You can serve school children better meals, but
you can’t make them eat.
A school district in Illinois tried putting
healthier foods on the menu, including fish and baked-bean burgers.
“This past year and a half, we added entrées
that had exceptional nutritional qualities, with the hopes to change our
students' eating habits,” reads a note on the Feb. 5 elementary school lunch
menu.
“Unfortunately, we could not persuade the
students to select these items.
“Beginning in February, we will no longer offer
two hot choices on the menu due to the extremely low participation of the
second choice.
“We will continue our efforts to educate our
students in the value of choosing nutritionally dense foods.”
Now their choices will be “cold items such as a
turkey sandwich, yogurt combination, or hummus and flatbread and hot items like
hot dogs, hamburgers, cheese pizza, chicken nuggets, tacos and mini pancakes
with Canadian bacon.”
Canadian bacon? Now, if it’s really Canadian –
as they could determine under Country-of-Origin Labeling legislation and
regulations, we might send up a cheer.
But they still might not eat it.
