CAA: Christian Anime Alliance

Hi everyone, I have been watching some episodes from this show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Oliver%27s_Food_Revolution).

As I don't live in the USA, I would like to find out whether you think the information portrayed in this show is accurate, especially in the context of the dietary habits of Americans.

For example, is it true that elementary schools there serve pizza for breakfast, or was the school portrayed in the show more of an exception than the rule?

I am just a bit sceptical of some of the portayals so I'd like to find out more. Thanks.

When I was a kid in the 90s, pizza was occasionally on the lunch menu at school. But it was infrequent; maybe once a month? I don't know if schools still do that though.

Huffington is probably the exception, rather than the rule. It's interesting though. Poor Jamie Oliver's receiving quite a bit of crap from angry parents - "how dare you introduce my little Timmy to healthy, delicious foods!"

Yeah, Huffington is not the normal school. I can't think of ANY that serve pizza for breakfast- in fact, I'm sure that there are national guidelines as to what may be served to kids according to nutritional guidelines. For lunch at mine, since we were a fairly well-funded and large school, we had decently healthy options, such as meatloaf or chicken a la king- served with either fruit or a bit of salad, and maybe a bit of dessert like a small slice of cake or some pudding or jello. And if we didn't want the main meal, we could otherwise have PB&J or ham sandwiches. But again, we were funded. Underfunded schools aren't able to afford that variety and have resorted to less healthy meals. It's also a case of the provider- schools pretty much are required to let the lowest bidder cook and provide the meals, so if they're cooking everything in an inch of fat and grease, well.... that's too bad, because they were the lowest bidder.

It is interesting that there seem to be angry parents, but since this is a type of "reality tv", maybe not so much. There might be some editing tricks going on here. I'm also wondering if it isn't the food they're outraged at, but something else, but it escapes me now....

EDIT: Yep, found the guidelines for breakfasts and lunches as set up by the USDA (they're in charge of that over here in the States). Here's the links: http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Breakfast/Default.htm (National guidelines for school breakfasts) http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/ (National guidelines for lunch)

Thanks for the responses, I found them quite informative - much appreciated.

Just a note, the city name is Huntington.

I like the show, but it's a bit concerning to watch.

I'm not sure why Jamie would want to portray it worse than it is... he's already having a hard time convincing the media, et al that he's on their side, and that would just destroy his credibility.

"Unhealthy" foods are even banned here from school canteens! So they can't sell pizzas at lunchtimes, let alone hand them out for breakfast! The amount of food waste was very worrying too.

We had something called Breakfast Pizza at my elementary school. It was probably my absolute favorite thing ever...but they werent big portions, you could probably eat them in 6 bites XD

Gravy + cheese + Sausage hamburger= win.

I also remember pizza burgers (pretty much burgers with cheese and marinara sauce) Fondly... haha

But my school was small, and probably what we got was a heckuva lot better than some schools who get to eat McDonalds and other fast food in their schools.

Atria35 wrote:Underfunded schools aren't able to afford that variety and have resorted to less healthy meals. It's also a case of the provider- schools pretty much are required to let the lowest bidder cook and provide the meals, so if they're cooking everything in an inch of fat and grease, well.... that's too bad, because they were the lowest bidder.

This is pretty much true, and makes me want to rant about politics, but I refuse because this thread would get ugly.

For the record, my school had pizza about once a week on the lunch menu, and never on the breakfast menu.

I remember at school we had pizza for lunch once a week. Everyone loved pizza day. Then there were gravy burgers with mashed taters. Those were pretty awesome too. The spaghetti was okay. I can't really remember what else we had.

We never had pizza for breakfast though. It was always cereal boxes and little cartons of milk and I really can't remember what else.

What time of the day do you start school in the U.S? Here in Australia, there's no need for breakfast at school because school starts between 8:30am-9am - depending on your school, and finishes between 3pm-3:30pm - again depending on your school.

It depends on the school. I know the school I was at started at around 8 or 8:30...I can't remember exactly. However, it was the only high school in the county, and some kids had hour-long bus rides to the school. Plus, you must remember that in a lot of ways, our country isn't quite on par with yours in how we treat the poorer in our society, and for a lot of kids if the school didn't offer breakfast, they wouldn't get any.

Breakfast was only really offered to the elementary school but the middle and high schoolers could still go in and get breakfast. Of course, most of us didn't do that while we were in MS. We went in and got a snack from the snack bar or something.

I honestly can't remember much about school. I started school earlier than most kids and had to be taken out during 8th grade if I remember because the school got pretty bad with bullying, drugs, and incompetent staff. I hear a lot of schools are like this in the south eastern part of the US as well but it all depends on location.

The idea of breakfast at school is so strange to me! My school typically ran from 8AM to 3PM (though I recall that some years, we started at 7:45 and got out at 2:45 to make dealing with traffic with the school across the street easier), but we only had one meal at lunch. Of course, I went to a really small private Christian school, so that might be the difference between that and a public school. Still, that's interesting!

Our school occasionally has pizza for breakfast. Usually because it's what was lunch yesterday, but I don't eat school food, so I shouldn't complain.

Radical Dreamer wrote:The idea of breakfast at school is so strange to me! My school typically ran from 8AM to 3PM (though I recall that some years, we started at 7:45 and got out at 2:45 to make dealing with traffic with the school across the street easier), but we only had one meal at lunch. Of course, I went to a really small private Christian school, so that might be the difference between that and a public school. Still, that's interesting!

A lot of the reasons why they had breakfast at public school is because to help out the kids that came from poor families that would have not had breakfast. I remember that it was like .75 for breakfast at all the schools that I went to.

The other reason why to have breakfast at school was to that the parents could drop their kids off early and they could go on to work without having to worry about their kids missing breakfast in the morning.


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My school had breakfast but you had to get there at like 7 to get it (classes started at 8).

Okay, thanks for the helpful replies guys and girls!
Sorry about calling the town "Huffington" instead of "Huntington". I must have had Hufflepuff on my mind. Actually, I think "Huffington" sounds better.

Australia is amazing but we still have poor people. I'm guessing that breakfast is served in some of the poorer communities.

For our school breakfast was always cheaper than lunch. Lunch was like 85 cents when I was in high school but breakfast was only 45 or 55 cents.