"We put icing on everything at Bible School!"

One year I was teaching Vacation Bible School. We would have a snack every evening and we always tied it in to a lesson. One day we were eating soft pretzels for our snack, with icing on them. One of the kids seemed shocked at having icing on his pretzel. This prompted M, one of the people in charge of snack, so say "Oh honey, we put icing on everything at Bible School!" And she was right, it really was on everything that week LOL

The food at my pre school is junk. I understand economics. So much money comes in, so much money goes out, etc. I get it. I also understand that because we are located on government property, that it is just easier to hire the same catering company that feeds the DOE in the cafeteria. After all they are right there. No hassle getting them in and off site each day to bring food.

I am not asking for a miracle or anything, but some better planning would be nice. The main problem I have is that the director seems thrilled with the food. Yuck.

We make breakfast ourselves. And by "ourselves" I mean one of the early teachers tosses something in the microwave. It is the following every single week:
cold cereal *my class always gets cheerioes, which is much better than the Lucky Charms the other classes get*
frozen pancakes
frozen waffles
frozen french toast sticks *which are really, REALLY good LOL But so bad for you!
English muffins with melted cheese on them
bagels that are just covered in butter, really, dripping, soggy with butter
mini blueberry muffins that are frozen

That is it. They rotate these choices.

I know that there are some of you out there who will post what your kids eat, and that it will be much, much worse. So I will try not to complain too much.

Lunch (recent ones I have served at work):
Today:
fish sticks that are mostly bread. And they aren't sticks, they are crumbs. I serve them with a spoon. Maybe I should start taking pictures of this. Really, it is very gross. They are soggy and usually cold. I would be embarassed to admit that I took money to serve those to people if I was the catering company.
canned green beans that are cold
grapes- yes, they were actually fresh, that is rare! I was happy with those.
Thursday: meatballs on white hotdog buns.
mixed veggies from a can- had potatoes in it too. It smelled so bad. As a teacher, I know it is important to eat in front of the kids, but you could not have paid me $1,000 to eat those veggies, they smelled that bad.
canned pineapple
Wednesday: chicken tenders- fried in veggie oil. I know this because of a peanut allergy we had, so they told us what oil they used.
Canned corn
canned pinapple
Tuesday: grilled cheese on white bread. Soaked with butter.
tomato soup
canned applesauce
Monday- the worst offender LOL Beef tacos. Basically cold meat- that is the highest fat content they can get because it is cheap- stuck in a flour soft tortilla. They can't be bothered to add anything like lettuce, tomato, nothing. Yuck.
canned corn *yes, again*
canned pears

Snacks from this week:
rice krispy treat
cheezits
cinnamon toast crunch cereal
pudding with graham crackers
raisins and saltines
Other snacks are:
cake
cookies
brownies
Trix yogurt maybe once a month

And I am expected to eat all of these meals at the table with the kids. And lose weight? I don't think so.

I actually can't eat 90% of it without litterally running to the bathroom. The beef days got so bad that I was having to use the kid's bathroom because the staff bathroom is always full- 19 females + one toilet = huge line- and it prompted one of y students to draw the following for me:

Huge yellow star "award" sign along with the caption: Miss Jaime always goes first.

I asked her what I always went first for.
Her answer: The bathroom! LOL

I don't have a gallbladder so anything that greasy makes me very sick, very fast.

I am spoiled because on the rare occasion that I eat meat at home (I might have eaten red meat maybe once a month when I was living with my husband) it is grass fed, organic, hormone free meat raised on my Aunt's farm, treated like a family pet and not a cash crop. You know, a happy cow! LOL

I have a weight problem because I make bad choices in the food that I eat. Really bad choices. I ate junk food and fast food because it tasted good.

I just think that we are setting these kids up to have health problems.

This is why I am dead set against using food as any kind of motivation. In fact, for the first year I worked there, I flat out refused to do it. I broke our long standing tradition of getting a piece of candy for doing so many practice sheets, and was giving out cute erasers instead. The kids hated it. Eventually I stopped because I figure that if their parents don't care, then maybe it was not my place to be preachy about it. And I don't think that one lollipop a week from us is going to do long term damage. But at the core level I disagree with using food.

Not that I think that any of my students is going to end up weighing as much as me. I don't. But I think we are setting one huge bad example for them.

I am more forgiving in the public schools because in my county, a lot of the kids there only eat at school. Yes, you read that right. They might only eat at school. The poverty level is huge here. The school tries to pump them full of calories so that if they don't get dinner, they are still okay.

However, I teach at a private school. The parents drive cars that are worth more than my last house. None of them are at poverty level, not one. I have been to their houses, I have been given expensive Christmas presents. Maybe some of them are in a bad financial state and are very discreet about it, but still not poverty. So I think that we can get away with serving a decent salad once in a while. And no, I don't mean some bagged iceberg lettuce that is brown on the edges. In a bowl. Just the brown iceberg, nothing else- although once I saw half of a cherry tomato in one.

I can't save the world. All of us at work have complained about the food. It isn't going to change any time soon. They used to pay out the wazoo for a company who- believe it or not- made FRESH FRUIT a DAILY snack. Who knew?!?! Yes, it was expensive, but come on, I consider this an investment in the future!

I will continue to work on my my boss. But in the meantime, I can only complain here and hope to get some sympathy LOL

But this is why I can not eat at school. I generally eat the fruit and that is my contribution to the whole "Family style eating." I feel that it is important for them to see us eating what is served, because I know that a lot of parents don't really want to cook two meals, one for them and one for the kids. But I think the food is pushing it. Oh and the hotdogs, I have nightmares about those. They are supposedly all beef, but my coworker with the pork allergy always breaks out in hives if she eats one, so I wonder what else they are misleading us about.

We get a LOT of physical exercise there. The kids are super active. We have an awesome playground set up. So they are working their little bodies and having a great time. I just wish we could fuel those bodies better!