* school lunches
Topics: Regulation
09 Jun 1994
From: ervan
I read today in the Chronicle that the Ag Department is promulgating
new rules about nutrition requirements for schools lunches. No great
liberties are at steak here, but it is in an interesting look inside
the sausage factory. The first question is how the heck did we arrive
at the point where a federal agency responsible for pork barrel for
farmers is now in charge of deciding what kids will eat?
Oh well, school lunches are such a success. The government found
something to do with the surplus food generated by subsidies: store it
for 6 months, can it, serve it as indistinguishable mush to kids, and
ask the taxpayers for more money to run this noble experiment. Think
of all the jobs generated hauling this stuff around (not to mention
trash pick-up since no one actually eats it).
The article said the new rules don't prohibit popular foods, it merely
requires them to be rotated with healthy foods, i.e. unpopular foods.
Nothing is really changed. Kids will eat the marginal stuff and dump
the rest. I want to see Mike Espy (Ag Secretary) personally eat every
canned pea that comes back to the trash can. There is an irony in the
history of the project which started out trying to give undernourished
kids good food and now it's going to try to starve kids unless they eat
the least appetizing offerings. This is just an interesting case of
the law of unintended consequences. Just because the government tries
to make something happen, it won't. It often even produces the
opposite of the desired effect.
Anyone want to bet how much money will be spent enforcing this? In the
middle of a supposed financial crisis of our public schools, they now
have to dedicate more staff time to making sure they meet the federal
fat quotas. With bureaucratic brainstorms like this, no one can
imagine why the public schools have no money left to teach.
On another of my favorite themes, no matter how bad government is
principle, in practice you get the wrong purpose *and* terrible
implementation. I see that whole milk has not been touched. Is this
because it is healthy? Of course not. It is because the dairy lobby
is one of the strongest on the Hill. This is also the reason the
original 'four basic food groups' were cooked up the government. The
four food groups represented the four farming groups with the most
clout.
We could eliminate the Ag Department (except possibly meat inspection)
with absolutely no downside.
---Ervan
Home