Last night I saw the "Chopped" episode with the school cafeteria cooks.

[CrispyQ]

What a wonderful episode! Those ladies had me in tears more than once. Contestant Cheryl (?) told about how she has Pasta Monday in her school, because so many of the poor children that attend the school, don't have enough to eat over the weekend, so she fills them up on Monday.

What the fuck? This is America?

These ladies are heros.

[Phentex]

1. I haven't seen that one...

but they usually repeat them.

Sounds interesting! :hi:

[grasswire]

2. it was great

They mentioned the way "lunch ladies" are treated in schools -- really denigrated. The judges called these women "chef" and it touched them.

These women, unlike many many many school cooks, have some degree of control over the foods they serve and they were serving real foods and trying to cram nutrients into them and make them particularly palatable to kids.

As we know from Jamie Oliver's series about America's school lunches, most school cooks do not have control and must prepare and serve processed JUNK for the kids.

[CrispyQ]

5. "Super Size Me" has an excellent segment on school lunches, too.

He interviews teachers who note the difference between student performance with those who have had proper nutrition, vs. those who have not.

When I was a kid, our small town schools had German women who cooked our meals at each of the 3 schools in town. Everything was home cooked from wholesome ingredients. They knew us kids by name & knew our parents & our siblings & well, everyone. It was a different space|time. The women on this show reminded me of those German women & made me realize that some things exist outside of space|time.

Our for-profit tunnel vision has done incalculable harm.

[Lugnut]

7. My schools served home made food.

Most school cafeterias today provide meals from a food service company that provides terrible "oven-ready" food. I'm old enough to remember being served cafeteria food that was prepared with government surplus items along with regular food from grocery supply companies and cooked fresh every day by the cafeteria ladies for both my elementary and high school lunches. My kids went to a Slovak Catholic elementary school that served them home made bread, pirogi, hulk and other ethnic foods that they ate at my mother's house. There is a huge difference.

[dmr]

3. Is this a TV show or on YouTube?

I'd like to check it out. :hi:

[Lucinda]

4. You can catch clips at these two links:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/chopped/video/index.html

http://www.hulu.com/search?query=Chopped&st=1&fs=

[grasswire]

6. Food network -- episodes are repeated often

So if you watch your local listings, you could probably catch it in the next few weeks.

[CrispyQ]

8. The cafeteria show is being shown this morning on the Food network.

Hope you catch it. But if you don't, they frequently have days where they'll do several shows in a row.

[kurtzapril4]

9. Lots of those "wholesome"

home-cooked cafeteria foods of yesteryear were also loaded with fat, salt, sugar and starch. Yeah, they tasted good..but they weren't that good for you, either. I know...I had to eat them. Of course, back in the day, I think kids moved around a lot more than they do now, though.