What's for Lunch - Tues., 3/20

TBLT
Breaded White Meat Chicken Patty
Turkey Bacon, Lettuce & Tomato
Salad Bar Sides

This meal contains a lot of highly processed, manufactured foods.  Here are the ingredients on the chicken patty - manufactured by Tyson and including rib meat: Boneless chicken breast with rib meat, water, salt, and natural flavor. BREADED WITH: Wheat flour, water, wheat starch, white whole wheat flour, salt, yellow corn flour, corn starch, dried onion, dried garlic, dried yeast, brown sugar, extractives of paprika, and spices. Breading set in vegetable oil.  ('Set' is often a euphemism for 'flash-fried.')

You can read more about Tyson here. It's not pretty.  These patties have 14g of fat and 620mg of sodium.

The turkey bacon does not say "Applegate" on the menu so I can't be sure it is but that's what we usually use. Nonetheless, it is still bacon.  Here are the ingredients: Turkey (Turkey Used Never Administered Antibiotics, Growth Promotants or Animal By-products), Water, Sea Salt, Maple Sugar, Celery Juice, Onion Powder, Spices, Lactic Acid Starter Culture (not From Milk.)  They promote it as nitrate-free but this NYT article says otherwise - and cites the company saying their bacon has the same level (naturally) of cancer-causing nitrates as conventional brands.


You could just get the salad bar or the fruit plate.

What's for Lunch - Mon. 3/19

Whole Wheat Rotini Bolognese or Marinara
Fresh Garlic Bread
Caesar Salad at the Salad Bar
Pears in Fruit Juice

This is a whole grain pasta. Thesauce is a Red Pack vitamin enhanced tomato sauce. The sodium at 140mg is much lower than we previously used.  Here are the ingredients: Tomato Concentrate (Water, Tomato Paste), Sugar, Soybean Oil, Potassium Chloride, Onion Powder, Salt, Citric Acid, Spice, Garlic Powder, Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), Black Pepper, Vitamin E (DL-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate), Natural Flavor, Vitamin A (Retinol Palmitate).

Plus, salad (shown above) and canned pears.

What's for Lunch - Fri., 3/16

BRUNCH FOR LUNCH
Homemade Challah French
Toast w/Orange Rounds
Applegate Turkey Bacon
Salad Bar Veggie Sides
Cinnamon Applesauce

Say "No" to meal declared to be "cake" for lunch by our committee's nutritionist - basically white flour bread.  The syrup is basically HFCS.  They are looking for an affordable maple syrup but do not have one yet - but they will be limiting the serving size this year in the meantime.  Actual lunch from our schools above. This meal has a lot of sugar, simple carbohydrates -- no whole grains.

The turkey bacon is by Applegate.  Here are the ingredients: Turkey (Turkey Used Never Administered Antibiotics, Growth Promotants or Animal By-products), Water, Sea Salt, Maple Sugar, Celery Juice, Onion Powder, Spices, Lactic Acid Starter Culture (not From Milk.)  They promote it as nitrate-free but this NYT article indicates otherwise - and cites the company saying their products have the same level (naturally) of cancer-causing nitrates as conventional brands. Read more about nitrates here.

On the upside, there are fresh veggies on the salad bar plus applesauce with cinnamon.

What's for Lunch - Thurs., 3/15

FRENCH BREAD PIZZA
With Broccoli or Plain
Salad Bar Veggie Sides
Fresh Fruit Salad

For the pizza, the sauce is a Red Pack vitamin enhanced tomato sauce. The sodium at 140mg is much lower than we previously used.  Here are the ingredients: Tomato Concentrate (Water, Tomato Paste), Sugar, Soybean Oil, Potassium Chloride, Onion Powder, Salt, Citric Acid, Spice, Garlic Powder, Vitamin C (Ascorbic Acid), Black Pepper, Vitamin E (DL-Alpha Tocopheryl Acetate), Natural Flavor, Vitamin A (Retinol Palmitate).  The cheese is a USDA commodity part skim mozzarella.  Ingredients are cultured pasteurized milk, salt, enzymes. The sodium is 240mg/oz - I think we use 2 ounces.   It is made on white-flour bread so it is not whole grain.
 
You can get fresh broccoli with the pizza - which you should unless you think pizza is a vegetable.

Sign the Petition - Stop the Overuse of Antibiotics in Food Animals

From the Center for Science in the Pubic Interest:

The modern miracle of antibiotics, and by extension the health of all Americans, is under attack. 

Overuse and misuse of antibiotics in animal production is leading to the growth of resistant bacteria that can spread throughout the environment.  Nearly 80 percent of antibiotics used in the U.S. go to animal agriculture--and most of these drugs are fed to healthy animals to make them grow faster and prevent infection, not to treat disease.  Decades of research has shown that regular dosing of healthy food animals with sub-therapeutic antibiotics, many of them also used in human medicine, is a major reason for the rise in drug-resistant bacteria.  This practice contributes to the growth of antibiotic-resistant "super bugs," making it harder and more expensive to treat common bacterial infections.

The Food and Drug Administration’s reliance on pharmaceutical companies and industrial agriculture to voluntarily stop the use of antibiotics is inadequate to protect the public.  To squander these life-saving drugs on healthy animals is irresponsible.  We don’t wastefully sprinkle antibiotics on our children's cereal every morning to increase their growth--why should we allow food-animal factories to do the same with animal feed?

The Center for Science in the Public Interest has joined with other consumer protection organizations to create a ‘We the People’ petition on the official WhiteHouse.gov web site urging the Obama Administration to end antibiotic overuse in food-animal production. 
Please make your voice heard by signing this petition by March 16, 2012.

Sincerely,

Cindy Roberts
Food Safety Research Associate

What's for Lunch - Wed., 3/14

BBQ Fajita Chicken Strips
With Whole Wheat Bun
Baked Shoestring “Fries”
Mini Corn Cobs
Strawberry-Yogurt Smoothie

I don't have the details on this chicken. It should be whole muscle white meat. Our other chicken products come from Tyson so they are likely the source.  The bun is whole grain.

The fries come from McCain's labeled "Frozen French Fried Potatoes" and the ingredients are: potatoes, vegetable oil (contains one or more of the following: canola oil, soybean oil, cottonseed oil, sunflower oil, corn oil), dextrose, sodium acid pyrophosphate added to preserve natural color.

Mini corn cobs arrive frozen.

The smoothie  will be made with either plain yogurt to which we add  honey or vanilla yogurt (no honey) if we can't get plain plus 1% milk and frozen strawberries.

Action Alert - Tell the FDA to Get BPA Out of Our Food

From the Environmental Working Group:

Are you one of those shoppers who always looks for the BPA-free label? If you are, we need your help.

This month, we have an unprecedented opportunity to make sure our food is free of bisphenol A.

By March 31 - just 19 days away - the federal Food and Drug Administration plans to decide whether or not to continue allowing food packaging that leaches BPA. There is no time to lose - the FDA has to hear from you before it makes its call. The government needs to know that Americans will not stand for food contaminated with toxic chemicals.

Click here to send an email to the FDA today - get BPA out of food packaging.

BPA is a synthetic estrogen used in everyday products from canned food linings to store receipts. It disrupts the hormone system and has been linked to serious health problems such as early puberty, brain and heart disorders, infertility and prostate and breast cancer. The Environmental Working Group has been at the forefront of BPA research since 2007, when we released a first-of-its-kind study that found that BPA had leached from can linings into more than half of the canned foods, beverages and liquid infant formula we tested.

Markets are already changing. Food industry giants - including Campbell's Soup, ConAgra, Eden Foods, Edward & Son, Hain Celestial Group, Heinz, Muir Glen, Oregon's Choice Gourmet and Eco Fish, Trader Joe's, Vital Choice and Wild Planet Foods - are considering reformulating their cans.

With one decision, the FDA can begin to rid food packaging of BPA for good. We need to make sure this important agency knows that consumers are tired of toxic chemicals leaching into food. There is no time to lose - the decision comes this month - so email the FDA today.

Click here to tell the FDA that you want BPA out of food packaging. There is no time to wait.

Thank you for standing up for safe, healthy food.

Sincerely,
Ken Cook
President, Environmental Working Group