Jaimie Etkin: The Devil Wore Manolos
Big Brother is Watching You Snarf Those Fries During School Lunch
Filed under: Nutrition: Health, In The News, Mealtime
Big brother is watching you eat lunch. Credit: Getty Images
In an effort to raise a new generation of crazy Texans who wear tinfoil hats and go on paranoid rants about how the "gummit" is reading their thoughts through their hip implants, school officials in San Antonio are spying on kids.
Time magazine reports officials are installing surveillance cameras and rigging cafeteria food trays with computer barcodes with a $2 million grant from -- you guessed it -- the federal gummit.
Meanwhile, toothless conspiracy theorists across the land are cackling, "I knew it! I knew it!"
Hold on. How all this ties into the UFO cover-up remains uncertain. School officials in San Antonio tell the Reuters news service they're just using the grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to find out what children are eating.
Then they report their findings to parents, school nutrition specialists and the Vatican. OK, maybe not the Vatican. (Someone's been reading too many Dan Brown novels.)
The actual conspiracy, according to Reuters, is to create healthier lunches based on what kids actually eat. The information can also help parents plan meals at home. If your kid is practically inhaling fries at school, you might want to know so you can force some green vegetables down his gullet later on.
Scientists who study children's nutrition also can use the data to better understand how kids' diets cause obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
"We will be able to determine whether current programs that are aimed at preventing obesity work and whether they are really changing students' behavior," Roberto Trevino of San Antonio's Social & Health Research Center, which is leading the program, tells Reuters.
In other words, are kids eating more salads and fewer Hostess Ding Dongs? You really need surveillance cameras and barcodes to figure that out?
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ReaderComments (Page 1 of 1)
5-13-2011 @ 5:26PM
charlotte7224 said...IT IS NOT THE SCHOOL'S JOB TO MONITOR THE KIDS!!!
IF they are so concerned, give the kids more physical activity time; more gym; more outside recess to run jump & play. Its this thats lacking; not the 1 meal a day the school provides. Look at past generations; what were they eating in school, & how much playtime outside, away from TV & Computer did we as kids, spend.
The problem with child hood obesity is not school meals, (after elementary the larger percentage of kids don't eat at school anyway). it lies with lack of activity. Kids today for many reasons; get less physical playtime; & this is the major contributing factor.
With so many texas teachers & staff losing jobs; that money could have been better spent......its time to call a halt to schools acting in lieu of parents; & get back to the business of education.
Reply
6-21-2011 @ 1:08AM
Jackie said...I have to agree with you to an extent. There does need to be more activity at school and outside of schools. Unfortunately activity programs tend to be the first things cut followed by teachers etc. I don't agree with a lot of this obesity issue being all on the food. It all comes down to lack of activity and kids being uneducated about the right choices and parents not enforcing better eating habits. I was allowed sweets as a kid but it was 1-2 cookies after dinner not an entire box. On that same note, because schools are with kids more than the parents, schools become put under a lot of pressure by parents to serve healthier meals.
5-14-2011 @ 12:05AM
isisreptiles said...This invasion of privacy is truly frightening.
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5-14-2011 @ 6:08PM
jack and mary ramsey said...Dear Dave and friends, My husband both took a sack lunch when we went to elementary school. This was probably more healthy than all those "hot expensive school lunch trays" we either had
pb & j, or lunchmeat....fruit and maybe a cookie once in a while.
they gov spends more $ on cameras and programs to feed children
starving in other countries...........disgusted in az
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