The Politics of School Lunches

I'm a huge fan of Jamie Oliver and his campaigns to get people to cook more food at home and to reform the school lunch program. Here's some background on his new show.

We've started packing lunch for the kids every day, because the school lunches are complete crap. And Jonah's cool with that, because he hates the food, too. Here's the menu from March. [Sorry, link removed.] Mozzarella sticks as a main course. Nacho chips with fake cheese another day. One out of every four lunches was pizza. They say they offer salads, but their salads are a cup with a few leaves in it. They sell potato chips and cookies to the kids. Some ten-year olds only eat the potato chips and cookies for lunch. 

Reason Magazine has the nastiest response to Oliver that I've ever seen. They say it would cost too much to improve school lunches and that kids like crappy food, so we should give them what they want. Niiiice. 

They roll their eyes when Oliver questions the wisdom of serving pizza to the children for breakfast. Their reporter stands in front of a McDonald's and says, "That was British celebrity chef, Jamie Oliver, whose campaign against delicious food like this has come to our shores."  And he's not joking! Really! It's just awesome. Watch out for the evil organic kale, people.