Big Food in your school:

The Mafia in Italy is often named “La Piovra” which in English means the “Octopus” because it is very hard to kill. The Octopus changes color and forms to mimic the environment and it has long far-reaching arms that it uses to grab prey. That’s the image that comes to mind when thinking about Big Food: something dangerous, well camouflaged, and far reaching.

Let’s investigate how big food infiltrates our society, starting in schools, from kindergarten to college.

First, it opens the door with the help of the recommendations of the Food and Nutrition Board who sets up the so called “standard” of good nutrition. Illustrated by the Food Pyramid, which is also promoted with enthusiasm by several organizations like the American Dietetic Association, the USDA, the FDA, the Dairy Management and others.

The second way to promote their product is Marketing, or as they call it “Education” and they have a lot of nifty, sneaky little programs going on in our schools, for example:

• School Milk Pilot Test
• Pyramid Café
• Cold is Cool
• Got Milk Program
• July is National Ice Cream Month

Got milked yet?

“As the best avenue to increase fluid consumption long-term, children are without a doubt the future of dairy consumption. ” (1)That’s why the dairy continues to implement school milk marketing programs as one way to help increase kids fluid milk consumption.”

_{2001 Dairy Management Inc annual report}

Chef Combo’s Fantastic Adventures “Educational “set of lesson plans was placed in 76 % of preschool kindergarten nationally. ₍₁₎

The third way is through the kitchen doors. Bringing junk food, processed food, and soft drinks to our kids and students. This is our institutional gastronomy: garbage in, garbage out.

(Check out What’s in Your Food.)

The fourth way is through didactic material, offered free of charge to schools and teachers.

The fifth way is through the vending machine. Some vendors are “helping” some schools with a sort of kickback, but these schools have to sell a predetermined quota of soft drinks if they want the financial help of the companies. They don’t call it kick-backs, they call it financial help.

The sixth way is trough advertising on internal TV networks or like in some schools in Colorado: on the school bus.

The seventh way is through gambling, but they call it sweepstakes, where the student can win different prizes.

The last way is by giving gift certificates to good alumni or inviting entire classes and teachers to fast and trash food joints called “restaurants”

_{(1) Report to Congress on the national Dairy Promotion and Research Program 2003}

Conclusion:

What is the Food Nutrition Board? An interest group working for Big Food. Big Food is using it to infiltrate our schools with their tainted research, making sure their products constantly find new costumers, regardless of what this does to our health. They are manipulating our children from their first day at school.If you want to read more read my page on : Pushing obesity

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