I'm lactose intollerant, my milk costs twice as much per gal as reg milk, and I also have to watch it so that I don't eat too much cheese and other dairy foods. Who is going to take into account my dietary quirks, and respond to them better, my Mom, or some overwhelmed, underpaid cafeteria lady who is wearing scrubs and a hairnet?

Here we go again with TANSTAAFL. These meals are so "not free", they probably cost more that something that would be actually nutritious, taste good, and not get thrown away half-eaten, thus wasting the money spent on them.

A nine year old can't figure out how to peel a banana and pour milk into a bowl of chocolate frosted sugar bombs? Or pop a Hot Pocket in the microwave? (I know, still nutritionally void, but surely no worse than a school breakfast)

It's hard for me not to feel a little offended by this. My large family was poor because of the life choices our parents made... or did not make. As kids we were victims of our circumstances.

Government assistance helped but it wasn't enough. There was rarely any breakfast food in our house besides cereal and that was only used for breakfast on the weekends when school could not feed us. My mother wasn't cooking. She was working so much that I rarely saw her the first ten years of my life.

Without free school breakfast and lunch all five of my siblings and I would have gone hungry until dinnertime. (Hell, most of my school would have gone hungry because at least half of us were living below the poverty line, anyone could see that just by looking at our ill-fitting clothes or hearing third-graders talk about food stamps.) I still remember the urgency in our steps to get to school early--we were never late.

It is pretty disgusting to think that kids that have parents who can financially support them but "don't know how to make breakfast" are getting free breakfast that they do not need.

I am sure the parents that support and take advantage of these breakfasts are the same ones that complain about welfare recipients in the same breath.

What's the difference between providing breakfast and providing transportation to schools?

The school breakfasts are crap, but it gets even worse---my sister's middle school served the kids breakfast during homeroom. Seriously. Kids who were already shaving apparently needed a teacher to hand out Coco Puffs and Pop Tarts. Right before they handed out the condoms, I guess.

I do think it's different from providing transportation to school, though. Providing school buses (if done properly, which is a big if for governments) relieves congestion on the road, keeps the school from having to provide huge parking lots with designated drive-through lanes and the like. If everybody (in rural areas particularly) had to drive their kids to school it would still cost time and money to the local government and headaches for everybody, even people without kids in the system. Not that I'd be adverse to charging a fee for bus service, necessarily, and obviously the kids who live close enough to walk don't need a bus. Requiring that everybody feed their own kids (or at least pay for their kids' breakfast) only really impacts the kids and parents.

Somewhat off-topic, but "Wheat Belly" was mentioned in the blog item:

I was doing some work in the Dietician's office in our hospital and I saw a copy of "Wheat Belly" on the counter. We started a discussion about the book and then carbs. It seems that these dieticians aren't married to the Canada Food Guide and were very interested in what I had to say about low carb eating. They also want the recipe for almond flour pizza crust that I told them about. Things are looking up.

Our school provides breakfast for kids ... if you pay for it.

I am okay with feeding the poor kids breakfast. It wans't their idea to be born, or to have poor parents, and kids CAN'T learn if they're hungry. But all kids? hell no. Our school offers breakfast. Some people pay, some get it free, but since it's all computerized no one knows who is who.

Our school offers breakfast. Some people pay, some get it free, but since it's all computerized no one knows who is who.

Posted by: momof4 at September 12, 2012 11:12 AM
________________________________

And a good thing, too.

Here's a letter to Salon.com from 2003.

By Catherine:

"Recently a letter writer accused the writers at Salon of being snobbish elitists for assuming that people who are financially incapable of supporting kids shouldn't have them.

"I'd like to respond that I don't believe in an inalienable right to reproduce as often as you wish, or at all, and I speak as one of four children of a divorced working mother.

"We always got the free school lunches (and had to carry lunch tickets specially marked with a red stripe so all the other kids could tell who the charity cases were), we wore hand-me-down clothes, and we were embarrassed to have Mom pick us up after school in the rusty, junky old car. My mother often worked two jobs, and sometimes cleaned friends' houses for extra money. Yes, there was a lot of love in the family, but it's easy for love to get buried under shame and resentment, when you're too embarrassed to let friends from school see where you live.

"When I was 13, I started working about 20-25 hours a week after school just to have money for clothes and books. There was never enough money ... I felt like I always, always, always had to work. I suppose poverty and hard work help build character, but it also breeds bitterness, anger and a pervasive sense of insecurity and shame. This has left me deeply ambivalent about creating children that I fear I won't be able to care for properly. And by properly, I don't mean having their own TV and DVD player and car, I mean growing up without a constant sense of the dread I felt. I just can't describe the horrible sense of knowing that at any minute our family could fall apart due to simple lack of money, or the utter shame of realizing that my parents were about as helpless in dealing with life's hard knocks as the children they were supposed to protect.

"I love my mother. She did the best she could do. It's just that sometimes I find it hard to understand, much less respect, the mistakes and decisions she made -- even when one of those decisions was me. Why on earth would you even want to have children you know you cannot afford? How selfish is that? What kind of life do you plan on giving them?

"I feel like my childhood was spent in a cloud of anxiety and tension that has carried over into my adult life. A large part of my decision to postpone, and possibly avoid, having children was my own impoverished upbringing. Call me selfish, but I think I've already made my sacrifices. Now that I'm finally, somewhat, financially stable at age 29, I want to relax and enjoy my life.

"I am not some snobbish elitist, just a kid who's been there. I think if you're poor and must have kids, have one -- not four."

I wonder how much of the true motivation is to remove the stigma of being poor? Adults should be ashamed to be on welfare. Children should not.

Amy,

I had meant to listen to this podcast awhile ago, so thanks for posting the link here. I'm 2/3 through and I've never listened to more than 3 consecutive minutes of talk radio before in my life.

In the interview, you said something about eating grass-fed beef in the context of it being superior to grain fed. Would you mind explaining that for me?

Oh, and I'm back on my low-carb diet (I had to go off after sinus surgery because all I could eat was applesauce for awhile). My blood pressure is going back down.

Leona beat me to it. My fault for taking a half hour to think up three sentences.

"Adults should be ashamed to be on welfare. Children should not. "

It doesn't hurt to remind them, so they don't get the idea that it's an acceptable way to live. When I was in the sixth grade, I worked in the school cafeteria's scullery to pay for my lunches. It was wet and filthy work. I remember thinking, "So this is what poor people do." It definitely motivated me to not be poor.

(Although a lot of the other guys in class were actually jealous because I got to play with the industrial dishwasher...)

I wonder if the public schools will eventually become boarding schools

"Parents who don't have time to feed their children need to get their priorities in order. Or perhaps sign their children over to a responsible adult who can take care of them".

I do agree with this sentiment. It gets sticky in my head from there though. I don't want low-income children to go hungry, and I don't want them to bear the burden of stigma that should rest on the shoulders of their parents, but like Cousin Dave said, they also shouldn't be raised to believe that it's an acceptable way to live.

Having rented to several low-income folks, I've noticed that (at least the ones I interacted with) are definitely teaching their children the entitlement way of life, rather than teaching them how become self-sufficient.

I don't know what the solution is. I do have ideas floating in my head, but none of them would be popular and would probably be considered unkind.

One of the things our local PTA does is "bread basket." They used to make sandwiches, but now they're doing packs of non-parishable food that are (discretely) sent home with kids on free/reduced meals for the weekend.

I think this is a good idea, but I'd have a heck of a lot more to donate toward it if my money wasn't sucked into the black hole of the IRS and Congress' reach.

For the record, no matter how many times they ask for fruit snacks, I'm sending in individual servings of nuts. I also send in the highest protein granola/nut bars I can find for the granola/cereal bar category. And oatmeal instead of single-serve sugar cereal. I still feel bad that they're mostly getting carby-crap.

Some nuts, like almonds, are technically fruit.

Careful with allergies, though.

Can you not give babybel cheeses or something?

No, those need to be refrigerated.

I think the school makes sure there aren't any allergy issues before handing them out, but we aren't given any allergy information. For that matter, they ASK for peanut butter stuff.

As far as parents not having time, I'm noticing that it's become the norm for young workers to roll out of bed 15 minutes before they come to the office, where they then eat breakfast and grab their first cup of coffee, or even crash on the lunchroom sofa for some more sleep. (We oldtimers actually seem to be more alert!)...and they promptly tie up the only private bathroom to take care of that morning business. Me, I get up at 6 and do *all* my business before I leave the house.

Do young parents have similar habits? If so it's no wonder their kids show up unfed.