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I neglected to give a shout out to Jamie Oliver who might actually be responsible for the school food revolution in both the UK and the US https://www.publicsc

I neglected to give a shout out to Jamie Oliver who might actually be responsible for the school food revolution in both the UK and the US https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-food-revolution-changing-americas-public-schools https://www.publicschoolreview.com/blog/jamie-oliver-is-his-...

p1necone 2y ago
His crusade against mechanically separated chicken made me lose all respect for him. It's just chicken, you're literally just making better use of the animal. It's not magically less healthy because you used a machine to get at it.
- kome 2y ago
  eh too simple... it's a paste based on chicken, it's not JUST chicken. And the paste contains a lot of shit, honestly.
  - looofooo0 2y ago
    Yeah, but this is separated issue from the meat processing.
    - kome 2y ago
      It's not, it's an ultra-processed food, because you can't just eat mechanically separated chicken, it has to be made into a paste, a goo, to become edible.
      - p1necone 2y ago
        I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Paste like texture = ultra processed = bad?
        Symbiote 2y ago
        To make the paste useful, various artificial additives are used so it sticks together, has a suitable texture and so on.
        chneu 2y ago
        So, in food production you can't just "make a paste". A lot of chemical stuff begins to happen very quickly. Oxidation being a major one, with separation being another. How do we mitigate these issues? We add things. We'll add emulsifying agents, de-clumping agents, things to retain moisture, other things to retain color(or just treat it with gasses, or dye it), etc etc. While it's easy to say "they're just making a paste", in reality that is not what's actually being done. That said, there are plenty of mechanically processed foods that are fine but fall under the "processed" headline because they're technically processed. The devil is in the details though and people really need to get educated on basic food processing/preparation. I don't mean raw milk or grass-fed carnivore Idiocracy, but even a basic understanding of what a preservative is would be helpful.
        looofooo0 2y ago
        But is it bad? If you had declare everything in a tomato, you get a long list.
- casey2 2y ago
  A pepper seed is just a seed until you chew it
wahern 2y ago
Maybe the most recent "revolution", but like with reading or math the politics of school lunches has a long history, with periodic (decadal?) waves of concern and subsequent systematic changes going back to the 1930s, when national school lunch programs were first instituted. The underlying point of contention has always been money, not desire. Who doesn't want healthier kids? For the first 50 years or so the hurdle was the price of food, but since the 1990s the hurdle has been labor. California public schools today offer free breakfast and lunch to everybody, independent of ability to pay. The push for that change started circa 2010. But to make it work fiscally that appears to have accelerated the shift to centralized kitchens distributing prepared--and increasingly highly processed--meals to schools. Before it was closed, my oldest son went to a parochial school that prepared hot lunches out of a tiny kitchen jammed into a corner, pricing them at cost. But it was only possible because of one very dedicated cook (who possibly may not have even been paid staff) assisted by rotating parent volunteers. When that school closed he moved to a new parochial school with a large, well-equipped (albeit old) kitchen. But the kitchen is unused. There's no budget to fund a reliable, affordable cafeteria program even with paid meals, so like most of the parochial schools in the city they contract a private company to deliver prepared "hot" meals, which are no better than the horrible prepared meals the public school district gives kids even though they're sold at "market" price. (The city has their own central kitchens, but the economic pressures result in the same product.)
- casey2 2y ago
  If you were employed there was never a time in American history were food was expensive. When you consider the relative price increase needed to serve quality food to students cost becomes a bad joke. The reason is that nobody is America cares because there is no food culture there is food product and nationalization. The idea that you can have a national lunch program, with 0 national dishes and no standard for preparation is only something that could come from D.C. America has plenty of regional cuisine that is likely cheaper to source locally, people just rarely take into account the fact that money spent close is much more likely to come back to you, 90%/10% is a good rule here. For every dollar you spend you get 90 cents back if the entire supply chain is local and 10 cents if it's completely external.

p1necone 2y ago

His crusade against mechanically separated chicken made me lose all respect for him. It's just chicken, you're literally just making better use of the animal. It's not magically less healthy because you used a machine to get at it.

kome 2y ago
eh too simple... it's a paste based on chicken, it's not JUST chicken. And the paste contains a lot of shit, honestly.
- looofooo0 2y ago
  Yeah, but this is separated issue from the meat processing.
  - kome 2y ago
    It's not, it's an ultra-processed food, because you can't just eat mechanically separated chicken, it has to be made into a paste, a goo, to become edible.
    - p1necone 2y ago
      I'm not really sure what you're trying to say here. Paste like texture = ultra processed = bad?
      - Symbiote 2y ago
        To make the paste useful, various artificial additives are used so it sticks together, has a suitable texture and so on.
      - chneu 2y ago
        So, in food production you can't just "make a paste". A lot of chemical stuff begins to happen very quickly. Oxidation being a major one, with separation being another. How do we mitigate these issues? We add things. We'll add emulsifying agents, de-clumping agents, things to retain moisture, other things to retain color(or just treat it with gasses, or dye it), etc etc. While it's easy to say "they're just making a paste", in reality that is not what's actually being done. That said, there are plenty of mechanically processed foods that are fine but fall under the "processed" headline because they're technically processed. The devil is in the details though and people really need to get educated on basic food processing/preparation. I don't mean raw milk or grass-fed carnivore Idiocracy, but even a basic understanding of what a preservative is would be helpful.
        looofooo0 2y ago
        But is it bad? If you had declare everything in a tomato, you get a long list.
casey2 2y ago
A pepper seed is just a seed until you chew it

wahern 2y ago

Maybe the most recent "revolution", but like with reading or math the politics of school lunches has a long history, with periodic (decadal?) waves of concern and subsequent systematic changes going back to the 1930s, when national school lunch programs were first instituted. The underlying point of contention has always been money, not desire. Who doesn't want healthier kids? For the first 50 years or so the hurdle was the price of food, but since the 1990s the hurdle has been labor. California public schools today offer free breakfast and lunch to everybody, independent of ability to pay. The push for that change started circa 2010. But to make it work fiscally that appears to have accelerated the shift to centralized kitchens distributing prepared--and increasingly highly processed--meals to schools. Before it was closed, my oldest son went to a parochial school that prepared hot lunches out of a tiny kitchen jammed into a corner, pricing them at cost. But it was only possible because of one very dedicated cook (who possibly may not have even been paid staff) assisted by rotating parent volunteers. When that school closed he moved to a new parochial school with a large, well-equipped (albeit old) kitchen. But the kitchen is unused. There's no budget to fund a reliable, affordable cafeteria program even with paid meals, so like most of the parochial schools in the city they contract a private company to deliver prepared "hot" meals, which are no better than the horrible prepared meals the public school district gives kids even though they're sold at "market" price. (The city has their own central kitchens, but the economic pressures result in the same product.)

casey2 2y ago
If you were employed there was never a time in American history were food was expensive. When you consider the relative price increase needed to serve quality food to students cost becomes a bad joke. The reason is that nobody is America cares because there is no food culture there is food product and nationalization. The idea that you can have a national lunch program, with 0 national dishes and no standard for preparation is only something that could come from D.C. America has plenty of regional cuisine that is likely cheaper to source locally, people just rarely take into account the fact that money spent close is much more likely to come back to you, 90%/10% is a good rule here. For every dollar you spend you get 90 cents back if the entire supply chain is local and 10 cents if it's completely external.