US typical fast food style school lunch
Sweetgreen created the global school lunch project by evaluating government standards for school lunch programs, and compared this data to photos that real students had taken of their meals and shared online. What they captured amazing shows the huge disparity between school lunches around the world. It shows the value that a country places on its future citizens health and well being and in the case of the US shows that the over 32 million students who eat school lunches on a typical day are receiving over processed, factory farmed crap as befits the capitalist, for profit
health killing,
Earth killing (pdf) US food system.
Typical school lunches from are the world and how the US stacks up:
Italy
Local fish on a bed of arugula, pasta with tomato sauce, caprese salad, baguette and some grapes
Finland
Pea soup, beet salad, carrot salad, bread and pannakkau (dessert pancake) with fresh berries
France
Steak, carrots, green beans, cheese and fresh fruit
France
Brazil
Pork with mixed veggies, black beans and rice, salad, bread and baked plantains
South Korea
Fish soup, tofu over rice, kimchi and fresh veggies
Greece
Baked chicken over orzo, stuffed grape leaves, tomato and cucumber salad, fresh oranges, and greek yogurt with pomegranate seeds
Greece
Ukraine
Mashed potatoes with sausage, borscht, cabbage and syrniki (a dessert pancake)
Spain
Sautéed shrimp over brown rice and vegetables, gazpacho, fresh peppers, bread and an orange
USA
Fried ‘popcorn’ chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, fruit cup and a chocolate chip cookie
Doesn't make me feel like shouting "we're #1". We do have an opportunity to improve the dismal US school lunch program by implementing the
recommendations of US government scientists to change the US Dietary Guidelines to an environmentally sustainable model for the first time in history.
We can improve the nations public health as well as the health of the planet by taking the advise of the expert panel which was chosen to recommend changes to the US food system based on scientific research rather than on profit for our industrialized corporate food system.
More than one-third of kids in America are obese or overweight. In 2013, the National School Lunch Program, a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools, served 5.1 billion lunches, Bloomberg reports. The quality of these lunches must somehow correlate to the health of America's youth, considering more than 32 million children are served NSLP every day.