matter how dire their poverty, can afford.

So quit the humblebrag martyr BS. You are the worst kind of poseur.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[mpercy]

Oh, suck on my chocolate salty balls Stick 'em in your mouth and suck 'em Suck on my chocolate salty balls.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It is thought that hunters-gatherers actually had a lot of free time, much more than later farmers. Think three hour work days. Humans are too lazy to chase a mammoth for twenty kilometers every day anyway. ;) Sooner or later, you'd come up with an idea for how to avoid it.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess there's more than one way to be lactose intolerant!

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[trg83]

That's an awful lot of hyperbole! :) I think the ancestry of people has a lot to do with whether they find dairy both enjoyable and digestible. Those descended from herders tend to be better equipped to consume it. It may also be that those of us in smaller cities near rural producers might actually get better quality milk.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[trg83]

Some of us even skipped the holding tank. My grandpa (a dairy farmer) used to milk the cow right into a cup of coffee on occasion. We had no illusions as to the origin of dairy products! :)

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[RabidReindeer]

In Bangalore you can prepare a meal for 6 for the price of a big starbucks beverage.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[PopeRatzo]

Do you have a link to where you got this insight into the minds of the people changing this rule?

Do you have a link proving that the people changing these rules have minds?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[SCVonSteroids]

Did you say bacon?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jenningsthecat]

Low-sodium diets also have some pretty serious problems with lack of any repeatable evidence of efficacy.

And even if kids got ZERO dietary sodium in meals at school, how many of them would be sodium-deficient? That's also likely to be pretty close to zero, given the average American diet.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[I'm New Around Here]

My neighbor used to shoot the milk from the teat right into his cat's mouth. His cats were very happy creatures.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

Honestly, I find that salt mostly overpowers over flavours, leaving it out allows flavours that would otherwise vanish to be more prominent. There is a delightful cacophony of flavours in a well-made waterless curry, when you're already using at least 5 different spices aside from the 3 different curries in the mix, what is salt going to add ?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[I'm New Around Here]

I think that if you ate a similar diet and added steamed rice ( reducing proportionately fats and protein), you'd get similar results.

Maybe not. Have you seen a Hawaiian person lately? They eat rice with everything.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[havana9]

The US has the highest proportion of obese children of any rich nation, so lack of fat is probably not what holds back brain development in children in America

Eating too many foods with sugars and carbohydrates is a sure way to get fatter even one eats a diet low on fats.
100 ml of Coca cola are 42 calories and 100 ml of whole cow milk are 61 calories, the latter contains more fats. On the othe hand one feels more full after drinking a glass of latte or better milk and coffee rather than a glass of coke, so one will normally eat less calories in total.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[serviscope_minor]

I could have had a bit more if I didn't go to weekly poetry nights at the local rock-bar where I consumed vast amounts of cheap red wine and read bad poetry while listening to other people reading THEIR bad poetry. But I honestly think that was worth more than salt,

Sounds way better!

I don't hold with the theory that one should always save up as much as possible and be super prudent etc etc because "just in case". They're missing the opportunity cost: you only have one life to live.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[thegarbz]

Agree on all accounts, especially the taking good food to school.

We took our own lunches in and while it was interesting watching kids claim they were better for having a spring roll so greasy their hands almost turned invisible while I was eating a sandwich, in retrospect and away from peer pressure, those sandwiches were incredibly tasty. ... And still are. There's a world of delicious healthy things out there to eat.

It's a shame I didn't appreciate it as a child, but I'm thankful that my mother decided what I should eat rather than choosing myself.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Evtim]

The ongoing scam "low fat - high sugar" is well documented; do a search - some doctors and even some politicians have apologized already for misleading the public decades ago. Of course the corporations were soooooooooooooo happy about it - a piece of bread has the same calorie content as a piece of meat but the price difference is 10 fold. Economy 101 states that corps will do anything to lower costs - it is a race to the bottom; capitalism always is , you don't need to know the particular case.....

Consider:

If most of the food is eventually converted to glucose for powering the body, why then you cannot feed a person on glucose only? You can add the vitamins and mineral and so on as well and still anyone will die horribly if left on such diet for a long period of time. Why? Isn't it logical that it should work? Why bother processing, just pour into the blood stream "the final products". In that respect there was a drive many years ago to raise cattle on sugar. The farmers REALLY tried , since that would have been so much cheaper. None succeeded... bottom line - nutrition is way more complicated than we imagine. In such situations, where we understand nothing or very little the best rule is - do what has been done for the last 500 000 years and you won't go wrong. The system has evolved over countless millennia; we have barely begun to scratch the surface when it comes to gut flora and its absolutely PROFOUND influence on everything in our bodies and minds - from cancer to mental disorders - all of those can be mitigated or exasperated by the bugs in our gut. And those bugs, although being rather diverse and in different relative abundances from human to human (it truly is a fingerprint) they all have the same underlying behavior - put too much sugar and easy carbs in the system and it goes wrong. Every time! Vegetarians I can understand to a certain degree, although I would not have liked to be born vegetarian (I like being tall and strong rather than a midget) but vegans are downright wrong and crazy because there is no way to supply the calories on vegan diet without massive amounts of carbs and sugars. What cretins!

BTW, I cured myself from very nasty issues (and 150 euro per month medication) by going against the above-mentioned scam - the best thing I did in my life. So I am talking from personal experience too.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

Absolutely, saving money is important but it's not more important than everything else. Ultimately, it's more important to accumulate memories than money.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[religionofpeas]

I don't like rice very much. It's got little flavor, and it's low on nutrients. I'd much rather skip the rice, and have some more vegetables and meat instead.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[fintux]

I think GP referred by "whole" milk exactly that, not whole milk. At least in Finland, the 3.5% milk is labeled as whole milk (or full milk - the word is ambiguous). And I think it is an EU wide thing, since before the EU, it was labelled as "consumption milk". The process for that might vary, but at least in Finland it is done by adding cream or skim milk to the "raw milk". But homogenization is achieved by forcing the milk through very small holes, not by using chemicals (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homogenization_(chemistry) ). That breaks the fat liposomes to so small units that they won't separate anymore. However, the homogenization does activate or accelerate some chemical processes, which then may alter the chemical composition of the milk as well. Though technically you could say that this is chemically treated fat, it might give the wrong impression of chemicals being used for achieving this.

All that said, I remember seeing some studies and debate that since the fat is broken down into small particles, it modifies how the milk behaves in digestion, and the homogenized milk doesn't create a protective layer on the intestine, which might make people more prone to allergies and digestive problems.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[TheCastro1689]

That's not true, you can do LTLT or other forms of lower temps that don't make the milk worthless like UHT.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Vegan Cyclist]

Actually, whole food, high-carb vegan diets are not only working, people are losing weight and giving up medications, including insulin. No joke, many people are actually *reversing* Type 2 diabetes this way.

Obesity leads to diabetes (not sugar consumption), once diabetic, sure, *sugar* (without fiber to slow down absorption) can be an issue, but it's the excessive and fatty food that contribute to metabolic syndrome which then leads to diabetes.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've given up water completely. I could only afford 8 ounces a day while I was a starving college student that walked both ways to school uphill. In 140 degree heat. While I was being beaten with a cane rod.

I came to like it and to this day I drink almost no water and prefer to be beaten by cane rods whenever I have to go for a walk.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Vegan Cyclist]

Well-said - the brain isn't made of trans and saturated fats. There are ZERO nutritional requirements for either of these, and they're contributing to heart disease. Keeps fats relatively low, and make sure you're getting plenty of Omega 3's & 6's, and you'll do quite well if not over-eating.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[TheCastro1689]

I started a Keto diet in April. Lost ~25 lbs in a month, but I'm really fat. The thing about the diet is you can still buy processed stuff as long as it isn't high in carbs or sugar. So dips, cheeses, meats, etc are still on the table. It is pretty easy to stick with, lots of salads with meats and you can have most dressings. Cutting carbs and sugars has really improved the way I feel and my poops.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Curry and other savory well spiced food doesn't need it as that has a very similar delicious effect, as do acidic things. However on roasted or steamed veggies I find a tiny amount added at the table really will bring out the flavor and by tiny amount I mean a few grains of salt just to get the saliva flowing.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[bluefoxlucid]

I eat like 5,000mg sodium per day. The doctors told me my blood pressure was too high and I needed to eliminate salt to get rid of the 147/97 that showed up for 2 months. I eliminated the amphetamine salts. When it happened again, I had the dose of Atomoxetine lowered to something that wouldn't cause tachycardia and serotonin mania. 123/79, suck it.

My family history is loaded with cardiovascular problems, thyroid disease, and schizotypal personality disorders. I'm not fat and didn't buy into the low-sodium/low-fat diet; I also don't eat like 6 ice cream bars every day when they're around, and generally graze on sweets. I eat in meals--frequently meals like Popeye's fried chicken (shitloads of sodium and saturated fat). 5 years ago I moved into a house with no stove, and it's been like 3 years since I ate something that wasn't fast food; removing the vending machine visits (candy and chips) and not overeating straightened out the extra 20 pounds I was carrying.

I'm still stuck with ADHD (hyperactivity variant, near as I can tell; attention issues if I don't sleep), some severe insomnia, and schizoid personality disorder (downgraded from schizotypal once I rejected my dad's constant conspiracy theories and magical thinking). I like schizoid personality disorder. Major depressive disorder might be in there somewhere, but I don't want to self-diagnose depression and I need some time to chew on that one; the implications are unpleasant. (I start things but lose motivation almost immediately; I thought that was just ADHD, but "bored of everything" and "no sense of achievement" goes together with the anhedonia to make a textbook case for MDD--and I don't feel depressed, so my first impulse is to reject depression as a thing; plus I don't want to start a new saga of even more drugs unless I have a clear idea of what I'm trying to do, considering SPD makes it really uncomfortable to ask doctors for drugs.)

The thing is nutrition is mostly voodoo. Nutrition researchers freely admit this; nutritionists (engineers) work from their textbooks in full faith.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[futuresheep]

Your wife and kids love your cooking because they're used to the blandness and lack of balance. It's no different than a person that's raised on a processed food diet thinking that properly salted food is bland.

The PROPER use of salt certainly has an effect on both the taste and the sensory feeling of food. Of course adding too much salt just makes things salty, the challenge is learning how to season food properly.

I'll also call out your B.S. "I couldn't afford that $1.00 expense" excuse. Salt is the cheapest seasoning in the supermarket.

I suggest you start here:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/b...

Where you can read fun facts like the following:

Salt imparts more than just a salt taste to overall food flavor. In work with a variety of foods (soups, rice, eggs, and potato chips), salt was found to improve the perception of product thickness, enhance sweetness, mask metallic or chemical off-notes, and round out overall flavor while improving flavor intensity (Gillette, 1985). These effects are illustrated in Figure 3-2, using soup as an example. In the figure, the distance of each of the points (e.g., âoethickness,â âoesaltinessâ) from the center point represents the intensity of that particular attribute. This figure shows that when salt is added to a soup, not only does it increase the saltiness of that soup (compare closed circles with open triangles and open circles for saltiness), but it also increases other positive attributes, such as thickness, fullness, and overall balance.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

>Your wife and kids love your cooking because they're used to the blandness and lack of balance
That wouldn't explain why she loved my cooking on our second date, when she had just met me, and I cooked her dinner. There was no prior 'getting used to' time there.

And it wasn't that I couldn't have bought salt INSTEAD of other things - but I would rather give up the salt than the pepper.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[chaotixx]

How can you be too poor to afford salt? At around 50 cents/lb it has to be the cheapest seasoning by orders of magnitude. Even the cheapest restaurants just give it away.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[hey!]

It's surprising what scientists learn when they actually look, which is why it's important to fund research.

The gold standard in calorie consumption measurement is something called "doubly labelled water" -- basically a scheme for measuring energy use using water tagged with uncommon isotopes of hydrogen and oxygen. The incorporation of these isotopes into metabolic by-products provides an indirect means for measuring metabolic rate in real world conditions.

So researchers did a doubly labeled water study on the Hadza of Tanzania, one of the few remaining hunter-gather societies in the world, and discovered that there was no significant correlation between activity level (measured by GPS) and calorie consumption. While they did exhibit more energy usage than sedentary westerners, it was only on the order of 200 calories/day -- which admittedly over a year is a lot of calories.

Now it's a mistake to extrapolate from the Hadza to people living in industrialized economies. The Hadza are smaller, leaner, much more active and eat a much different diet which varies in calorie content every day. But the most important thing to take away is the unreliability of the naive "scientific" model of the human body as being like, to a first approximation, an insulated calorimeter that can only shed energy by exercise.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jpbelang]

So do the japanese. They have lower obesity than North Americans.

Hawaiians, however, have integrated high sugar into their diets.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Opportunist]

Chips and Red Bull.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jpbelang]

Well if you don't like it then, you're just wrong :-)

Again, I'd feel foolish telling you to eat rice instead of extra vegetables. Meat, you have to be careful (bowel cancer), but from a weight gain perspective, I think we agree.

PS: I'm not a vegetarian. We eat less meat than we used to, but as I said, not because I'm afraid of fat.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[hey!]

You may be right, but if you've ever looked at scientific papers in nutrition most of the studies are modest, and there's a lot of arguing over what looks like not enough data. More nutrition research could wipe out a lot of common-wisdom extrapolations from limited data and replace them with solid, evidence-based results.

The US spends about 1.6 billion in nutrition research annually, which sounds like a lot, but it's quite evident that a really good nutrition study (large enough sample size, long enough duration, adequate experimental controls) is extraordinarily expensive. And to put 1.6 billion in perspective, we spend 3.2 trillion on health care annually, a lot of it to treat conditions (diabetes, obesity, hypertension) that we know are connected to nutrition but in ways we don't fully understand. I don't think there's anyone who doesn't believe we could achieve significant improvements in longevity and quality of life with better nutrition, but catch is we don't know how.

We're funding nutrition like "small science", when it should by any reasonable measure be big, "moon shot" level science.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[futuresheep]

Sure it would, she didn't know any better either. I have an aunt that cooks a lot, but she under seasons everything, it's rather bland. My cousin, who is used to this type of cooking considers himself a "foodie", and has the exact same problem with everything he cooks, it's simply under seasoned.

And just stop using cost as an reason for not buying salt, the cost over the term it's usage is simply too low for any rational person to bother budgeting for. A 26oz container of Morton Salt is 0.89 on Amazon Pantry right now and should last a very, very long time.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[the_bard17]

Not all milk. Here in NYS, we have a loophole allowing farms to sell raw milk directly from the farm. It's worth the drive out once a week to pick it up. I was raised on fresh raw milk from a Jersey cow milked by the family. Milk just ain't the same if you don't have to shake it a bit before opening...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

And these are the people who argue against raising minimum wage - yet apparently have no idea whatsoever what it entails when your salary goes 80% or more just into sleeping dry.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

He's not the healthiest 70yo I know, but he's clearly doing much better than the average.

But how much of that health can be attributed to his diet? His form of exercise? Genetic predisposition? There is no control for this experiment, so how can you draw the conclusion that everyone should just follow his same diet?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[chispito]

Yes, but the reason they are doing isn't cause they children need more fat to have healthy diet, it's cause the food industry through SNA lobbyist want give kids cheap processed foods that tend to be high in fat, sugar, additives, and sodium.

It putting corporate profits over children.

As opposed to now, when the food is supplied by...?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

"Similar" meaning "be happy that you live until fifty"? Just because the distribution is skewed by infant mortality doesn't mean that after removing the infant mortality, they lived anywhere nearly as long as we do today with antibiotics, dentistry, surgeries, heart supporting drugs, and what not.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[fredrated]

Wow, you should try unhomogenized milk, it beats homogenized milk by a mile. Lumps of butter in their milk? Is that the best you can do, run down real milk with a straw man? Real milk where the cream rises to the top is the best!

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[argStyopa]

Oh I get it "Trump's a buffoon, so everything he does is wrong and even if RIGHT is for the wrong reasons"

Is that about it?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Serge_Tomiko]

Umm, sorry. But all fat you consume is converted to glucose via lipase and bile in the intestines. Sugar is absorbed in the mouth, and even amylase in your mouth breaks down starch into glucose right away.

The relationship between insulin and fat/sugar consumption is one of time. Fat causes a gradual rise in blood sugar levels, whereas sugar causes an immediate spike. The "spike" is what, over time, appears to cause insulin insensitivity as your body misinterprets that high of the spike as being the baseline. This, ultimately, is why the low-fat craze caused the epidemic of diabetes. You need dietary fat to stabilize blood sugar levels.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[coinreturn]

He's not the healthiest 70yo I know, but he's clearly doing much better than the average.

I believe the "doctor's note" he presented during the campaign said otherwise.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Anonymous Coward]

The current research suggests that sodium is still just as unhealthy as always believed, but just to certain people who are in high risk groups (some with completely hidden signs of risk). So, until we get to the point where nutrition guidelines are fully customized based on a genetic workup to rule out sodium risk, the most healthy suggestion overall is still to reduce sodium intake. Its no different from wearing seatbelts. Most people will never be in a car accident that tests the veracity of their seatbelt preparedness (i.e. were they wearing it) but that doesn't mean we can go around saying seatbelts are unimportant to most people. The fact is we dont know who will end up in such accidents, so for our own good we make everyone wear them.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[squiggleslash]

Is this what Slashdot has come to? We're now full of Milk Hipsters? Geez!

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[slinches]

Where do you live and how active are you?

If you're an active person in a hot climate, the ideal diet is higher in salt than someone who lives in a colder climate and rarely exercises to the point of breaking a sweat.

I live in Phoenix, AZ and giving kids their primary meal with only 600mg of salt would be dangerous. You can easily lose over a gram per hour of outdoor activity in the summer.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[larryjoe]

I mean I know tastes are subjective but let's be honest: skim milk is vile.

Not only is taste subjective, there is also inertia in that subjectivity. I've switched from whole milk to skim and back a few times in my life, with each stint lasting a few years. Each time I switched, my immediate reaction was disgust, but that disgust always dissipated after a few weeks.

The only type of milk that I truly hated and never got used to was powdered milk. That was bad, even when mixed with non-powdered milk, and that distaste never went away.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

Go on then. Bifurcate into three and have one of you eat a whole grains (no flour, that's processed), one of you eat processed grains and the last one of you eat loads of nutrient rich fatty protein food sources, correctly salted. See what the outcome is. Wheat is wheat however you grind it. Your stomach lining doesn't care if the insulin mimetic properties of wheat agglutin came in whole food packaging or not.

>universally accepted as healthy

You use the word 'universally'. I don't think you know what that means.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[PopeRatzo]

Oh I get it "Trump's a buffoon

Now you're catching on.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Hognoxious]

Fat is essential for brain development, our kids definitely shouldn't be eating low fat.

Low fat isn't no fat.

Care to estimate the percentage who: A) eat too little fat such that they suffer brain impairment B) eat enough, more or less and C) eat too much and are obese?

I suspect that in most developed countries A) is like the rounding error of C).

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[futuresheep]

Oh please go on Mr Strawman.

The point that many people are making is that you're rationalizing not buying salt to save money while talking about getting drunk on cheap red wine at a bar once per week.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[ncc74656]

Wow, you should try unhomogenized milk, it beats homogenized milk by a mile.

Near as I can tell, it's not available here. The only place I've ever seen it was when I spent a couple years in England in the mid-'80s, where it was delivered by a milkman (!) every morning in glass bottles with aluminum-foil caps. Homogenized cost extra; unhomogenized worked as well as long as you carefully shook the cream back into suspension first (hold the cap on with your fingers if you don't want to send milk flying across the room). I don't know if they still do that; home delivery of milk in the US went away well before my time, and I'm in my mid-40s.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Hognoxious]

Increasing the fat content of food makes it far more expensive to produce

Really? Which costs more per unit weight - prime lean steak or shergarburgers?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Talderas]

On a completely unrelated note, what's that coppery taste in my mouth?

Blood, now get to brushing your teeth regularly so your gums don't bleed.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[amiga3D]

I think the whole point is that the Federal government setting regulations for what kids eat for lunch is ludicrous. The parents have control of local schools through school boards. They should run the show. This nanny state crap where the Fed tells you how to manage every aspect of your lives is more than just annoying. It's oppressive.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[link-error]

How do you get your iodine requirements? It's basically only available in processed table salt.
    Personally, I take kelp supplements.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AthanasiusKircher]

People don't like lumps of butter in their whole milk, etc.

Huh? Non-homogenized milk doesn't have "lumps of butter." Non-homogenized milk just will have the cream gradually float to the top. Butter is generally only formed when you concentrate cream and agitate it.

People used to receive non-homogenized milk at home all the time, back when the "milkman" deliveries were common. If you wanted "homogenized" milk texture, you just shook the bottle before drinking. If you wanted an extra-rich cup of milk, you took the first cup from the top of the bottle. (Which often tastes a bit like half-and-half, unless you wait a long time for the cream to float up without any bottle motion.) Without shaking, the remainder of the milk would generally retain a small amount of fat, probably on average a bit more than today's "skim" contains... but it seems to be more flavorful than typical "skim" or "low-fat" milk.

It's not a huge effect, but a lot of people think non-homogenized does have a stronger and more pleasant flavor. The main reason for adopting homogenization was benefits in shelf life and consistent product (e.g., mixing milk from different sources, with no discernable difference). I don't think anyone would agree it was done for taste, since there was strong resistance to it among consumers for decades. For consistent texture? Yes, that's mostly why consumers prefer it these days.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AthanasiusKircher]

People surviving to adulthood had similar lifespans as humans today.

No they didn't. It depends on how far you go back in time, but 130,000 years ago basically no one survived past about 30. That link goes on to note that in Neaderthal culture, you had only about 4 adults past the age of 30 for every 10 young adults. It's only when you get to the early Stone Age that people live long enough to see a significant number of grandparents.

Basically, around the time of the agricultural revolution (where the "paleo" diet supposedly ENDS) is where you start seeing people living longer and actually making it to middle age regularly. Not surprising, since agriculture was probably responsible for making old age feasible, by allowing permanent settlements with more consistent food and nutrition sources and less dangers from hunting and gathering.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Well, there's historical precedent. A number of nutritionists from the USDA over the years have come out and claimed that various aspects of the "food pyramid" etc. were explicitly modified to suit the interests of various food industries, rather than nutritional guidelines. I don't know that there's direct evidence here of a similar trend, but it would probably be surprising if food lobbyist interests were NOT taken into account, at least somewhat...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AthanasiusKircher]

Have to agree here. Salt is incredibly cheap. I can definitely see cooking without salt if you substitute other seasonings or something, but almost any kind of seasoning is more expensive than salt in terms of flavor per dollar added. If GP made a choice to lower salt intake, that's perfectly valid, but the economizing thing makes little sense.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Talderas]

According to this website the number could be as many as 450,000.

http://www.feedingamerica.org/...

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Bartles]

Why would organic fat free milk be any different?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Bartles]

Shelf stable milk in a carton is still pretty unusual in the US. So no, we don't.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[HiThere]

That doesn't sound like a paleo diet to me. And isn't "2000 calories is heavy in fiber" a typo? I can see a fad dietist claiming that "2000 calories very low in fiber" would lead to a weight gain. I'm not even really sure it's wrong (ans I wouldn't want to experiment).

Also, it's possible that 6000 calories a day would lead to a weight loss if you did it in real paleo fashion...e.g., ran it down and speared it yourself, and then ate it without cooking. There've been lots of claims that cooking things makes the nutrition that they contain more accessible.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

You're just wrong, you fail to comprehend actual life expediencies of adults. Even after it is pointed out that child mortality skews the statistics, you still fall back on it. You're claiming that "antibiotics, dentistry, drugs, and what not" adds over 30 years to the life expectancy of people who lived to adulthood. It doesn't.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Hognoxious]

UHT? Pah. When I was a kid there was a thing called sterilised milk. It came in beer bottles.

It was yellowish in colour & kept for weeks, unrefigerated, after opening. That's to say it didn't taste any worse than when it was opened.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[HiThere]

You're confusing things. During the paleo period people generally lived as long as currently (possibly less at the really old end, and certainly higher infant mortality).

OTOH, when agriculture was introduced not only did population levels start spiraling up, but the health of individuals plummeted. And the lifespans shrank remarkably. I'm not real sure the average person even lived to see 28. So you're really talking about the early agricultural era...and periodically all the way up to the present. Current western lifespans are probably even slightly longer than during the paleo period, and certainly there is lower infant mortality, but you can still find groups where people die young. Malnutrition and excessive stress are the main reasons.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

Current belief is that most adults of the time died of trauma.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Seriously, your source is the Daily Mail?!

The claim that "130,000 years ago basically no one survived past about 30" is not only idiotic, it is laughable.

First of all, the study was only on the teeth of Neandertals. And it claims, "In the Neanderthal culture there were just four adults past the age of 30 for every 10 young adults." OK, 4 over 30 to 10 under 30 is NOT the same "basically nobody." I'm not going to complain about people not understanding statistics, because these numbers are small enough you shouldn't need statistics to understand it.

Second, you missed the whole fucking point of the study which was: "However, when researchers turned to the European humans of the early Stone Age, they discovered that the ratio of older to younger adults was 20 to 10, meaning that many people were now living to have grandchildren."

Your horse shit about agriculture just shows you don't know when or where agriculture began, when the early Stone Age was, or what the difference between Neandertals and other Humans in Europe would be.

Normally I would encourage a person to try again, but please, do yourself a favor, stop trying; you don't understand anthropological information even when you find a weak media report about a study.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Hognoxious]

Have you tried anything other than standard white rice? Wild brown rice, Thai red, Italian black...

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[HiThere]

If you don't like a boiled egg without salt, then you're overcooking the egg. It shouldn't need ANY seasoning while still warm, and even after refrigeration many other choices are as good as salt. But if you overcook it, nothing much will rescue it, and salt can ameliorate the result.

For roasted potatoes try sprinkling some granulated garlic or mild chili pepper on them. Or Italian herbs. No salt needed, or, by me, desired.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[HiThere]

Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get too little sodium in your diet? This isn't true if you are laboring outside under a blazing sun in a temperature in the 90's (F), but for those who work indoors one can have real difficulty in getting too little salt to be healthy. My wife generally tries to hold her salt down to 300 mg/day. This worried me, but her doctor examined her blood serum level and said it was ideal. Still, she doesn't sweat much, and never works outside.

The normal diet is excessive in salt. How much excessive is subject to argument, as there are always tradeoffs, and people aren't all identical. I do OK generally following my wife's diet, but using a bit of soy sauce (SALT!) occasionally. But then I don't dig ditches outdoors in high temperatures.

I don't think I've seen a case of heat prostration in my life. but that's the most common medical problem caused by lack of salt. However the normal diet is so high in salt that most people are at no risk of that. They're more likely to suffer kidney damage (often not reversable) that comes due to excessive salt. If this is mild it may not be noticed without explicit tests, but it increases irritability and decreases brain function. How much depends on how severe the disease. It's an apparently continuous scale all the way from minimal change up to death (though it's usually detected and treated long before that).

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

>Do you have ANY idea how hard it is to get too little sodium in your diet?

Yes. Cooking for myself I have control over my macronutrient intake, fat type intake and micronutrient intake. If I have too little salt or magnesium I start to cramp. Popping a magnesium pill and taking some salt fixes it quickly. This happens when I'm working in the sun and sweating a lot.

I avoid pre-packaged foods, I buy ingredients. So I don't suffer from the bad food constituents of those foods.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Altus]

But France has a life expectancy that is almost as long as Japan and they use a TON of butter.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[JimFive]

Then pack their lunch and let them eat that. The government doesn't MAKE your kids eat the school provided lunch.
--
JimFive

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

I live in Cape Town and I'm not nearly as active as I ought to be :P

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

I just eat quite a lot of actual Kelp. I love sushi.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

I would just love to see your citation for this. Because there are people still in the world today who live very much as we did in the paleo era, genuine hunter-gatherer societies still exist: and they rarely live to be old.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

Wouldn't surprise me, but just because you were likely to get gored by a buffalo before your diet did you in, that doesn't mean the diet wouldn't do you in if you managed to avoid all the buffaloes.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[rainer_d]

It's available here (Switzerland) in organic shops.

It's even available unpasteurized - it's the closest thing to raw cow-milk fresh from the source you can get.

I've reduced my milk-consumption semi-recently (I eat yoghurt, butter, cheese and I'm not a calf, so I don't need to consume a combined half a liter every day) and the non-pasteurized milk goes bad in about three days.
So, I don't buy it anymore because I don't drink enough of it before it goes bad. But it's delicious.

For infants, I'd boil it.

But when I was a kid, we used to get the raw milk directly from a farmer and I often consumed it raw, unboiled.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[iMadeGhostzilla]

There's no evidence of any sort to support that line of thinking of what would have been, as far as I know. What you're saying is possible in principle, but so are infinite number of other things.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

Low carb is more similiar to what people ate before the obesity epidemic? Bread and rice have been major staples in humanities diet for thousands of years.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

Why do we need to factor out child mortality? Pretty sure more kids make it to adulthood now because they are healthier.

Seems like you're trying to doctor your data to fit the world view you want to have.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

Sure, that's why the obesity epidemic is recent but grains (bread and rice) have been the staple of human diets for thousands of years.

It all makes sense when you turn a blind eye to thousands of years of history!

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nasch]

Neither pasteurization nor homogenization is a chemical process. And it makes no sense to claim the cream is homogenized and then added back to the milk, which indicates you have no idea what homogenization is.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[omfglearntoplay]

Yep. Giving kids cheap unhealthy food at school should be a crime. And I am shocked at how little outdoor time/physical activity my kids get. They are allowed outside about 1/5 the amount I was when I was in elementary school. Even more a problem because the before/after care places almost never let them play outside either. Everything is reducing physical activity and increasing junky food. Only the rich who send their kids to private schools are avoiding that very well in my state (in the US) from what I see.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nasch]

Besides water, skim milk contains protein and sugar.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nasch]

We got milk delivered from a local dairy for a while in the early 2000s but it was too expensive.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nasch]

Well of course you were disgusted, you were drinking the disgusting varieties of milk! If you had stuck to 1 or 2 percent, you would have been fine. ;-)

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[sexconker]

I don't eat a paleo diet by any stretch of the imagination. But you're wrong.

You said:

As opposed to the Paleo nuts who claim 6000 calories a day will cause weight loss, while 2000 calories a day will cause weigh gain (so long as the 6000 calories are carb-free, and the 2000 calories is heavy in fiber)?

You mock "Paleo nuts" for some imagined claim, yet your own claim (that X calories can't cause weight loss compared to Y calories if X > Y) is wrong. Without specifying the makeup of calories, you can't make such a claim based solely on the number of calories. Unless you're also putting your piss and shit through a bomb calorimeter and subtracting the output from the input.

https://www.scientificamerican...

Have you never taken a shit that was huge and a direct result of the food you ate prior? Have you never noticed some turds floating and others sinking like stones? Input does not equal weight gain (or loss). Input minus activity does not equal weight gain (or loss). You can mock "Paleo nuts" all you want, but they're smarter than you. I'll mock them because they can't enjoy delicious things like a good pizza crust or a fresh doughnut.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[baegucb]

Tastes the same to me ;)

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

Many others have pointed out that "homogenization" is a mechanical process of pushing cream through a screen to break it down to smaller pieces that don't clump or rise. You can treat cream for homogenization while it's whole milk, or separately. Apparently it's you who doesn't know what it is. Here, I've been told that the process does include an emulsifier that helps keep the separation, which was what I was referring to. Apparently the process here is vastly different than the US.

It appears people disagree more with the implications than the facts. Milk can be made by separating the parts, treating them separately, then mixing them back together. Some places do it that way, some places don't. Apparently, they can't do it here the way they do because in parts of the US Slashdotters live don't do it that way.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

Yes. The same process that gets the fat to distribute evenly in the milk gets it to spread around inside your mouth. That is a greasy film left in your mouth by the homogenization. That you've never noticed doesn't mean it doesn't happen. What magic does your milk have where homogenization distributes fat in water (milk) but not in water (saliva)?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[nasch]

Even if there's an emulsifier used, you can't homogenize the cream, add it back to the milk, and get homogenized milk. There has to be a process when the cream and the milk are together, even if it is just mixing in the presence of an emulsifier, and not forcing through a screen. Where did you find the info on the process in your locale? (Also your claim was "all milk is skim", apparently based on your local practices, so it's a bit rich to then complain that things are different where you live)

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Trogre]

So you send them with packed lunches and the problem goes away, right?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[yuriklastalov]

But what if the locals do it wrong? What then, Mr. Libertarian? Hmmmmmm? Next you're going to tell me people have a choice to live wherever they want, which is wrong because obviously. The fact of the matter is that the stupid peasants should be unilaterally subjected to whatever flights of fancy their intellectual superiors have devised this month. If they don't like it, just scream "IT'S SCIENCE" until they give up and go away.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[lucm]

Given that large food concerns are opposed to the policies that logically follow from it I doubt they particularly lobbied for it.

That's not how it went down. The various groups didn't "lobby for it", they lobbied against it until the USDA finally came up with a version that was acceptable for all the lobbies.

You would immediately denounce the influence of lobbies if the government was to release a pyramid that would suggest 4h of TV, 2h of social media, 1h of videopoker and 30 minutes of book reading per day for a healthy lifestyle. But that's exactly what they did for food.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[aberglas]

Of course they cannot play outside. Health and safety. Not to mention the deadly radiation emitted by the sun.

But they are welcome to watch pictures of kids playing outside on their devices.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[aberglas]

Where "obese" is defined to have more than 1 oz of fat on their bodies...

It is 90% fashion, 10% science.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[aberglas]

But their lives would seem to be a lot longer if they cut out the butter.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Groups that rarely have birth records are rarely recorded with verified ages.

Groups that have good records, have individuals who reach the same old ages as humans anywhere else today. The average is slightly reduced, and surely there is an increased period of reduced health at the end of life.

If they drink a lot of alcohol, their lifespans will be substantially reduced. Drinking is a much bigger lifestyle problem than living in the jungle eating grubs, from a health perspective.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Well, you're certainly welcome to consider oranges separately from the apples. They have lots of interesting qualities.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[amiga3D]

You're in a bad mood, aren't you?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[jandersen]

"Obese" is a well defined, medical term - look it up. I know there is some controversy over how fit for purpose the definition is, but there is no doubt what it means at all. And arguably, whether your BMI is 33 or higher because of an abundance of fat or because of muscles that have been artificially pumped up with hormones, it is likely to affect your health negatively.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

No, you're eliminating data points to accommodate your world view. That's great you want to harbor your delusions but please keep them to yourself and refrain from voting.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Hilarious! My country's life expectancy is around eighty two or so. Recent hunter-gatherer estimate is around fifty five after reaching the age of fifteen (i.e., discounting child mortality). That's actually around thirty years fewer. Be glad that we're not discussing neolithic populations. Clearly YOU suck at paleodemography. I've never NOT filtered out child mortality, it's a GIVEN that you have to do that, but the massive difference is there anyway.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[lsatenstein]

It is the MacDonalds, BurgerKing,A&W fats from the hamburgers, fries and sauces. And some pizzas loaded with bacon bits, pepperoni and synthetic cheeses. To make these foods taste good, they are loaded with salt. especially the fries.

My view is that Trump has a dislike of the middle and poor classes and a hatred for Obama since the day Obama got him back with the birth certificate embarrassment. Now Trump, who he himself is a fat guy, will insure his kids eat well, and will have limited junk food and fuck the rest. Fat people don't die young, and don't live to be old.

 

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

The evidence-based solution is low carb, high fat diets, which actually DO reduce obesity, unlike low fat, high carb diets, which promote obesity.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[vandamme]

You forgot alcohol.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[HiThere]

OK. If you work in the sun and sweat a lot, that's reasonable. Sweat glands are a lot less conservative of salt, etc., than are the kidneys.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Unfortunately, you were unable to read the chart labeled "Figure 1," and so you don't realize that that citation verifies my claim.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[serbanp]

Don't be stupid. MOST milk you can buy in a carton in US is UHT. What do you think "UltraPasteurized" means and how does it have a shelf life (in the fridge, but that's just for the show) measured in months?

Here in the Bay Area most milk is UP, but some of it (notably Clover) is simply pasteurized and goes bad in 2-3 weeks.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

No no no, it's beans, bacon, whisky and lard!

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I think the most important thing to realize is that salt should be a flavor enhancer, not a flavor by itself. If you can taste the salt, you've added to much. Personally, I prefer to use good quality soy sauce or other salty-tasting ingredients, that aren't simply just NaCl.

It's the same thing with sugar. It's a flavor enhancer and should be used sparingly (and it works wonders in bolognese sauce), and I much prefer to use something like honey instead.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

No, you have to eliminate variables other than the one you're looking at, or there is no way to isolate any signal in the data.

You're right in your implication that using your world view as a basis for identifying confounding variables would be bad. But I wasn't actually even having ideas, man. Read a book sometime, will you?

If the context is "health effects of paleo diet compared to other modern diet choices" and there is a claim being made that people didn't live as long on that diet, it is just not supported by the known facts. The known facts are not that people had a shorter maximum life expectancy. People who died of old age are believed to have been dying at close to the same age as modern humans. Child mortality obviously has little to do with dietary choices. If you starve, you didn't choose the wrong foods. It isn't related to food choices. If you're gored by a woolly rhino or eaten by a cave bear, that tells us nothing about your diet. If Grog smashes your head in with a rock because attempting communication with you is frustrating, that tells us nothing about your diet choices. Only if you make it to the end of your natural life do we discover what the result of your diet choices was.

And they were all getting a lot of exercise and eating a varied diet by necessity. Their diet was fine. They had a lot of disease, a lot of parasites, and strong immune systems.

When Dufus Realitycouch stops eating vegetables and declares he's gone paleo, the health outcomes are different. And office workers are not going to do much better unless their hobbies are seriously hardcore.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

If you can taste the salt, you've absolutely added way too much. Salt should be a flavor enhancer, not a flavor by itself. You've got the right amount of salt when all the other flavors seems to sort of meld together and the overall taste just tastes that bit more like itself than it did before.

Personally, I prefer soy sauce or fish sauce or similar salty ingredients over straight NaCl, whenever possible.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Citations are definitely needed here.

Do you have any actual proof at all that whole grains are not healthier than processed grains?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[silentcoder]

Same here, on those occasions where I feel a bit of salt is needed - I would rather add it in the form of a savoury ingredient with other flavours. The weirdest thing in the world though to me is people sprinkling salt on seafood... seafood is already salty !

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

" Child mortality obviously has little to do with dietary choices."

That is the core of your point and is so blatantly wrong I dont understand how you can say it. Malnutrition almost never equals death directly, what it does equal is being weaker and less able to defend oneself from disease, parasites, and environmental dangers all of which we have very neat solutions to nowadays so that even if you're weak you still probably wont die from any of these hazards.

How about I turn about another way? What explains the high child mortality rates you want to cut from the equation?

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[houghi]

I only use salt to boil my spagetti. For the rest no salt.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Bartles]

I can't buy milk in a carton here in wisconsin if I tried.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Malnutrition doesn't result from diet choices, it results from insufficient access to food. If you were trying to choose a different Mediterranean diet and couldn't find enough food, that is the same as if you're trying to eat a Paleo diet and couldn't find enough food.

If you want to compare diets, you have to compare what happens when you do eat that diet, not when you fail to eat that diet. If you only eat Woolly Rhino and you can't find any Woolly Rhino and you die of starvation that tells us nothing fucking at all about the healthfulness of a diet that did in fact consist of Woolly Fucking Rhino.

That's why you should stop trying to think, and start trying to learn what the fuck is going on around you.

And what explains high mortality rates of Woolly Rhino hunters is that hunting Woolly Rhino is fucking hard. And when the next tribe over shows up to club you over the head, you might just run as fast as you can and leave Jr. behind with anybody else that can't run fast enough to escape, because life in forest is fucking hard. And it isn't hard because of your food choices.

And people who do have enough food, and do have physical security, lived to about the same max age as modern people.

Next you'll probably discover that Russian food is unhealthy because lots of Russian men die in their 50s. Or do we have to consider confounding variables?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[cheesybagel]

BS. I know plenty of diabetics which were never fat at all. Plus you get fat by having a high caloric intake. You get fat regardless if your calories come from fat or sugar or whatever. Diabetes itself is measured as the amount of glucose on the blood and that comes from carbohydrate consumption. Having more fatty tissues in your body makes you more insensitive to insulin, which can supposedly lead to diabetes, but consuming fat per se has little to do with it, the problem is elevated caloric intake. There are also plenty of people "reversing" diabetes type 2 with high-protein high-fat diets with even better results. Google 'ketogenic diet' and 'ketosis'.

The only reason doctors recommend diabetics not to consume fat is because diabetics typically have higher sensitivity to cardiovascular disease. But that isn't an issue if you eating fatty rich fish because of the lipid profile.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

Oh, I see. You're making up a fantasy scenario to support your claim now. Where's your data?

There have always been outliers of people who live longer then everyone else around them. That fact is the norm was to die young for paleolithic man and that norm continued through the agricultural revolution and up until the 20th century when people started eating more varied diets.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Aighearach]

Read. A. Book. Someday. Please.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[skam240]

Write a sentence properly, someday, please.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[serbanp]

So how is it sold in Winsconsin? Plastic bags, jugs, glass bottles, udders (squeeze-it-yourself style)?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

>Do you have any actual proof at all that whole grains are not healthier than processed grains?

We could start with understanding the difference between whole/partial and processed/not processed.

Flour in any form, whether the whole grain or not is processed. White flour is partial and processed. Whole grain flour is whole and processed.
Wholeness of the grain has to do with the presence of the whole grain. Processing has to do with the extent to which it has been physically or chemically altered.

I subscribe to the established (by science!) fact that wheat agglutin is an insulin mimetic and to a greater or lesser extent this interacts with the stomach lining in not-good ways. The presence of the kernel, husk and/or kitchen sink don't alter the presence of the wheat agglutin. The rate at which it fettles your glycemic load does not alter the number of wheat agglutin molecules that are present. You might have western metabolic disorder and then the carbs are bad for you. That's a different issue entirely.

The extent to which it interacts with your innards depends heavily on who you are. Western Europeans and middle easterners for instance have had many more thousands of years to adapt to wheat than in the far East for instance. But it varies widely from individual to individual. The science is fascinating.

I could go and dig up the papers and analysis by smarter people than me that led me down this path of understanding, but it's Sunday evening, I didn't keep copious notes and I'm not going digging right now.

Being sciency, I'm open to new data and better science but the balance right now is wheat is a problem. The carb/glucose/fructose = bad thing is much more problematic, since there are well documented cases of people with obesity problems improving their situation by both going to high fat/no carb and by going to no-fat/high carb/high sugar and of course there are all the skinny people who eat what they want. If was a simple case of carbs make people fat, this would not be the case. Low carb works for me, but I don't pretend to understand the whole shebang and I don't think anyone does.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

I subscribe to the established (by science!) fact that wheat agglutin is an insulin mimetic and to a greater or lesser extent this interacts with the stomach lining in not-good ways.

Citation, please.

You might have western metabolic disorder and then the carbs are bad for you. That's a different issue entirely.

Citation, please.

I could go and dig up the papers and analysis by smarter people than me that led me down this path of understanding, but it's Sunday evening, I didn't keep copious notes and I'm not going digging right now.

So you have plenty of time to write long posts, but not enough to post a few links to studies that back up your claims.

Again: Citations, please.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[Gussington]

My diet: eat real foods, including ... Avoid processed foods, including...

Why?
The "eat real food" mantra is well worn, but I've never seen any science to back it up. Sure it sounds right on the surface, I mean surely fresh food must be better for you than something in a tin, but is it? I eat whatever, tinned, packet, fresh, I don't care, I'm hungry I eat and my body seems to deal with it just fine.
How much if this is based on real science and how much of it is feel good hipster dieting fads?

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[Marxist Hacker 42]

One that is being used by the diabetic community is the idea of glycemic load- how much does your blood sugar go up when you eat certain foods. Oh yeah, and sugar is just refined carbs.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[TechyImmigrant]

Maybe later after I get home from work. You could google this stuff if you wanted.

Re: Low fat whole grain?

[KozmoStevnNaut]

No, I'm afraid I don't have the energy, due to my conventional, balanced diet. /s

Ketchup is a foodgroup

[Billly Gates]

In the spirit of Saint Reagan

Re:Ketchup is a foodgroup

[hairyfeet]

Oh give me a break! They were trying to push a low fat high fiber diet which is great for 50 year olds but for poor kids whose school lunch may be the only decent meal they get? Not so much. Remember these are FOR KIDS, kids that are burning energy and growing...growing bodies need calories and fat more than some 40 year old parked in front of a PC monitor all day.

The only thing on Obama's rules I agreed with was lowering the salt but even then I could see it causing major issues as its damned hard these days to find any processed food that isn't just loaded all to hell with salt and when you are feeding 400+ kids? You can't just pop over to the farmer's market a couple times a week for sides.

Re:Ketchup is a foodgroup

[dave420]

You might disagree with the rules, but the swathes of nutritionists involved in writing them don't share your concerns. You are complaining about solved problems and unfairly ascribing ignorance.

Re:Ketchup is a foodgroup

[religionofpeas]

The rules are largely written by processed food industry representatives, with the help of some paid research. Remember how trans fats were touted as a healthy alternative to saturated fats ?

Moo-shelle Obola!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ever see that TSA South Park episode? Yeeeeeeaaaah.

Giving parents more control

[Okian Warrior]

In the spirit of Saint Reagan

Oh, be fair.

The regulations were many, and often at odds with each other and at odds with the goals of School Nutrition Association. It was pushed by Michelle Obama with little or no input from nutrition experts or the aforementioned group, and caused so much anger with it's one-sided dictates that Michelle's "food policy czar" was asked not to speak/hand out awards at the SNA association dinner.

School regulations are the purview of state, not federal. It's much *much* better when the local population has a say in how their kids get schooled. Common core and "no child left behind" was a disaster.

Schools are better off managed at the local level.

Everyone knows that.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Frank Burly]

Schools are managed at the local level. Whether they are better off depends on whether or not you live in Kansas.

Regardless, nutrition is reasonably well understood and not something for which we need 50 laboratories of ideas. Something like 0% of American kids are sodium deficient and my fingers are too fat to google what percent are obese.

Regarding the SNA's preference not to have the "food czar" present an award and the SNA's (very related) preference for the status quo ante:

Nineteen former SNA presidents wrote a letter of dissent and several expressed worry that the food industry was unduly influencing the association’s position, for which it was aggressively lobbying on Capitol Hill — moves that led the White House to believe that most school nutrition leaders are on its team and agree with the changes.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/07/white-house-school-nutrition-association-108874

But there is no denying that Trump is, as the kids say, salty.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

"School regulations are the purview of state, not federal. It's much *much* better when the local population has a say in how their kids get schooled"

No it's not, that's how we ended up with the garbage they were and / or are serving now. That's literally why these steps were taken because local government wasnt doing anything. Sure, I loved nacho day when I was a kid but when I think back on the food in my school cafeteria I cant believe that they were feeding us that shit and from everything I've ever read my school's menu was normal by American standards. We have a health epidemic of childhood obesity in this country and school menus are most certainly a contributor, particularly for low income kids who are more prone to obesity and depend on free school lunches for a "proper meal". The "locals decide the menu" method has shown itself to be a complete failure.

And for the nutrition nerds out there, I dont think the Obama era rules are perfect but they are most certainly better then what most schools were offering.

Aaaaand I just read your Breitbart article which you apparently did not, Right there in the article:

"Nineteen former SNA presidents wrote a letter against the waiver rider and asserted they were wary of the influence of the food industry on SNA’s position. Half of SNA’s operating budget comes from the food industry. With 55,000 members across the nation, SNA is fighting the new nutrition regulations, which include limits on sodium and orders students to have a serving of fruit or vegetables so their school is eligible for USDA reimbursement. "

So yeah, SNA is not so creditable you hack.

Re:Giving parents more control

[zieroh]

Schools are managed at the local level. Whether they are better off depends on whether or not you live in Kansas.

I admit it, I laughed. Schadenfreude is a powerful thing, you know?

Re:Giving parents more control

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Breitbart is so news worthy. Little cuck go back to your alternative facts.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Sarten-X]

School regulations are the purview of state, not federal. It's much *much* better when the local population has a say in how their kids get schooled. Common core and "no child left behind" was a disaster.

Schools are better off managed at the local level.

Everyone knows that.

I call bullshit.

What actually happens is that local school administrators think they're better off, because they can put more money into the football program and cut out that high-falutin' nerd crap. After all, kids just don't need that fancy electronic stuff to run the farm. It was good enough for their grandpa, good enough for their pa, and it's good enough for them.

Yes, it's a stereotype, but all too often it holds true. Under the banners claiming "locals know best" and "parents know best", you find an army of last-generation people whose education hasn't actually progressed since the 1970s. The myths they grew up with become fact in their mind, and the priorities and politics of their small-town local life becomes the focus of a stagnated culture. Without mandates and guidance from an emotionally- and geographically-detached administration, the local schools are far more likely to base the curriculum on a local economy, effectively denying their students the skills needed to participate in a modern global society.

I was fortunate enough to have grown up in one of the outliers. In my area, the school superintendent had been an engineer for the government, and had moved around the country before settling in my little farming town. Previously, the school had used a curriculum focused on American history, home ec, and shop class, but the new administration fought to diversify the programs. We got a new arts program, computer lab, and even (much to parents' disgust) made wood shop an elective!

The end result was that is was possible for a student to learn more than their family's farming trade, and eventually afford to actually leave the town. The immediate effect was that there was a "lost generation", where graduates left the town, either for college or for jobs elsewhere. In the longer term, however, those students ended up being the most successful, with some of the highest-paid careers the school has ever produced.

In comparison, the neighboring district generally held that a proper education focused on physical strength and good morals. Last I heard, a drought had devastated their local farming economy, and the district had about 85% population below the poverty line.

A modern workforce demands a diverse skill set, and having a self-reinforcing education system eliminates opportunities for the students' skill set to widen. Schools are better off managed with input from all levels, providing students with options to make their own course through life.

Everyone knows that.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Oceanplexian]

Kansas actually has a better public education system than most other states, including California. People from Kansas would love it if Californians didn't try to tell them how to run their schools or what to feed their kids. Nutrition is almost certainly an emerging science and a laboratory of ideas, and it's a perfect example of why public schools need to remain local, community institutions and not as yet another expansion of the federal government.

Re:Giving parents more control

[JWW]

Bullshit. My kids reported that the meals at school turned completely awful after these regulations were put in place. Tiny helping of whole grain crappy, super bland food. Lots ended up in the garbage.

Re:Giving parents more control

[I'm New Around Here]

But it was super healthy garbage. That's what counts.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

Your completely anecdotal (and probably politically bias) review of school food has been noted (and lets face it, kids love junk food and will complain about getting switched off of it). I will continue to celebrate any measure taken to help combat the childhood obesity epidemic in our country.

If your kids were getting the same school food I was getting when I was a kid you werent doing them any favors by buying it for them. If they don't like the new stuff then maybe pack them a lunch? It's cheaper and can be healthier. It's probably what your parents did when you were a kid and is super simple to do.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Slalomsk8er]

Tomatoes are a berry so it is highly concentrated and sugar laced fruit juice - fruit = healthy ;)

Re:Giving parents more control

[Darinbob]

This is a good point. Cafeteria food for the most part is for students from low income families. The school lunch may be the healthiest meal they get all day. In many poor neighborhoods you can't even get fresh fruit and vegetables at the local stores. If someone doesn't like the food at school then there is the option for the parents to supply something better if they can afford it. If the parents can't afford anything other than the discounted school lunch then they should be glad their kids get something nutritious.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Anonymous Coward]

In other news, my drug addict cousin complains that Methadone is just shit compared to Oxycontin and heroin.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Anonymous Coward]

Collectivist hack. Just plain wrong and proud of it. Kids were in active revolt to Michelle Obama's food diktat, and generally supported by parents and educators.

You're just another butt-hurt socialist who needs to tell other people how to live their lives and gets offended when they laugh at him.

Well Ha Ha.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Opportunist]

Of course kids love junk food. Welcome to our evolutionary baggage where it was a survival trait to enjoy food that is high in calories.

The difference is that today there are no starvation times when we have to survive on what's around our waist.

Re:Giving parents more control

[thegarbz]

My favourite was spring rolls. If the trans-fats didn't turn the paper bag see-through before you even bit into it then frankly it wasn't good enough. I ate one recently. Almost gagged with the amount of fat and salt on it.

Re:Giving parents more control

[djinn6]

The end result was that is was possible for a student to learn more than their family's farming trade, and eventually afford to actually leave the town.

That's great for the students, but from the town's perspective, they just lost all of their best and brightest to the global economy. Most of those kids won't be coming back as working adults. It's happened all across the US: these towns get smaller and smaller until they're left with a ghost town.

They might be wrong, but I don't think you can really fault them for protecting their own best interests.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Opportunist]

What the GP said is that if you don't introduce your kids to "good" foods and only feed them "bad" ones, they will crave the "bad" ones. Which are unfortunately, evolutionary speaking, the "good" ones. The ones with lots and lots of calories that make you fat so you can survive those times when food is scarce where all the ones that didn't like to eat the greasy "junk" die of starvation.

Unfortunately there are no times where food is scarce anymore, so our evolutionary "advantage" comes to bite us in the fat ass.

Re:Giving parents more control

[shilly]

If you're asking others to be fair, you might be fair yourself and acknowledge that the School Nutrition Association is not some dispassionate group of experts with no skin in this game, but is instead funded by corporations that can profit more from the new regime than from the old.

Re:Giving parents more control

[pmotuja]

If you create a good environment, good memories, even encourage kids to leave town...eventually some of these bright minds might just come home... Maybe consider making sports part of a background of a larger group of after school activities. Don't make the music program revolve around (and depend on) the football program. Stop using simpleton phrases like jocks and nerds entirely. Maybe teach what we don't know instead of blunting kids over the head with deductive thinking.

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

I won't doubt that locals were doing a poor job of managing school lunches but they are the ones that should control it. If it is an issue that you feel strongly about, going to each district and convince them of a better standard is the best approach instead of coming from the Federal government. Just like passing prohibition, it didn't start at the federal level. If the solution you have is best (or in this case menu) getting enough people to follow that will eventually lead to a national policy standard.

This is my main contention with anything from a top down perspective. People should be in charge of their government institutions for better or worse. Local institutions are closer to the people and should be managed by those people that are serviced by those institutions. Federal directives and standards should be the very last step to simplify interstate commerce and welfare, not the starting point. If you start at the federal level you will galvanize the topic and piss off half the people which will eventually lead to a repeal of that topic/idea/standard no matter how good it is.

Re:Giving parents more control

[hierofalcon]

Same thing happened in our schools. We feed our kids pretty well at home - definitely more healthy than the average American. The trouble is that cooking healthy meals is more expensive and school systems can't afford it. Here, to try to get the balance they needed, the schools were serving overripe bananas, apples that had gone soft, and other crap that they could buy cheap because it was well past its prime. It isn't that they couldn't do a good meal on the new plan - it's that nobody wants to pay for the cost of doing that. So yes - a lot of stuff ended up in the garbage.

One meal at school isn't going to make a difference in your kids lives either way. I grew up in the days we looked forward to the days we had cinnamon rolls smothered in frosting. Maybe the meals weren't perfect on the Obama scale. But we actually ate most of them. The cafeteria food in college was good too and most didn't go to waste - except for a food fight I remember just missing. Bake schools at elementary schools are mostly a thing of the past around here as well. Nothing wrong with homemade cookies - they have lots of healthy ingredients in them. The things they substituted to try to raise money were failures.

The problem is all the rest of the junk food kids eat - whether that is what they are living on at home (McD breakfast and dinner?), bags of chips, oversize sodas, and the like. In my day, nothing was supersized except on Thanksgiving. Restaurant portions were smaller and healthier. Lots has changed for the worse outside of the school day. And get off my lawn!

It's better to give the kids a meal they will eat than to give them garbage that gets thrown away. This is especially true for kids who may not get another decent meal at all.

Re:Giving parents more control

[pkuyken]

It may be anecdotal, but when I have three kids, including my 5 year old, that will eat damn near anything says that the food at the cafeteria is terrible I have to take them at face value. (You can't call a kid picky that will sushi, escargot, frog legs, oysters, etc.) While I'm not saying that cafeteria food was fine dining before the Obama regulations, at least kids would eat it. For those saying cafeteria food is mainly for the low income families, that may be so, but when the garbage can contains more "healthy" food than what ends up in kids, you're still not doing them any good.

Re:Giving parents more control

[religionofpeas]

The problem with most junk food is that it's both high in carbs, as well as fat. That's a combination that's very rare in nature, but it's very addictive. When you eat such a combination, the carbs will provoke an insulin response, which causes the fat to be stored, and the sugar to be used as immediate fuel, as well as converted to glycogen. Fat burning is reduced, because high blood sugar is more dangerous to the body than high fat.

After a while, the fat is stored, and the sugar is partly used, partly stored, and blood sugar starts to drop again. The body starts sending out hunger signals, while reluctantly burning some fat. You start eating again and the process starts again.

Because the body doesn't burn much fat (there's a constant supply of sugar), it reduces the number of enzymes required to burn fat, so it becomes more dependent on the sugar. This reinforces the cycle.

If you cut back on carbs, it takes a few weeks for the body to adapt to increased fat metabolism, but after that you have much reduced hunger, and less need for carbs. Weight falls off easily.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Opportunist]

Great analysis of the problem. But I guess most people who actually care already knew this. The key question remains how to solve it.

Since we can't tackle the problem with the calorie intake, maybe we should try to do something for the burning? The fun part is that when you're already overweight, a little exercise already burns quite a few calories, since you have to haul about way more mass than the skinny ones.

Why can't we let our kids play like they used to? You know, outdoors, running about, burning those calories as quickly as they were consumed, instead of labeling every child that is acting like one a ADHD "sufferer" and pump enough Ritalin into them to put them into a stupor.

Re:Giving parents more control

[apoc.famine]

I'm glad my dad, the straight D high school student, was wise enough to understand this. Yep, he pushed us kids to get a good education, and we've got 7 college degrees between 3 kids to show for it. Also the closest we live to that little town is an hour away. I'm a thousand miles away.
 
I don't keep up with my HS classmates anymore, because nothing has changed for them in the last two decades save more kids and more poverty. They still revel in the glory days of winning touchdowns and prom parties, while I'm flying around the country on business and exploring different cities.
 
I don't know how the town I grew up in is still there. I don't understand how it functions economically. Well, I guess I do. Families live in the same house for generations, long paid off. Hardly anyone buys new vehicles, and everyone spends their free time doing odd jobs and farming to make extra money. Dad has a big vegetable garden and beehives. Barters fish and game for favors and services. Gives Dale up the road a couple gallons of honey and ten pounds of venison and Dale drops of a dump truck of wood from the lot he's clearing, which dad cuts and splits.
 
Not a lot of leisure time, and always one step from economic disaster. The house my great grandparents bought when they immigrated to the country has been a hole in a ground for about a decade now. (Not owned by our family in a generation.) A former classmate was renting it and burned it down. The owners didn't have it insured, and don't have any money to replace it, so it's an overgrown hole in the ground now. It's not the only one either. Steady uptick of houses falling into disrepair and trailers replacing them. Trailers with mortgages, because there wasn't enough money for maintenance on the old house.
 
It's hard to be sad when these towns finally die, because they are literally falling down. If you don't have enough money to fix your roof, the solution isn't to get a mortgage on a trailer so you don't have to change your way of life. The solution is to retrain, reskill, and improve your quality of life. My family history is mining, machine shops, and dairy farming. My siblings and I have STEM degrees, plenty of employment options, and make very good money. Those people still trying to hang onto the past are missing out on life. I just don't get why refusal to change for the better is a thing.

Re:Giving parents more control

[WrongMonkey]

nutrition is reasonably well understood

oh really? REALLY?

Re:Giving parents more control

[wyHunter]

Clearly, you do not live in farm and ranch country. Farmers and ranchers KNOW how much technology drives their lives, and are, for the most part, happy with it because it helps them make more money. Their kids are also usually more articulate and intellegent than the idiots in suburbia. This has been my observation living in such an area - though of course, I cannot speak exhaustively on all farm and ranch areas, just the one where I live.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Anonymous Coward]

At our high school, they made us take a required serving of fruit or vegetables with the meal. Almost nobody ate it and a majority got thrown out. It got so bad that they started placing a bin 3 ft. after the check-out register where students could place the untarnished/unwanted fruit instead of throwing it out. That way, the school did the government required action of forcing the fruit/vegetable, but it didn't go to complete waste and could be donated to a food shelter instead of the landfill.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

Well for starters, using your one situation is probablematic because there are plenty of reasons you could be having your problem that dont equal "Obama food program is bad". Maybe you feed your kids too much junk so they dont like the taste of healthier fair (not trying to be rude but from my end it's a possibility). Or maybe your school district serves shitty lunches. There's absolutly nothing about more veggies, whole grains, and less salt that has to equel bad food and if you think so then please revisit my first "maybe".

And then you seem to be saying it's okay to serve your kids junk food for meals because it will make them happy. That doesnt seem like you're teaching them how to eat very well. Maybe try packing them a lunch, it's super easy and not terribly expensive

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

And states should be able to choose to have slaves and / or treat minorities in a descriminatory fashion too, right? There's a lot of people clamoring for repeal of the thirteenth ammendment, yeah? (The thirteenth ammendment which was ratified by southern state governments just after the civil war that were puppets of the federal government)

And federal directives on school lunches are not "the starting point". The starting point was in fact local control which has shown itself to be almost a complete failure. Furthermore, schools were still completely allowed to keep fueling the obesity epidemic in this country, they just couldnt do it with federal money. Shit, they could hand each kid a big hot tub of nacho cheese everyday when they came to school.

Re:Giving parents more control

[pkuyken]

But when I hear from other parents at the same school, and other parents hear the same message from kids at other schools maybe our kids aren't all full of crap at the same time. (Kids are often full of crap, so you have to play the numbers.) For our situation, we do pack lunches for them precisely because we actually want them to have something to eat that's healthy and palatable. Regardless of what we happen to feed our kids, having federal mandates over something that is not one of the limited and enumerated powers is yet another example of federal overreach and expansion of powers.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

"There's absolutly nothing about more veggies, whole grains, and less salt that has to equel bad food and if you think so then please revisit my first "maybe"."

Also, schools are free to feed their kids whatever they damn well want. They can hand a pint of ice cream and a plate of nachos to them every day when they walk in the door. The Obama era regulations just meant they couldnt use federal money or programs to feed kids garbage like that any more. There was zero federal over reach happening here.

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

And states should be able to choose to have slaves and / or treat minorities in a descriminatory fashion too, right?

So, because states violated personal liberties we shouldn't want states rights? Because the federal government has never abused individual liberty... -.- Which government is easier to change for people? The federal or local? This is a dumb argument and you know it. We are not ruled by the past and with power comes the ability to infringe on individual liberty. The feds do it just like the states.

There's a lot of people clamoring for repeal of the thirteenth ammendment, yeah?

I haven't seen any of them and obviously it wouldn't be enough to do... So unless you should me that there are enough people that this is a threat I think it is a bullshit statement.

The starting point was in fact local control which has shown itself to be almost a complete failure

For better or worse. Yes, I agree with you that they have done a horrible job but it is their job to fix. If you think that it is a problem that is an issue and you want to solve it you should convince the districts to be better.

they just couldnt do it with federal money.

And we are seeing that kind of action from the federal government challenged by cities that do not want to help the feds on immigration. Do you think that those cities are filing frivolous lawsuits? Many localities did reject federal funds but one issue is that the Department of Education still enforces very costly laws on those municipalities. You are forced, by federal law, to spend X money for Y reason and oh by the way if you don't like all our "optional" directives we can cut funding which can bankrupt the school. This is why people do not like the federal government messing with education.

Yes, childhood obesity is a problem and the schools share that blame but if you want to see real change that people can rally behind you don't do it from a top down federal initiative. You start at the local municipalities and change the people and not force them to change. Else you get those people pissed that elect people to smash your federal bureaucracy that is making their lives hard.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

No it's not a dumb arguement. (I dont have any interest in engaging you in the broader arguement you seem to want to talk about so I'll just stick to the issue.) Local government has failed on this topic. Furthermore, local government is still free to feed their kids whatever they want, they just have to pay for it themselves. I'm sorry you feel like the states and schools were being horribly oppressed by the Obama rules but they most certainly were not, the schools and states complaining just wanted to suckle at the federal teet but didnt want to be told how to do it.

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

I don't feel one way or another about Obama's rules tbh. I do understand the sentiment behind their repeal and I generally err on the side of states rights over the federal government for most issues. Yes, I agree that local governments have failed on this issue but the way those fixes from the federal government being pushed foster resentment and blow back, rightly or wrongly. I don't think Trump is doing this purely to spite Obama nor is it done in a vacuum. It is because this has been echoed in the GOP that gets their voters mad (whether that translates to votes or not I don't know). It's that whole "electing someone to smash the federal bureaucracy that makes their life hard".

If you pay taxes toward the federal government you want the benefits. It would be nice to only pay taxes for programs you want but it doesn't work that way. So yes, states want their cake and to eat it but again part of the issue is that there are other laws that force expenditures on local governments that put them between a rock and a hard place. They are free to choose what fatty foods they feed kids in as much an extortionee is free to not accept protection from the extortionist.

I think the discussion of states rights is part of the issue at hand because it is about what role the federal government has and what the responsibility is for the local governments. I wouldn't think that something as simple and as well understood as nutrition would be controversial but it is because of how it has been enacted.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

It isnt frick'n extortion. I keep telling you, the schools can feed the kids whatever they want. If I offer you 5 bucks and say you can only spend it on health food, am I extorting you? No.

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

If there is a law that is fiduciarily irresponsible that the only way to pay is by receiving federal funds then yes it is.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

Answer my question, If I offer you 5 bucks and say you can only spend it on health food, am I extorting you?

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

Again, it isn't the only federally mandated cost on the schools. IDEA ( Individuals with Disabilities Education Act), while laudable, puts a high cost on schools. If you are in a smaller district with minimal funds with these kinds of increases on costs are of concern in addition to other revenue sources and costs.

http://www.nea.org/home/19029....

The current average per student cost is $7,552 and the average cost per special education student is an additional $9,369 per student, or $16,921. Yet, in 2004, the federal government is providing local school districts with just under 20 percent of its commitment rather than the 40 percent specified by the law, creating a $10.6 billion shortfall for states and local school districts.

Over the past 10 years, the number of U.S. students enrolled in special education programs has risen 30 percent

Also, the decline in participation has an effect on the schools revenue. The school has to bear the cost. Since the program is by district and not by school this can cause problems for needier schools in the same district.

If you are a school faced with all these costs and are no longer financially secure, any revenue source must be looked at regardless whether you like the strings attached or not. Directly answering your question, no but when you add in the other federally mandated expenditures for financially struggling schools it becomes more and more like it.

Re:Giving parents more control

[UnderCoverPenguin]

It's much *much* better when the local population has a say in how their kids get schooled.

From my and my girlfriend's prospective, the Obama-era nutrition requirements are a mix of both bad and good.

Since we went to a private school, in theory, our parents - and the other kids' parents - had a say in what food was served in the school cafeteria, but, for budget reasons, the school bought food from the same vendors the public schools did, so what we got was only a little better than what the public school kids got. Slightly less added sugar and salt, and (slightly) leaner meats. As I recall, it cost the school about 25-30% more, but it was still cheap food. By standards of my and my girlfriend's families, it was still too heavy with salt, fat and grains. (We are part Native American, so, at home, we ate a version of our ancestors' diet: Berries and other fruits, leafy vegetables, lean meat (venison when possible) and a small amount of grains, mostly maize (aka "corn").)

Side notes:

Common core and "no child left behind" was a disaster.

1. Much as I hate "Common Core", I know that it was a multi-state initiative that the Obamas liked, so supported. But it was the creation of many states, not the Obama administration. The only blame I place on Obama for it is for not seeing it for the disaster it is.

2. Despite the idea behind "no child left behind" being admirable, the rules it put in place were disastrous. The effect of those rules was not limited to the schools that actually needed them. The rules also penalized schools that had artificially low rates of improvement: Either they had a high turn over (such as schools with a high portion of children of new immigrants), a small number of "special needs" students, and/or were already high performing. These situations skew the results.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

Sorry, you havent sold me a bit. If a state is going to take federal money it cant bitch and moan about strings being attached. It's the state's job to take care of this shit, if they aren't doing a good enough job it's not the federal government's fault.

Re:Giving parents more control

[penandpaper]

Sure. But I wouldn't be surprised when enough people get annoyed by federal policy's that make their life difficult and they elect someone to put those policy's to an end.

Re:Giving parents more control

[skam240]

No, I'm not surprised that people are dumb and self entitled enough to get upset with strings being attached to free help.

Re:Giving parents more control

[Gussington]

I just don't get why refusal to change for the better is a thing.

I have a similar story to you, and I thought about it many times yet have no answers. But at least be aware that you're not alone.

Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again, making afternoon class teachers and any student with afterschool activities happy again.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/6/1m-kids-stop-school-lunch-due-michelle-obamas-stan/

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[DogDude]

By that logic, why do we teach kids things they don't want to learn? Why not just teach them Snapchat?

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

No, "in other words" schools are again contributing to eating habits that will shorten children's lives. There's nothing wrong with encouraging eating habits that will help combat the childhood obesity epidemic in this country.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Mashiki]

Yes, because everyone wants to eat a couple of crackers, a piece of cauliflower and a few slices of meat. Which is considered a complete lunch under the Obama nutrition standards. I don't know about you, but when I was in school I would have been hungry again in about 45 minutes with that little food.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

Oh, you have link to photos? We should feed our kids crap food because you have links to photos of small meals then?

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you ever actually *met* a kid hyped up on sugar, let alone tried to make one behave? Now imagine a room full of them. I'm sure the teacher's are feeling something, but I doubt it's happiness.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[I'm New Around Here]

If you would rather your kids only have the meals shown in those two photos, instead of anything else schools had a decade ago, you are a moron.

Those two pictures, taken by the students themselves I'm sure, border on child abuse and neglect.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

Do you actually think those photos constitute definitive evidence of anything?

Here's some other photos

https://www.google.com/imgres?...

https://www.google.com/url?sa=...

https://www.google.com/search?...:

Looks like plenty of food to me!

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[AK Marc]

It's the "Starve the Beast" game. If you are selling a sloppy joe with 10g of salt, and a 600 mg salt limit, you cut out all other items and serve 6% of a sloppy joe, then complain about the quantity of the food.

For the same constraints, you could serve a huge meal. It would just have to have fresh fruit and vegies. Those are too fungible, if you sell an apple for $10 each, someone will notice that it's a rip off, but a $10 "sloppy joe meal" that costs $0.10 to make is less identifiably fraud by someone 1000 miles away.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[sexconker]

By that logic, why do we teach kids things they don't want to learn? Why not just teach them Snapchat?

It's sound logic, usually. Most of the shit they do teach them is useless, a lot of it is politically motivated indoctrination designed to instill the values of not thinking or at least thinking the "right" way. And of the useful shit, most can't learn it or will forget it soon after.

How many adults struggle with basic math? When was the last time they taught English grammar and spelling? But hey, they make kids memorize the states and capitals, the order of US Presidents, and other such useless things.

Remember when drivers ed classes had cars to practice in? Remember wood shop? Home ec? Can't have kids learning a basic stitch, basic cooking, or how to create a household budget.

The hippies were right. Schools are mindless conformity factories.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Aighearach]

Your photos are way better, I have to admit, the hippies win this one.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Aighearach]

Yeah, when I was a kid I could eat a whole basket of halloween candy in 30 minutes.

I can do better than meeting a kid, I was a kid!

I guarantee you, the crap they put in those lunches, people are suffering. Not just the adults, but a lot of the other kids.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[thegarbz]

In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again

Kids will not starve themselves regardless of what they will claim.

As for happiness, well you could just feed them all cocaine. That would make them happy too. What could go wrong right? If happiness is dependent solely on a diet of salt, fat, and high levels of sugar, that's not happiness. It's simply avoiding withdrawals from your horribly unhealthy addiction.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

This.

You can lead a donkey to the water, but you cannot make him drink. Likewise, you can offer healthy food to kids but guess what: They don't like it and will refuse it.

Remember when you were a kid? Remember when your parents packed you "something healthy" for the lunch break? What did you do? Eat it? Probably not. Throw it away and buy something else? More likely.

This is pretty much what happened after the change for "healthy" food. Kids simply said "this sucks" and refused to eat it. Instead they took their money to the next burger joint. The older the kids, the more likely. And there you had exactly ZERO control over what they'd eat.

It is far more sensible to provide a meal that they will enjoy where you still can slip in something healthy. I'd rather have a school offer grilled turkey, well seasoned on whole grain burger buns, with fresh veggies and kids eat it than them offering some bland tofu squares on leaf lettuce without any salt or taste that kids will go "meh" over and instead stuff their face with burgers and fries from the Wendy's around the corner.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

Once you have a way to test and grade their eating habits, that parallel actually works.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

Tell me how you want to force the kids to eat it. Until you can do that, they simply will not.

If you have kids, you should know that they can be surprisingly creative and incredibly stubborn when it comes to not eating what they do not want to eat.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

Have you ever met a kid cranky because he's hungry? I'd rather have one hyped up on sugar.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Trailer Trash]

In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again, making afternoon class teachers and any student with after school activities happy again.

Not only that, they can also eat *enough*. That was my kids' biggest problem: the amount of food that was served was nowhere near enough for a growing adolescent boy - the meals were perhaps 500 or 600 calories tops. I was eating 3000+ calories/day as a teenager, and weighed 128lbs. at 6ft. when I graduated high school.

My kids were always starving when they got home from school in middle school, thanks to Michelle Obama. They would tell me that when there were chicken nuggets they were allowed only 5 of them, so when the lunch lady would turn her back they would grab extras and put them in their pockets. After awhile I began to realize that the lunch lady was purposely turning completely around at intervals so the kids could steal nuggets. I never had the opportunity to thank her. But think of how pathetic that is.

I'm glad it's over. It's ridiculous, anyway. We're worried about the amount of "sodium" they get? I have never seen a study that links sodium intake in kids with any kind of ill effects. Ever. And fats? Kids *need* fats. Holy crap, how fucking stupid is this stuff? When the government started pushing the high-carb/low-fat diet we saw obesity sore, along with diabetes. Sigh.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[BlueStrat]

I'd rather have a school offer grilled turkey, well seasoned on whole grain burger buns, with fresh veggies and kids eat it than them offering some bland tofu squares on leaf lettuce without any salt or taste that kids will go "meh" over and instead stuff their face with burgers and fries from the Wendy's around the corner.

Government solution: Ban all fast-food businesses within walking distance of any public school.

Strat

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[geekmux]

In other words, schools are now allowed to serve stuff that kids will actually eat again, making afternoon class teachers and any student with afterschool activities happy again. http://www.washingtontimes.com...

In other words, we're reverting back because the "kids" say so.

Next years menu will include a pound of bacon-flavored ice cream with Ritalin sprinkles for breakfast, along with bong hits and an afternoon nap for lunch. I mean, whatever makes them happy, right?

Perhaps we should try and remember why we wait until a human mind is at least 18 years old before labeling it an "adult". Children quite often make fucking stupid decisions, which includes food choices (like throwing away fruits and vegetables).

The only thing this decision truly caters to is the Medical Industrial Complex, who will be raking in billions treating the ignorant masses who are obese and diabetic.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Anonymous Coward]

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you *jazz hands* dismiss an argument you don't agree with, and shut down the conversation. WINNING!

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

So kids will be late for afternoon courses because they have to walk further?

Hell, the smart ones will probably just hitch-hike. What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[DogDude]

By that logic, we shouldn't teach anything that can't be tested? No phys ed? No art?

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[BlueStrat]

Just hold classes at Mickey-D's!

Save everyone time, taxes, and trouble!

Strat

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

So the solution is to cave in and let the kids eat crap? That's terrible parenting.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

Your turkey burger scenario is literally the Obama era plan; veggies, low fat meat, whole grains. Your tofu scenario is fantasy you made up

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Areyoukiddingme]

By that logic, why do we teach kids things they don't want to learn?

Kids want to learn everything. They only learn to hate learning when you pack them into a room with 20 or 30 assholes (a.k.a. other kids) and subject them to Prussian factory learning. Kids who haven't had the love of learning beaten out of them are voracious sponges for knowledge. Hell, even the ones who have had the love of conventional learning beaten out of them still love to learn. Pick the right generation and you can find kids who can name every single frickin' Pokemon, their abilities, and their evolutions. That same kid will absolutely hate learning what she's supposed to learn, just because of the format it was presented in. (I say she because the lunatic Pokemon lover I knew personally was a girl.)

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Areyoukiddingme]

Remember when you were a kid? Remember when your parents packed you "something healthy" for the lunch break? What did you do? Eat it?

Yes. Yes. And yes.

You win that one when they're toddlers. As a parent, it's your job to win that one. When your two year old says, "No! I don't want it!" your answer is, "Eat it anyway. It's all you're going to get, and you're not leaving the table until you eat it." And that's how it must be. It's often the first test of wills between parent and child, and if you fail that test, you're a bad parent. If you lose, you're forever at a disadvantage when dealing with that child, because they learn that they can just be a little shit and you'll cave. That lesson goes deep, and can have disastrous consequences later in life.

I'm not saying you can't compromise later. Some textures, especially, kids just have a physical reaction to. Some kids can't handle lima beans. Others can't handle raw tomatoes. Most people grow out of it. But the fundamental dynamic must be you're the parent and they're the child and they'll eat what they're given and that's an end of it. That is the origin of the American childhood obesity epidemic. Single parents too rushed and harried with their new toddler to wait them out when that day comes. The result is a nation of McDonalds addicts and fat kids.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[BlueStrat]

Event trigger - faculty unions: demanding longer lunch breaks and closer parking, as now they have to drive to Wendy's. No winning.

How about simply abolishing public-sector unions? That would solve the problem at State run universities and public schools.

The entire concept of unionized government workers is revolting; Unions and politicians sit down together and decide how much of *your* money the politicians will give the unions in exchange for how much the unions will spend in campaign contributions, lobbyists, and plain old kickbacks to those same politicians while they all laugh their asses off at the stupid, gullible public they're raping six ways from Sunday.

Strat

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

it's funny you say it like that. Where I come from sensible eating isnt hippie shit, it's sensible eating. Shit, one of my photos has tatter tots in it and I don't see any tofu or granola in any of the photos.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

As an added plus, a lot of the students will already get accustomed to the atmosphere in their future career.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

When your two year old says, "No! I don't want it!" your answer is, "Eat it anyway. It's all you're going to get, and you're not leaving the table until you eat it." And that's how it must be.

We'll talk again when you have kids yourself.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

No, of course you could just use a ring-gag on them and stuff whatever you want them to eat into them.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

I think you're onto something.

By the way, I got graded in both of them. So yes, it is possible. Not very sensible, but possible.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Trailer Trash]

I have to call BS on that one - 128 lbs and 6 feet tall? I was 122 lbs and 5 foot 6 and I was thin.

I wasn't "thin", I was skinny. I don't know how I survived.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[skam240]

"Telling kids they cant eat junk food is hard!" :(((((((((((((((

Give me a break... Try some parenting.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That's how I was raised, and it worked. There is hardly any food I will not eat, or at least try once, and I absolutely love cooking delicious homemade (and healthy!) meals.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

Really?

Folks? We found the person this treatment worked on! Stop looking!

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Your parents are not supposed to be your friends while you're growing up. They're your parents, they make the decisions for you, because they (hopefully) know what's best for you. It might not seem that way, but there's a reason you don't get to eat ice cream for dinner every day.

If you just buckle under and let the kids win the arguments, they will turn into insufferable shitheads later in life, and not just in regards to food.

A lot of parents seem to have an aversion to actually imposing even a modicum of discipline and consequence on their kids, and it seriously fucks up the kids for the rest of their lives.

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

My parents sure weren't my friends when I grew up. I only noticed very soon that I am not only smarter than them, they also had a tendency to lie to me to get me to comply with their wishes. Once I had this figured out, I stopped believing them.

Unfortunately it's rather difficult for a child to determine when they are lying to get you to behave the way they want to and when they are making a decision that is actually beneficial for you. From your point of view, there is not really any difference, and parents, especially when most of their rules are based on arbitrary decisions rather than logic, really loathe explaining their rules to you.

And to this day, I have a really hard time following rules that lack a logical reason for their existence. I have this problem understanding and even remembering things that lack an explanation...

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Oh look at you, you're special!

Just another "I'm better than those ordinary people" self-obsessed misguided elitist. Let me guess, your IQ is probably above 130, and you like to remind people of this fact, at every possible opportunity?

Re:Chocolate milk and pizzaboats are back!

[Opportunist]

No. Only when they ask. Thank you for asking.

Kids weren't eating the food

[DatbeDank]

The unwritten tidbit here was the lunches became so bland and boring that kids stopped eating them and instead either didn't eat or brought in food. This isn't good because school lunches come from farming subsidizes and under utilized school lunch programs in low income areas mean kids aren't eating. The real solution to this is more physical education (with physical exertion).

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[skam240]

So we should just go ahead and feed (literally) the childhood obesity epidemic in this country rather than try to teach kids how to eat properly?

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Tablizer]

If kids get hungry enough, they WILL eat nutritious food. It's a myth they'll starve. Don't give them alternatives at home etc. and they will eat fruits, veggies, and whole grains. I guarantee it.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[I'm New Around Here]

So, you're saying to starve them at home too?

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[sexconker]

Turkey sausage? I'd rather eat nothing instead of that affront to nature.

Whole grain coating? Not gonna happen. You can't even get many kids to eat the crust on white bread.

Blueberry mixed with meat? Are you one of those monsters who puts pineapple on pizza?

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Aighearach]

I've eaten pineapple-anchovy pizza before, it was good.

I've got some turkey sausage in the fridge and a frozen Italian pizza in the freezer, maybe I can make this work even without the pineapple!

If they put it on the ballot to add it to the State Constitution that anybody convicted of feeding white bread to children would be executed, I would vote yes for sure. And if they served it without crust, execute them twice to make sure.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Aighearach]

That's what the orange squirrel riding the green frog said, anyways.

But I think he was just mad that Michelle Obama... that Michelle Obama... yeah. He's just mad that Michelle Obama.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[thegarbz]

brought in food

And precisely what is wrong with that?

kids aren't eating

Yes they were. Kids don't starve when food is in front of them

The real solution to this is more physical education (with physical exertion).

A myth that has been proven wrong over and over again. The expense of more calories causes in general more consumption. If you make kids run around they will simply eat more, more of the same unhealthy crap.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Opportunist]

The words "pineapple", "anchovy" and "pizza" do not belong next to each other. In no combination. You might find them in a classified paper talking about the diet in Guantanamo, but nowhere else.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Opportunist]

You cannot solve the obesity problem in the country that way. What you do here is ensure that kids don't eat healthy in any way. But that's basically it.

I was "blessed" to go to a school that did the whole "whole grain and vegetable" bullshit years before Michelle got the idea. Our parents paid a lot of money for our healthy school lunch, with the net effect that the school made a ton of money that way, knowing that only a tiny fraction of the kids would eat there at all. Because the grub was simply unbearable. You, as an adult, may understand that it's a necessity to feed your body something healthy. Most likely because you, even at the age of, say, 30, start to feel the drawbacks of stuffing your face with greasy hamburgers and you know that you pay the price of pigging out on cheese pizzas next day in the bathroom.

Kids don't.

All they know is that the stuff sucks, tastes like garbage and that they don't eat it. Especially if there's a burger joint just 100m down the road that gladly takes their money.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[lucasnate1]

I was educated from a young age that "burgers are poison". Good conditioning solves this problem, at least partially.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Hognoxious]

Look everybody, it's Captain False Dichotomy!

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[Opportunist]

Got told the same thing. Sadly, a lot of the stuff I was told aside of that was utter bullshit and I learned at an early age that following the advice I get is detrimental to my well being.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That is not a problem with the mandate for healthier food. It's a problem of schools being either too lazy or too incompetent to serve full meals that fulfill the requirements.

Re:Kids weren't eating the food

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That is not the fault of the regulations, it is the fault of lazy and/or incompetent school managers.

This is also a Michelle Obama-approved school lunch, from Mirror Lake Elementary School in Federal Way, WA:

https://img.washingtonpost.com...

What good is healthy?

[OYAHHH]

If the students refuse to eat it? Would it not be better for educating students if they were neither experiencing growling stomachs or suffering from food comas?

Being on the "I'd rather starve" end of the spectrum is not desirable from a development and learning standpoint.

Food for thought.

Re:What good is healthy?

[skam240]

So we should feed our childhood obesity epidemic in our schools, thus encouraging a lifestyle that will kill our children early and cause a shit ton of needless suffering?

Re:What good is healthy?

[Mashiki]

Maybe encourage them to get off their asses? Because governments spent decades pushing stranger danger, and going outside as dangerous as well. And you can't forget all those schools which stopped outdoor recesses, or punished kids for physical activity outside because they might get hurt. Strange how I ate the same stuff, and drank heavy laden sugar drinks as a kid and didn't have a weight problem as a kid. Neither did my parents. Almost seems like there's this correlation between a lack of physical activity...

Re:What good is healthy?

[MFriis]

Or maybe, just maybe, do both. Provide healthy meals and encourage outdoor activities.

Portion sizes have likely changed a lot since you were a kid. I am only 30ish and remember a screw capsule glass bottle of coca cola lasting almost an entire week.
There is an excellent comparisson of mickeyd' portion sizes through the ages (and countries) somewhere. They are likely not alone to have increased it over the years.

In Denmark it's quite rare to find a school that actually provides meals. Everyone has to bring a lunch from home which puts the responsibility firmly in the hands of the parents.

Re:What good is healthy?

[thebullshitpatrol]

this sounds incredibly like "my kids will only eat mcdonalds".

this is beyond retarded. if you want kids to eat a certain way, lead them to water. at the VERY LEAST it doesn't set in their minds that it's perfectly normal to eat fucking sugar-fruit, sugar-milk, and frozen food every day. that's the bare minimum net effect that I can think of. at best, a good portion of the kids in the united states will eat the lunch and wont die from a malnourishment coma.

Re:What good is healthy?

[skam240]

Nail on the head.

Kids are eating way more processed foods then they were when I was a kid. Shit, there's parent who think feeding their kids gatoraid is healthy nowadays. I know because I would sell it to them when I was a checker in a grocery store during college and they would talk about it.

Re:What good is healthy?

[meta-monkey]

How was the school lunch program doing at solving that childhood obesity epidemic?

Re:What good is healthy?

[skam240]

I dont have any data right in front of me. Feel free to do an internet search if you're curious.

Personally, I just think it should just be a no brainer that the food schools serve kids should be something healthy and not basically fast food.

Re:What good is healthy?

[Mashiki]

Portion sizes have likely changed a lot since you were a kid. I am only 30ish and remember a screw capsule glass bottle of coca cola lasting almost an entire week.

When I was a kid, we didn't have screw on bottle caps. You needed this device called a bottle opener.

Re:What good is healthy?

[meta-monkey]

Okay. Well, when there's no evidence the food they're being forced to serve is "nutritious" (and nutrition is hard), and some people think it's unhealthy, shouldn't parents in their school district be allowed to tell the federal government to fuck off and serve their kids food they think is healthier?

Re:What good is healthy?

[skam240]

Sure, there are tons of healthy diets that include the nachos and and tatter tots that have been served in school for years.

Get a clue...

Re:Make Americans Fat Again

[aevan]

Don't blame (just) the food. Blame the lazy curriculum. If the bratlings are sedentary, really doesn't matter how healthy they eat.

Though, I'll grant you that losing perspective on what a proper meal serving size is plays a good part.

Re: What is the rationale?

[Anonymous Coward]

Billions of dollars wasted on a fad diet (and trashed food) being forced on schools from above

Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Kohath]

It was never the Federal Government's business what a school kid was eating for lunch.

Re: Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Anonymous Coward]

What part of the Constitution EXPLICITLY grants the power to regulate education? Ergo, your schooling sucked and the steady supply of cocks you ate didn't lead to an well rounded education.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[SuricouRaven]

Perhaps it shouldn't be, but when state and local governments have proven unwilling to so much as acknowledge the problem of unhealthy school meals in most areas, it has to fall to the federal government to intervene.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Freischutz]

It was never the Federal Government's business what a school kid was eating for lunch.

If the thing the school kid is eating is unhealthy and contributing to kids on the whole being physically unfit and sick then it is every bit the Federal Governments business, or rather duty, to fix that just like it was and is their duty to fix the water situation in flint Michigan. And yeah I know the Feds have been dragging their heels on the Flint situation but at least they did something to fix this school lunch situation. Now the current admin is spending it's time un-fixing the school lunch situation for the sake of corporate profits when they should be using that time to fix the poisoned water problem in Flint Michigan which is only set to get worse now that the EPA is being run by a neo-liberal sociopath/moron hybrid who thinks having something like the EPA to keep an eye on things like poisoned water is a waste of taxpayer money because it interferes with his ability to boost his profit margin by dumping poison in the water supply and feeding school kids substandard food.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[thegarbz]

Yes lets play politics while the local government ensures your kids end up great again. Great by sheer volume.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Kohath]

...contributing to kids on the whole being physically unfit and sick

There are no "kids on the whole". Every kid is an individual person. Most are healthy. They don't need busybodies thousands of miles away -- bureaucrats who never met them and don't care about them individually -- meddling in their daily lives.

Flint Michigan

Flint has a local government and Michigan has a state government. Those governments are responsible to solve the problem.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Kohath]

Turns out that the regulations is on the businesses and organizations, not the kids

Any excuse or evasion to justify unlimited meddling in every person's daily life, I guess.

So you have to ask who holds them responsible.

The local and state voters.

See the 14th Amendment and Article IV.

Flint residents are welcome to sue and get a remedy from courts.

See how it works yet?

Yeah, any excuse for unlimited meddling by distant self-dealing busybodies.

Re:Federal Juvenile Lunch Police Stand Down

[Kohath]

Why do you want the Feds meddling in everyone's daily lives? You seem to be nearly desperate to advance the idea of bureaucrats in a distant capital thousands of miles away deciding what a kid can and can't eat for lunch. Why?

I want people to be able to lead their lives without having to ask distant bureaucrats for permission to make ordinary choices. But I'm not writing long, weird screeds about it.

Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

If the parents forgot to pay off a previous balance for school lunches, the kid's lunch gets thrown into the garbage to shame them. Only in America...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/well/family/lunch-shaming-children-parents-school-bills.html

On the first day of seventh grade last fall, Caitlin Dolan lined up for lunch at her school in Canonsburg, Pa. But when the cashier discovered she had an unpaid food bill from last year, the tray of pizza, cucumber slices, an apple and chocolate milk was thrown in the trash.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[skam240]

It's a shame the kids have to suffer for their parents not paying their bills but there are programs in most of America for kids to get free school lunches if their parents are low income enough. While the article begins with a case of clerical error for the little girl who got her lunch thrown away the fact is that can not be the reason for most of the kids being refused food (or even as the article states, given cheese sandwiches or the like). To me it seems like the real bad guys here are the parents who cant be bothered to pay their kids school lunch bills or *gasp* prepare them a meal themselves which would probably be cheaper. Shoot, if you know how to shop you can send your kid to school with a buck or two worth of produce and they've got a filling, nutritious meal. That's certainly how I lived when I was going to college.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

Shoot, if you know how to shop you can send your kid to school with a buck or two worth of produce and they've got a filling, nutritious meal. That's certainly how I lived when I was going to college.

So your parents sent you to college with a few bucks of veggies for lunch each day? Wow! I had to buy ramen as I worked my way through college. :P

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

So one bored or unthinking lunch lady, in an isolated incident, defines for you the school lunch experience that is typical of America?

I've been turned away from getting a school lunch because my mother forgot to give me five dollars at the beginning of the week. I guess you have never gone to school without lunch, have your milk money stolen by older kids, or a teacher toss your lunch into the trash because she was having a bad day. If none of these have happened to you, you probably didn't go to a public school in America.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[skam240]

No, I worked my way through school and yes ramen was a key component to me diet, as were eggs and veggies.

Meat was a delicacy back then...

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

Meat was a delicacy back then.

So was Taco Bell when I went to college.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[TechyImmigrant]

If the parents forgot to pay off a previous balance for school lunches, the kid's lunch gets thrown into the garbage to shame them. Only in America...

So one bored or unthinking lunch lady, in an isolated incident, defines for you the school lunch experience that is typical of America?

Okay...

I remember it being like that with my kid when she was at elementary school. It didn't help that the means of paying was massively difficult, with a very incompetently cobbled together web site, which is why parents failed to pay the bill. It wasn't for want of trying. There was no notification either. You had to hold a seance to find the balance.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[skam240]

Okay, that's my point so I feel like you're making a different one?

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

Or you could, oh, I don't know, GIVE THEM A $20 bill...

That would have been a bad idea when I was a kid. I could easily blow $20 at the arcade — or the bookstore. The funny thing was my non-reading parents were more concern about the bookstore than the arcade. But they were happy I wasn't spending my allowance on drugs like my older brother.

Re:Don't forget lunch shaming...

[__aaclcg7560]

What's next, turning off the power to my house just because I didn't pay the electric company?!

Depending on where you live and the season, it may take up to three months for power to get turned off for non-payment.

About time.

[ancientt]

I've eaten with my children and the school meals are terrible. Every kid thinks their school lunch sucks, I'm no exception, but by comparison I was given haute cuisine. If it was actually healthy I could nearly forgive it, but the plans are built on junk science.

Being happy with the results of anything coming from our current president makes my stomach churn. Nonetheless, this is a good thing.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

What about less salt, whole grains, and more veggies is junk?

I'm not saying the menus couldnt be better but they were a lot worse.

Re:About time.

[TechyImmigrant]

What about less salt, whole grains, and more veggies is junk?

I'm not saying the menus couldnt be better but they were a lot worse.

Too little salt kills you. Enough to not kill you, but still too little is very painful. Too much has no measurable health enpoint effect unless a 5 ton block of salt lands on your head. The correlations are to proxies, not actual health outcomes.

Whole grains make you fat. Wheat agglutin is toxic to many and just slowly kills the others. The first recorded cases of cancer appear about the time and place that wheat agriculture began.

Veggies are probably ok, but they aren't necessary. Put liver, kidneys, eggs and fatty meat on the menu with salt and pepper at the tables and no one would be harmed.

Re:About time.

[phantomfive]

Enough to not kill you, but still too little is very painful.

Experientially speaking, it makes you not want to eat any food that doesn't have enough salt on it. Literally you'd rather starve than eat because of the lack of salt.

Re:About time.

[TechyImmigrant]

Enough to not kill you, but still too little is very painful.

Experientially speaking, it makes you not want to eat any food that doesn't have enough salt on it. Literally you'd rather starve than eat because of the lack of salt.

I was talking about pain resulting from muscle cramps caused by too little salt, but yes, there are palatability issues too.

Re:About time.

[SuricouRaven]

"The first recorded cases of cancer appear about the time and place that wheat agriculture began."

The first recorded cases of cancer are in ancient Egypt. They happen to correspond exactly with the earliest surviving medical texts. Cancer has always been around - it will kill all multicellular organisms in the end, unless something else kills them first.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Let me address you point by point.

The American diet is NOT AT ALL in danger of being salt deficient. Salt is in fact the cheapest of additives to our food. Your concern is nonsense and there is plenty of evidence that the massively unnatural salt abundance in our modern diet isnt doing us any favors.

It is widely excepted that whole grains are better for you than bleached and heavily processed grains as they are far less likely to spike your blood sugar levels.

Veggies are intrinsic to every diet dietitians consider healthy.

In summary, your concerns are right up there with anti-vaccine types.

Re:About time.

[phantomfive]

It's not palatability so much as lethargy.

Re:About time.

[religionofpeas]

It is widely excepted that whole grains are better for you than bleached and heavily processed grains as they are far less likely to spike your blood sugar levels.

Whole grains spike your blood sugar faster than table sugar, and only marginally slower than white processed flour. Look it up, if you don't believe it.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

So then you are confirming that I was correct when I stated that whole grains were better for your blood sugar levels?

Re:About time.

[thebullshitpatrol]

>too little salt kills you

find me which pockets of the US are having an epidemic of sodium-deprived children. i'll wait here until hell freezes over. on the other hand, 90% of the US overconsumes sodium, and all evidence points towards sodium (along with trans fat and simple carbs) being the leading cause of heart disease.

it's insane i can find posts on slashdot where people are suggesting that whole grains "make you fat" and blood pressure is a myth. the jews are out to get us, amirite?

Re:About time.

[religionofpeas]

Whole grains are marginally better, yes. Just like filter cigarettes are better than non-filter ones. If you want to reduce your blood sugar levels, it's actually better to eat sugared banana cake, or a snickers bar.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Of course there's a lot of mean-stream opinion that says otherwise. For instance, my fathers doctor tells him to eat whole grains and avoid the crap that you suggest and his suggestions seems to be very in line with general medical advice.

Do you have a medical degree and somehow know more than the average doctor? Seems like there's a shit ton of yuppy, arm chair doctors out there telling us vaccines are no good for us either.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Okay, first link

https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/n...

Whole wheat breads and pastas coming in better than the garbage you describe.

Now I'm not saying low carb and avoiding most of that shit isnt better for people with blood sugar issues. What I am saying is that you're wrong.

Re:About time.

[AK Marc]

Too little salt kills you.

In theory, yes, but for most children were to eat zero salt at school, they'd still end up eating more than the recommendation by the end of the day. So, failing "too healthy" wouldn't be a bad thing.

Fat is bad. Carbs are good. Sugar is bad. Protein is good. Fiber is good.

No salt, low-fat high carb diet is one of the healthiest diets there is (so long as the high carbs are fiber, not sugar).

Re:About time.

[Aighearach]

...the massively unnatural salt abundance in our modern diet isnt doing us any favors.

Or disfavors, for most people. Health outcomes generally remain unchanged.

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

Right, and your link says exactly why. Glycemic index and glycemic load are two different things. GP is right. Breads (whole grain or otherwise) typically have the same or higher glycemic index as sugary desserts (candy, cakes, cookies, etc). However, they also typically have a much lower glycemic load. In other words, the rate at which sugar enters your blood is the same or higher, but the amount of total sugar delivered to your blood is much lower.

Just a few examples:
    Whole wheat bread (Average): glycemic index = 69, glycemic load = 9
    Spaghetti, white: glycemic index = 46, glycemic load = 22
    Spaghetti, whole grain: glycemic index = 42, glycemic load = 17
    Vanilla cake mix: glycemic index = 42, glycemic load = 24

Keep in mind that the glycemic load numbers are dependent on the serving size, so if you habitually eat 5 times the recommended serving size of, say whole grain pasta, it won't matter that the glycemic load is lower than a cake that you would typically eat much less of.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

Whole grains are a marketing gimmick. They contain a negligible increase in micronutrients and a marginal amount of additional fiber (and fiber is overhyped at best).

High amounts of sodium are harmful. "High amounts" would be intake over 6,000mg/day. The anemic sodium intake above which people believe salt is unhealthy is ridiculously-low, and the amount Americans eat is well-below anything concerning.

Fruits and vegetables are generally nutritionally-deficient, with many having a particularly-imbalanced profile. This leads to things like a serving of broccoli providing 8%DV of calcium being "high in calcium," while you would need to get a minimal proportion of calories from broccoli to not end up with severe micronutrient deficiencies. Meats have better vitamers (e.g. Vitamin A retinol is 6x as biologically active as Vitamin A beta-carotine), and have a more-level and more-complete micronutrient profile for vitamins, magnesium, manganese, potassium, sulfur, silicon, iron, and most other minerals.

The major exception is Vitamin C. Vitamin C is available in specific organ meats from specific animals in low concentrations; it's highly-available from plant sources. Vitamin E is also generally better-available from some specific plant sources (not broadly available, like C).

The big argument between plants versus meat is mainly that meat has fat and plants have sugar. People are trying to decide which is bad for you, which is why 20 years ago eggs were a deadly disease inflicted on humanity and would murder you by plugging your heart with cholesterol while today we talk about how eggs are fine because consumed cholesterol doesn't impact blood cholesterol levels at all and debate on whether sugar or all carbohydrates cause an increase in LDLs.

The things we actually know are pretty limited. One, as above, that cholesterol intake doesn't affect your blood cholesterol level. The other is that complex carbohydrates (starches) are absorbed more-slowly than simple sugars and don't spike your blood glucose levels (insulin and diabeetus issues).

Beyond that, we've actually got tentative scientific consensus that saturated fat intake doesn't actually cause heart disease; an open question on whether trans-fats are actually harmful; and a scientific view that carbohydrate intake might cause heart disease, but probably only at high levels (10% is considered "low-carb", and the 25%-40% range has been cited as the "tolerable range" for carbohydrate intake; meanwhile, our decades-old nutrition guidelines suggest 70% carbohydrate intake).

Low-fat, low-sodium diets are a matter of engineering (and common knowledge) lagging science, and science unapologetically claiming that this stuff is hard and not well-understood. Fiber has a broad range of effects, with soluble fiber (and resistant starch) feeding intestinal microflora, and fiber in general slowing down certain digestive processes and nutrient absorption; people focus a lot on insoluble fiber and its effects in reducing colon cancer and constipation, both of which have been thoroughly-debunked in the past two decades. Diets centered on fruits and vegetables produce micronutrient deficiencies, while diets high in animal products and low in plant products almost never have deficiencies.

Basically, the public understanding of salt and fat lags science; while fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are an unscientific fad that refuses to die.

That's not why Trump did it, though. Trump repealed this shit because Obama's name is on it. Basically, Trump doesn't know any of this; he's just an asshole.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

He was saying that with numbers like 300, 1,000,000, and 999,970, the last two things are not meaningfully-different and trying to claim that the last is superior because lower numbers are better is plain stupid, if not deceptive and dishonest.

Whole grain and bleached white flour are the same thing, except whole g rain has slightly more fiber and a negligible increase in micronutrients.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

Fat is good, carbs are bad, protein is good, fiber is unimportant at best and causes constipation at worst.

Re: About time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Regarding fiber, you mean that the lack of it causes constipation, right?

Re:About time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe I payed too much attention in my physiology classes, but I know what the liver does in a body. There's no way I'm eating one.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

No, you cant compare over eating of pasta to a proper portion of cake you hack. At that point you can just make anything up you want to prove your point. "Cake is way worse because if people eat 10 servings thats waaayyyy worse then a serving of pasta"

Re:About time.

[skam240]

If you make up your own numbers and ignore things like fiber then yes, you're completely right. How silly of me.

Remind me to check in with you next time i say anything so i can find out what i should ignore and you can fabricate up a few data points for me so I dont have to look at any pesky numbers with meaning assigned to them.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

I love how you talk so authoritively when so much of what you posted is not settled at all. Then there's things like you questing broccoli because it doesnt have a lot of calcium. You're making me laugh here. Of course it doesnt have a lot of calcium compared to animal sources, it's a plant.

The conversation was never about fat in peoples diet and I loath the introduction of tangents in a conversation so I'll just ignore all that. Below I'll just revisit our three points again. I know I wont address everything as a lot of your post is about fat and thus I'm bound to miss some things when skimming for pertinent info.

Salt: The American diet is awash in a completely unnatural amount of salt and there are certainly valid studies that show corelations to health issues and salt intake.

Whole grains: Grains are a staple of the American diet. Whole grains are superior to the bleached stuff both nutritionally and in regards to its impact on blood sugar levels.

Veggies: Your rejection of veggies i find to be kind of laughable when they are a staple of any major diet suggested by mainstream nutritionists.

Re:About time.

[AK Marc]

Ah, one of the "carb bad" religious nuts. There is no science that supports that position. Every study that comes close is obviously biased for a specific result, and horribly invalid. And no, I haven't read them all, as when every one of them looks the same, there's no reason to keep reading them until they find something. But they never do. The sham studies refuse to compare calories from fat to calories from complex carbs and fiber.

When you have to lie in your study and compare fat to simple sugar, you know you are a fraud, and are only scamming the religious nuts that have already bought into the cult.

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

That's not what I said in my post at all. Try reading it again while not in attack mode.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Kinda seems like it

"so if you habitually eat 5 times the recommended serving size of, say whole grain pasta, it won't matter that the glycemic load is lower than a cake that you would typically eat much less of."

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

Read the whole comment, not just the last sentence. Context matters.

The first point was that glycemic index and glycemic load are not the same thing. You were arguing with the GP about whether whole grains were better or worse for you based on the glycemic index. You were wrong. If you look only at the glycemic index, whole grains are worse for you (they have a higher glycemic index). However, as the article you linked to noted, glycemic index is not a good measure of how much sugar is delivered to your blood because it doesn't account for the sugar content of the food, only the rate at which that sugar enters the blood. So a better measure is the glycemic load, in which case whole grains in general are better than sugary cakes and other refined desserts (they have a lower glycemic load).

However, the second point was that glycemic load is calculated based on the recommended serving size. If you don't eat the recommended serving size, or if you eat more servings than recommended per day, then the glycemic load by itself is not a good measure. You have to look at glycemic load times the number of servings you eat. Unless you are a professional dessert eater, it is not unrealistic to assume that you will eat more servings of cereal grains than desserts per day. Also, you are probably eating much larger than the suggested serving size of your cereal grains. Think about it. The last time you ate pasta, did you eat the recommended 1/2 cup serving size, or did you fill up your plate/bowl? The last time you ate a sandwich, was it served on one slice of loaf bread or was it a 12" hoagie roll? Did you eat a bowl full of cereal this morning, or the recommended 2/3 cup?

The bottom line is that there is no straightforward way to assign goodness or badness to a food. Cake eaten in moderation is perfectly fine for you. Whole grain bread also eaten in moderation is probably better for you. However, if you are accustomed to eating large portions of cereal grains beyond the recommended daily amounts (which most Americans do), it matters little whether they are whole grain or not.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Yes, I read all of that and was aware prior to me ever talking to you and I still think you're sticking to your guns about making up numbers rather then doing proper comparisons. I worked in a rather nice grocery store for a few years that has a very nice bakery. If you think more healthy carbs are the only thing people pig out on you're deluding yourself.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

Oh, and let me answer your questions.

Pasta: the last time I ate pasta was in stir fry I made and yes, roughly it was a small serving size. I do lots of veggies and meat.

Sandwich: The last sandwich I ate was a single slice of whole grain folded over sardines. This, along with whatever produce I have sitting around, is my standard fast meal for when I don't have time or don't want to cook. I keep the bread in the freezer so it wont go bad.

Cereal: I dont eat cereal

I also basically dont eat desert items outside of holidays, birthdays (I prefer to not be rude by refusing food everyone else is eating by telling them it's not healthy) and the rare ice cream treat I quite happily enjoy.

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

All I'm saying is that if you are making comparisons based on glycemic load, you have to consider the serving sizes. All things being equal, yes, 10 portions of whole wheat bread are better for your blood sugar than 10 slices of cake. But that is not a useful comparison because aside from the occasional binge, most people don't eat that way.

The biggest problem with carb consumption is that people delude themselves into thinking that it is ok to eat a lot of them (actually I think it is more habitual than anything else), as long as they are whole grain and they avoid the cookie jar. That's clearly not the case from the data. Unbeknownst to most people (Americans in particular), unless you are a nutritionist or have been counseled by a nutritionist, is that what we typically view as a normal serving size (a bowl of pasta, a few slices of pizza, a double quarter-pounder with cheese, a plate of fried rice, a 6" sandwich with meat/cheese/dressing, a few slices of toast with butter/jam), all have much larger than the recommended serving sizes for carbs. Eat a few equivalents per day and you are exceeding your recommended daily carb intake by a lot.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

There is no science that supports that position. Every study that comes close is obviously biased for a specific result, and horribly invalid.

Stop reading Atkins fad diets. The high-quality studies use unrestricted-calorie diets with a restriction on carbohydrates or fat. Those are diets where people eat bread, potatoes, pasta, and the like, not candy bars and cake icing.

Oh, right, right. You're using a strawman argument, got it. You have no actual defense, so you make something up for the express purpose of attacking it.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

Then there's things like you questing broccoli because it doesnt have a lot of calcium.

Uh, no. Broccoli is "high in calcium". The problem is it's low in everything else, and "high in calcium" is ~8%DV per serving. My point was you can't make your entire diet broccoli, and mixing the little spikes of nutrients from various fruits and vegetables is an enormous engineering task to get just the right balance; whereas animal foods come right in with a good, moderate level of damn near everything.

So this, right here, is you attempting to use a broken argument. Apparently you didn't read what I said, so let's try again:

Of course it doesnt have a lot of calcium compared to animal sources, it's a plant.

Animal sources provide roughly the same level of calcium as a proportion of necessary intake as they do for nearly every other nutrient. That means animal sources are a decent source of everything except vitamin C and E in particular. Plant sources are generally deficient in everything except one or two specific nutrients, and so you need to mix various plant sources to try and engineer a food that's not nutritionally-barren.

The conversation was never about fat in peoples diet

What's so great about whole grains and more vegetables if it's not the nutrient content? Whole grains and vegetables are the worst source of micronutrients.

Whole grains are superior to the bleached stuff both nutritionally and in regards to its impact on blood sugar levels.

In the same way a Snickers bar with 280kcal of sugar is superior to a Snickers bar with 281kcal of sugar.

Whole grains don't contain any significant increase in nutrient content. They are bleached white grain with some husk and 0.1% more of some micronutrients.

Your rejection of veggies i find to be kind of laughable when they are a staple of any major diet suggested by mainstream nutritionists

I explained micronutrient levels and the nutritional value. You appealed to authority. You're basically telling me facts don't matter unless they're accepted by a specific person.

Re:About time.

[bluefoxlucid]

A slice of whole-grain multigrain bread has fewer calories than a slice of white bread, with 69 compared to 74. Those 5 calories, man, it's so important that your 550kcal sandwich be 545kcal.

There are some trace amounts of vitamins and minerals in the germ and husk, and fiber of course. Fiber has some great benefits, doesn't it?

Really, though, insoluble fiber is a non-essential nutrient. It's mostly talked up as a means of reducing colon cancer, even though scientific studies haven't been able to confirm any consistent association between colon cancer and fiber intake. Soluble fiber and resistant starch are equivalent, and provide food for gut flora. Other than that, insoluble fiber can slow food absorption, reducing the glycemic index of foods; this isn't important if you aren't taking in so much carbohydrate as to cause insulin-related problems anyway.

I just keep carbohydrates in the 25%-40% range of my diet, and avoid high amounts of fiber. I had to get a rectal exam after the most-recent uptick in fiber intake; exceeding 7g/day is painful, and passing 10g/day lead to me squirting a discharge of blood. My doctor says my colon is healthy and I probably just tore a blood vessel and bled a lot into my rectum. I'm a single data-point, and wouldn't much matter if it weren't for the fact that there are millions of others sensitive to fiber, and that practically nobody in any developed economy actually gets more than 10g of fiber a day, much less the ridiculous 25g people recommend.

Personally, my theory is a longer travel time correlates to higher insoluble fiber sensitivity; that stuff builds up if you're not crapping it out every day, and some people have as much as two weeks between bowel movements. I can get as high as 70% by mass fiber content in my feces pretty easily, meaning I get a piece of engineered wood in a fatty binder matrix--a pretty rigid material that's resistant to water. It's not hard when you realize I've got over half a kilogram of fiber in there on 25g/day.

Fiber has definite impacts on digestion, which have downstream health impacts. The dubious bits--the parts actual nutrition scientists (not nutritionists, but the researchers trying to find new knowledge) freely claim as unsupported--are its impacts on colon cancer and constipation. We know it affects intestinal fermentation, carbohydrate absorption, and cholesterol absorption; we also know it's non-essential.

So don't bring fiber into the conversation if you want to be taken seriously. It's the last refuge of people without an argument about nutrition. "But... but... but fiber!"

Re:About time.

[AK Marc]

"Unrestricted-calorie diets"? So it's not blind, or double blind, and no control.

The real studies are done in rats, where the calories are counted, measured, and delivered in specific ratios. Double blind, and properly controlled.

But the fad-dies-pushers refuse to do that, because they know it would prove their sham diet to be a sham. So they make up studies that don't actually test the diet, and claim victory.

My favorite are the ones where those on the diet get increased exercise. Though, that's usually hidden far in the "method" and ignored in the published results.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

"You're basically telling me facts don't matter unless they're accepted by a specific person."

No, what I'm telling you is that I'm not going to simply take your word for things. Virtually every major diet considered healthy features plenty of veggies.

Whole grains are most certainly not as close to bleached as you make out and serve as a good substitute for a staple of the American diet. Or in other words, a food the entire world has been consuming in massive amounts for thousands of years, well before any form of obesity epidemic or many of the health issues that have come up that people try to solve by cutting out grains, is probably not that horrible to eat.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

I'd like to remind you, we're arguing over a food group that has made up the majority of almost every cultures diet since well before anyone ever thought obesity could possibly be a problem for society. Please, tell me how for thousands of years (including many decades which historians would categorize as the "modern era") did humans ever survive on such horrible food without getting fat before it all of a sudden became a problem.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

You seem to harbor some deep-seating misunderstandings about nutrition.

Too little salt kills you. Enough to not kill you, but still too little is very painful. Too much has no measurable health enpoint effect unless a 5 ton block of salt lands on your head. The correlations are to proxies, not actual health outcomes.

"Too little salt" is absolutely not at problem for anyone living in the western world. There is more than enough salt in a regular diet already, even if you don't add any yourself.

Whole grains make you fat. Wheat agglutin is toxic to many and just slowly kills the others. The first recorded cases of cancer appear about the time and place that wheat agriculture began.

Please give some peer-reviewed proof that this is actually the case.

I'll quote someone who harbors the same misconceptions as you: "Wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) may be just as dangerous as gluten."

Which I do actually agree with, because both of them are completely harmless to humans, unless you you specifically suffer from celiac disease or gluten allergy. Odds are extremely likely that you don't. Trying to avoid gluten is simply a fad diet, and completely pointless for most people.

Veggies are probably ok, but they aren't necessary. Put liver, kidneys, eggs and fatty meat on the menu with salt and pepper at the tables and no one would be harmed.

Veggies are absolutely necessary in a healthy diet, especially veggies such as broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts, which contain important compounds (phytochemicals, sulforaphane, indoles) that have been proven to reduce the risk of cancer.

In addition to this, veggies provide a good amount of dietary fiber, not to mention essential vitamins and minerals.

Yes, we should absolutely eat more organ meats, rather than "choice cuts", but to say that you should simply replace all other food (including vegetables and whole grains) with fatty meat and organs, is absolutely insane and ridiculous.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

There is no direct correlation between low sodium levels and cramps, unless you regularly sweat out a lot of salt, by working (or working out) hard for extended periods of time, while only refreshing yourself with plain water. Athletes drink isotonic sports drinks to mitigate this, but it is absolutely not an issue for a normal person, with a normal level of physical activity.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

some people have as much as two weeks between bowel movements

Those poor people are basically torturing themselves.

"You should never resist the call to stool", holding it in only leads to problems like those you describe.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

fiber is unimportant at best and causes constipation at worst.

Only if you're in the habit of holding it in for way too long.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Maybe I payed too much attention in my physiology classes, but I know what the liver does in a body. There's no way I'm eating one.

And yet, it's so goddamn delicious.

Same thing with kidneys. I know that's where the phrase "boil the piss out of it" comes from, but I can't help but love a good steak and kidney pie.

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

First off, we're going to need some authorative, peer-reviewed sources on those claims.

Secondly, vegetables are a fad? Are you insane?

Re:About time.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

you can't make your entire diet broccoli

And no one is suggesting that you do. But broccoli (and cabbage and Brussels sprouts and others) have well-proven cancer-preventing effects, and so should definitely be a highly recommended part of a healthy diet.

I explained micronutrient levels and the nutritional value. You appealed to authority. You're basically telling me facts don't matter unless they're accepted by a specific person.

You have posted a lot of claims, but you have no actually provided any proof.

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

It's a very interesting question. There is actually quite a bit of active research in this area. One likely possibility is that, in addition to factors like physical activity, everything we normally eat, from bread to ketchup, is much more highly processed now than it has been historically. Another more culturally-dependent possibility is that we are more likely to eat and run now rather than sit down and have a proper multiple course meal as was more common in the past. In our grandparents generation, it was more common for families to eat home-cooked meals together. Today it is more common for individuals (sometimes within families) to grab some quick Chinese takeout or a frozen dinner and eat it in front of the tv before heading off to bed. It used to be, and still is in some cultures, more common to eat a big carb-heavy lunch and a light dinner. Now, because of our work patterns, it is the opposite.

I wouldn't say this has "suddenly became a problem", either. It's been a problem in development, steadily getting worse, for several decades. It's very clearly a worldwide problem. Latin America, South Asia, East Asia, Europe, everywhere there is a steadily growing obesity/diabetes epidemic. It's not just the American twinkies and doughnuts culture.

I'm not arguing with you about the relative badness of cake. I'm just disagreeing that that is the significant root cause of obesity and diabetes. Not saying that it can't be a cause in some cases, but there are plenty of people that limit their intake of sugary sweets, and yet they are still obese, still have dangerously high triglycerides in their blood, and still often develop diabetes.

Re:About time.

[skam240]

"I wouldn't say this has "suddenly became a problem", either. It's been a problem in development, steadily getting worse, for several decades"

Depends on what your timeline is. In the context of human history, a few decades is rather sudden.

Also, slashdot had a great posting maybe a year ago that I've lost track of and dont have time to look up about a huge Israeli study in regards to nutrition that was showing some interesting results in regards to how relative to the individual how the body processes food is. One persons blood sugar would spike with a slice of whole wheat while anothers would not. Differences in gut bacteria was the culprit although the study was still ongoing as of the article I think. Anyways, it'll be interesting to see what comes of people finally looking at the bacteria in our bodies considering it makes up so much of us.

Re:About time.

[Rutulian]

Also, slashdot had a great posting maybe a year ago that I've lost track of and dont have time to look up about a huge Israeli study in regards to nutrition that was showing some interesting results in regards to how relative to the individual how the body processes food is.

Yes, this is also an area of research I am very interested in. I think I know the study you are referring to.
https://genie.weizmann.ac.il/p...

Here is another nice review,
https://genomemedicine.biomedc...

And this one was on Slashdot a few months ago,
http://www.nature.com/nature/j...

Re:About time.

[TechyImmigrant]

"The first recorded cases of cancer appear about the time and place that wheat agriculture began."

The first recorded cases of cancer are in ancient Egypt. They happen to correspond exactly with the earliest surviving medical texts. Cancer has always been around - it will kill all multicellular organisms in the end, unless something else kills them first.

You need to provide some evidence that human cancer was around before the rise of wheat agriculture in Egypt for that argument to hold. There is plenty of data from the last two centuries of African and innuit populations with no recorded cases of cancer, recorded by western doctors and this then changed as they adopted western elements into their diet. In the context of that, the Egypt data lines up well. Taken alone, the Egypt data is subject to interpretation about the availability of texts, but it's not just the one thing. Taube's GCBG has references to all the papers on this but it's a long read.

Re:About time.

[SuricouRaven]

Ancient societies were not very good at recording an exact cause of death for anything but the most common of illnesses. The text I was referring to is the 'Edwin Smith Papyrus.' That's the first to describe something which is clearly identifiable as cancer. That doesn't mean cancer appeared then, just that there are very few medical texts from that era still surviving today.

The kids in the low income areas were eating

[rsilvergun]

when you're hungry enough everything tastes good. This is mostly about cost. The healthier options cost more. This lets them cut the program and pocket the difference somewhere else. The people who did this are not good people. Don't kid yourself.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[Mashiki]

No it's about waste. You can find the articles over the last couple of years on it, but some schools saw lunchroom garbage increase by 80%. The entire obama admin idea on lunch was garbage from the start.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[fyrewulff]

So they went from needing one trashcan to two?

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[sexconker]

when you're hungry enough everything tastes good.

I take it you don't watch Naked and Afraid. They regularly enter physical starvation and are still unable to eat many of the things they find.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[Opportunist]

When all that needed trashing was the lunch system in the first place...

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[Gilgaron]

When I eat pizza and French fries I have a tray to dispose of. When I eat fruit I have a peel or core, perhaps an empty yogurt carton etc... I don't think volume of trash can necessarily be considered a useful metric.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[DatbeDank]

Because kids were taking the trays and not eating them on their free and reduced lunch. IE not eating the food.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[wyHunter]

My observation about the healthier options is that they were mostly grains, which are very, very cheap. Meat and vegetables are not cheap and those,f or the most part, were not being served.

Re:The kids in the low income areas were eating

[omfglearntoplay]

Well, you can't believe these 80% garbage stories without actual numbers/statistics. Anything is possible, so let's see the numbers. I'm also of the mind that kids, my kids for instance, eat healthier stuff the less you expose them to trash. The more junkfood they eat, the less they want to eat healthy food. If they are hungry, they are going to eat the healthy food eventually. If they aren't hungry, fine, don't eat.

We can learn some lessons from other countries maybe, or at least get ideas.

I read in the past that the French force their kids to eat the same food grownups do, and the kids adapt and eventually eat it. This article might touch on that:

http://www.alternet.org/food/f...
or this
https://karenlebillon.com/fren...

Japan eats the complete opposite way to Americans. All Japanese folks rave about the excellent school lunches (blew my mind):

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wh... ... oh, and the French and Japanese kids are way more active. Who would have guessed. I just saw this in one of the articles I linked:

Another bigger contribution to French students' healthy disposition? Recess. Students have two 15-minute and one 60-minute recess every day, writes Plantier, and they also have the advantage of walking or biking to and from school, which students only attend four -- not five -- days out of the week.

Re:What is the rationale?

[phantomfive]

Lowering sodium intake seems like a good idea given all the studies that show correlation between cardiac health issues and high levels of sodium. Honest question here...

The correlation is not at all clear

Sodium?

[Kohath]

Because school children are at high risk for undiagnosed hypertension?

Re:Sodium?

[omnichad]

Sodium only has an effect on hypertension if you have a particular sensitivity. Otherwise your body still manages to keep it in balance as long as you're not dehydrated. The demonizing of sodium is starting to get ridiculous.

At home, I salt my food with sea salt - equal proportion of sodium and potassium so there wouldn't be a risk anyway.

He's just the anti-Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Lets face it, Trump didn't really consider ANY of that. He wouldn't have studied any of the rules, or considered any of the science. He wouldn't have assigned a researcher to look at it.

No, the only thing Trump did, was see it was an Obama rule and do the opposite.

Because that is what Trump defines himself as: the opposite of Obama.

Hence the Trump inauguration cake that copies Obamas but was sligthly bigger. The piss on the Moscow hotel bed Obama slept in. The Obamacare ill conceived replacement. The cancelling of Obama sea reserves, the removal of Obama net neutrality.

It's not that lazy fucker Trump knows or cares about any of it. He only knows it was an Obama rule.

He really is nothing, not even defined by himself, he's defined by whatever he's attacking. At the moment its Obama, so he's attacking everything Obama did, even if it means siding with Putin and attacking America.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Anonymous Coward]

Democrats bad, Republicans good.

We have similar system in Australia. Coalition good,Labor bad. The current government are only interested in holding onto power by demonising the other side and haven't constructed a single nation-enhancing policy since they were last booted out of government in 2007.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Okian Warrior]

Lets face it, Trump didn't really consider ANY of that. He wouldn't have studied any of the rules, or considered any of the science. He wouldn't have assigned a researcher to look at it.

Let me see if I understand you.

Even if Trump does something good, it's for bad reasons, so we should still hate him.

Did he got elected despite all odds?

Is he a (mostly self-made) billionaire?

Did he raise a good family, and are his kids well-mannered and successful?

Despite this, *everything* he does is bad, because his inner motives are evil. And despite historical evidence that this particular bill (that he axed) was roundly opposed and generated much anger from experts.

You're perfectly comfortable reading his motives from afar, predicting what he *will* do, what he is all about, and what he thinks.

And it's all bad. There's nothing good about any of it.

This is what you're saying, yes?

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[h33t l4x0r]

Killing Obama-sponsored school lunch regulations is a no-brainer for Trump (who hates Obama, regulations, and probably school lunches). Turns out, sometimes being president is easy. Who knew?

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[TechyImmigrant]

Lets face it, Trump didn't really consider ANY of that. He wouldn't have studied any of the rules, or considered any of the science. He wouldn't have assigned a researcher to look at it.

No, the only thing Trump did, was see it was an Obama rule and do the opposite.

Because that is what Trump defines himself as: the opposite of Obama.

This is indeed not a way a good leader would lead, but it does accidentally do some good things.

A) Getting rid of the department of education. The net effect of the DoE has been strongly negative on schools and pupils. Dems might think it's a bad thing to do, but those with an interest in better education and knowledge of DoE shenanigans over the past few years will be happy to see it go. I'm a lefty on many issues, but this is not a right/left issue. It's a bad/good issue. The educators should call Trump's bluff and demand more federal control so he imposes more local control of schools. Then things will improve in places that are far from Kansas.

B) The subject of this article. Low sodium, high whole grain diets are what is killing Americans. If school kids get full fat milk and properly seasoned meat, then they will be better off. Michelle Obama who is a naturally skinny person has no concept of the western metabolic disorder and its causes.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[TechyImmigrant]

> The net effect of the DoE has been strongly negative on schools and pupils.

Wrong. Ted Kennedy's No Child Left Behind has been great for children. Except for the part where he decided to require schools to let military recruiters have students' contact information, it is nearly as good as can be. He listened to the teachers when he coauthored the bill.

Really? When I checked with an expert on the matter, who's sitting right next to me, she laughed.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[ArylAkamov]

The piss on the Moscow hotel bed Obama slept in.

People actually believed that fan fiction and upvoted this?

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[serviscope_minor]

B) The subject of this article. Low sodium, high whole grain diets are what is killing Americans.

Utter bullshit. Hardly anyone's eating, low sodium, high wholegrain diets. Mostly, it's high in sodium and high in very refined carbs.

If school kids get full fat milk and properly seasoned meat, then they will be better off.

And you know, vegetables.

A) Getting rid of the department of education. The net effect of the DoE has been strongly negative on schools and pupils. Dems might think it's a bad thing to do,

As a card-carrying liberal, as far as I can tell, the US school syllabus needs to be nuked from orbit---it's the only way to be sure. Killing the department of education won't help unless it's replaced either at the federal or state level with something better. Given the "something better" is basically going to involve paying teachers a lot more (doubly so for ones teaching in areas where they can almost always get better jobs elsewhere) and finding actual genuine subject area experts along with actual genuine teachiIf you thinng experts to figure out what to teach and how.

But that's (a) expensive, (b) ignores the Jebus made our cows in 7 days lobby (c) ignores other lobbies and (d) involves effectively ceding power to those untrustworthy prevert commernist academic teacher types. Who knows? They'll probably fluoridate our kids or something.

Some dems might think scrapping the dept. of education is bad, and I probably agree: if it's simply scrapped there's a risk the replacement is even worse. Beware of people very keen on getting it scrapped: many are likely to want to use the hole to push their own agenda in schools. The other problem with the department of education is it gets pushed around by congress. Scrapping it won't fix that, congress always has an agenda, so they'll simply push around whoever is left in charge.

IOW just because it's bad doesn't mean scrapping it will help.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[skam240]

Local control of schools in the US has proven to be terrible. Denial-ism in regards to what started the civil war or the atrocities visited upon native Americans is rampant in the history books of many red states. The historic revisionism present in many red states is parallel to as if Germany were to deny to the holocaust (something most Germans are really quit honest about admitting).

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Darinbob]

Local schools can be utter crap. School boards aren't accountable, or the superintendent isn't held in check, the funding goes to unimportant stuff like funding the football team trip rather than sports as a whole, and so on. Standards are a good thing and local governments in many cases just have awful standards. Next up is teaching abstinence only in the schools and intelligent design.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Aighearach]

I didn't even have to check for that one.

I went to public schools in a blue state, though.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Opportunist]

He was elected on a "Obama is teh evilz and Hillary is his minion" platform, what do you expect now from him? He's pretty much only doing what is to be expected.

Anyone expecting anything else is severely deluded.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Opportunist]

"No child left behind" essentially means "kids who could do better are held back for the sake of not making the duds feel bad".

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Opportunist]

Actually, nuking something perceived bad and replacing it with nothing (which is actually worse) is pretty much what DID happen in the early days of the Soviet Union...

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[shilly]

Is he a (mostly self-made) billionaire?

It's not clear he is a billionaire. He has claimed to be, but he's prone to bullshit and examining what's known of his finances suggests he wasn't a billionaire before he entered the White House. I've not doubt that he will attempt to gorge himself on the riches available from his new position, though, given that he has refused to give up his assets that are causing conflicts of interest, has used his new position to promote his daughter's business, etc etc.
And he's certainly not self-made: he inherited a huge amount of money.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[serviscope_minor]

Are we agreeing? I think so...?

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[multi io]

The piss on the Moscow hotel bed Obama slept in.

People actually believed that fan fiction and upvoted this?

I wouldn't have believed until a few days ago that Trump would like to talk to Kim Jong Un not because he wants to avert a war but because HE ACTUALLY ADMIRES HIM (just like he admires other strongmen like Putin, Erdogan, Duerte). But that's exactly what he does. I've always been as anti-Trump as it gets. But even I am still thinking too conventional when it comes to Trump. Too rational, too strategic. Whenever you believed Trump was doing something out of strategic consideration or rational insight, chances are you'd be proven wrong at some point. You tend to assume that Trump would make decisions like normal politicians or just normal reasonable adults do, and you tend to be proven wrong. Trump is making decisions like an eight year old, fawning over friends and hating "bad people". He can be talked into and out of things in ten minutes and he believes whatever adult he's last spoken to.

So yeah, you'd assume he didn't do that thing in the Moscow hotel bed, because adults don't do such things. And then, you might be proven wrong.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[penandpaper]

I would say he was elected on: "What have you got to lose?" The anti-Obama rhetoric had been around in the GOP for some time so expecting a GOP candidate to not give what the GOP wanted sounds... dumb. And let's be honest, Hillary wasn't popular (or liked is a better word) with democrats. She was a terrible candidate with a terrible candidate and a terrible message. It was about her. Trump, "what have you got to lose?" implies some hope instead of pure narcissism. Not that Trump isn't narcissistic as well but Clinton's campaign "I'm with Her" takes the cake of narcissistic campaigns in 2016.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[TechyImmigrant]

The other more significant change is the move to teach to the test, because the student scores on the next test directly impacted the school and teachers, so anything outside things specifically being tests for NCLB criteria were deprecated. Goodbye rounded education.

That and all the bloody testing.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[TechyImmigrant]

I checked with the expert that's sitting next to me and he said you're both dumbasses.

My expert has a PhD in education, has performed education research, has worked extensively with the DoE and has been a middle school teacher. So she's in a better position to judge than I am, but I pick things up along the way.

Re:He's just the anti-Obama

[Opportunist]

Pretty much, yes. I was just adding a revelation I had while reading your post.

What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm Aussie and I think the culture is different compared to the states, but when I went to school virtually everyone brought their own packed lunch from home.

Me and a number of my friends were given money by our parents to buy our lunches from the school canteen once a week, usually on shopping day when we had not much food left in the house.

Does anyone in the US send their children to school with packed lunches, or is it something of a social stigma to do so?

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Does anyone in the US send their children to school with packed lunches, or is it something of a social stigma to do so?

When I was a kid here in the US (back in the days of gas lamps and horse-drawn carriages), it was about 50-50. My family didn't have a lot of money, so we mostly packed lunch. But there were a couple school lunches I really liked, so I always lobbied my folks to let me buy lunch on those days.

My daughter usually preferred to take lunch to school, although in her case it was because she and her friends preferred to have their short lunch time (35 minutes, if I recall correctly) to have fun versus stand in line.

On a side note... has anyone old enough to have kids in high school here noticed that lunch times and between-class-break times are shorter now than they used to be, or is it just in my neck of the woods? Back when I was in high school, we had 10 minutes to transit between class - and 50 minutes for lunch. But all of my daughter's schools only had 5 minutes transit time, and less than 40 minutes for lunch.

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[skam240]

I think a big part of the problem in the US is that school lunches are largely the junk food crap which kids love. I know I used to bug my mom all the time to get me school lunches rather than make my lunch because school lunches were full of the junk food I loved to eat.

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be somewhat common, if you go back far enough. That was also before the obesity epidemic. I grew up then, and what is accepted as "normal weight" now in the US still looks obese to me. I am still not used to being able to run up stairs better than a significant percentage of people 35 years younger than I am.

However, the culture has changed in many ways since then, not all of them for the better. Some parents still pack home cooked healthy meals for kids, but I don't think it is as common as it used to be. On top of that, food has become an ideological battleground, like most everything.

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[__aaclcg7560]

Most of the time my mother packed my a lunch. If the school had a cafeteria and the lines were short, I'll get money to buy lunch at school. Not only was I the proverbial fat kid in school, I was the only one ate tuna sandwiches. No one wanted to trade anything for a soggy tuna sandwich.

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[TechyImmigrant]

I'm Aussie and I think the culture is different compared to the states, but when I went to school virtually everyone brought their own packed lunch from home.

Me and a number of my friends were given money by our parents to buy our lunches from the school canteen once a week, usually on shopping day when we had not much food left in the house.

Does anyone in the US send their children to school with packed lunches, or is it something of a social stigma to do so?

When my kid was going to school and of a certain age, bringing lunch had no stigma. Having the coolest lunchbox was certainly a thing though. School food was horrible and so packed lunches were in demand by children.

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[SuricouRaven]

And they are full of crap for good reasons:
1. Crap is cheap. School budgets are always tight.
2. The kids universally love it. Who doesn't enjoy pizza?

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[skam240]

So fueling childhood obesity (which is a major health issue in the US) is cool because of your above issues?

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[AK Marc]

The "canteen" or tuck shop or whatever in the US (and most industrialized nations) have a full cafeteria with menu. About 20% of students take sack lunches. Sack lunch is a sign of upper lower-class. Those too "rich" to have subsidized lunches, but not rich enough to buy lunch. PB&J and half an apple every day for me, with a single mom raising two with no support, before "deadbeat dad" existed. Made just enough to not qualify for anything, and back when divorce was punished with high cutoffs for single parents, to dissuade broken homes. And it singles out the students with bags as being "unusual".

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[Aighearach]

When I was in grade school I usually brought a home-made lunch with home-baked whole grain hippie bread, vegetables, fruit, etc.

Some kids thought it was weird, but it didn't cause me any troubles. Their lunches weren't exactly anything to brag about, so even if it was less common there was no stigma at all. Lots of kids, probably "most" kids, brought a lunch. But usually most of it was packaged convenience food, or white bread + processed lunch "meat."

Re:What's wrong with a packed lunch?

[Aighearach]

I don't know about now but in the early 90s my school had 5 minutes between classes, and lunch was the same length as classes because lunch periods were staggered.

Anybody with an art, language, or drama class scheduled next to a science, health, or PE class would have to run to make it.

It readies youth for interference at every level

[Anonymous Coward]

, getting them used to bureaucrats making decisions for them good or bad. Like forcing people to wear seat belts (good or bad) in the 70's and 80's.

The Case Against Low-fat Milk ...

[Babel-17]

http://time.com/4279538/low-fa... "In a new study published in the journal Circulation, Dr. Dariush Mozaffarian and his colleagues analyzed the blood of 3,333 adults enrolled in the Nurses’ Health Study of Health Professionals Follow-up Study taken over about 15 years. They found that people who had higher levels of three different byproducts of full-fat dairy had, on average, a 46% lower risk of getting diabetes during the study period than those with lower levels. “I think these findings together with those from other studies do call for a change in the policy of recommending only low-fat dairy products,” says Mozaffarian. “There is no prospective human evidence that people who eat low-fat dairy do better than people who eat whole-fat dairy.”" http://holisticsquid.com/skip-... "the skimming process not only strips the milk of essential saturated fats, fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and K2 and healthy cholesterol; but also most reduced fat milks have powdered non-fat milk added which contributes toxic nitrates and oxidized cholesterol."

Literally everything you wrote is false

[Anonymous Coward]

The regulations were many, and often at odds with each other and at odds with the goals of School Nutrition Association. It was pushed by Michelle Obama with little or no input from nutrition experts or the aforementioned group,

Literally everything you wrote is false.

Obama worked with top experts on nutrition. These guidelines were the product of the best current science in conjunction with many in the industry itself, not politics and certainly were not arbitrary "dictates."

The SNA originally supported the law when it was passed in 2010.

The board has since flip-flopped to the serious consternation of many of their members.

And the cause seems to be due to the fact that they are overwhelmingly funded by food suppliers. One of their largest donors was previously responsible for getting pizza declared a vegetable. The SNA no longer advocate for children's health, they advocate for business's profitability at the expense of children's health.

Schools are better off managed at the local level.

Everyone knows that.

Everyone knows that kids need the same nutrition regardless of where they live. The law does not mandate meal choice, only nutrient content. Every school is free to follow their own direction within the guidelines.

I swear, I don't know why anyone trusts what you write anymore. You regularly tell bald-faced lies which you then pad with misrepresentations and to top it off you cite breitbart. WTF dude? Breitbart?

Re:Literally everything you wrote is false

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Try eating winter food in summer for a week, see how sick you feel after a week.

I eat the same foods all year round, and I feel great.

That includes hearty stews in the middle of summer, light salads in winter, and everything inbetween.

Stop spreading nonsense.

Obligatory Jim Gaffigan joke

[DontBeAMoran]

Most health food gets corrupted anyway. Like the granola bar. That's been completely corrupted.

Because you know initially some guy was like, hey kids are eating candy bars, right? All we got to do is shape granola like a candy bar, kids will eat the granola.

And then like a week later, uh Bill, kids are not eating these granola bars.

Well, all you got to do is put chocolate chips in the granola bar. Kids will eat the granola.

Uh, Bill, kids are picking the chocolate chips out of the granola bar.

All you got to do is cover it in chocolate. Get rid of the freakin' granola. I gotta tell you how to do everything?

And now, obligatory link to Jim's website:
http://www.jimgaffigan.com/pro...

Re:Obligatory Jim Gaffigan joke

[SuricouRaven]

Or just mix the granola with a ton of honey.

It's all-natural, organic honey, of course.

Re:Obligatory Jim Gaffigan joke

[fluffernutter]

Where I am from it is even worse. You have to get 'Peanut Free' granola bars. Which means you have to pick from 5% of the granola bars out there which are the most mass-produced and almost certainly the candy ones.

Re:What is the rationale?

[TechyImmigrant]

Beyond just to get rid of all traces of Obama, is there any reason to go back to the previous standards? Lowering sodium intake seems like a good idea given all the studies that show correlation between cardiac health issues and high levels of sodium. Honest question here...

You know that the many studies showing a correlation between blood pressure and salt intake don't actually pan out for health effect right? You know correlation is there but heavily confounded by many things that are hard to control for right? You know that the amount of blood pressure increase for a western salt intake given the claimed correlation is minute and easily offset with a tiny bit of exercise don't you? Of course you know that if you get too little salt, you die.

BTW, it's not sodium. If we were feeding sodium to kids, they would explode. It's sodium chloride, which is completely different chemically.

Get off my lawn!

[NotQuiteReal]

Back when I was a kid, schools were teaching, not feeding.

And I had PB&J sandwiches, a lot! And I liked it!

Re:Get off my lawn!

[turp182]

Can't bring those to school anymore due to allergies.

We... might send those along with the twins sometimes, on accident.

Local population don't know better

[aepervius]

Local population are for spanking and corporal punishment, which we know is counterproductive through studies. Local population are "local" and thus in lower numbers and don't have the power to do a lot of studies, and thus can have hit and miss. In this precise case, I am pretty sure "low fat" is stupid, but this has nothing to do with the "state vs federal". De genere, the feds will have more power for studies and will in average know better than the state.

Re:Local population don't know better

[SuricouRaven]

Local populations are also very inconsistent.

If you left it up to the local populations, most of the schools in Alabama would be teaching that Jesus is coming next year, evolution is a hoax made up by nazis to justify genocide, and climate change consists of those pages the teacher carefully cut out from the textbook. And the students would all live off of pizza and pie. Made with proper lard, not that low-fat hippy stuff.

Re:Local population don't know better

[WrongMonkey]

If that's what people want, who are you to tell them otherwise? Isn't the whole point of democracy to let people live their lives as they see fit?

Re:Local population don't know better

[meta-monkey]

Local population are for spanking and corporal punishment, which we know is counterproductive through studies

Have anything recent to support that? Practically everything we "know" about child rearing through studies has perished in the replication crisis.

I think we can agree on some basic principles

[wickerprints]

School lunches should be balanced in nutrients. They should be available to any student regardless of income level. They should be fresh. And students should want to eat them, to enjoy eating them. I think these are core principles that any reasonable American can agree to.

The problem is that this is not what school lunches are: they never have been, nor should anyone with a brain have any illusions that the Trump administration's rollback would do anything meaningful to solve the problem.

Do you really want to know why school lunches suck? Because Americans are hypocrites. They talk about caring about education. They talk about caring about children. A balanced diet is a critical part of those priorities, yet when it comes down to the putting the money where their mouth is, nobody wants to pay to feed them real food. Oh, you will hear how parents say they want the freedom to choose what to feed their kids...but let's be brutally honest: Americans are fucking fat and they didn't get that way by making good dietary choices for themselves, did they? So if they can't stop guzzling sodas and calling frozen pizzas "dinner," what do you think their kids will eat?

But how dare I question the inviolable rights of a parent to choose whether to give their kids cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes? Because we live in the Land of the Free...free to gorge yourself on Chick-fil-A and Burger King, that is. And with the fast food industry essentially using an addiction model to sell their poison, is it any surprise that kids (and their parents) would choose to eat a high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar diet?

Americans are hypocrites: they howl at the idea of being told by anyone else what they can and can't do, but when it's time to pay the consequences of their own poor choices--the millions of dollars spent on their cancer, diabetes, and heart disease--suddenly, it's someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility.

At some point, you have to decide to make a stand and say, "I the taxpayer, am willing to pay more now to ensure that your kid eats right, so that I don't have to pay more later to subsidize the lifelong health consequences of the shitty lifestyle and dietary choices you made for your kids because you're too fucking stupid to be a parent." Freedom doesn't mean freedom from responsibility.

If you doubled the school food budget and cut out all the factory farm subsidies and waste, and hired real cooks to make lunches, these kids would be eating real food. And the cost savings would be enormous. And if you have even the slightest bit of intelligence you'd know that the food industry drives these policies: their profit relies on addicting each new generation on junk food.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[OrangeTide]

School lunches should be balanced in nutrients. They should be available to any student regardless of income level.

I don't think people agree on this, it's a major source of conflict right now.

,They should be fresh. And students should want to eat them, to enjoy eating them.

Tastes vary. If my school offered fresh mixed fruit and it contained melon, I would have thrown it away (and still would, because melon is the foulest of fruits).

I think these are core principles that any reasonable American can agree to.

I'm not trying to make a joke or throw around hyperbole, but can we be so certain that even half of the American population is reasonable? As in they are able to recognize a logical argument or agree to the premises for and argument? Are people even scientifically literate enough to separate facts? I doubt it given so many people like to parrot popular book author myths about gluten, carbohydrates, etc.

The problem is that this is not what school lunches are: they never have been, nor should anyone with a brain have any illusions that the Trump administration's rollback would do anything meaningful to solve the problem.

Do you really want to know why school lunches suck? Because Americans are hypocrites. They talk about caring about education. They talk about caring about children. A balanced diet is a critical part of those priorities, yet when it comes down to the putting the money where their mouth is, nobody wants to pay to feed them real food.

Oh, you will hear how parents say they want the freedom to choose what to feed their kids...but let's be brutally honest: Americans are fucking fat and they didn't get that way by making good dietary choices for themselves, did they? So if they can't stop guzzling sodas and calling frozen pizzas "dinner," what do you think their kids will eat?

Sure, we'd be healthier and safer with a nanny state. But who is qualified to run our lives for us? We're certainly not qualified to elect someone competent.

But how dare I question the inviolable rights of a parent to choose whether to give their kids cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes? Because we live in the Land of the Free...free to gorge yourself on Chick-fil-A and Burger King, that is. And with the fast food industry essentially using an addiction model to sell their poison, is it any surprise that kids (and their parents) would choose to eat a high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar diet?

Americans are hypocrites: they howl at the idea of being told by anyone else what they can and can't do, but when it's time to pay the consequences of their own poor choices--the millions of dollars spent on their cancer, diabetes, and heart disease--suddenly, it's someone else's fault, someone else's responsibility.

At some point, you have to decide to make a stand and say, "I the taxpayer, am willing to pay more now to ensure that your kid eats right, so that I don't have to pay more later to subsidize the lifelong health consequences of the shitty lifestyle and dietary choices you made for your kids because you're too fucking stupid to be a parent." Freedom doesn't mean freedom from responsibility.

Which is why Americans apparently want people without money to die from those shitty choices rather than get free healthcare. I have no other suggestion on how to interpret our current position on healthcare.

If you doubled the school food budget and cut out all the factory farm subsidies and waste, and hired real cooks to make lunches, these kids would be eating real food. And the cost savings would be enormous. And if you have even the slightest bit of intelligence you'd know that the food industry drives these policies: their profit relies on addicting each new generation on junk food.

School administrators are a very stupid and risk adverse bunch. They know they'll lose their jobs if they

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[SuricouRaven]

"School lunches should be balanced in nutrients. They should be available to any student regardless of income level. ... And students should want to eat them, to enjoy eating them."

Pick any two.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[wickerprints]

You've never seen a Japanese school lunch. It is not a coincidence that, despite the higher rates of smoking (which, along with obesity comorbidities, is the most significant lifestyle choice that affects lifespan), Japanese life expectancy is higher in both sexes compared to Americans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Teaching kids about food is not simply about telling them what they can or can't eat. It's about leading by example and modeling good dietary choices.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[WrongMonkey]

You'll find that very few Americans can even agree on what "balanced in nutrients" even means; that includes the supposed experts. But that doesn't stop you from using taxpayer funded healthcare as an excuse to dismantle some of the most basic natural rights: eat what you want and raise you kids as you see fit. That is exactly the talking point that Republicans use to oppose taxpayer funded healthcare in the first place.

If you doubled the school food budget and cut out all the factory farm subsidies and waste, and hired real cooks to make lunches, these kids would be eating real food. And the cost savings would be enormous.

[citation needed] If you suggest three policies that would all increase expenses, then you need to show some math on how that would supposedly result in enormous cost savings.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[WrongMonkey]

Japan has such a different school system and culture that the comparison is irrelevant. For starters: do you think American schools would allow students to cook lunches? The unions, labor board and health inspector would all be racing to see who shut down the school first.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[k6mfw]

Because we live in the Land of the Free...free to gorge yourself on Chick-fil-A and Burger King, that is. And with the fast food industry essentially using an addiction model to sell their poison, is it any surprise that kids (and their parents) would choose to eat a high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar diet?

Exactly. Do these people actually have a free choice? Can they afford a healthy choice? Also most Americans are at the mercy of powerful sales and marketing forces, someone with a basic education is no match against highly educated in advertisement and persuasive skills. Reminds me of municipalities banning sales of 20oz sodas (they make people fat) but those ordinances get shot down with the battle cry, "I have my freedom to buy a big gulp anytime I please!" Did you really have that freedom or was it a well timed sales pitch?

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[wickerprints]

Simply attributing the difficulty in implementation to cultural differences is, to put it mildly, a threadbare excuse. It amounts to throwing up one's hands and saying that because "this is how Americans and Japanese are different, consequently there is no way for Americans to learn from the Japanese model." And such an attitude reflects the kind of entrenched, defeatist, brainwashed thinking that permeates all kinds of problems that American society faces.

Read the WaPo article on this subject: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/on-japans-school-lunch-menu-a-healthy-meal-made-from-scratch/2013/01/26/5f31d208-63a2-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_story.html

Here's how this comment thread has played out: I posted about the problem and why it exists, largely ignoring the partisan politics on the issue. Someone responded saying how the goal of cheap, healthy, and delicious school lunches for kids is unattainable. I provided direct evidence that contradicts that belief. Now you say that such evidence is not valid due to differences in culture. And I reject your claim, because Japan's approach proves that the original goal is attainable. Moreover, what it also suggests--but does not in itself prove--is that what needs to change is not only the school lunch model, but American attitudes, specifically the tendency to make excuses and whine about the perceived lack of freedom and individual choice.

Re:I think we can agree on some basic principles

[WrongMonkey]

I read that same WaPo article before I even replied to your comment. Its the first thing that comes up when you google Japanese school lunches. I'll just highlight a few things that stuck me.

Schools in Japan, by contrast, give children the sort of food they’d get at home

How is that going to work out in the US? You think kids are going to eat Japanese lunches when they get sugar cereals and chicken nuggets at home?

When it comes to food, Japan has some deeply ingrained advantages. Children are taught to eat what they are served, meaning they are prone to accept, rather than revolt against, the food on their plates.

There's that culture problem.

Municipalities pay for labor costs, but parents — billed monthly — pay for the ingredients, about $3 per meal, with reduced and free options for poorer families

Average US school lunches are about $2.43=$2.60, which includes the cost of labor. Your Japanese lunches are 20% more expensive. Not much of difference but defeats the idea that this approach is any cheaper.

Now back to your points

what needs to change is not only the school lunch model, but American attitudes, specifically the tendency to make excuses and whine about the perceived lack of freedom and individual choice.

What you really don't seem to grasp is that most Americans don't want to live in a Japanese style culture. Our grandparents fought a war to prevent that from happening. Voters are rejecting the party that's trying to push for these changes. The foundation of American culture is freedom and individual choice. And we're not going to reject those values just because a few kids are fat.

Re: What is the rationale?

[thebullshitpatrol]

low-sodium is a fad diet?

low fat definitely is, but a diet low in sodium and high in whole grains is objectively a good idea based on all current evidence.

Re:I (don't) think we can agree

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, the old "I think we can all agree" followed by paragraph upon paragraph of one-sided rant, sweeping generalizations, and insults that we most definitely DO NOT agree on. How quaint.

Even if we DID "all" agree on many of the principles we would still not all agree that it's the massive federal government's responsibility to force the issue!

Provide recommendations and do research, sure. Force schools to feed kids stuff they hate* based on the assumption that a few cherry picked attributes of food will magically make all the kids healthier? Just no. Steal twice as much money from our pockets to "hire real cooks" while also hurting farmers who actually produce the food? Even worse.

* Personal anecdote: I wasn't paying enough attention to Mrs. Obama's nonsense but one day my kids came home asking what the heck the school had done to the mashed potatoes (which they had previously looked forward to a couple times a month). They used to like them, but now claimed they suddenly tasted like runny wallpaper paste and Elmer's glue, and no amount of the so-called gravy could make it edible, so they stopped eating them. This was followed by other complaints about how the food was no good anymore. I initially guessed that they were just trying to cut costs, but it turned out to be more complicated than that. The guidelines were the main driving factor, both in making the food far less desirable, and reducing the quality of various items that weren't mandated in order to make up for the increased cost of the mandated items/attributes.

Sooo... Ketchup counts as a vebgetable again

[Anonymous Coward]

Trump will be happy.

Re:What is the rationale?

[I'm New Around Here]

At first cat urine tastes awful, but then you get used to it. Then the old plain water now tastes yucky.

That article is complete, total and utter BS

[Anonymous Coward]

And I said as much when it was published.
Look, you have two choices:

1. Feed every kid anything they want, for "free" including the kids with two parents each making 6-figures but who are too lazy to actually pay off their lunch balance. I'd be OK with this, but the cost is high, and the parents who give their kids sack lunches (for whatever reason) also end up unnecessarily subsidizing those who eat school lunch even if those parents could easily afford to pay.

2. Expect parents with sufficient incomes to either send their kids to school with food, or pay the frickin' negative balance within a reasonable length of time, after numerous notices, notes home, and sometimes even calls!! Free/reduced lunch programs are readily available for low income families. You can (and most schools do) even offer a basic, alternate lunch (which is as good or better than what I ate most days growing up) to kids whose parents are able to, but simply refuse to pay, repeatedly and habitually.

That's all. You can't just say "oh, you have to pay... except if you don't, that's fine too, no consequences whatsoever" That's total lunacy. What kind of a moron would even consider that? My school had no basic lunch option. If I forgot my lunch and didn't have money (at least once paid with (literally) pennies I'd saved up myself) I'd have to tough it out. I would have been thrilled to get a cheese sandwich and milk on those days instead of maybe mooching a chicken nugget off a friend and then hitting the water fountain.

Mostly right and completely wrong

[raymorris]

> Trump didn't really consider ANY of that. He wouldn't have studied any of the rules, or considered any of the science. He wouldn't have assigned a researcher to look at it.

Pretty much right. Well he doesn't assign a specific researcher. There are two MILLION federal employees. The president doesn't assign research tasks - he doesn't even know the researchers' names. He knows the names of the department heads - a couple dozen of the millions of federal employees. What Trump did is he told all federal agencies, in one memo, "review all of the regulations that Obama made on his way out the door". Then Trump was off to deal with North Korea or the budget or health care or China or Russia or jobs or taxes or whatever. School lunch regulations are about number 5,762 on a president's priority list. So the agency head forwarded that memo "review all recent regulations" to his top management, who forwarded forwarded it to someone who deals with lunch standards. And this manager, who has never seen the president, undid some of the recent changes.

> It's not that lazy fucker Trump knows or cares about any of it.

Right. He's a little busy with trying to learn whose who in Chinese politics to prevent wars, find out what the federal reserve is up to trying to keep the economy afloat, have some general input on the federal budget, etc.

> He only knows it was an Obama rule.

He doesn't know or care if someone that Obama's wife talked to decided on skim milk or 1% or 2%. He likely doesn't know that school lunch standards were changed under Obama - those two million federal employees handle that stuff.

What the president knows is this:
Obama's administration made a bunch of regulations that liberals like. In the final few months, knowing they would be replaced regardless, they went a little wild. So his team of more conservative people should tell their people to have a look the changes done by Obama's people and consider doing things differently.

That's what President Trump, or any president, knows. They don't read millions of pages of federal regulations.

Democracy

[idji]

Dear America,
You may have missed this, but in a Democracy, laws are made for the People by the People's representatives. In a Corpocracy laws are made for corporations by corporations' representatives.
Signed, Most of the Rest of the World.

Re:Democracy

[Aighearach]

Dear Derpy World,

You mistook the idiotic stuff in the media in places with freedom of speech for knowledge of our system. Please take two clues, and don't call us in the morning.

Signed, America.

PS: Nuts.

Re:Democracy

[JonnyCalcutta]

Dear America,

Huh?

Signed, the rest of the world

PS: Yes please

Re:Democracy

[Aighearach]

That's an improvement, World, you're getting closer.

Could be actually a good thing

[havana9]

This could be actually a good thing, but for their unintended consequences.
After the publication in 1980 of USDA dietary guidelines the percentage of obese people in USA started to rise.
Same thing happened in the UK with the introduction of the Eatwell plate.
I think that all stems from the idea that eating fats and cholesterol make one fat, so the energy intake should be based on starchy foods like rice, potatoes and refined wheat: these are foods with a really high glycemic index so the starches are rapidly converted in glucose, the pancreas stats to produce insulin and the glucose is transformed in fat. Then normally the level of glucose in food decreases and the brain registers it as starving and if food is readily available one eats again the starchy foods, that are healthy. Unfortunately this is a sure way to eat too much.
Eating some fatty food, like cheese, eggs, olive oil, nuts or meat requires more times to be digested and the glycemic response is much lower, so one feels more satisfied to eat.
In this case I think thast giving to kids "boring" foods makes them eat more "tasty" food like snacks and fried potatoes, that are high in calories and surely not "gourmet" foods, making the whole dietary advice moot.
If in schools they start to serve a real pizza margherita made with buffalo mozzarella, olive oil, fresh tomato sauce and freh basil, maybe the kids will get a more decent taste for good food, istead to eat some baked thing called pizza made with leftovers

WTF are the feds doing?

[bradley13]

WTF is the federal government doing, micromanaging cafeterias in local schools?

Even more bizarre: it isn't even the (entirely counterproductive) Department of Education doing this, but the Department of Agriculture. Aren't they supposed to manage farm subsidies and the like?

Dear Mr. Trump: Please drain the swamp like you promised. Regulations like this have no reason to exist in the first place.

Re:WTF are the feds doing?

[backwardsposter]

Dear mods, you may disagree, but this is certainly not trolling. For shame.

Part of the problem

[DrYak]

Diabetes? Yes, probably,

Though not necessarily. Fat tissue can disbalance hormonal regulation.
Among others, you end up with less sensitivity to insulin.
(so you end up with a type 2 Diabetes, because of your fat - which might be caused by other causes than you processed sugar intake,
not because of direct influence of those intake)

Obesity is caused by eating too many calories.

...combined with not doing to much exercise.
Which will encourage the body to use these excess calories to build "reserves, just in case".
(As opposed to other uses for calories :
- burning them, to move muscles
- burning them for thermal purpose
- use them to rebuild muscles).

Whereas, doing lots of exercise, in addition to the direct consumption of calories (you need energy to move),
will also raises a bunch of hormones stimulating muscle growth/repair/up-keep, so calories will be also burned and used in the "construction work" in keeping those muscles.

Meh.

[waspleg]

My district must have been one of the ones not following the guidelines. I see chocolate milk running down the walls at a high school Monday and they were making loads of whole pepperoni pizzas at a different one.

In my district, any kid, regardless of if they go to the school, can walk in the door and get fed breakfast, lunch, afternoon snack and they're working on dinner...

The Restaurant Business

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe schools shouldn't be in the restaurant business or deciding what people can eat.

Re:GAO: Trump kills children

[Opportunist]

And as soon as you can FORCE kids to eat it, you actually have a point.

Too complicated to regulate

[pelpet]

Healthy food is too complicated to regulate with good results. A few years ago, low fat products were considered heathy. Then came Atkins and LCHF and now sugar and sweet food is the culprits. There are also unintended side effects from this kind of regulation - for example that the kids don't like the food and goes to McDonalds instead. Some simple things could be regulated, like limiting sale and drinking of soft drinks on school, but such a limitation can also be requested by parents so it's hardly useful. One thing that might work out is to force schools to describe how they ensure that the school food is healthy - then parents and journalists can keep check on them.

Re:Too complicated to regulate

[serviscope_minor]

They're not too complicated. You simply have to listen to professional scientists, not magazines, not celebrities, not infomercials, not the popular press, and certainly not lobbyists from the food or agriculture industries.

And they'll tell you the same thing they've been saying for years: eat a balanced diet and avoid processed foods.

That's boring and annoying and doesn't sell crap or make anyone rich, so it's basically never covered.

Re:Too complicated to regulate

[SuiteSisterMary]

Eat a balanced diet with portion control and avoid processed foods.

Also, never 'start a new diet.' Just very slowly change your eating habits. Try whole-grain cheerios instead of regular cheerios. Try a yogurt instead of a pudding with lunch. One itty bitty thing at a time, so it's not work, and you're not lamenting all the delicious crap you used to eat.

Re:Too complicated to regulate

[serviscope_minor]

Eat a balanced diet with portion control and avoid processed foods.

Yes. There's certainly two aspects, nutrition and weight. Portion control is essential for the latter. and no snacking: you ought to be hungry before starting to eat.

Also, never 'start a new diet.'

Also very true. The key is not to go on a diet, but to change your diet. I think even calling it "a" diet implies it's a limited time thing and there's some end, whereas it should be a permanent change.

Oh and the other thing is don't try ot lose weight fast. Get some scales and aim to take it slow, like 2lbs per month. Yes, it's going to take bloody ages, but the alternative will usually take longer. Most people can push weight loss pretty hard and lose a bunch in a short time. Trouble is it's miserable and you'll burn out then put the weight back on.

Scales are essential because at that rate you won't see or notice the weight loss, so the only way to stick with it is to keep measuring.

Re:Too complicated to regulate

[SuiteSisterMary]

Oh and the other thing is don't try ot lose weight fast. Get some scales and aim to take it slow, like 2lbs per month. Yes, it's going to take bloody ages, but the alternative will usually take longer. Most people can push weight loss pretty hard and lose a bunch in a short time. Trouble is it's miserable and you'll burn out then put the weight back on.

And while doing this, don't be paying attention to the daily number; just record it. Try to be consistent about when you measure; personally, I suggest naked and right after your morning, ahem, evacuations.

Then, watch for downward trending. Again, pay no attention to the daily numbers. Too much noise.

Similarly, with exercise, don't 'start an exercise regimen.' Just be more active. Get up and walk around more often. Take the stairs once in a while, then more often. Do a couple of pushups. The thing with exercise is, unless you're trying to be a really competitive athlete, you don't really need all that much.

Now, if somebody could come up with something to drink that is a) delicious, and b) not full of sugar, I'd be happy guy. Water just gets so goddamn BORING after a while.

Re:Too complicated to regulate

[serviscope_minor]

Now, if somebody could come up with something to drink that is a) delicious, and b) not full of sugar, I'd be happy guy. Water just gets so goddamn BORING after a while.

Tea? You can get decaf if that's your thing, low caffiene ones, like green tea, flavoured, like jasmine tea or any of the now large variety of herbal teas. Many suck, but they've got a lot better the last few years.

Re:Make Americans Fat Again

[Opportunist]

Well, as soon as a child actually wants to be a child, i.e. play, run around, be active, climb on trees etc, we call it "hyperactive", diagnose ADHD and pump enough Ritalin into them 'til they are sedated enough to not move anymore.

5 years later we lament how they don't exercise enough and get fat.

Good.

[KermodeBear]

I don't recall "school lunch program" being part of the federal government's responsibilities.

If this is something that concerns you, then go to your state. The feds have no business here.

Re:Good.

[Baron_Yam]

Are the people in your state a different species?

I'm pretty sure we all have the same nutritional requirements, so why have 50 different standards set by 50 different committees?

That's just inefficient.

Re:Good.

[moeinvt]

We have thousands of small committees making decisions about public education. They're called "school boards".

Surrendering local and state control to the federal government for the sake of "efficiency" is a terrible trade-off. It relieves you of the responsibility for decision making, but it also renders you powerless to implement change. What if you and every other parent with kids in your local school agree that the standards are terrible? How are you going to remedy the situation in your "efficient" top-down, one-size fits all model? By contacting your Congressman & Senators? Wouldn't it be better if you could approach the school board or city council with your concerns?

The parents and school board are much more concerned with the welfare of the children in the local school than a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Washington DC. The OP is right. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to be sticking its nose in public education.

Re:Good.

[Baron_Yam]

School boards... a place where politicians breed and local busybodies fuck up education with their local ignorance. School boards ban books and think their interpretation of God overrules evidence and the scientific method.

School boards should be obliterated, or at least exist only to handle a small portion of the schooling system set aside for 'items only locally relevant'. They can decide if the kids should attend a particular local festival or what local history should be given precedence in the curriculum. And they can certainly act as oversight for the school administration. But they shouldn't be setting standards for the education system.

Your argument - at least to me - makes the exact opposite point you obviously intended.

Experience first hand.

[Beowulf_Boy]

My daughters go to a public school in rural Ohio. This last year we stopped packing their lunches and found it was cheaper to just let them buy at school. We were spending about $40 every 2 weeks on stuff for them to pack (lunch meat, cheeses, vegetables, etc) and it was the same price for them to just buy at school.

They also get a free breakfast at school. I believe this is because our district has x number of people below the poverty line or something like that.

Regardless, I've had both breakfast and lunch with them, and am very satisfied with the meals they are having. The breakfasts are generally high carb and fat, such as french toast, but with a side of fruit. But this is what kids their age need for breakfast. They are growing, and need the fat and calories.

Lunches are quite healthy, generally with side salads or other fresh vegetables.

I've read about some of the regulations that Trump is rolling back, and I don't disagree with it. Eg, one of the articles I read cited that in the south they wanted to serve grits with breakfast, but the whole grain grits had black specks in it that turned a lot of the kids off and they wouldn't eat it.

I know at my kids school, they offer whole grain breads with their meals, but its not super grainy type breads. At home we eat hearty 8 grain type breads, but at school its just slightly browner colored white bread. I really see no difference between that and regular boring bleached white bread. Does it really matter?

What matters is getting calories into hungry kids.

Re:Experience first hand.

[KozmoStevnNaut]

What matters is getting calories into hungry kids.

And by all accounts, they are definitely getting those calories, hence the child obesity epidemic, which definitely needs to be taken into account.

Yeah

[Ryanrule]

Post your age when you make a "damn govt telling my kids what to eat" comment. We need to know if you are ignorant or just stupid.

Political Murders

[JimSadler]

It may take some proctors to get the kids to eat their lunches. We can't assume that the kids are not eating due to the food served. Being skinny is a big thing with young kids these days and some simply may not want to appear to be of an eating type of personality. Schools have also cut back on exercise for kids and that may well be causing them to be picky about eating. But the best policy is to serve what highly educated professional nutritionists recommend. I have seen US government mini pizzas served in schools that i would not feed to a dog. If a kid liked those cheap junk pizzas he should be sent to a mental health facility.

Re: What is the rationale?

[cheesybagel]

Not really. It's a fad as well. Japanese and Icelanders are quite healthy and they consume quite a lot of sodium. As for whole grains carbo-loading is a cause of diabetes. Plus whole grain based diets cause rickets.

Re:Whole milk is healthier

[cheesybagel]

Worse of all they didn't allow whole milk with these changes either. The change seems merely to be that 1% can now be flavored.

What??

[fluffernutter]

Kids don't need vitamins to work in a sweat shop!

Same "chart" applies to water

[mpercy]

Too little water >> you die
Too little sodium >> you die
Around recommended amount >> good
Double amount of recommended amount >> your body attempts to adjust itself to the situation by getting rid of water through, e.g. urinal, sweat, etc. Can cause overhydration, water retention, and hyponatremia (leading to, ironically in context, too little sodium in cells).
Too much water >> you die

Everything should be done in a moderate way.

But at least climate science is settled, right?

[mpercy]

The science isn't settled in just about every field, they're still arguing over sodium, theoretical physicists are still arguing over gravity! Apparently only the very best scientists work in climate science, they're the only ones where the science is settled.

It does make me wonder, if their science is settled, why are they still getting paid to do more climate science?

There are two types of people in this world

[RogueWarrior65]

Those who enjoy food and those who merely see food as fuel. Never ever take nutrition advice from the latter.

Re:There are two types of people in this world

[KozmoStevnNaut]

Taking advice from those kinds of people leads to "food products" like Soylent. Blech.

I call bull [Re:Kids weren't eating the food]

[Tablizer]

No, they won't. I was a child and I would not eat rather than eat the "healthy" stuff put in front of me. Children will go past the point of harming themselves in their stubbornness. They won't starve to death, but people will notice they look unfed and report you.

There may be rare exceptions, but your case is probably exaggeration. It sounds like your parents gave in too early. A few days is not enough. Hunger will eventually out-vote a stubborn streak in a kid's head. Eventually kids get used to good food.

Note that many kids are naturally skinny and there's nothing wrong with that. Parental instincts may be to "chub" them up with junk food, but that's wrong.

It's not easy to manage a kid's diet, I will agree. But this debate is not about what's easy.

Re:I call bull [Re:Kids weren't eating the food]

[sexconker]

A few days? People will notice. You'll get reported. You have no kids or you don't have this problem.

Re:I call bull [Re:Kids weren't eating the food]

[Tablizer]

I bet this is fake. "Anonymous coward".

You may get reported if the kid lies and claims to teachers etc. you outright are not feeding them, but that's another matter. That's a truth problem, not a food problem.

Re: What is the rationale?

[thebullshitpatrol]

If I wanted to hold myself to a standard of sodium consumption, east asia is the last place I'd look to set my benchmark.

Perhaps there's other confounding variables and you can't just draw a conclusion that salt isn't bad for you because certain countries both consume lots of salt, and have a few years higher life expectancy. Obesity rate? Trans-fat/processed food consumption?

As I understand it, diabetes (as well as inflammation-induced heart disease) is caused specifically by the type of blood sugar spikes SIMPLE carbohydrates produce, whereas complex carbohydrates are much more likely to provide a steady stream of energy throughout a period of time. Please show me if i'm wrong.

Better to revert given Sidwell Friends hypocrisy

[sethstorm]

Better to let schools determine their own standards and not be shackled into serving something that won't be eaten.

That way, public schools are free to make the balance between nutrition and what will be eaten - versus forcing something on people that the prior regime's family would never eat themselves.

So pizza isn't a vegetable anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

Weren't these the same standards that declared pizza a vegetable?

Weren't these also the same standards that replaced fats with sugars?

Weren't these the standards that were a prime example of the federal government meddling in state affairs?

Not sure how anyone can see this as a bad thing.

"healthy"

[Anonymous Coward]

no foods are "healthy". all foods are "healthier" or "less healthy" than other foods, depending on the consumers dietary needs. Kale is not healthy if you eat it raw and are sensitive to the chemicals found in uncooked greens. chocolate milk is healthy if you are an athlete who needs a boost of milk fat, sugar and cocoa for whatever sport requires such. white rice is healthy for people with crohns disease. steak is unhealthy for babies who choke on it. i support banning the adjective "healthy" as a modifier for foods. however, whatever trumps admin does is completely unhealthy, as its morally tainted (and you dont want your taint anywhere near your food...)

Re:Rage

[iggymanz]

You should be angry at your own ignorance, for dietary standards and analysis the mass is in milligrams. Also, "calories" means kilocalories. Rage and break things, because you don't set the standards.

Kids in other countries

[omfglearntoplay]

I keep running into facts that piss me off so much about the schools around here.

Why do schools not allow 3 recesses for more physical activity? Why are school serving trash for lunch? Why the hell are the before/after care places all forcing the kids to stay indoors and be inactive?

France, Japan, and many others with thin kids allow 3 recesses/exercise breaks and serve better food.

http://www.alternet.org/food/f...

Quote: "Another bigger contribution to French students' healthy disposition? Recess. Students have two 15-minute and one 60-minute recess every day, writes Plantier, and they also have the advantage of walking or biking to and from school, which students only attend four -- not five -- days out of the week."

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wh...

Japanese friends rave about their childhood lunches. They also all walked to and from school, about a mile or two away. When they got older, they road bikes.

I hear my kids complaining about not having enough time to eat as well. I visited once and was amazed at the time restraint. Here is an Irish article with the same problem. This can't be good.

http://www.irishtimes.com/life...

Food not eaten is not making kids healthy....

[The Relentless]

You can engineer the most healthy lunches. But if they taste like shit, the kids won't eat them.

Re:Food not eaten is not making kids healthy....

[KozmoStevnNaut]

That's on the schools for being too lazy or incompetent to make tasty meals that adhere to the dietary requirements.

Re: What is the rationale?

[cheesybagel]

No. Complex carbohydrates increase blood glycemic levels as well. It is just that the spikes themselves can be more dangerous than the high sugar level on the short term. But in the long term having a high blood sugar level will lead to complications like blindness, kidney failure, and heart disease.

I think looking at what countries with high longevity and low levels of disease consume makes sense. And it is clearly not related to an Asian genome or something given that Icelanders have a Caucasian genome and much the same applies there on salt. Salt certainly raises blood pressure, but if high blood pressure causes heart disease or not clearly depends on other factors as well like the lipid profile.

No, we cannot

[Anonymous Coward]

When my parents were kids, their parents were responsible to feed them breakfast, send them to school with a bag/box lunch, and feed them an evening meal at home. If their parents did not, it was on THEM, and their kids (my folks) would be a little less "obese".

When I was a kid, my parents were responsible to feed me breakfast, send me to school with a bag/box lunch (or a little cash to buy a school lunch), and feed me an evening meal at home. If my parents did not, it was on THEM, and I would be a little less "obese".

People who have kids are responsible for feeding them - I'm NOT advocating for abortion here, just a return to the idea that adults are expected to be responsible grown-ups. Growing up in a family where a person's parents failed at these basic tasks was historically actually a spur to drive many historical figures to say "I'm going to do better than my parents did" and go on to be very productive people. Some limited hardship is sometimes a good thing in the long run. Children learn from their parents, whether for good or ill and sometimes a poor parent is a good example of how not to be. It's also true that people with bad parents who failed at basic things, like providing food, used to often be assisted by extended family and/or charities or the local community.

The idea that it is the government's job to feed kids is a relatively recent notion and quite contrary to historical American traditions that hold individuals responsible and encouraged individualism. There is a cultural reason why so many famous innovative companies were founded in the US and so many new things were invented here: we had a culture deeply steeped in rugged individualism, family, personal responsibility, and the protestant work ethic. There are now places in the US where kids are encouraged to show up at school early for a government provided breakfast, then get a government-provided lunch, then are encouraged to stay late for a government provided dinner. We have schools in California that now encourage the kiddies to show up on weekends and during vacation times to pick up packages of food to take home. This is the creeping destruction of the family, where government is increasingly becoming a replacement for mom and dad, just as it has been gradually replacing husbands as a provider for women and children. It might be politically popular in some circles but the long-term cultural destruction is likely to have unforseen and probably very toxic side effects.

Re:No, we cannot

[Uberbah]

You could have said "I'm an elitist who likes to sneer at poor people and poor kids for having poor parents" and saved yourself a lot of typing.

Think of the children

[kenh]

This is honestly a great thing - I've worked in public education, and the food schools were 'allowed' to sell and still qualify for federal subsidy programs were disgusting... nor even the school the Obamas sent their kids even entertained the idea of complying with those standards.

A tremendous smount of food was wasted trying to appease a non-sensical program that was based on the idea that the First Housewife knew what all of america's school-age children would eat.

Schools were finding cheaper to drop the restrictions and forgo federal food subsidies - it was actually cheaper, more meals were sold in the cafeteria and the kids ate better meals.

Re:Better to revert given Sidwell Friends hypocris

[KozmoStevnNaut]

The schools were not "shackled into" anything. They were simply presented with a list of dietary requirements and told "cook what you want, but it must match or exceed these targets".

The schools that serve shit food are run by lazy, greedy and incompetent idiots.

Re:Better to revert given Sidwell Friends hypocris

[sethstorm]

The schools were not "shackled into" anything

Except that they were shackled given budgetary and dietary requirements, things that weren't issues at places like Sidwell Friends.

The reality is that they couldn't cook what they wanted.