Food Theory: DON'T TRUST Your School Lunch!

Quick question: What was the best thing

your

school

lunch

served? Seriously, write

your

answer in the comments below. I'm really fascinated by this topic because at my

school

, when I was a kid, cream of the crop was known as cheesy dips. They were literally just breadsticks with a bunch of melted cheese and meat sauce to dip them in. Every other school has that or something similar because the kids went crazy for these things that were on the menu like every other Wednesday and the line was out the door for them and it always confused me because you know they're just breadsticks and sauce, but he didn't realize at the time that those cheesy dippers, as well as all the other hot dog pizzas and mystery meats that Lady Brenda was having for

lunch

that was spilling onto my plate, were part of a vast conspiracy, a cascade of lies and negative comments so eat while you can my friends, after today's episode you will never look at lunchtime the same again hello internet, welcome to

food

theory

class It's now in session, that's right friends, it's the return to the school season and with it comes lunchtime, the time when clicks form that can make or break your school reputation or you know you can always be like me and reject the entire social hierarchy. rather than forcing you to sit at each individual lunch table, one at a time, as part of a grand social experiment to see which social cliques respond most angrily to a stranger invading their territory.

True story, that was my 8th grade science fair project. the sporty girls ended up being the worst, throwing

food

at me and physically trying to get me out of my seat for the entire hour in an attempt to get me to move, but science doesn't move for anyone. I locked my legs under the bench and held them. I continue on with my dear life and you know what it was worth. By throwing away food, I got some free fries that day and eventually got a blue ribbon at the Ohio State Science Fair, so dive in there.

Mallory Courtney Bethany Catherine with a k and Another Bethany today, while we're not here to talk about the social politics of the dining hall, we are talking about the food politics of the dining hall. You see, school lunches have been in the news a lot in recent years, the USDA recently increased funding. For school meals, some states like Maine and California now permanently offer free school lunches for all, and of course, the ever-present issue of whether school lunches are healthy enough for kids can seem like an odd topic to be a focus. of controversy, but school lunches and their nutrition are actually one of those topics that have a direct influence on how the next generation grows up and while I think everyone would agree that healthier is better, the history of school lunches shows how many competing interests there are in the competition for how little Jimmy is digging into his pie hole at noon, 30, somewhere between physical education and algebra, for example, this is a tomato, it's a fruit, right, I think that's pretty well established now, but for decades when I was a kid, people were confused about it, constantly thinking it was a vegetable and their confusion was completely justified because you know what it was, so was ketchup. , so was pizza, vegetables, vegetables, vegetables, so how is it possible that pizza was considered a vegetable?

Well, it all started here in the school cafeteria, so get in line and spread out your tray. I'm about to give you a tasty story so you can begin to understand the conspiracy behind the garbage students receive. You see, the origin of America's national school lunch program actually dates back to 1946, when it was considered a matter of national concern. defense, no joke, well it's true that some schools in the US offered food to their students as early as 1894. It didn't become something that public schools were legally required to do until the passage of the national school lunch law .

This was just after the world. Second World War and during the war they discovered that large numbers of enlistees who might otherwise have been eligible for service ended up being disqualified due to poor nutrition. Yes, apparently what made the government stand up and make feeding children a priority was a realization. that emaciated Americans couldn't die for their country, so they decided to feed them and then send them away, but regardless of the reasons that actually made this start, people immediately liked it, parents all over the country were more than happy. from taking a break from putting together some pb js, so the school lunch programs got bigger for the rest of the '50s, '60s, and '70s, there was the school breakfast program, the child care program, and adults, the special milk program, you know what?

I'm just going to come out and say that there's something I inherently don't

trust

about the phrase special milk, but not only did parents like it, but the government liked it because it solved another problem they had, namely that the United States United States had a surplus of milk. national products and I didn't know exactly what to do with all that. In fact, I talked about this in a previous

theory

about America's secret underground cheese supply. If you haven't seen it, be sure to check out the episode after this one, but Basically, school lunches were a place where they could get rid of a bunch of that extra cheddar cheese food for the kids and at the same time use up the leftover cheese, two birds with a Swiss one and cheese wasn't the only example of this, I mean, I don't mean that the school lunch program was just a convenient dumping ground for all the extra unsold food that no one wanted to buy.

I don't want to say it, but you know many times throughout the history of the school lunch program it ended up being true, for example. When the USDA was faced with that dairy surplus, they initially bought the cheese right and put it in the caves and eventually they became part of my cheese pots, but then they realized, hey, those cows that continue to produce so much milk. that we can't know what to do with oh yeah, they're also suspicious of the meat. Look at the cows and the whole herd buyout program of the 1980s was born.

School lunches suddenly took the form of hamburgers, pizza and whatever else you could get your hands on. use beef or cheese, so where does the school lunch conspiracy in nutrition come from? You see, while surplus was certainly one determining factor dictating what was and was not served as part of school lunches, the other was the nutrition that school lunches had. so that it was at least nutritious and because food regulations still stated that children should be served two full servings of vegetables with their school lunch, everything was going smoothly, if you have been watching this channel for a while you will know that Those who establish the definitions around foods do not always do so impartially, I mean our vision of a healthy diet used to look like this, with cereals as the basis of a healthy and balanced meal, conveniently, it was also the type cheapest food to serve, I mean, I already made a whole video on the various competing forces that made the food pyramid look the way it did, but suffice it to say that for a long time the guiding principle was to eat more carbohydrates, now that I think it.

The food pyramid was created by the USDA, the same USDA that was responsible for the school lunch program in the first place, so the same organization that makes the lunches also makes the nutrition rubric by which those lunches must be graded. Surely there's no chance of bias or conflict of interest there, well, in 1979, USDA guidelines were relaxed to the point that nutrition standards for school lunch items only had to meet the minimum requirements rather than the stricter requirements of being, quote, officially healthy, so how minimal is it? a good minimum standard, a USDA official is said to have explained it this way: If a chocolate bar has only one nut, we feel it is above our minimum nutrient standards;

In other words, things aren't looking great, but at least they still had that two-veggie rule that ensured that even if a baby ruth with peanuts was served on the side with their macaroni and cheese, it at least had some beans. greens and carrots on the plate to balance everything. take out what I said a few seconds ago quote children should be served two full servings of vegetables with their school lunch ladies and gentlemen it's time for us to play a game, you see, that's what the rules say, except it features a problem because it is expensive it is expensive to store it at the correct temperatures it is not preserved for very long periods of time its preparation requires different times and it must be shipped in appropriate conditions, generally within specific seasons, remember that we are talking about technology from the late 70s and early 80's to do all this as if that wasn't bad enough.

Surveys on school lunch waste repeatedly show that vegetables are the item that children leave unused and throw away most often, so, in essence, what we are dealing with is food. that generates the highest cost and also has the lowest return it's only there because parents expect the school to offer healthy vegetables to their children it has to be on the menu the regulations say so, but the words may be open to some creative interpretation So if you're a government agency in the '80s whose funding was just cut by 30 by the president, you're looking to save money on school lunches while still technically complying with the letter of the law, where in this Prayer thinks there might be some wiggle room, my friends, it's the game we're playing today.

I'll give all your budding politicians a second to think about it and while you take that second to come up with an answer, be sure to subscribe to the food theory no. someone else is offering the bitter truth about the lies in their food. It's free to subscribe and as we all know, brain food is the best food, plus it has zero calories. Okay, you have your answers ready. Great solution number one, the word here vegetable, vegetable already has a nebulous definition in itself which is an episode for another day, but suffice it to say that the administration at the time was eager to use that obscurity for its own benefit in an attempt to Adhering to the letter of the law and the technicality, but not necessarily in spirit, the USDA sought to list condiment ingredients to help increase the amount of vegetables served to children in school ketchup.

Well, if you read the label, it says tomato, that's a vegetable, count it, pizza, well, that's not just it. Any sauce, my friend, that is tomato sauce, count it, the package is a pleasure, right there, friends, there is a portion of cucumber and that is the story of how ketchup almost became a vegetable, almost if you think that this strategy of the school lunch program It was a little bit of a cheat, you're not alone, it became a national debate that culminated with Pennsylvania Senator Henry J Heintz III, yes, Heinz belongs to the Heinz brand ketchup dynasty, apparently the family was dedicated to politics, go figure, he gave a speech from the US Senate saying quote that ketchup is a condiment, this is one of the most ridiculous regulations I've ever heard of and I guess I don't need to add that I know something about the ketchup and condiments or I did once the New York Times described the whole thing as the emperor's new thing. condiments and finally the USDA withdrew what would be known as the ketchup proposal, except we are still playing this game and we haven't solved the problem, we still have to cut costs and follow the law to the letter, so let's take a look at our quote children should be served two full servings of vegetables with their school lunch if you can't swap a condiment for a vegetable, why not try swapping the labels for something else?

And that's when they found their new loophole, this word here serves the USDA. adopted new guidelines that are still largely used today based on the offer versus serve model, which is exactly what it sounds like, rather than requiring that they serve a certain serving of vegetables. What if school lunch programs only required offering a certain serving of vegetables and children were making the decision that they could be

trust

ed to reject that offer, the defense of that position is that serving vegetables to children doesn't do much good. If kids are just going to throw those vegetables straight into the trash, so this became an important cost-cutting measure,schools could suddenly have a minimum of products on hand and justify it in the name of reducing waste by listening to the comments, so the end of our ketchup is a debate about vegetables, yes, at least it was until today.

The whole story made me curious: does ketchup really have enough tomato to count as a serving of vegetables? I'm sure we're all okay to laugh at how stupid this all was and acknowledge that it was a little underhanded in terms of cost-cutting. As far as measurements go, I've seen Heinz commercials where they squeeze over 25 whole ripe red tomatoes into one bottle, so I reached into the refrigerator and pulled out my bottle of oh come on, Heinz tomato ketchup to make. Some calculations based on information from eat4health.gov a single serving of vegetables weighs 75 grams or a medium-sized tomato.

Now the ad here says there are 25 tomatoes in a 40 ounce bottle of ketchup, so one would assume that an entire bottle of ketchup would be served. 25 vegetables, not so much, we don't know how big those tomatoes are, it could just be 25 whole ripe red cherry tomatoes in 2015, Heinz was sued in Israel by local ketchup producer osem on the grounds that it uses too much high corn of fructose. syrup in their products, so they do not qualify for the name ketchup according to Israeli nutritional standards. Case reports estimated that the amount of tomato in this tomato-based product was between 17 and 39 depending on which lab was tested.

Fortunately, the Heinz nutrition label is much more helpful than the label on something like salsa. pink, it tells us that there are 148 grams of tomato to make one hundred grams of ketchup and yes, it may seem strange to have more tomato for less ketchup, but remember that things lose mass as they cook anyway, if you had a full bottle of 40 ounce ketchup, that would be about 15 servings of vegetables, you would also consume almost 1500 calories to get those vegetables considering all the extra sugar and stuff. There we are also not taking into account bioavailability and all that so take the estimate with a grain of salt anyway a vegetable is a vegetable so in theory, in food theory, according to the numbers, you could argue that by grabbing a bottle of ketchup and drinking from afar, you were potentially satisfying at least the commodity quotient of getting some vegetables, but remember that when it came to school lunches, legislators were talking about ketchup packets, so how many packets What would the typical student need to eat to get a single serving of Vegetables based on the USDA proposal at a minimum, you're looking at nine eight in the third, if we're being precise, I hope you brought some tater tots for that enormous amount of pizza with ketchup, while So much so, yes, it is still considered a vegetable, actually if there is enough sauce.

In 2012, the Obama administration tried unsuccessfully to raise minimum vegetable requirements again for the first time in forever under guidelines first proposed in 2010 aimed at curbing childhood obesity. Frozen pizzas of the kind normally served by the slice in school lunches could retain their portion of vegetables if the sauce quotient was increased to half a cup of sauce instead of just two tablespoons, except that once again people have problems with that conagra that supplies about 75% of frozen pizza to American schools argued that sautéing their product too much would make kids not want to eat it and then they spent 6 million dollars lobbying the government to convince legislators of that exact fact and so on school pizza remained the square of dry bread it has been for decades or conagra, you could just go the way my grade school did and rebranded everything as cheesy dips, no sauce required, boom, just you saved six million dollars in lobbying the government.

In the end, the point of all this is to show you how complicated school lunches really are, there's always such a hard back and What happens between what parents want their kids to eat, what kids really want to eat, how much they want spending schools and governments to make those types of elections possible and the companies involved making profits regardless of the final outcome. Just remember this: the next time your mom tells you that you need to eat vegetables, you tell her that I need to eat more of this pizza to get enough tomato paste, so that adds up to a full serving if you can get your way. one, you're going to have a great career in politics, but hey, that's just a theory, a food theory, bon appetit or you know you couldn't worry about any of that using the help of today's sponsor ritual.

I have to be honest with you, my diet. It's bad, it's not entirely cheesy, every day it's bad, but a lot of times it's pretty close. I'm just taking in as much as I can on the go, with health and nutrition taking a solid backseat to speed and convenience, which is why I choose to supplement my diet using Ritual, the obsessively researched and transparently produced multivitamin, and when I say transparent I mean every definition of the word, each shipment comes with information on how its nutrients are obtained, they are also transparent because you know the capsules are transparent, the ritual capsules are also delayed release, which It makes them bland even when you take them on an empty stomach, but again I appreciate that because I tend to skip too many meals personally.

I use their essential vitamin for minimums which contains 10 high quality nutrients such as vitamin a d omega. 3 and zinc, but they also have a multivitamin for women over 50. There is even one designed specifically for teenagers so you don't have to worry about your nutrients being absorbed by hundreds of ketchup packets and this is just a small detail I'm adding here, but I appreciate it. The capsules have a bit of a mint flavor, which I like because I usually hate the taste of dried capsules in my mouth and if you're worried about the cost, it's only a dollar a day. to get 10 high-quality nutrients delivered right to your door every month, no strings attached, so fill in the gaps in your diet and your daily lunches using a ritual, one small step that helps support a healthy foundation for your body, you can get 20 off your first month of ritual by going to ritual.com meal 20 f-o-o-d-20 and using the code meal 20 at checkout, that's ritual.com meal 20.

Never worry about the amount of sauce on your pizza again Until next week guys, bon appetit.