The Glade 4.0

A Florida school district is considering a plan to install surveillance cameras on cafeteria trash cans to monitor what kids are throwing away – after they discovered that students were tossing out their federally-mandated fruit and vegetables.

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The Lake County School Board said more than $75,000 worth of vegetables have been thrown in the garbage. The veggies and fresh fruit are party of the Obama administration’s policy to force schools to provide healthy produce in lunch rooms.

“It’s fairly specific recipe of what they would like us to serve,” Lake County School Board member Tod Howard told Fox News. “Unfortunately, much of it has to do with fresh fruit and vegetables and it seems to be going into the trash. And that’s not okay.”

So Howard suggested the district attach security cameras to the trash cans to monitor exactly what is being thrown away.

“It will also give us documentation so that we can go back to the federal government and say here’s what we are finding,” he said. “We do know there’s an issue.”

School districts across the nation are furious with the Obama administration’s orders. Some students have staged strikes while others have launched petition drives urging the federal government to change their policy.

But Lake County is believed to be the first to actually videotape kids tossing their veggies – and that has some parents upset.

“So we’re going to spend how many more thousands of dollars to put cameras on trash cans to document the thousands of dollars in food the kids are throwing away,” one parent wrote on ClickOrlando.com “This is a no brainer, kids are not going to eat the stuff served at school. Has anyone really looked at these lunch trays?”

“Why not just remove the kids from their parent’s home at 3 – 5 years-old and put them in mass dormitories where their entire lives can be monitored and properly controlled so that they become properly modeled citizens and serve as they are needed by our enlightened leaders,” another reader wrote.

A number of parents were concerned that their children might be videotaped.

“Because no matter what they say, they are going to try to identify the kids throwing the food away and then social workers and courts will get involved,” wrote one local resident. “If your child doesn’t eat his school lunch, you will face punishment. Think I’m wrong? There are cities and states that punish the adults if the children are truant or get in trouble with the law in any manner. Your kid threw away a carrot? Go to jail. This is what we are coming to.”

Howard called those concerns “conspiracy theories” and said they were not going to force kids to eat their vegetables.

“I don’t want anybody to be on camera at all,” he told Fox News. “This would be aimed directly into the trash can. By no means would any of our students be in the picture.”

He said the cameras were meant to give the school district evidence they need to push back against the federal guidelines.

“If we just can’t get kids to eat broccoli and 90 percent of it is going in the trash – that’s a waste of taxpayer dollars – and the federal government needs to look at their mandate,” he said. “We have no choice in the matter. This is just a tool to help us document he issue.”

No decisions have been made on the cameras – yet.

Todd is the author of “Dispatches From Bitter America.” The book is endorsed by Sarah Palin, Mark Levin and Sean Hannity. Click here to get your copy!

Wasted Food, Hungry Kids: Michelle Obama’s Bill in Action

Posted By Patrick Richardson On September 24, 2012 @ 3:27 pm In Education,US News | 409 Comments

In 2010, Michelle Obama went to a lame-duck session of Congress with a request: pass a nutrition bill giving the United States Department of Agriculture broad new powers [1] to regulate school lunches. That bill was passed in late December of that year, and the new regulations have started to go into effect, with the predictable results of wasted food and angry, hungry children.

The cinnamon rolls and chili everyone loved from their childhood are now gone. Bands and other school groups can no longer sell candy bars as a fundraiser. The government is mandating everything from portion size to how many tomatoes have to be on a salad.

P.J. Moran, a food service director for a small district in rural Kansas, said wastage has gone up “at least 20 percent” over last year, as students, particularly at the grade school level, cannot refuse anything on their trays — but, of course, cannot be forced to eat it.

At the high school and junior high levels, things are more flexible, but not much. Moran said those students can refuse up to three items on the tray, but must take the fruit and vegetable servings whether they plan to eat them or not.

The district’s principal, Jim Bolden, said that at the beginning of the year, food service put fresh peaches on the students’ trays, only to helplessly watch them be thrown away by students who didn’t want them:

I bet we threw away four boxes of peaches.

The 8th grade class, which had planned — as always — to sell candy bars to fund its class trip this spring, has had to find new ways to fund it as sales of candy bars this year are allowed only during certain hours. Says Bolden:

Next year we will not be able to do any selling of food products at all. Right now we cannot sell from an hour before lunch until an hour after lunch ends.

Not only is the mandated food not popular and often wasted, there also is not enough of it, and students are protesting. Students in one district have released a YouTube [2] video [2] parodying their quest for enough to eat during the day. A Facebook [3] page asks kids to send in pictures of their meager lunches.

According to Livestrong [4]. [4]com [4], teenagers need between 2,000 and 3,000 calories per day to be healthy, and athletes can need as many as 5,000 calories. But the new regulations limit the intake to just 750-850 calories on the tray. Which, if the food is unpalatable, means the students may not be getting even that much.

Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) and Rep. Steve King (R-IA) have cosponsored the “No Hungry Kids Act,” which aims to repeal the legislation they say is sending kids home hungry. PJ Media spoke to Huelskamp on September 20, when he called the regulations “the epitome of good intentions gone awry.”

Huelskamp said he got involved in August — in Kansas, school starts in August, much earlier than many other states — when a relative sent him pictures of what was in a school lunch:

One size doesn’t fit all, particularly in the lunchroom. The goal of the school lunch program is supposed to be feeding children, not filling the trash cans with uneaten food. The USDA’s new school lunch guidelines are a perfect example of what is wrong with government: misguided inputs, tremendous waste, and unaccomplished goals. Thanks to the Nutrition Nannies at the USDA, America’s children are going hungry at school.

Huelskamp noted that even the last refuge of the hungry kid — the unlimited school salad bar — is now more or less a thing of the past:

Eight-hundred calories is not going to get you from lunch through football practice. They can’t even have an unlimited salad bar any more because they [the kids] might put too much cheese on it or not have the mandated eight cherry tomatoes.

The amount of protein a child is allowed on their trays is seriously limited as well, according to Huelskamp. He said the current regulations limit servings of protein, which could be anything from a hamburger to a side of beans, to 1.5 ounces two days a week and 2 ounces the other three days.

Huelskamp suggested the administration’s focus is perhaps misplaced:

Obesity is not the number one national [5] security [5] concern [5] like [Michelle Obama] says it is.

It was a sentiment with which Moran agreed:

I don’t really think childhood obesity is because of school lunches. Their aim shouldn’t be at the schools.

Dave Trabert of the Kansas [6] Policy [6] Institute [6], an independent policy think tank, said much of the problem is traced straight back to government bureaucracy:

It’s really up to parents what their kids eat and the government should not be mandating. It drives up the cost, it strips people of freedom and eliminates local control. The intrusiveness has been growing and recently it’s been indescribable. These things are done by bureaucratic mandate. These are people who cannot be held accountable. I would have to wonder how many of these bureaucrats are having pizza at their meetings.

In a release [7], King was vehement that these regulations were not helping and were intruding on the rights of parents:

The misguided nanny state, as advanced by Michelle Obama’s “Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act,” was interpreted by (USDA) Secretary (Tom) Vilsack to be a directive that, because some kids are overweight, he would put every child on a diet. Parents know that their kids deserve all of the healthy and nutritious food they want.

Big surprise, kids don't like eating fruit and salads instead of freaking pizza. Doesn't mean we should continue giving them that garbage every day.

Big surprise, kids don't like eating fruit and salads instead of freaking pizza. Doesn't mean we should continue giving them that garbage every day.

Why offer what won't be eaten - that only wastes the food at a slower rate.

Removing choice in order to force what one group think is good on everyone else almost always has horrible unintended consequences.

So remove choice to not remove choice?

If the healthy foods are offered then those that are hungry will eat the things that are offered. If they don't eat, they go hungry. The school can then say to the parents "We offered your child a selection of healthy food, and they *chose* to not eat. How is this our fault again?"

And by not having the food discarded in the trash, it can then be offered to other programs for other people after a time. If you were homeless, would you rather have an apple that was maybe a bit brown or one you had to dig out of the trash?

Ok, so repeal that dumbass law. Or adjust it to Food items offered for sale or consumption cannot then be resold, but can be donated appropriately.

Ok, so repeal that dumbass law. Or adjust it to Food items offered for sale or consumption cannot then be resold, but can be donated appropriately.

Pizza, and school lunches in general, prior to this nonsense were not "garbage".

Pizza and most of the foods offered prior to this nonsense were indeed "garbage" from a nutritional perspective. That fact that you think otherwise speaks to just how completely **** our perspectives on what good food are.