This week on Meat and Three take a seat at the kids table, we promise to serve more than plain pasta and chicken fingers. Beyond the brightly colored boxes and school lunch trays, our team explores pressing questions surrounding the regulations and safety of ‘kids foods’.
Further Reading:
Why Don t America s Public Schoolchildren Get Universal Free Lunch? eater.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from eater.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Related Some children have just returned part-time to the school where Michael Gasper works, and he is busy. Gasper is the district’s supervisor of nutrition services in Holmen, Wisconsin, a small community just north of La Crosse, with six schools and 3,800 students. His team is coordinating both in-school meals and meal delivery for students in remote learning, while also running a vibrant farm to school program. And on this mid-February day, Gasper is preparing his newly remodeled kitchen for the delivery of 40 boxes of locally produced hamburger and Italian sausage.
Like most other districts around the country, Gasper has been providing free school meals to students during the pandemic, paid for by federal waivers granted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and he wants to keep it that way. Today, he is joining with 750 members of the School Nutrition Association (SNA) to call on Congress to expand the National School Lunch and School Breakfast programs and provide
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One Green Bean, Please: Decades ago, dietitian Ellyn Satter, R.D., developed her now-famous method for raising kids who have a healthy relationship with food: Caregivers decide what to serve and when to do it, and kids get to decide whether to eat and how much. | Credit: Priscilla Gragg
My kids spent their first couple of years eating anything we put in front of them. “What’s the big deal about getting kids to try new things?” I’d say as I roasted arctic char or stirred a chickpea stew. But then the jig was up. My 5-year-old daughter refused anything except mac ’n’ cheese. Her big brother pushed away his old favorites, from his grandma’s stuffed Lebanese meatballs to his dad’s lemony scallops.