Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

The article about forcing kids to buy school lunch made me laugh, because buried in the middle was a sentence about how a private contractor runs the kitchens.

Chicago + government contracts = kickbacks

Polonius wrote:The article about forcing kids to buy school lunch made me laugh, because buried in the middle was a sentence about how a private contractor runs the kitchens.

Chicago + government contracts = kickbacks

Polonius wins the thread!

Honestly, a chocolate milk ban isn't suprising. Most schools in BC are banning/have banned pop, potato chips, flavoured tortilla chips, chocolate bars, etc...

My old elementary school had no cafeteria, but it did have hot dog day and pizza day once a year. They now do an annual sub sandwich day instead. vending machines carry juice and/or water, vending machines carry dried fruit chips, trail mix, rice chips, and baked crackers.

Even the cafeteria at my highschool had dropped a lot of it's more substantial evils off of the menu. They still do Pizza buns and Jalapeno Ham and Cheese biscuits though, which is good to hear, because those are the best two damn baked goods in this city. But they sell a lot more salads (Good Caesar salad too - locally grown lettuce and they even make their own dressing), sandwiches (toasted and cold), and soup (goes well with above mentioned Ham and Cheese biscuit). They've also apparently added a wide variety of fresh-brewed teas to the menu, which they didn't have when I was a student

I think chocolate milk is a lesser evil though. It's good they're trying, but there's far worse out there.

Well back when dinosaurs roamed the earth we didn't have chocolate millk in our schools, so I am not seeing the loss.

Neither am I. I think it's a great idea, but they probably could've started with energy drinks and pop

At the company where I work as well as a fantastic canteen we have free soft drinks (our own brand mineral water, Coke and other cans, and fruit juice.)

Last summer I decided to switch from diet Coke to fruit juice on the grounds of health. I was shocked to find that fruit juice contains as much sugar as non-diet Coke.

Juice is actually a pretty terrible food choice. You can eat several oranges for the calories in a small glass of jiuce. Ditto Apple.

Water is the only really healthy drink. Unless you don't mind caffiene and/or chemicals.

Kilkrazy wrote:At the company where I work as well as a fantastic canteen we have free soft drinks (our own brand mineral water, Coke and other cans, and fruit juice.)

Last summer I decided to switch from diet Coke to fruit juice on the grounds of health. I was shocked to find that fruit juice contains as much sugar as non-diet Coke.

Depends on what you're buying. The schools around here buy pressed juice, which is unsweetened and has far less processing to it. It's also quite cloudy and, with citrus, always has pulp. As you can expect, it has about 1/3 the sugar content of Five Alive and other "not-juice" juices.

ADD: I also make sure I always have a bottle or two of this stuff in my fridge:


It's probably one of the healthiest juice products you can buy, and it actually tastes pretty damn good. And note how it's cloudy - means it's pressed and unsweetened.

Polonius wrote:Juice is actually a pretty terrible food choice. You can eat several oranges for the calories in a small glass of jiuce. Ditto Apple.

Water is the only really healthy drink. Unless you don't mind caffiene and/or chemicals.

QFT. You'd be better off with a lite beer than most juice actually.

Army food is similarly dreadful. The messes get around £1 a day per soldier for food and it shows in some of the food that gets churned out. To be fair, the Army chefs do wonders with what they have but as the saying goes, 'you can polish a turd...'

Well my friend, if you were part of the US armed forces you could get all the wonderful fast food your heart would desire.

http://www.stripes.com/news/fast-food-making-comeback-on-u-s-bases-in-afghanistan-1.117636

Seams that for a while they tried to get rid of it, but its back in fashion.

"I don't know what their problem is we bring them freedom, fast food and pants....pants man!" Saying attributed to a fictional US combat vet in the middle east.

I'm telling you drink water, use that MIO stuff if you don't like water, it's pretty good. I rarely endorse products.

Heh, our Reserve regiment doesn't have a mess hall (It's just an armoury after all), so we hired a private catering company.

Never thought 'Army Food' would include Chicken Cordon Bleu, but there it is

Those poor Armour bastards in Vernon on the other hand... yikes. I wouldn't feed their stuff to my rats

filbert wrote:Army food is similarly dreadful. The messes get around £1 a day per soldier for food and it shows in some of the food that gets churned out. To be fair, the Army chefs do wonders with what they have but as the saying goes, 'you can polish a turd...'

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

filbert wrote:Army food is similarly dreadful. The messes get around £1 a day per soldier for food and it shows in some of the food that gets churned out. To be fair, the Army chefs do wonders with what they have but as the saying goes, 'you can polish a turd...'

If i remember right the daily food budget for someone living at 'Her majesty's pleasure' is double that of someone serving in the british army.

All this military food talk makes me want a good old-fahion Navy Slider.... with extra grease.

djphranq wrote:

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

MREs are awesome. My uncle bought like a hundred form an army surplus store for emergency disaster food. We eat them for dinner when we're too lazy to cook, and to cheap to go out to eat.

ChrisWWII wrote:

djphranq wrote:

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

MREs are awesome. My uncle bought like a hundred form an army surplus store for emergency disaster food. We eat them for dinner when we're too lazy to cook, and to cheap to go out to eat.

Ate a ton of MRE's after Katrina,and while I found them to be pretty damn good...they are extreamly high in calories/carbs....not the best choice for everyday meals.

FITZZ wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:

djphranq wrote:

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

MREs are awesome. My uncle bought like a hundred form an army surplus store for emergency disaster food. We eat them for dinner when we're too lazy to cook, and to cheap to go out to eat.

Ate a ton of MRE's after Katrina,and while I found them to be pretty damn good...they are extreamly high in calories/carbs....not the best choice for everyday meals.

Yeah, they are meant for soldier in the field that walking carrying 100lb packs. That's a lot of energy. Michael Phelps's food is probably awesome, but if you are sitting at home, not swimming miles a day, you will quickly become a fat ass!

Andrew1975 wrote:

FITZZ wrote:

ChrisWWII wrote:

djphranq wrote:

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

MREs are awesome. My uncle bought like a hundred form an army surplus store for emergency disaster food. We eat them for dinner when we're too lazy to cook, and to cheap to go out to eat.

Ate a ton of MRE's after Katrina,and while I found them to be pretty damn good...they are extreamly high in calories/carbs....not the best choice for everyday meals.

Yeah, they are meant for soldier in the field that walking carrying 100lb packs. That's a lot of energy. Michael Phelps's food is probably awesome, but if you are sitting at home, not swimming miles a day, you will quickly become a fat ass!

Exactly...after the whole mess was over I had actually gained five pounds from a two month MRE diet,and that was with a great deal of activity ( Cleaning up tons of wreckage,walking everywhere etc) on a daily basis.

Man on one campout a while ago (it has a whole slew of funny stories attached to it) my troop camped on National Guard training land. The part particular to the topic at hand is that, for some reason, the three boys who had no idea whatsoever how to cook were placed in charge of dinner. Dumped spaghetti in pot, didn't stir it once, and called us to eat 15 minutes later. I love black carbon in a 1/2 tomato 1/2 starch water sauce!

Anyway, the training commander took pity on us and offered us some surplus MREs. Those were really good. They even came with jumbo sized crackers, cinnamon gum, and, best of all, matches! The Boy Scout's true friend...

The one weird part was the protein bars and lemon cookies. Both of them tasted horrible, yet those who had them could just not stop eating them. It was like the military laced them with coke.

The whole area of military catering is quite interesting.

The military historian Martin van Creveld said that the daily military ration has never varied much in history because human dietary requirements don't change. I think he said it was about seven pounds in the early 18th century, and it still is now.

Even modern lightweight dehydrated food doesn't help, because soldiers then require more water.

Apparently MRE design in modern armies is constantly updated to reflect changing food habits and preferences. According to Wikipedia, there is some trouble getting soldiers to eat as much as they need in the field, so good meals are important for health and morale.

Iron rations aren't intended for long term diet and contain higher salt and fat than is healthy in the long run.

So, Chocolate Milk is the enemy?

I don't think so...

http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/what-school-lunches-look-like-in-20-countries-arou

Cheers for linking that Buffo some of those meals look Yummers. Oh and trust me british school meals are about as pure pish as those american ones lol.

You guys need Jamie Oliver to wreck your school dinners like he did ours...

But you got chocolate milk? Srsly? No wonder you're all gelatinous blobs.

Henners91 wrote:You guys need Jamie Oliver to wreck your school dinners like he did ours...

But you got chocolate milk? Srsly? No wonder you're all gelatinous blobs.

I am a highly fit, muscular male with peak health conditioning and a perfect health track record at the doctors.

Wait... I am Brasilian... Even though I am an American citizen, my values come from a foreign culture...

I ain't helping my case FOR Americans here, am I?

helgrenze wrote:All this military food talk makes me want a good old-fahion Navy Slider.... with extra grease.

that sounds like a sexual euphemism...

djphranq wrote:

filbert wrote:Army food is similarly dreadful. The messes get around £1 a day per soldier for food and it shows in some of the food that gets churned out. To be fair, the Army chefs do wonders with what they have but as the saying goes, 'you can polish a turd...'

MRE's are cool though... best school lunch ever

This says something really disturbing about the quality of school lunches.

Another issue with the food that kids eat is that all that deep fried, greasy, sugar-laden crap can't possibly good for helping the kids' energy levels or concentration. I'm willing to bet that if the kids ate better, they'd do a hell of a lot better in school too.

I remember in elementary school, we just brought our own lunches, but in Jr. high, the food was horrible greasy crap. They served donuts and chips alongside the 'real' food. Salads were brown and mushy. Utterly horrible. No wonder I was a fat kid... then puberty hit... but that's beside the point.

High school got much better. Fresh sandwich bar (although it eventually got closed down to save costs), and the cooking class catered for the cafeteria, meaning plenty of great food like prime rib and chicken that was properly cooked. I couldn't eat much of it though, since I can't eat much onion without getting sick and they used a LOT of onions. After they closed down the sandwich bar, I just ended up bringing my own lunch for a while, until I just stopped eating lunch completely in order to get more work done over my lunch breaks.

Fafnir wrote:Another issue with the food that kids eat is that all that deep fried, greasy, sugar-laden crap can't possibly good for helping the kids' energy levels or concentration. I'm willing to bet that if the kids ate better, they'd do a hell of a lot better in school too.

Yeah, but good food costs money.

Also, it has been proven that in schools that use incandescent lightbulbs (the standard, old timey lightbulb), students learn better than if they study underneath fluorescent bulbs (the long, white sticks). Schools use the fluorescent bulbs simply because they are cheaper to operate.

CT GAMER wrote:

helgrenze wrote:All this military food talk makes me want a good old-fahion Navy Slider.... with extra grease.

that sounds like a sexual euphemism...

Its a cheap, nasty, greasy thin "burger" on a cheap, nasty, greasy bun with cheap, nasty, greasy cheese.

helgrenze wrote:

CT GAMER wrote:

helgrenze wrote:All this military food talk makes me want a good old-fahion Navy Slider.... with extra grease.

that sounds like a sexual euphemism...

Its a cheap, nasty, greasy thin "burger" on a cheap, nasty, greasy bun with cheap, nasty, greasy cheese.

That sounds like a sexual euphemism...