Food For Thought

Food is certainly having a big week in the news.

After failing to change people's dietary habits with their "Meat Is Murder" campaign, their hidden videos from slaughterhouses and farms and pretending that tofu isn't disgusting, the Anti-Personal Freedom Movement has decided to use the ultimate scare tactic: claiming meat causes cancer.  The World Health Organization is assisting in the effort claiming that by combining hundreds of independent studies they can show that 34-thousand people worldwide died of cancers that may be linked to consumption of large amounts of processed meats.

Now before you put down that piece of bacon and your Jimmy Dean Breakfast Sausage please consider that 8.2-MILLION people die of cancer worldwide every year.  That means consumption of processed meats may have accounted for .4% of those deaths.  Compare that to the same World Health Organization findings that link smoking to 5.6-MILLION cancer deaths a year--a whopping 68% of all cancer-related deaths a year.  And yet the WHO is going to list meat as a "carcinogen" like tobacco and asbestos?  Nice try, but I won't be giving up my smoked brisket or Italian sausages anytime soon.

Meanwhile, we found out this week that more and more children are skipping the lunch line at school nowadays.  The latest food service report from the Oshkosh School District shows the number of lunches and breakfasts served to kids has dropped 13% and 6% in the last two years respectively.  That has created a $125-thousand dollar deficit in the hot lunch program--after spending every penny in the reserve fund as well.

In a refreshing bit of honesty from a group that likes to deflect negative attention from anything that educators support, Oshkosh officials are putting the blame for the exodus from the lunchroom on the White House rules on portion sizes, caloric intake and ingredient restrictions.  These rules came, of course, from the self-appointed Queen of the Anti-Personal Freedom Movement: First Lady Michelle Obama.  I was going to post video of Adam Sandler and Chris Farley performing Lunch Lady Land on Saturday Night Live here--but most kids today don't know what a school lunch Sloppy Joe is because--hello--meat causes cancer.

I have to congratulate the students who are turning their backs on the pathetic new school lunches before the lunches turn their stomachs.  If someone told me that cauliflower and cheese is as good as macaroni and cheese, I'd probably tell them to stick their cauliflower in the same place it will be coming out of tomorrow if they ate it.  And if I had a two-hour basketball practice right after school, I'd probably choose somewhere where I could get a couple thousand calories on my plate--instead of portions the First Lady deems acceptable for the 80-pound freshman girl who spends her entire lunch hour texting her friends instead of eating anyway.

Maybe this generation of kids has decided that it's enough for their school to be their educator, nanny, nurse, birth control provider, thought police, political lobbyist, therapist, technology provider and emasculator--and that they don't need it to be a dietician as well.