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All praise to the lunch ladies

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Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#91

Post by JuniperMesos »

onecommentman wrote: post #55

Embarrassed by the HN comments here. Lunch ladies, along with other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get. Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is pathetic. Such commenters should be forced to prepare and serve lunches for hundreds of hungry children while also being forced to listen to screaming political rants thro…

> Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is pathetic.

The sentence "Lunch ladies, along with other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get" is itself an attempt to score poltical points for a poltical faction. As is calling them "heroes".

Specifically, this is a leftist poltical argument associated with the Democratic party in the united states, suggesting that it is good for the government to be in charge of running civic institutions that are legally obligated to serve all citizens in exactly the same way, in order to dissuade people from spending their money on services they prefer which might be better than those poorer people can afford; and also that the government employees who do the frontline labor at these institutions are laudable and morally superior people. There are ideological associations here with official Soviet propaganda lauding the worker in the abstract.

Someone who didn't like their public school experience or the way the lunch lady there did their job might resonably grow up to take political stances that reject the idea that low-status government workers are as close to an Absolute Good as you can get.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#92

Post by somerandomqaguy »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #57
somerandomqaguy wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school children is going to be any easier.

> The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone to like everything they have, you can't do that without letting them trade away the stuff they hate.

From the horse's mouth?

>The CMNR reviewed many of these studies when they were initially completed and noticed that underconsumption of the ration appeared to be a consistent problem. Typically, soldiers did not consume sufficient calories to meet energy expenditure and consequently lost body weight. The energy deficit has been in the range of 700 to 1,000 kcal/d and thus raises concern about the influence of such a deficit on physical and cognitive performance, particularly over a period of extended use. Anecdotal reports from Operation Desert Storm, for example, indicated that some units may have used MREs as their sole source of food for 50 to 60 days—far longer than the original intent when the MRE was initially field tested. > >There have been successive modifications of the MRE since 1981. These modifications in type of food items, diversity of meals, packaging, and food quality have produced small improvements in total consumption but have not significantly reduced the energy deficit that occurs when MREs are consumed. This problem continues in spite of positive hedonic ratings of the MRE ration items in laboratory and field tests. The suboptimal intake of operational rations thus remains a major issue that needs to be evaluated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25121269/

Or to summarize it; soldiers weren't eating the full MRE's in Desert Storm, and it a widespread problem. Soldiers that weren't meeting their caloric intake requirements were suffering cognitive issues while in combat operations. Bit of an issue when you've got two groups of people trying to kill each other and not their own side.

So they figured the best option to get the soldiers to eat their rations was to keep improving and updating until soldiers were more inclined to eat the whole damn thing. I don't know if they've succeeded per say but they have been updating the menus pretty consistently since the 90's. I think only the beef stew and a few other meal items have stayed consistent over the last 30 years of MRE's.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#93

Post by renewiltord »

cpursley wrote: post #16

Having a school lunch in a "poor" former eastern block country as a guest was really eye opening. It was actually good, fresh made borscht, veg dishes that tasted good (wasn't steamed)! Like, I would order and enjoy it at a restaurant level no-bad. Who knew that was even possible? From what I can tell, a non-crappy school lunch is the norm all over Europe. Why can't America have that?

The usual truth is that labor costs more in the US than it does anywhere else. A lot of things are just what you get if you have cheap labor. As an example, all over South Asia you can get top-notch personal cooking and cleaning on a daily basis. In the US you cannot. It's because everyone is rich in the US. The embodied cost of labor in everything you get is quite a large fraction.

The median household income in Poland is a quarter that of the US.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#94

Post by hexbin010 »

Auracle wrote: post #69
AstroNutt wrote: post #66

Great read! I sent this story to my girlfriend who works as a lunch lady in a small West Texas town for the last 10 years. She said they are still able to provide nutritional food for the kids. Her mother had an aunt that worked at the same school in the 50's and 60's and they made everything from scratch. Vegetables were bought locally too. She also mentioned the kids hated the whole wheat pasta and breads when Mich…

I will never understand why Michelle Obama’s plan included low salt. It’s not like kids have major hypertensive issues.

I'd have eaten way more salad as a kid if my mum didn't treat salt as if it were the devil itself. There is nothing enticing about raw cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes on the side of a plate.

A pinch of salt and pepper, small amount of olive oil, oregano and lemon? Now we're talking.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#95

Post by buu700 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #89
speed_spread wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it conditions your expectations of tasting salt everywhere, which is what industrial food provides. Good food should taste great even if it's low on salt.

An enormous amount of traditional food from around the world has a lot of salt in it. Salt is not a modern invention. For example, humans have been eating olives for tens of thousands of years. Olives contain and require prodigious amounts of salt to taste good, usually in the form of seawater.

High salt intake is only an issue on a high-carb diet or with inadequate hydration. Otherwise, consuming adequate salt/electrolytes can actually be a bit of a chore. Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary standards.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#96

Post by userbinator »

sevg wrote: post #85
userbinator wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the graph of life expectancy vs. average sodium intake by country, and you may be surprised.

Read this and you may be surprised: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...

That's exactly what I'm implying.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#97

Post by komali2 »

maxlybbert wrote: post #77
komali2 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you're saying doesn't contradict the argument that the goal was do outdo the black panther lunch programs. Certainly I'd like to read more about the idea before I buy into it, but it does make a lot of sense - schools in black neighborhoods are chronically underfunded and the black panthers were first and foremost a direct action and mutual aid group, and furthermore the USA government viewed them as a huge thre…

> [Original, emphasis added]: the only reason we have school lunch programs in the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free breakfast program for black children in the 70s > [Response, emphasis added]: The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s . The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946 Are you saying tha…

> the only reason we have school lunch programs in the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free breakfast program for black children in the 70s

> The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946

How does the existence of a food program in the 1890s, or 1946, automatically invalidate the notion that the promulgation of the food programs into 2025 is due to the efforts of the black panthers? Similarly, one could attribute gun control laws in California to the black panthers focus on arming black neighborhoods, rather than some kind of liberal anti-gun attitude.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#98

Post by mylies43 »

simmonmt wrote: post #75
komali2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an American if I paid the same taxes but the half that's spent on building -b2 bombers- fine, substitute for "devices used to kill people I'll never meet in countries I'll never see," instead went to giving kids so much food they threw half of it away, I would be ecstatic with this change in the distribution of my taxes.

They stopped building B2 bombers 25 years ago.

And now we build B21s

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#99

Post by jandrewrogers »

buu700 wrote: post #95
jandrewrogers wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An enormous amount of traditional food from around the world has a lot of salt in it. Salt is not a modern invention. For example, humans have been eating olives for tens of thousands of years. Olives contain and require prodigious amounts of salt to taste good, usually in the form of seawater.

High salt intake is only an issue on a high-carb diet or with inadequate hydration. Otherwise, consuming adequate salt/electrolytes can actually be a bit of a chore. Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary standards.

Salt pills were a thing for people working in hot climates. The military requires electrolyte augmentation in such conditions. These days we use fancier electrolyte blends but it is still largely salt. If you are on a multi-day fast it is the primary thing you need to replenish aside from water.

I do some pretty serious backcountry trekking in the summer. You can feel when your electrolytes are low after several hours, the signs aren’t particularly subtle. Fortunately, you can slam a few grams of electrolytes and you’re back to normal in a matter of minutes.

Our bodies can handle it, humans largely developed in regions where electrolyte depletion was a risk. The amount of salt you have to consume to regulate your electrolytes in environments with high electrolyte loss dwarf what you are going to consume in typical food, processed or not. The idea that the average human is hyper-sensitive to consuming too much salt is preposterous. Even animals gravitate toward salt licks.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#100

Post by buu700 »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #99
buu700 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

High salt intake is only an issue on a high-carb diet or with inadequate hydration. Otherwise, consuming adequate salt/electrolytes can actually be a bit of a chore. Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary standards.

Salt pills were a thing for people working in hot climates. The military requires electrolyte augmentation in such conditions. These days we use fancier electrolyte blends but it is still largely salt. If you are on a multi-day fast it is the primary thing you need to replenish aside from water. I do some pretty serious backcountry trekking in the summer. You can feel when your electrolytes are low after several hour…

Agreed. The idea that salt is merely a flavoring with negative side effects has always struck me as indicative of an unhealthy relationship with food. It aligns with a broader Calvinistic tendency to view pleasure and harm as inherently linked, which is fortunately at odds with reality.
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