Friday, October 11, 2013

2089 A Spoonful of Junkfood



A while back there was a big pushback from some folks when Michelle Obama attempted to promote healthier food alternatives in school lunch programs. Why would anyone complain about replacing deep-fried French fries with carrot sticks, and ketchup with real tomatoes? 

(You remember ketchup was formerly categorized as a vegetable in the federal school lunch nutritional guidelines.)

The folks against this fairly common sense approach made loud complaints about America turning into a "nanny state." Apparently healthy food choices are one of those nanny things.

Always a funny sort of insult to me. I’m one of those lower class folks who never had a nanny, admonishing them to eat well or otherwise. The closest I ever came to a nanny was watching Mary Poppins. As I recall, my mom had that duty and, working as she did, could use all the help she could get from educators to reinforce her nutritional choices, which my peers were working hard to undermine.

I guess the nanny-callers only care about rich kids not having to accept government food choices. Because Phil Roe, Republican Representative from Tennessee, has recently introduced a bill limiting food stamp choices to "nutritious" food. 

He proposes prohibiting the use of food stamps to buy soda, sugary cereals, frozen French fries, tater tots, or canned fruit with added sugar. In short, all the stuff on sale at Walmart and Big Lots. 
 
In all fairness, maybe Phil wasn't one of those nanny-callers and isn't being a hypocrite. I hope so, because I actually agree with him. We shouldn't subsidize poor nutrition, either in the food stamp area...or the cafeteria. 

But we ought to figure out a way to make nutritional food as cheap as generic Froot Loops.

That would be supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. 

America, ya gotta love it.


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