Ah, Congress

[Alt+F4]

And it showed significantly better education attainment correlating with school lunch programs.

It said no such thing. From page 25:

The NSLP (National School Lunch Program) appears to have had no long-term effect on health but may have affected educational attainment. The IV estimates on education suggest that increasing NSLP exposure by ten percentage points is associated with increasing education by .365 years among women and nearly one year among men.

And btw, the NSLP as orginally conceived had nothing to do with education, it was a national security measure to make sure we had enough healthy adults for military service. A significant amount of men were not eligible for military service in World War II due to malnutrition.

You claimed "the opposite". So where is your evidence?

I can't find any studies that say that the crappy school lunches that kids are served today in anyway, shape or form help them do better in school, as I said, that is not what the program is for. I'll go with my 18 years in the public school system listening to thousands of kids who complain about school food and having to deal with kids coming late to class because they stopped to get something to eat, despite the fact we offer free breakfast to everyone.

 

[rwguinn]

This?

 

[Newtons Bit]

Except it's not about education, it's about schools having to (yet again) fullfill the role of being parents. Ban school breakfast and lunch, let parents feed their own kids, stop asking the government to do it.

It would be nice if parents were responsible enough to feed their own kids. Unfortunately, many are not. Almost 100% of the kids in rural New Mexico are on free or reduced lunch programs. Most also get free breakfast. There's a number of organizations who provide kids with backpacks full of food so they can eat. They do it, because without it, these kids don't eat at all during the weekends.

Free school breakfast and lunch is the only meal some of these kids get. The Roadrunner food banks provides 3,000 of food backpacks a week.

 

[Alt+F4]

It would be nice if parents were responsible enough to feed their own kids. Unfortunately, many are not. Almost 100% of the kids in rural New Mexico are on free or reduced lunch programs. Most also get free breakfast. There's a number of organizations who provide kids with backpacks full of food so they can eat. They do it, because without it, these kids don't eat at all during the weekends.

Free school breakfast and lunch is the only meal some of these kids get. The Roadrunner food banks provides 3,000 of food backpacks a week.

There is a differnence between being eligible for free breakfast/lunch and actually eating it.

During the 2010 federal fiscal year, 20.6 million low-income children received free or reduced-price meals through the National School Lunch Program. Unfortunately, just 2.3 million of these same income-eligible children participated in the Summer Food Service Program that same year.

If school breakfast/lunch is the only meal these kids get, what are they eating in the summer? I think the crappy school food helps increase childhood hunger and malnutrition because the kids refuse to eat it.

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/child-hunger-facts.aspx

Schools are desperate for every parent to complete a lunch form, because the school gets more money. The schools don't care if the kids actually eat the food or not. In NYC we even have prizes for lunch forms.

Schools Chancellor Dennis M. Walcott and NY Jets Tight End Dustin Keller today announced a sweepstakes to encourage parents to submit the school meals application that determines if they qualify for free and reduced-price lunch for their children. Parents will be automatically entered in the sweepstakes when they submit the application form. The winning family receives a trip for two sponsored by the Jets to the National Football League Pro Bowl in Hawaii in 2012.

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/medi...ches/2011-2012/schoolmealsapprelease92711.htm

 

[Newtons Bit]

There is a differnence between being eligible for free breakfast/lunch and actually eating it.

If school breakfast/lunch is the only meal these kids get, what are they eating in the summer? I think the crappy school food helps increase childhood hunger and malnutrition because the kids refuse to eat it.

I have no idea how the kids eat during the summer. I saw a presentation by the Roadrunner Food Bank a couple of years ago that stated this was a problem for many kids. I imagine the summer food programs are under utilized because the kids have trouble getting to the sites that distribute the foods. Kids are already bussed to schools, and local governments enforce kids attending. Free summer food programs don't have this logistical advantage.

Schools are desperate for every parent to complete a lunch form, because the school gets more money. The schools don't care if the kids actually eat the food or not. In NYC we even have prizes for lunch forms.

http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/medi...ches/2011-2012/schoolmealsapprelease92711.htm

I recall something like this occuring when I was in school. Some schools/administrators/districts are money grubbing. That doesn't justify punishing impoverished kids to get back at the money grubbers.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

It said no such thing.

I refer you again to the text I bolded in the abstract. It said exactly that. [ETA: Actually the abstract overstated it using the word "effects" rather than correlation.]

The correlation is there. The causation (whether or not the lunch program affected educational attainment) is beyond the ability of the paper to tease apart from any number of possible confounding factors.

I can't find any studies that say that the crappy school lunches that kids are served today in anyway, shape or form help them do better in school,

Yes, it would be impossible to conclude that without setting up a randomized study. All we can do is look at what happened and see a correlation. A correlation is the best evidence we can expect of school lunch programs having this effect. You claimed the "opposite", so I await the production of evidence that school lunch programs harm educational outcomes.

And, yet again, going back to the topic at hand, none of this excuses or defends Congress' declaring pizza to be a vegetable.

 

[Alt+F4]

I have no idea how the kids eat during the summer. I saw a presentation by the Roadrunner Food Bank a couple of years ago that stated this was a problem for many kids. I imagine the summer food programs are under utilized because the kids have trouble getting to the sites that distribute the foods. Kids are already bussed to schools, and local governments enforce kids attending. Free summer food programs don't have this logistical advantage.

I agree that without school bus service it's difficult for rural kids to get free breakfast/lunch during the summer. However, school food can't be their only meal of the day since most are not getting it during the summer and I see no reports of kids in New Mexico or anywhere else starving to death. Also, do you have evidence that large numbers of poor children in New Mexico get no food at all on weekends?

 

[Newtons Bit]

I agree that without school bus service it's difficult for rural kids to get free breakfast/lunch during the summer. However, school food can't be their only meal of the day since most are not getting it during the summer and I see no reports of kids in New Mexico or anywhere else starving to death. Also, do you have evidence that large numbers of poor children in New Mexico get no food at all on weekends?

It came from a presentation by the food bank. Which is why they give over 3,000 kids a week backpacks filled with food.

 

[Alt+F4]

It came from a presentation by the food bank. Which is why they give over 3,000 kids a week backpacks filled with food.

I think the food bank in your link does a lot of good. What I think is a dubious claim is that there are children in New Mexico who get no food whatsoever from lunch on Friday to breakfast on Monday morning.

 

[ZirconBlue]

No it's an argument for parental responsibility, feed your own kids. Why is that too much to ask?

Well, I'd like my daughter to get a nice hot lunch, with some variety, rather than be stuck with the same handful of items that are suitable for a sack lunch. If that makes me "irresponsible", then so be it.

Kids in NYC high schools are not let out for lunch (too time consuming to re-scan them back in). So if we had a cafeteria with healthy food they would have no choice but to eat that, or brown bag their junk (which they won't, because that takes.....effort!)

I don't see why parents just can't get up 10 minutes early and make their kids a friggin sandwhich and throw in a piece of fruit. Close the slop scene in the public schools and save some money.

Oh, good, peanut butter and jelly. Again.

Oh, and you know that not all school systems are the same, right?

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

No it's an argument for parental responsibility, feed your own kids. Why is that too much to ask?

And does your position on parental responsibility somehow excuse or defend Congress' declaring pizza to be a vegetable? I know you really want to start a new topic here, but Congress simply did not suggest ending school lunch programs. They sought to get around USDA requirements for the number of vegetable servings by declaring pizza to be a vegetable.