04.15.08

Don’t Take Your Lunch for Granted

Posted in Food, Local, Musings, Soapbox, Vent, lunch at 4:14 pm by trueepicure

I’m getting cranky in my “old” age. Maybe I’m just noticing inconsistency more these days. I don’t know. I just know I’m annoyed at the stupid political BS that runs rampant in this country.

There was a piece on NPR yesterday, talking about how Bush is sending a bunch of food aid to various developing countries. [I won't get into the fact that it would be better/faster/more efficient to send money rather than ship food.] It’s great that we are trying to be good world citizens (??) and help other countries in their time of need, without starting a war, but I wonder…

According to the US Department of Agriculture:

In 2006, under the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), cafeterias in participating schools served more than 5 billion lunches, more than half of them free or at a reduced price. The NSLP also provided more than 1 million afterschool snacks.

To put that into perspective, in order to qualify for:

• free lunch: you must be a child living in a household with a total income at or below 130 percent of the federal poverty level
• reduced-price lunches: you must be a child living in a household with a total income that is less than or equal to 185 percent of the Federal poverty level.

If we have that many kids who qualify for free and reduced lunches, what in heck are we doing giving money away to other countries???

I tried to play devil’s advocate with myself, and I said to myself: “Self, as a nation, we are so much better off than so many other countries. We can afford to give $200 million dollars away, once in a while. We’re spending WAY more than that on other, less productive activities these days.”

It’s true, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that much money. But then I think about a friend of mine, who teaches in a school about 20 minutes from my house. A large portion of the kids in her class (and the entire school, I think) are on free or reduced lunch. For some of these students, the food they get in school is the only food they will eat for the day. Recently, when the food truck didn’t show up one Friday, the teachers and school administration were in a panic because for some of these kids, Friday lunch is the last meal they would eat until the following Monday. It’s sad, but this is the reality for many children in the United States.

I’m not intending to be a nationalistic wacko (though you wouldn’t think so from my last couple of posts). I just think that the logic (or lack of) is mind-boggling.

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