Unfortunately the feed-lot/weight gain based food pyramid the fed gov came up with is the very reason kids are being fed such a garbage diet at school.

For the most part, my kids didn't eat school lunches either, even though the lunches weren't nearly as dismal then as they are now - At least once they started going to a suburban school, they had access to more variety. In middle school and high school, that even included a salad bar. A reasonable amount of protein was still part of school lunches back then, although they definitely kept things pretty low fat, which still put too much emphasis on starches.

The thing about this is, when I think about the school lunches we had back in the 60's, it was based mostly on the 4 food groups. We'd have some kind of protein, mostly beef, because chicken wasn't used as widely back then. Fridays, there would be fish - most likely as a breaded/fried fish sandwich. There would be some kind of grain of course - most often a roll or slice of bread, with real butter, sometimes pasta, no whole grains. There was at least one vegetable (peas, green beans, corn, carrots, or a mix of those), usually some kind of fruit (canned, in heavy syrup)... and most of the time, there was a dessert, usually a thin square of cake with a thin coating of frosting on it, sometimes a fruit cobbler (which would cover both fruit and dessert categories), or a little cup of icecream - which was full fat ice cream, not ice milk. Milk was provided with every meal, always whole milk.

Despite the fact that we were obviously being fed far more fat and calories than the kids are allowed in school lunches now, very few kids were even slightly chubby, and it was very rare to have even one child in your class who was severely overweight. They try to explain that away by saying kids were outside playing more, running off all those excess calories back then, and that may be true to a certain extent. But from what I recall, the kids might play tag for a couple of minutes, or climb a tree... then simply sit in that tree talking, or sit in one spot on the ground making mud pies for the next half hour. Even most of the playground games back then - duck-duck-goose, hop-scotch, jump rope - most of your time playing those games you were idle, waiting your turn. Dodge ball (at least the version we played in those days) started out with half the kids in the center running around trying to avoid being hit by the ball (there was only one ball in play), but as they were eliminated one by one, the number of idle kids around the outside increased, and unless an individual happened to be the one to catch the ball to throw it at the kids remaining in the middle, they were just standing there - not running off any excess calories.

If it was simply a matter of calories in/calories out, we should have been the fattest kids ever back then. It was about the diet, and they really do have a terrible diet being pushed on them now. To make matters worse, it's not just the school lunches, many schools provide breakfast now too - so they're eating even more starches and sugars, even if what they're being fed has been given the aura of good health by virtue of being from whole grains, or fruit based. Your body doesn't know the difference - it's still starch and sugar.


I know I'm just preaching to the choir though - those of us who have been on this forum or a while already know these things.