Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes • Hacker News Board

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#101

Post by leot » Wed, May 23, 2012, 4:57 AM UTC

rquantz wrote: post #95

leot wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the success of various "healthy fast-food" restaurants, it seems nearly everyone can be taught to cook the simple stuff. But I was thinking, here, of quinoa prepared in a rice cooker (comparable in difficulty to microwaving a burrito), salad, and pre-made vegetarian chili. There's no way the total cost of this is higher than calorie-equivalent microwave mexican fare. E.g., Costco organic quinoa is about 700 kCa…

I don't want to undermine your basic point here -- I hope that you're right. Quinoa in particular might be a problem though, since it's already increasing in price due short supply. Mass adoption by America's schools would probably result in making it unsustainable both for the schools themselves and for South American communities that rely on it. http://www.newser.com/story/114536/in-bolivia-a-quinoa-quand...

It doesn't look like quinoa can only be cultivated in particular regions, but rather that it takes time to get good crops going. The price should come down in a few years.

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#102

Post by fennecfoxen » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:03 AM UTC

mvzink wrote: post #78

jdietrich wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your political system doesn't see child nutrition as a priority, your political system needs to be burned to the ground. Are we honestly expected to believe that a first world nation can't find room in the budget to give children vegetables? I cannot imagine a future in which they do not look back and think "Food was cheaper in their age than at any point before or since, but they fed their children worse than cat…

That first sentence isn't quite right. I agree, personally, that every political system should be burned to the ground but, as usual, some Marx might give a slightly saner perspective here: the problem is precisely that there is a political system, which separates political personhood from private, civil personhood. Today, a group of people acts in social cooperation primarily through a political system. They may hav…

"the problem is precisely that there is a political system, which separates political personhood from private, civil personhood."

I don't know about that! I have plenty of Politics in my life without it needing every fibre of my life to be infused with it, thank you very much. Rather, I shall go into the office tomorrow and go about business with Ron Paul supporters and Occupy SF supporters alike, and sip espresso with them in the afternoon, and I think there's something fundamentally humanizing about being able to do that.

But then, I guess that's a classic divide, as I recently saw evidenced in this opinion piece: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230437150457740... on the fundamental differences in the outlook on life as evidenced by commencement speeches delivered by Barack Obama and by Mitt Romney.

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#103

Post by olalonde » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:19 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #64

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #32

Awesome and hilarious - I would be a very proud father or older brother. But on a serious note, directed at the media woohoo that always ensues, demanding better food for schools Jamie Oliver style misses the constraint of a limited budget. Presumably there's some price/utility tradeoff between the cost of the food and the health/taste. Then there's a tradeoff between teacher quality and wages, school size and the nu…

If your political system doesn't see child nutrition as a priority, your political system needs to be burned to the ground. Are we honestly expected to believe that a first world nation can't find room in the budget to give children vegetables? I cannot imagine a future in which they do not look back and think "Food was cheaper in their age than at any point before or since, but they fed their children worse than cat…

This screams applaud lights slash appeal to emotion slash straw man. My school never provided free meals and I don't think the Canadian government should be burned to the ground. If I ever have kids, I'll trust myself much more than the government to take care of my child's nutrition.

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#104

Post by nash » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:20 AM UTC

gouranga wrote: post #3

Good. Looking at the utter shit they feed children in the UK under the guise of school dinners, it's nice to see someone documenting it. I send my children in with a proper packed lunch and their friends take the piss out of them because it's NOT processed shit. I don't get humans sometimes.

How often do you get Humans in your meals?

ducks

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#105

Post by ekianjo » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:28 AM UTC

sopooneo wrote: post #93

malnourish wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest thing with this is that there are some parents who are unable to prepare food for their child due to financial costs. For some kids, a school meal might be the only thing they eat, or the largest meal of the day.

There are many families where it is an issue of finance and time preventing them from making their kids healthy lunches. There are also a great many families where it is an issue of broken culture and defeated people that actually could provide nutritious meals. Of course if it's only one kid in a poor school that comes every day with simple cheap home-made food, that child risks serious ostracism.

Well if you don't even expect parents to care about what their children eat, how can you expect parents to care about education ? It boils down to the same thing.

Besides, I hear this argument often but I don't buy in the "finance" issue to get good food. Getting veggies/rice is cheap enough and can be cooked pretty fast. You don't need meat 3 times a day to be healthy. Just 60 years ago, people were eating 10 times less meat than now and they had no issue becoming smart (and probably smarter than now, seeing the extremely poor achievements of school education nowadays).

Basically lunches in School is an extension of the School system: you ensure people have to rely on you, everyday. This is toxic in so many ways. Kids never learn what it takes to prepare food, because they never see their Mom/Dad prepare food for them. It makes them value food as a commodity. It also "breaks" another link between parents and children, since you rely on a separate organization to feed your own kids, on which you have little knowledge and control.

Seriously, providing lunches at school is just a broken solution to the broken culture problem you mention. It does not fix anything, and provides comfort that it's OK to be part of that "broken culture". It just makes things worse in the end.

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#106

Post by ekianjo » Wed, May 23, 2012, 5:37 AM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #64

kevinalexbrown wrote: post #32

Awesome and hilarious - I would be a very proud father or older brother. But on a serious note, directed at the media woohoo that always ensues, demanding better food for schools Jamie Oliver style misses the constraint of a limited budget. Presumably there's some price/utility tradeoff between the cost of the food and the health/taste. Then there's a tradeoff between teacher quality and wages, school size and the nu…

If your political system doesn't see child nutrition as a priority, your political system needs to be burned to the ground. Are we honestly expected to believe that a first world nation can't find room in the budget to give children vegetables? I cannot imagine a future in which they do not look back and think "Food was cheaper in their age than at any point before or since, but they fed their children worse than cat…

A little variation on your statement...

"If parents don't see child nutrition as a priority, their priority list needs to be burned to the ground. Are we honestly expected to believe that a first world nation's family can't find room in the budget to give their own children vegetables and prepare food for them ?"

Since when is the political system responsible of what your children should or should not eat ? Is that even the role of the political system? And if your answer is "Yes", where does that involvment in private affairs stop ?

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#107

Post by vacri » Wed, May 23, 2012, 6:27 AM UTC

kaybe wrote: post #76

hack_edu wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The cost of the materials is only a small part of it. Preparing and cooking fresh food requires much, much more effort than prepared packaged foods. Microwavable or similarly low/zero-prep food products require very little labor, require only a few steps before they are served, and create almost zero items to be washed and cleaned. You would be surprised how much cheaper a flat of microwave burritos is compared to an…

Deep-frozen vegetables are even cheaper than fresh ones and still have nearly all the nutrients, plus they usually come cleaned and preprocessed. Put it in some boiling salty water, wait a few minutes and you're good to go. How much easier can it get?

Mmm mmm. I remember as a kid, my favourite food was plain boiled vegetables. Like all kids, I just couldn't get enough of them. How I'd pester mum again and again to boil up some vegies. Yummy!

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#108

Post by mvzink » Wed, May 23, 2012, 6:28 AM UTC

fennecfoxen wrote: post #102

mvzink wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That first sentence isn't quite right. I agree, personally, that every political system should be burned to the ground but, as usual, some Marx might give a slightly saner perspective here: the problem is precisely that there is a political system, which separates political personhood from private, civil personhood. Today, a group of people acts in social cooperation primarily through a political system. They may hav…

"the problem is precisely that there is a political system, which separates political personhood from private, civil personhood." I don't know about that! I have plenty of Politics in my life without it needing every fibre of my life to be infused with it, thank you very much. Rather, I shall go into the office tomorrow and go about business with Ron Paul supporters and Occupy SF supporters alike, and sip espresso wi…

I'll admit this idea of political-social alienation/separation is a very abstract notion, and usually meritless in terms of immediate practicality. But you've demonstrated the reality of the notion itself: "I have plenty of Politics in my life without it needing every fibre of my life to be infused with it, thank you very much."

The claim is that "politics" as a social activity separate from universal, daily human life is artificial and an accident of modern society. That is, in the Marxian ideal you would never think "politics in my life"—that distinction between "politics" and "my life" would be a meaningless concept, since "politics" would be a nonexistent concept. You are already an inherently social being, and politics is just a particular abstraction of that sociality which seems like a good idea in modern society but prevents an "ideal" society (for many formulations of "ideal").

Think about it this way: when you vote, you are acting socially through politics. When you perform a business transaction, you are acting socially through economics. When you go to work (or leisure) with people of different opinions, you are acting socially in a way that we generally just describe as social. All these things are inherently intertwined, but modern society has done a good job making them seem separate and distinct; it has invented terms to distinguish the first two types of social activity, and has imposed rules on them. The third example doesn't have another word because it isn't consciously regulated by society—there is no abstraction for day-to-day interactions with other people. Thus, a Marxian ideal sees no abstraction for any other types of interactions with other people. They all collapsed into one: there is no politics or economics, which are abstractions of sociality.

I'm not proposing any particular change in modern society that would bring politics "into" your life, merely presenting a way of thinking about politics and sociality that explains why child nutrition (and numerous other social problems) are not also political problems.

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#109

Post by simonbarker87 » Wed, May 23, 2012, 6:30 AM UTC

smcl wrote: post #52

simonbarker87 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have heard the argument that with a fully private healthcare system there is no financial benefit to lobbying/pushing for a healthier society as the healthcare sector can only make money off people who are ill - therefore it comes down to who can afford to shout the loudest at those in charge. I guess until there is a way to profit off prevention rather than cure there will always be this sort of conflict of intere…

>> Scotland (for now, lets see how the independence referendum goes) is NHS (national health service) based Scotland leans left, there's no way the NHS is going even if independence is granted.

That's true, forgot that

Re: Nine-year-old’s lunch blog shames school into making changes

#110

Post by vacri » Wed, May 23, 2012, 6:31 AM UTC

droithomme wrote: post #92

unimpressive wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The more conspiratorial side of me likes to think that school is a prison camp used by vested interests to teach American citizens from a young age that they have no rights and to stymie any sort of real intellectual development by providing large globs of homework and projects. But some people require more than the standard to weigh them down. Like in Harrison Bergerson.[0] And the only reason that they don't force…

> school is a prison camp used by vested interests to teach American citizens from a young age that they have no rights and to stymie any sort of real intellectual development There's a pretty strong argument made that that is actually the case and its intentional, backed by actual history. Have you read The Underground History of American Education? It's extremely interesting and well referenced. Read it free here,…

So the equivalent amount of schooling in all other industrialised nations is a separate thing? It's just in the US that it was engendered as a prison camp? There's a fair amount of tinfoil in that claim.