School Breakfasts (and lunches)

First some history of the school lunch program. It was begun under
Harry Truman.

http://www.fns.usda.gov/cnd/Lunch/

School breakfast programs came into being in 1966.

http://www.frac.org/html/federal_foo...grams/sbp.html


Universal school breakfast refers to any school program that offers
breakfast at no charge to all students, regardless of income. (Schools
that offer universal school breakfast are still in the minority, and
must seek local or state resources to cover any additional costs
involved.) Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Schools that provide universal breakfast in the classroom report
decreases in discipline and psychological problems, visits to school
nurses and tardiness; increases in student attentiveness and
attendance; and generally improved learning environments.

Participation

On a typical day during the 2006-07 school year, 9.9 million children
in more than 84,500 schools and institutions participated in the SBP.
Of these children, 81 percent received free or reduced price
breakfasts.

About 85 percent of schools that serve lunch also serve breakfast. In
the 2006-07 school year, 45.3 children received free or reduced price
school breakfast for every 100 who received free-or reduced price
school lunch, although this ratio varied among the states from 32.9
per 100 to 61.1 per 100. Research shows that universal school
breakfast programs dramatically increase student participation in
school breakfast.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

In article ,
toto wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Wouldn't it be rather difficult for the teachers to keep the room clean?

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

Chookie wrote:
In article ,
toto wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Many schools have staggered lunches because they can't
accommodate all the students in one shift. If they had to have
shifts for breakfast, that would take up more time. At our school,
breakfast is available in the cafeteria (free or reduced price for
those on free or reduced price lunch; full price for others), but
if you take the bus to school (most do), you probably don't arrive
in time to eat breakfast, so those who want to eat breakfast have
to find a way to get to school early.

Wouldn't it be rather difficult for the teachers to keep the room clean?

Not necessarily. The rooms are cleaned every day anyway,
and I suspect that a program providing breakfast at the desk for
each child would probably not have particularly messy breakfasts.

Best wishes,
Ericka

In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Many schools have staggered lunches because they can't
accommodate all the students in one shift. If they had to have
shifts for breakfast, that would take up more time. At our school,
breakfast is available in the cafeteria (free or reduced price for
those on free or reduced price lunch; full price for others), but
if you take the bus to school (most do), you probably don't arrive
in time to eat breakfast, so those who want to eat breakfast have
to find a way to get to school early.

OK -- sounds like the whole concept of disadvantage hasn't been well
understood, has it? "Kid, you can get the free breakfast if your family has a
car."

Wouldn't it be rather difficult for the teachers to keep the room clean?

Not necessarily. The rooms are cleaned every day anyway,
and I suspect that a program providing breakfast at the desk for
each child would probably not have particularly messy breakfasts.

I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that. Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or something on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A donut and
a juice box makes more sense.

--
Chookie -- Sydney, Australia
(Replace "foulspambegone" with "optushome" to reply)

http://chookiesbackyard.blogspot.com/

In article ehrebeniuk-CE9A39.21252930072008@news, Chookie says...

In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Many schools have staggered lunches because they can't
accommodate all the students in one shift. If they had to have
shifts for breakfast, that would take up more time. At our school,
breakfast is available in the cafeteria (free or reduced price for
those on free or reduced price lunch; full price for others), but
if you take the bus to school (most do), you probably don't arrive
in time to eat breakfast, so those who want to eat breakfast have
to find a way to get to school early.

OK -- sounds like the whole concept of disadvantage hasn't been well
understood, has it? "Kid, you can get the free breakfast if your family has a
car."

I don't think she said it was good - it certainly goes against the idea of
proliferating freebies in the schools.


Wouldn't it be rather difficult for the teachers to keep the room clean?

Not necessarily. The rooms are cleaned every day anyway,
and I suspect that a program providing breakfast at the desk for
each child would probably not have particularly messy breakfasts.

I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that. Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or something on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A donut and
a juice box makes more sense.


Whoa - morning blood glucose spike oh joy.

Banty

Chookie wrote:

In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Many schools have staggered lunches because they can't
accommodate all the students in one shift. If they had to have
shifts for breakfast, that would take up more time. At our school,
breakfast is available in the cafeteria (free or reduced price for
those on free or reduced price lunch; full price for others), but
if you take the bus to school (most do), you probably don't arrive
in time to eat breakfast, so those who want to eat breakfast have
to find a way to get to school early.

OK -- sounds like the whole concept of disadvantage hasn't been well
understood, has it? "Kid, you can get the free breakfast if your family has a
car."

That's not the way it works. When she said "if you take the bus to
school", the other option was walking, not coming in a car. In a
rural area such as the one where we live, there are very few who walk
to school because of no sidewalks, roads without significant
shoulders, long distances etc. DS did walk to school when he was in
kindy, but he walked from a daycare house that was right next to the
school. In the morning, I drove him there and dropped him off, and he
was there in the morning and then walked to afternoon kindy. Then he
took the bus home.

In our area, anyway, parents delivering children by car is STRONGLY
discouraged. It interrupts the safe traffic flow, clogs the parking
lot and is generally disruptive. Although in our area, if you don't
have a car you are SOL because there is basically no public
transportation.

It was different in elementary (which started at 9:15), but in
secondary schools, we had 'early' and 'late buses - IOW, the buses
each made two runs to the school. The early bus people got there in
plenty of time to eat breakfast. Someone had to supervise the early
bus kids in the 'all purpose room' during the time that it took for
the bus to make another (shorter) run to pick the second set of kids
up, and then at about 10 minutes before the start of homeroom, the
kids were 'let out' to go to homerooms. Some of the late buses would
barely get there by 8 am.

In the afternoon, the early bus children went to their buses right at
the end of school, but the late bus kids stayed with their teachers
until their buses returned for the second trip - maybe 15 minutes to
a half an hour.

Also of course, lunch started at 10:30 for some classes.

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article ehrebeniuk-CE9A39.21252930072008@news, Chookie says...

In article ,
Ericka Kammerer wrote:

Many universal school breakfast programs provide breakfast
in the classroom when school starts in the morning, rather than in
the
cafeteria before school starts, which makes it easier for children to
participate.

Why does the location make a difference?

Many schools have staggered lunches because they can't
accommodate all the students in one shift. If they had to have
shifts for breakfast, that would take up more time. At our school,
breakfast is available in the cafeteria (free or reduced price for
those on free or reduced price lunch; full price for others), but
if you take the bus to school (most do), you probably don't arrive
in time to eat breakfast, so those who want to eat breakfast have
to find a way to get to school early.

OK -- sounds like the whole concept of disadvantage hasn't been well
understood, has it? "Kid, you can get the free breakfast if your family
has a
car."

I don't think she said it was good - it certainly goes against the idea of
proliferating freebies in the schools.


Wouldn't it be rather difficult for the teachers to keep the room
clean?

Not necessarily. The rooms are cleaned every day anyway,
and I suspect that a program providing breakfast at the desk for
each child would probably not have particularly messy breakfasts.

I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that. Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or something
on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A donut
and
a juice box makes more sense.


Whoa - morning blood glucose spike oh joy.

And this is the major reason why I'm not thrilled with our school district's
breakfast program. In the goal of "Easy to serve, not terribly messy", it's
really long on "Superdonuts" and similar things, which generally lead to a
quick rise in blood sugar, followed by a crash.

It's probably better than the kids having no breakfast at all, but it's not
great when you're the one teaching those kids!

They do serve milk with the various breakfast breads instead of juice, which
should help some.

Banty schrieb:
In article ehrebeniuk-CE9A39.21252930072008@news, Chookie says...
snip
I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that. Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or something on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A donut and
a juice box makes more sense.


Whoa - morning blood glucose spike oh joy.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I think the problem with school
lunches (probably more so in the states than here in germany) is that
it's going to be fastfood/junkfood. Yes, I consider Donuts to be
junkfood or a treat, something we may have for afternoon tea (is that
the right term? We call it "Kaffeetrinken" in our family, it's around
mid afternoon, we have cake/muffins/something else sweet or maybe a
sandwich if we don't want something sweet and either coffee or tea or
whatever else we want to drink).

What I would consider an appropriate school breakfast/lunch would be a
sandwich with lunchmeat and/or cheese. Maybe a leaf of lettuce and a
slice of tomato. No peanutbutter, no nutella, possibly jam/marmalade for
those who don't eat meat/dairy. And a drink of water (you have
fountains, right? We don't in germany.)
If they want to serve a hot lunch I'd personally prefer to see something
like pasta with meatballs, no frenchfries and fried meat, some fruit
salad or chopped up fresh fruit and/or yogurt...

I don't see anything wrong with occasionally eating fastfood/junkfood,
but I think our kids get enough junk at home as it is.

And I don't know why everyone's going on about the cost and the
requirement of kitchens etc. when every college probably has a canteen
and they're probably not serving junk either.

When I was at university I ate at the canteen a lot. Of course some food
was horrible but most food was good enough for the price I payed. We
didn't eat fried everything every day, we had frenchfries maybe once a
week (you could tell by the superlong queue) but we had a fair amount of
pasta and boiled potatoes.
We had a choice of
- regular meal
cheap meal with two sides one meat, like schnitzel and fries and
salad/soup, or pasta with salad. You could ask for vegetarian which
meant the meat was left out and you got more sides (very funny because
you usually ended up with a huge amount of food because there wasn't
that much meat on the plate anyway)
- pick your own meal
like a buffet, you picked what you wanted and then payed at the end
of the buffet.
- "eintopf" (one pot meals, not the actual translation of stew)
everything that could be served in a soup bowl. Risotto, stew,
"dampfnudeln" (it's a sweet dish consisting of a boiled/steamed ball of
dough, like a sweet roll possibly filled with plum jam, served with some
sort of sauce, usually chocolate or vanilla), "milchreis" (milkrice?
rice cooked in milk, like oatmeal I guess, served with canned
fruitsalad, raisins or just sugar and cinnamon.

The "eintopf" was the cheapest meal you could get and I don't think I
was ever able to eat the whole pot, but then I wasn't usually able to
east the vegetarian version of their regular meal because they piled on
the sides! I think the ladies working those food lines thought every
vegetarian would starve if not fed double the amount the carnivores got
*lol*

Yeah, that turned into a bit of a short story. Sorry.

cu
nicole

In article , NL says...

Banty schrieb:
In article ehrebeniuk-CE9A39.21252930072008@news, Chookie says...
snip
I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that. Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or something on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A donut and
a juice box makes more sense.


Whoa - morning blood glucose spike oh joy.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I think the problem with school
lunches (probably more so in the states than here in germany) is that
it's going to be fastfood/junkfood. Yes, I consider Donuts to be
junkfood or a treat, something we may have for afternoon tea (is that
the right term? We call it "Kaffeetrinken" in our family, it's around
mid afternoon, we have cake/muffins/something else sweet or maybe a
sandwich if we don't want something sweet and either coffee or tea or
whatever else we want to drink).

What I would consider an appropriate school breakfast/lunch would be a
sandwich with lunchmeat and/or cheese. Maybe a leaf of lettuce and a
slice of tomato. No peanutbutter, no nutella, possibly jam/marmalade for
those who don't eat meat/dairy. And a drink of water (you have
fountains, right? We don't in germany.)

Why not peanut butter?

At our house, breakfast for both of us is oatmeal with milk, and a few ounces of
cheese for me.

A sandwich for breakfast would probably be considered very weird and be
rejected, but a bowl of granola with milk would be decent. A little cold
sausage or cheese would be great. Anything protien other than milk would
probably not fly, though.

If they want to serve a hot lunch I'd personally prefer to see something
like pasta with meatballs, no frenchfries and fried meat, some fruit
salad or chopped up fresh fruit and/or yogurt...

Said fruit salad would probably be canned and packed in corn syrup - not great.
Chopped up - very labor intensive. Spaghetti and meatballs is a mainstay
already for school lunches.


I don't see anything wrong with occasionally eating fastfood/junkfood,
but I think our kids get enough junk at home as it is.

And I don't know why everyone's going on about the cost and the
requirement of kitchens etc. when every college probably has a canteen
and they're probably not serving junk either.

Everyone's going on about the cost because the cost of putting on a lunch and
the facilities for it is scrutinized by the public that directly finances USian
schools. Directly by property taxes (a good portion of the budget) VOTED ON
every year by the residents of the school district! So this sort of thing gets
streamlined, with much of the populace (esp. non-parents and empty nesters)
whining "why can't they just pack a lunch I'm being taxed out of my house and
home just to feed the kiddies luxury foods" or something like that.


When I was at university I ate at the canteen a lot. Of course some food
was horrible but most food was good enough for the price I payed. We
didn't eat fried everything every day, we had frenchfries maybe once a
week (you could tell by the superlong queue) but we had a fair amount of
pasta and boiled potatoes.

I gained weight at the university dorm cafeterias - one big problem was the long
line - once I was done with whatever they served, all that was left were the
vending machines. I lost the weight only when I went to an off-campus
apartment.

We had a choice of
- regular meal
cheap meal with two sides one meat, like schnitzel and fries and
salad/soup, or pasta with salad. You could ask for vegetarian which
meant the meat was left out and you got more sides (very funny because
you usually ended up with a huge amount of food because there wasn't
that much meat on the plate anyway)
- pick your own meal
like a buffet, you picked what you wanted and then payed at the end
of the buffet.
- "eintopf" (one pot meals, not the actual translation of stew)
everything that could be served in a soup bowl. Risotto, stew,
"dampfnudeln" (it's a sweet dish consisting of a boiled/steamed ball of
dough, like a sweet roll possibly filled with plum jam, served with some
sort of sauce, usually chocolate or vanilla), "milchreis" (milkrice?
rice cooked in milk, like oatmeal I guess, served with canned
fruitsalad, raisins or just sugar and cinnamon.


I think I'll be moving to Germany and going to college soon...

The "eintopf" was the cheapest meal you could get and I don't think I
was ever able to eat the whole pot, but then I wasn't usually able to
east the vegetarian version of their regular meal because they piled on
the sides! I think the ladies working those food lines thought every
vegetarian would starve if not fed double the amount the carnivores got
*lol*

Yeah, that turned into a bit of a short story. Sorry.

No, it was interesting.

Banty

"Banty" wrote in message
...
In article , NL says...

Banty schrieb:
In article ehrebeniuk-CE9A39.21252930072008@news, Chookie says...
snip
I hadn't read about the superdonuts et al at the time I wrote that.
Our
breakfasts involve cereal and toast (occasionally egg dishes or
something on
weekends), and my 7yo can still make a reasonable mess with that. A
donut and
a juice box makes more sense.


Whoa - morning blood glucose spike oh joy.

Yeah, that's what I thought, too. I think the problem with school
lunches (probably more so in the states than here in germany) is that
it's going to be fastfood/junkfood. Yes, I consider Donuts to be
junkfood or a treat, something we may have for afternoon tea (is that
the right term? We call it "Kaffeetrinken" in our family, it's around
mid afternoon, we have cake/muffins/something else sweet or maybe a
sandwich if we don't want something sweet and either coffee or tea or
whatever else we want to drink).

What I would consider an appropriate school breakfast/lunch would be a
sandwich with lunchmeat and/or cheese. Maybe a leaf of lettuce and a
slice of tomato. No peanutbutter, no nutella, possibly jam/marmalade for
those who don't eat meat/dairy. And a drink of water (you have
fountains, right? We don't in germany.)

Why not peanut butter?
Peanut butter seems to be used in the US for children much more than here.
Our schools round here state "no nuts/nut produce" due to potential
allergies. I don't know of anyone who finds that a problem, and I know very
few children who eat peanut butter as it isn't generally offered. Marmite
(for some strange reason) is much more popular.
Debbie