Wednesday, February 10, 2010

More West Michigan schools offer free breakfast to all students






"As students filed into the cafeteria one recent morning at Godwin Heights Middle School, custodian-turned-breakfast-pitchman Jose Rivera welcomed them with food.
'Here, you like cheese? Take a milk, too.'
Then, when a boy slipped past the table empty-handed, Rivera called him back.
'Free breakfast! Come on down, buddy. Take one of each, please.'"


WHY IT MATTERS
Benefits of breakfast
Academic and nutritional claims for students who eat a morning meal:
• Less tardiness and fewer abscences
• More energy
• Fewer disciplinary problems
• More attentiveness in the classroom
• Lower body-mass index
• Higher standardized test scores
• Better diet of nutrients, vitamins and minerals

This is so wrong on so many levels:
1. We are paying an adult to cajole kids into putting food on their tray that the kids don't want.
Nice carbon footprint of uneaten food going to the dump, right.
2. Let's teach our kids that "free food" is the normal way of life in America at an early age!
3. With SOOO many reasons ("Why it matters") to give more free food to kids, why aren't we already seeing all the wondrous benefits from "free lunch"? Oh, it's a bogus lie? OK.
4. If free lunch and breakfast are producing such marvelous benefits to our children's education, why not free dinner?
5. Where is all this "free" money coming from?
Gimme a break!

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