On Tuesday, students can choose:
Meatball Hero
Bagel with butter, American or cream cheese
Veggie Cheese Plate/wrap
Peanut Butter and Jelly sandwich
Sides:
Steamed Spinach
Chilled Strawberry Cups
Fresh Banana
Full disclosure: I am a vegetarian (although I do eat fish) but my kids are not. That said, I recommend the Veggie Cheese Wrap, spinach and banana. Here's why -- the BetterDCSchoolFoodBlog recently did a round up of school food news including new finding that much of the nation's beef supply - much less USDA commodity beef headed for schools - is tainted with antibiotics, pesticides and heavy metals. See the links at:
http://betterdcschoolfood.blogspot.com/2010/06/potpourri-school-food-news-roundup.html. But this is hardly the first finding of problems in our nation's beef supply.
Our heros have 10g of fat and 550mg of sodium in the meatballs. The sauce is the same government tomato sauce with a good deal of added salt and sugar. The 5" club (not whole wheat) also has over 500 mg of sodium. This is too much salt by any definition.
Here are the ingredients in the "beef" meatballs: beef, water, textured vegetable protein (soy flour, zine oxide, niacinamide, ferrous sulfate, copper gluconate, vitamin A palmitate, calcium pantothenate, thiamin mononitrate (B1) pyridoxine hydrochlorie (B6) riboflavin (B2), cyanocobalamin (B12), bread crumbs (enriched bleached wheat flour (niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid) vegetable oil shortening (soybean), distilled vinegar, contains 2 percent or less of: dextrose, leavening (sodium bicarbonate), salt, yeast, yeast nutrients (ammonium chloride, calcium sulfate) and spice extractives), salt, sugar, dried onion and garlic, torula yeast, pepper ...and the spell check goes wild!!!!
The Veggie Cheese wrap is a tortilla (not whole wheat either) with part-skim mozzarella, lettuce, carrots, peppers and cucumbers.
The spinach is frozen spinach- nothing added prior to arrival. The banana is fresh fruit! The strawberries are, um, full of sugar and arrive frozen. I'm not kidding - 30g of sugar (twice as much as say the pears which have added HFCS).
Comments and lunch reviews please!
Sara
I think it would be really challenging to be an active learner when your body is digesting something like that meatball hero. I just can't believe kids across the country are being served this stuff. Who else finds this insane?
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