One huge reservation I have about TLG’s school, and it’s been a back-of-my-mind concern since Day One (although wasn’t relevant for quite awhile) is the quality of the food. From what I can tell, and it’s not as though I have huge visibility into it, it’s fairly typical industrial cafeteria fare. Turkey dogs, “pizza”, “fresh fruit”, animal crackers, pretzels, ravioli, and so on. And they don’t boast “whole grain” anything, really. His allergies (which I still hope he’ll outgrow, and for all we know he may have already) have meant that we’ve been able to veto some of it and provide our own alternatives (itself a challenge for a toddler with mercurial food preferences). But he gets some of it. And it bugs me. I try to console myself with the fact that it’s one meal/day and the occasional snack (we provide many of his snacks – again due to the egg/dairy allergy).
But then I read articles like this in the New York Times which remind of just how horrible and disgusting our food system – particularly our meat system – is. TheGuy and I do not buy ground beef in stores. We do have the occasional burger out and about, but if we were to cook ground beef (which we don’t), we’d buy a cut of decent chuck and have them grind it right in front of us. That’s been true since the mad cow scare several years back. But on the occasions when TLG is eating at school and they serve beef, god only knows what sort of offal he’s getting. There’s a new director of the school. I think I’m going to have to go in and say that along with egg and dairy, he’s not to be served beef there either. Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
