Congresswoman Kristi Noem wants to give lazy, wasteful people more free food:
Sophomore Evan Baumberger said "some lunches are ok but there are some that feel like you could add more to them. For instance, I'm an athlete, and after school we usually have practices and usually I get hungry at the end of the day because lunch doesn't always fill me up."
"Every day I still consider bringing a school lunch but I'm sort of lazy. I don't want to go and make it and everything. So I do consider it though to get more in my meal , otherwise it's a very light calorie and you're super hungry. And by the end of the day, I'm starving," Pry said.
It's not every day kids get to eat a turkey platter like this. Some days, lunch just gets dumped.
"It depends what kind of day it is, if you have practice after school you'd have to eat it but if you don't then, you just throw it away. I guess and don't think much about it," Baumberger said [Mark Roper, "Rep. Kristi Noem to Introduce School Lunch Guidelines Bill," KSFY, 2013.11.25].
Rep. Kristi Noem is proposing a new school nutrition bill because she thinks she can make more political hay out of criticizing the Obama Administration's efforts to make school lunches healthier. She's not interested in feeding more children. She's certainly not interested in philosophical consistency; otherwise, why would a woman who pretends that food stamps promote waste, abuse, and government dependency advocate a liberal, big government expansion of school lunches instead of turning to lazy, wasteful kids and preaching a little personal responsibility?
In related news, the Rapid City paper lists total federal expenditures in 2012 on food stamps, farm subsidies, and other programs that South Dakota relies on to prop up its economy and state budget. Look what's on top:
- Farm subsidies: $720,927,000
- Medicaid: $525,607,659
- Premium subsidized crop insurance: $474,805,350
- Highway planning and construction: $323,593,936
- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps): $165,357,967
- Ellsworth Air Force Base: $102,400,000
- Head Start: $22,473,824
If it feeds her family (farm subsidies, crop insurance), Noem sees no evil. If it feeds anti-Obama anger and her finance soliciations, Noem's happy to campaign on it. If it takes care of poor people, Noem says it's a waste.
South Dakota, we should start treating Rep. Noem the way kids treat the stale yogurt the school plops on their plates: scrape her into the trash and order something better!
I'm not a fan of school lunches, I never liked them. But I will argue with anyone about this issue. I hear things like it doesn't fill me up, or it taste bad, its all because of Michelle Obama.
I come back with this. When I was in school, I'd eat (pre-lunch changes). I was always hungry whether I was in sports or not. I'd come home and eat more. Its what kids do, when you get older you understand that at that age you will eat if you have food in front of you. Its part of being that age, and you need someone to tell you that you are eating too much.If you want to bring your own food to school because of it, go for it.
School lunches are a critical facet of education. For many children it is the best meal they have all day. For others it's the only meal they have.
Children don't get to choose their parents, so those children whose only real meal is at school should not be penalized for the parents they were born to.
Some schools with a high percentage of students receiving free lunches, also offer free breakfasts. Studies have repeatedly shown that decent nutrition plays a major role in one's ability to learn. Hunger is a powerful distraction.
I ate school lunch for about 50 years (student + school employee) and it served me very well. No complaints.
School lunches now, and back in the 70s-80s when my kids were in school aren't what they were when I was in school. We had regular home style meals----the cooks peeled, cooked and mashed the potatoes. The meals were also served on glass plates and we had metal silverware, plastic glasses for milk, etc. We would have things like meat loaf, baked potatoes, goulash, sloppy joes, veggie, a real dessert, not fruit, and once in awhile we would get an apple or an orange. We could also go back for seconds without having to pay for the second serving.
Joan, same for me. Everyone ate on Thursdays at my grade school. That was the day Mrs. Klapperich made the best barbecues on the planet! (Back in The Day, we called sloppy joes - barbecues.)
My oh My!!!!!!! how did the country ever get to where it is now? Go to school without breakfast!! NO breakfast or hot lunches at school!!!! Soup for supper!!! One teacher and 10 or 12 kids all in a different grade rammed in a one room school!!!!!! Dad off to war in some foreign land we never heard of!!!! No government subsidies for the farmers!!! No E-B 5!!!!! impossible? Hell no
Rep. Noem puts out at least one weekly press release blathering about something in an attempt to appear relevant and to change the subject from the fact she hasn't passed a farm bill and hasn't done anything of substance in her 3 years in congress. I'm tired of reading press releases from our do-nothing, ineffective, government-shuttering, welfare queen congresswoman. Thankfully, this blog isn't a press release outlet like the former blog Dakota War College has become. On Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for the Madville Times.
Thank you and wishing you and your family a nice thanksgiving day CORY!!!!! You keep me up to date and entertained out here in hill billy heaven with your hard work and honest reporting!!!!!!!
It is remarkable that Kristi found it important to bring this up now. There is no new information, no possibility that anything she proposes will ever become law. But it is an opportunity for her to get on TV by showing up within range of all the TV cameras without stopping at a SF school. What a joke for a Congressperson!
Bree: because the farm bill doesn't encourage accepting human milk as a wholesome alternative to the crap hospitals give to newborns.
Kristi Noem doesn't want unadulterated food in school kitchens: she wants engineered edible food-like substances built by her donors. If South Dakota was serious it would listen to Montana Governor Steve Bullock who is leading on local foods in schools.
Republicans=cheap food; Democrats=safe food.
To me, one thing that is missed when I speak of school lunches is that I had something to eat at home. I had parents that were able to provide a decent home and food for us like in 3 squares a day. We got up and had the pleasant delight of a breakfast, not bacon and eggs, but cereal and milk and toast to start the day. We had the school lunch that was not like Mom made, but it was good just the same. At night, we had supper. Why do I bring that up? It is because that for many of our neighbor kids and their families, my childhood was a dream for them. They do not have 3 square meals a day, in fact, if it were not for school, they would go hungrier than they already are. NOem should be ashamed of herself, but to be ashamed, you have to stop being ignorant and for this piece of work, that is impossible. NO More NOem.
Thanks, Rollin! Same to you and your family on the homestead! Eat an extra helping of stuffing for me... and keep reading!
Deb (Back in The Day, we called sloppy joes - barbecues.)
When my wife came here from Iowa she called them Made Rights. It took me a couple of years to figure out what she was talking about. They talk funny in Iowa.
The Blindman
Taverns, Mr. Dithmer.
chili and cinnamon roll day: bipartisan, ecumenical, regional comfort food.
They showed a couple of kids on the story that I saw on the local news throwing some food into the garbage. As soon as I saw that, it became a non story. I still remember all of those starving kids over in China, that Mom used to tell us about.
First, school lunch is not a training table. Especially if you're an athlete, you ought to start learning about nutrition and what your body needs to perform. It is not government's responsibility to to provide you with the nutrition you need to perform at top level on the football field. You are responsible for that, and if you knew the least thing about nutrition, you would know that it has nothing to do with how full your stomach feels at lunchtime. That students feel hungry a few hours later tells me they are eating far too much carbohydrate-rich food. And that tells me they need even more mandates.
Second, I saw nothing in Noem's press release that would affect any of the students' concerns about school lunch. She's just using students as a backdrop to make comments that her food industry minders put before her.
Third, there is lots that can be done to improve school lunch, but it would take far more "mandates" to do that. I'd bet Noem's bill is meant to throw a bone to the worst of the food processing industry. With Noem it's always about the "race to the bottom."
In Minneapolis schools the board has responded to pressure from families to make some improvements in school meals. Now they source everything as close to the school as possible. Lots of local food; fruits, vegetables, meats, breads, etc. It's cheaper than the mass produced routine fish sticks, apple sauce, buns, fatty hamburgers, etc.
Students have been throwing out fresh foods because it's not the salty, sweet, fried foods they are most familiar with.
Family income is not a guarantee of healthier eating. In fact, sometimes the middle and upper income children eat worse because families don't share meals. They just get something out of the frig or freezer, nuke and eat.
By the way, there is a steady decrease in food thrown out. Students are getting used to the taste of real taste.
Healthy meals really pay off over time too. Rates of obesity, diabetes, heart and joint problems and other weight-related health issues diminish.
It's a win/win.
Rorschach:
Those aren't Press Releases, they are Fox News Job Applications.
Fox Promo:
"FOX AND FRIENDS, still hating Obamacre and now with Krisit Noem, the CRP Rancher and defender of farm dust inside Rapid City limits!"
I'll admit my diet isn't the greatest. Lots of fast food & soda. When I was in Europe recently (including Cory's ancestral home) I ate fresh food. Home cooked food bought daily at the grocery store 1 block away. Fresh fruit and vegetables. Fresh baked bread and pastries from the corner bakery. (The relatives I stayed with had only a mini refrigerator). Best tasting food ever! And I ate plenty of it. Funny thing happened though. Without McDonalds and BK and Taco Johns and KFC I actually lost weight.
If schools and KN want more local choice, you can always exit out of the federal school lunch program and establishing your own guidelines with your own funding. KN is like a drug addict. She needs a "fix" of federal dollars wherever she goes including crop insurance for her own family. Too bad a school district like Chester is used as a prop for political purposes.
Donald, that jockocracy angle comes regularly in these school-lunch complaints. Athletes seem to think they are entitled to more food. What about us nerds with high metabolism? And what about paying a fair price for food? School lunch is already the best deal in town. If kids need more food, is Noem really advocating the socialist position that they shouldn't have to pay for it? And if she really holds that position, why can't she apply that same generous, socialist thinking to food stamps? If football is a reason to put another sloppy joe on a kid's plate, so is poverty.
Mr. Grudz, what does Kristi eat for breakfast? Mrs. S tried to suggest you and I were the same person, but you eat your breakfast out West, and I take my breakfast in the East.
The most important point, to me, is food stamps 165 million and subsidies for crop insurance $427 million. Three times more aid to farmers than to the hungry but the republicans want to cut food stamps.
Daj, maybe that's supply-side economics at work?
Do the crop insurance subsidies subsidize farmers or just the agents and insurance companies?
If KELO could find really skinny kids to gripe and slim, trim mothers and fathers to gripe, the Noem BS might make sense. My memory of a couple hundred grade school kids between 1950 and 1960 is that fewer than a dozen were overweight or obese. Now five out of ten of the local kids appear overweight.
Rollin talk about fathers being off to war, the only wars I really remember are the Korean and Vietnam and what sticks out in my mind is back then we didn't hear about the young couples, crying "he won't be here when the baby is born," etc. How did young women get by not having the husband with them during delivery? How did the families where the husband/father get by without the military family support groups we hear about now? There also wasn't the huge deployment farewells we see on TV and the same goes for welcome backs, and guess what families survived.
Douglas, when I was in high school, there were all of roughly 50 kids in the high school, there was one boy that was heavy set, and two girls that could be called chubby, the rest of us were average size, one girl verged on being skinny. Even the town kids back then had chores to do when they got home, plus there wasn't TV, video games, computers, etc for kids to mess around with back then.
Back in the day when a kid wanted seconds of the school lunch they didn't have to pay for it and now they do.
Insurance subsidy for whom? Didn't we run a bill in SD that made sure agents would be kept profitable for disbursing Obama Care? I'd say subsidy for agents in a larger % for risk or input than farmers Doug, again guaranteeing profits for the insurance companies as they have done with the ACA. Farmers are always easy to blame.
I have to say this somewhere, Kristi would gain 20 pounds if she ate those same school lunches every day.
Also, Does Chester, SD, (location in the story) still have a grocery store even? It's now within a quasi "food desert" if I remember correctly.