A Daily News survey found lunchrooms routinely serve highly processed foods such as mozzarella sticks and pizza, which critics charge are loaded with preservatives and other unhealthy ingredients.
In spite of all the parents concern and food often being the dominant topic at public meetings, the story shows how much of a priority teaching children proper nutrition is at the government level.
"It's more window dressing than real change," said nutritionist Susan Rubin, founder of the Westchester-based advocacy group Better School Food. "Just cutting the calories and fat doesn't make this processed food healthy."
The almost healthy sounding "toasted cheese sandwich on oat bread" is actually a frozen sandwich that contains more than 30 ingredients. Even pizza, that is so often served. How simple can pizza be?
One pizza option has more than 25 different ingredients, including azodicarbonamide, which is used as a bleach for foods or a defoaming agent in plastics, and datem and sodium stearoyl lactylate, two food additives for blending the ingredients together.
The rest of the story explains how Bloomberg's war on sodium is not being fought in public schools, how slow the promised elimination of high-fructose corn syrup is going and how the promised school cafeteria improvments turned out to be "little more than lettuce and pickles" at one high school "salad bar."
But it is not all city government and Bloomberg cannot be expected to reach into his own pocket. At the end of the story a New York City official has his say. Eric Goldstein, the head of food and transportation for the city Department of Education after defending the good reforms by the Bloomberg administration, gets to the heart of the matter.
Still, Goldstein acknowledged more work needs to be done - including cutting high-fructose corn syrup and finding less- processed cheese sandwiches. But he said the city is doing the best it can with what amounts to $1 of federal funding per meal.
"The school food world is a different world. It's not Whole Foods," he said.
Why not? When should children embrace whole food? I guess when they are all grown up and paying their own way. Then they can change bad habits installed by the poor food they grew up with.
Seriously "$1 of federal funding per meal" in New York City. I know that school P.S. 42 where the lunch photo came from. It is right next door to a White Castle. That meal would cost $4.00 in that infamous fast food drive-thru and if a student walked a few doors down to a decent luncheonette something nutritious would cost $8.00. But students are expected to learn something on "$1 of federal funding per meal." |
