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varropdxThe latest issue of the New Yorker is the back-to-school issue. It contains an article describing a horrible miscalculation.
The article profiles the executive chef in the Berkeley, California School District. She had a long history of success at high-end restaurants, and was successful at devising innovative menus at a hoity-toity private school in the Hamptons, where limousine liberals sent their kids.
So what does she do when she becomes head of a public school system, with relatively normal kids? She replaces the frozen pizza with rubber cheese that we all knew and loved with hippie-dippy "healthy" pizza with corn, zucchini, and squash on it.
The kids sent more of this pizza into the trash than into their stomachs. No matter how they tried to pitch it, the kids rejected it. Over 200 students from one of the elementary schools signed a petition on butcher paper complaining about the food, with the pizza one of their prime complaints.
The lesson to be learned from this? If you want to connect with people, don't force your own hippie-dippy/yuppie tastes and attitudes on people. If you're a Democratic politician, go to spaghetti dinners, hot dog grills, and shrimp boils, and think of the yuppies as suckers to be shaken down as you tolerate their weird food. Engage people on their terms, not yours, and listen to them when you make decisions.
Only a yuppie can make kids shun pizza, and yuppies have done a good job in making working people shun the Democrats.
The article profiles the executive chef in the Berkeley, California School District. She had a long history of success at high-end restaurants, and was successful at devising innovative menus at a hoity-toity private school in the Hamptons, where limousine liberals sent their kids.
So what does she do when she becomes head of a public school system, with relatively normal kids? She replaces the frozen pizza with rubber cheese that we all knew and loved with hippie-dippy "healthy" pizza with corn, zucchini, and squash on it.
The kids sent more of this pizza into the trash than into their stomachs. No matter how they tried to pitch it, the kids rejected it. Over 200 students from one of the elementary schools signed a petition on butcher paper complaining about the food, with the pizza one of their prime complaints.
The lesson to be learned from this? If you want to connect with people, don't force your own hippie-dippy/yuppie tastes and attitudes on people. If you're a Democratic politician, go to spaghetti dinners, hot dog grills, and shrimp boils, and think of the yuppies as suckers to be shaken down as you tolerate their weird food. Engage people on their terms, not yours, and listen to them when you make decisions.
Only a yuppie can make kids shun pizza, and yuppies have done a good job in making working people shun the Democrats.
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Date: 2006-09-04 09:04 am (UTC)Sorry, i know that wasn't really the point of your post.
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Date: 2006-09-04 09:54 am (UTC)When I was that age, I didn't want vegetables on my pizza, either....I probably would have done the same thing. I'm less picky now, although some weird pizza shouldn't be made - green peppers, olives, mushrooms, and tomatoes - yes. Artichoke hearts, zucchini, and corn - no. And who decided to put ham and pineapple on pizza?
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Date: 2006-09-04 10:57 am (UTC)That's how Jim describes people like that, and I guess I'd have to agree, even though I'm college-edu-macated, too.
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Date: 2006-09-04 02:48 pm (UTC)When I was in school, any sort of rubber-cheese-frozen-pizza they tried to serve me was rejected outright. I tried a bite, gagged on it, and never tried again.
Not that I went after healthier options, mind you (not that they existed!) I pretty much subsisted on Tastykakes and Snapple. But then I'm fairly demanding that my food either be fresh and attractive; or hermetically sealed.
Things that could have made my school's hot lunch less disgusting to me:
1) Use plates.
2) Don't give me canned ANYTHING.
3) Let me serve myself.
4) Let me see my sandwiches being assembled.
5) Don't serve anything where the ingredients are "some sort of mystery in bland canned tomato sauce".
Actually, the stuff that Ann Cooper, if it's the same person, is doing don't sound entirely unpleasant to me. Although I'm a freak. And corn has no place on pizza. And when I was, say, twelve, knowing that my school lunch program was being run by some freak who doesn't know what belongs on pizza would probably have me running back to the Tastykakes.
But yeah to your general thesis. Even if I prefer the Hamptons-and-Putney style of dining to anything involving a hot dog.
But now you've got me reading her blog and all of the sustainable-agriculture stuff and I think I may need to get serious about avoiding soy, which is rapidly becoming one of the Horsemen of the Dietary Apocalypse.
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Date: 2006-09-04 11:09 pm (UTC)Tastes change over time - I'd expect elementary school kids and 20something grad students to want to eat different things. Cooper wanting to give the kids better quality food is a good idea, but serving them yuppie cuisine without warning is a very bad idea - it's an example of the kind of arrogance that loses liberals support.
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Date: 2006-09-05 12:03 am (UTC)Unhealthy, more specifically: there are acids in soybeans that can act to reduce the absorption of minerals. Stuff like calcium, iron, zinc: and life without zinc is a bad, bad thing for your immune system. And my immune system needs all the help it can get. A lot of the soy out there is GM: this may be judged to be food-safe, but that doesn't stop me from being nervous about it. It also holds pesticides REAL well. It's reportedly able to fuck with your hormones, and I *really* don't need that. Soy is one of the eight major food allergens, but while it's fairly easy to find foods without peanuts, tree nuts, or even without dairy, because it's cheap and is used as a filler in so many things it's very hard to find soy-free foods. Even for people who aren't allergic, it can aggravate health problems and lead to new ones.
And then there's the farming problem. Mass soy cultivation (and driving through farm areas one sees acres and acres of soybeans, as far as the eye can see...) means that other crops are being abandoned. It's this ugly cycle which benefits the big agribusinesses, petroleum companies, and not consumers at ALL, and it's ultimately more harmful to the environment than would be growing more varied crops. Let me give an example: the numbers are hypothetical, but the situation is real.
You are looking at the state of Iowa. This is a big farm state. Major crops: soy and corn. Walk into the HyVee: you don't see a produce section full of soy and corn. The food there is being shipped an average of 1,500 miles, taking several days and losing food value with every mile. Meanwhile, the soy and corn that's used for human consumption is being shipped to turn into food additives, shipped again to be added to processed foods, and shipped again to bring those processed foods to stores nationwide. The consumer pays a health cost, because the food in the stores is less nutritious than something locally produced would be; the consumer pays an environmental cost from all the shipping; and the consumer pays in loss of freedom, because a major part of the state's economy is now placed in the hands of a handful of businesses.
As far as changing tastes: I'm not claiming that I'm normal. But I'd come home hungry from the inedible fake-pizza-soggy-chicken-nugget-limp-fries school lunches and make myself things like a warm wilted salad with bacon dressing. Kids are capable of "wanting to eat" a lot more than what you find on "kiddie menus" -- if their parents don't treat them like that's all they should be eating. You're acting like there's some sort of virtue in feeding kids crap because that's what the kids want: but really, this is just kick-starting a process that should have been happening since at least the Johnson administration. Someone who's grown up in a home where food comes out of a can or a bag or a box (and while I spent many overnights in homes like that as a kid, I am ever so grateful that my parents are both cooking types) isn't likely to feed their kids any differently. I don't know where you get off on the "without warning" -- while I don't get the New Yorker, from what I've read there was a year's warning before she messed with pizza, and giving warning is a key part of the entire concept -- but giving kids real food isn't a liberal idea, it's a very conservative one. Reactionary, even.
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Date: 2006-09-06 03:47 am (UTC)(Sigh.) Okay, cash crops are evil. Well, I don't smoke and rarely drink. A person needs some evil in her life to keep from boring everyone to death. :/
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Date: 2006-09-06 04:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-11 09:10 pm (UTC)I even found a soy version of fudge-sicles that are pretty damn good. And I need those, damnit !! I mean, what if I need a delicious ice-cold chocolate-y treat that wouldn't plug up my respiratory system with all kinds of dairy stuff ?
(whine)
And the cats even eat boiled soybeans when they fall onto the floor. Soy is all-powerful. Right-thinking omnivores of many species bow before the mighty soyyyy!!!
Someday, the non-believers will understand.
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Date: 2006-09-04 02:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-09-04 11:09 pm (UTC)