If you’re around my age, you may remember when almost every commercial for cereal ended with the tagline: Part of this nutritious breakfast! Or, Part of this balanced breakfast! The “balanced” breakfast shown was always a bowl of cereal, two pieces of toast (because the cereal alone didn’t provide enough processed grain), a glass of milk and a glass of juice – usually orange juice.

Here are a couple of collections of old cereal ads I found on YouTube. The first is from the 1970s, the second from the 1980s:

Boy, cereal had some great flavors back in the day: chocolate, sugar, honey, cinnamon toast, more sugar, marshmallows, rocky road ice cream, even more sugar, and chocolate chip cookies. Trust me, Kellogg’s and General Mills had no problem convincing us to eat those “balanced” breakfasts. I think we may be looking at part of the reason rates of obesity began to take off around 1980.

Just for grins, I took clips from the videos above and stitched them into a little summary of my own:

Let’s look at the nutrition breakdown of that “balanced” breakfast the cereal manufacturers were promoting back then. Officially, a serving of cereal is cup or a half-cup, depending on the brand, but if you look at the commercials, those cereal bowls hold more like two cups – and I didn’t know any kids who ate just one cup of cereal for breakfast. They were called cereal bowls for a reason.

So I’ll go with two cups of Frosted Flakes, 2% milk (which is what we drank when I was an adolescent), Parkay Margarine (which was mostly trans fat back then) and Minute Maid orange juice from concentrate, the kind your mom mixed with water. Here’s what we get:

Frosted Flakes (2 cups)
Calories: 320
Protein: 2.7 g
Carbs: 75 g
Sugar: 32 g
Fat: 2 g

2% Milk (2 cups)
Calories: 244
Protein: 16 g
Carbs: 23 g
Sugar 23 g
Fat: 10 g

Toast (2 slices)
Calories: 140
Protein: 4 g
Carbs: 28 g
Sugar: 4 g
Fat: 2 g

Parkay Margarine (2 tbs)
Calories: 120
Fat: 14 g

Minute Maid Orange Juice (8 oz)
Calories: 110
Carbs: 27 g
Sugar: 24 g

Okay, let’s add up that nutritious breakfast:

Calories: 934
Protein: 22.7 g
Carbs: 153 g
Sugar: 83 g
Fat: 28 g

As a percent of calories, it works out to about 65% carbohydrate, 10% protein and 25% fat. Hey, I’ll be darned if those aren’t the proportions recommended by the USDA! No wonder people in my generation are so remarkably lean and free of diabetes.

I believe (or hope, anyway) that most parents these days know that cereals full of chocolate and marshmallows aren’t health food. But I’d bet many of them still believe a glass of orange juice is part of a nutritious breakfast.

Take a look at the sugar content in that glass of orange juice listed above. It’s a Coke with a bit of vitamin C. Now take a look at part of the abstract from a study in which investigators included orange juice with breakfast for one of the study groups, but not the other.

On 2 separate days, healthy normal-weight adolescents (n = 7) and adults (n = 10) consumed the same breakfast with either orange juice or drinking water and sat at rest for 3 h after breakfast. The meal paired with orange juice was 882 kJ (210 kcal) higher than the meal paired with drinking water. Both meals contained the same amount of fat (12 g). For both age groups, both meals resulted in a net positive energy balance 150 min after breakfast. Resting fat oxidation 150 min after breakfast was significantly lower after breakfast with orange juice, however. The results suggest that, independent of a state of energy excess, when individuals have a caloric beverage instead of drinking water with a meal, they are less likely to oxidize the amount of fat consumed in the meal before their next meal.

If you’re not oxidizing fat, you’re storing it. That’s why we never include orange juice (or apple juice, or grape juice, or any other fruit juice) in the nutritious breakfasts we serve at home – much less cereal and toast.

Someone mentioned in the comments section awhile back that if I ever produced another documentary, I should try funding it with a KickStarter campaign.  I have to admit, I wasn’t familiar with KickStarter.  After looking into it, I love the idea of fans supporting the works they’d like to see produced.

I’m not currently planning another documentary (apart from the companion DVD for our kids’ book), but there’s one in production now that I suspect all you Fat Heads would love.  It’s called Cereal Killers.  Here’s the trailer:

And here’s an introduction by Donal O’Neill, the producer:

I can tell you from my Fat Head experience that most of expenses involved in getting a film out into the world occur after the shooting stops and the post-production begins.  (Until Fat Head went to Netflix and finally drew a wide audience, I thought producing it was going to be the biggest financial mistake of my life.)

Here’s a link to the KickStarter page for Cereal Killers.  I just went there and made a donation.  I’d urge you to do the same.  People who make films like this need and deserve our support.

Last summer, Chareva and I encouraged the girls to create their own YouTube videos (with lots of help from Mom) and call the series Paleo Kids’ Club. The idea was to have them, as kids, talking to other kids about diet and health. They liked the concept but balked at doing the actual work, so we let it go.  Summer is supposed to fun, after all.

This summer, for whatever reason, they’re considerably more enthusiastic. (I think it had something to do with joining me for a podcast when I sat in for Jimmy Moore. They enjoyed that.) In the interim, Chareva and I decided to call their show Fat Head Kids’ Club, for several reasons:

1. Branding; i.e., a better tie-in with the book when we finish it, since Fat Head will almost certainly be in the name.

2. We’re not strictly paleo — we like our cream and butter. We’re closer to what Mark Sisson calls primal.

3. Some people in the paleo world have become vegan-like zealots, denouncing all that doesn’t fit their particular definition of the word.

4. Some people in the paleo world are also strangely hostile towards low-carbers, insisting that everyone must eat potatoes and other starches to be healthy and anyone who doesn’t is deluded.

In short, I didn’t want to link my girls to the word paleo and invite attacks from any self-appointed High Priests of Pure Paleo. Since I produced Fat Head, a Fat Head Kid is whatever I say it is.

I’m busy with other projects, so my role is mostly limited to serving as technical adviser/script consultant. Chareva and girls have been coming up with episode ideas, and Chareva taught herself how to edit video in Adobe Premiere, sometimes by picking my brain since I’ve been using Premiere for years. She also turned the girls’ downstairs playroom into a makeshift studio.

I don’t know how many episodes they’ll ultimately produce, but I’ll post them when they do. If you look at the top banner of the blog, you’ll see I added a Fat Head Kids’ Club link. After I post their videos on the main blog page, I’ll also post them on that page. That way anyone looking for the videos won’t have to scroll through old blog posts to find them.

Here’s their introductory episode. Enjoy.

A few weeks ago I was interviewed by Sam Feltham on his Smash The Fat Live show.  He told me at the time that he was running an N=1 experiment to see what would happen if he consumed 5,000 calories per day on a high-fat/low-carb diet for 21 days.

Before we look at the final results, here are some quotes from an article Sam wrote when he was halfway into his experiment:

10 days ago I started a 21 day experiment where I eat 5,794 calories of a low carbohydrate high fat diet to see if a calorie is really just a calorie. I have come across some militant scientists, who say my experiment is bogus, and some very supportive ones, who have applauded me for trying to push science forward. The only premises that I’m starting with are that a calorie is a calorie, that if you eat more than you burn you put on weight and that 1lb (0.45kg) of fat is 3,500 calories.

At the start of my 21 day experiment I weighed in at 85.2kg in the morning and 86kg in the evening making my mean for day 1, 85.6kg. My waist measurement was 78cm in the morning and 81cm in the evening making my starting mean 79.5cm. As it stands from this morning, halfway, I’m in a calorie surplus of 26,841 and according to the calorie formula I should be 3.5kg heavier than when I started at 89.1kg. On day 10 of the experiment I currently weigh 85.7kg and my waist is 76cm, so a gain of 0.1kg and a loss of 2.5cm.

So after 10 days, he gained a miniscule amount of weight, but lost a bit of fat around the middle.  In other words, he probably gained a bit of lean tissue.

Now here’s his report after 20 days of consuming more than 5,000 calories per day:

Day 20, and I am 86.7kg at 3am as I’m off for the weekend! Which is 0.4kg down from last night’s weigh in where I was 87.1kg making my mean for yesterday 86.45kg, which is 0.85kg up from my starting mean weight! According to the calorie formula I should be up by 6.6kg as I’m now in a 51,239 calorie surplus to 92.2kg from my starting mean weight of 85.6kg.

My waist measurement this morning was 76cm which is 2cm down from my starting AM measurement. Last night I was 77.5cm giving me a mean waist of 76.5cm, which is 3cm down from the start!

Translation for those of us not on the metric system:  he gained slightly less than two pounds, but lost just over an inch around the waist.  According to the usual (and wrong) interpretation of the calories-in/calories-out theory, he should have gained more like 15 pounds.

Predictably, the calorie fanatics who commented on his experiment are insisting that he simply has a super-high metabolism.  Oh, really?  By that logic, he should have been wasting away when he was on his normal diet of somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000 calories per day.  And yet he wasn’t.  So that “super-high metabolism” is a new development.

In two of my posts about the low-carb cruises I attended, I mentioned that despite eating three and sometimes four meals per day – larger meals than I typically eat at home, by the way – I didn’t gain any weight.  In fact, on the first low-carb cruise I attended, I weighed myself in the ship’s health club on the first and last days of the cruise.  I was a pound lighter on the last day.

People who insist weight loss and weight gain is all about counting calories like to point to studies of semi-starvation diets – people consuming 1,000 calories per day or thereabouts.  Yup, in most of those studies, there’s not much of a difference between low-carb and low-fat diets.  (In others, there was a difference.  The low-carbers lost more.)

But in my experience, the advantage of a low-carb diet isn’t in losing more weight at a very low calorie intake.  It’s in not gaining weight at a high calorie intake.  Pardon me for comparing apples to oranges a bit here, but when Morgan Spurlock consumed 5,000 calories per day of high-sugar, high-carb food in Super Size Me, he gained 24 pounds in 30 days and got fat around the belly.  Sam Feltham gained slightly less than two pounds while losing in inch around his waist.

After my first low-carb cruise, I wrote to Dr. Mike Eades to ask why I hadn’t gained weight while stuffing myself with eggs, bacon, sausage, burgers, steaks, lobster, salads with creamy dressing, etc.  He replied that he’d seen the same phenomenon dozens of times with his patients.  Some of them took being on a low-carb diet as an excuse to stuff themselves, then were disappointed when they didn’t lose weight, or only lost a couple of pounds in a month.  (For the record, Dr. Eades has always insisted that losing weight requires a calorie deficit.  Read the original Protein Power book if you think otherwise.)  When he checked the disappointed patients’ detailed food journals, he found that they were consuming 4,000 calories per day or more.  And yet they didn’t gain weight, or even lost a bit.

Why?  I don’t know exactly.  Neither does Dr. Eades.  He told me all we know is that the body finds ways to burn the extra calories.  The body may produce extra heat, it may repair and replace cells at a faster rate, it may engage in other energy-using processes no one has identified yet, or some combination of all three.  Somehow, given the right hormonal conditions, a body can resist accumulating fat even with a higher-than-usual intake of calories.  Dr. Richard Feinman told me pretty much the same thing.

And by the way, neither of them claimed that the extra calories vanished into thin air.  They claimed that somehow, a dramatic increase in calories in caused a compensating increase in calories out.  That’s what happened to me when I pigged out on the cruises, and it’s what happened to Sam Feltham during his 21-day experiment.

And no laws of thermodynamics were harmed in the process.

I don’t mean to beat a dead horse, but I came across an interview with the nine-year-old girl who parroted her mother’s opinions about McDonald’s at a shareholders meeting and was hailed by the media as a hero as a result.  I think the interview proves the points I made in my last post.

Before we get to that, I’ll explain my opinion of what motivates the anti-McDonald’s activists.  If you’ve seen Fat Head, you may remember the part where I said something like this:

“When I’ve discussed the merits of Super Size Me with my friends and associates, I noticed a curious pattern:  almost everyone who really likes that movie shares a common and dearly-held belief …”

(on-screen graphic)   POOR PEOPLE ARE STUPID!

Dr. Eric Oliver then appeared to say what struck him about Super Size Me was the underlying attitude that the poor can’t be trusted to make decisions for themselves and need someone else to step in and protect them.  The people who want other people “protected” from McDonald’s are snobs.  (My label, not Dr. Oliver’s.)

As Jacob Sullum explained elsewhere in the film, not everyone has the same values.  I’d rather be healthy than eat junk food.  That’s my choice.  But some people value pleasure over long-term health.  They know sodas and french fries are junk food, but choose to consume them anyway. That’s their choice.  It doesn’t seem to occur to the elitists that a person can knowingly eat junk food without being a victim.

Back when I worked at home and had more time to break my own rule about not arguing with idiots, I participated in a couple of online debates that went something like this:

Of course we should put limits on advertising by McDonald’s!  They use slick advertising to sucker people into eating their lousy food.

I’m sorry McDonald’s suckered you into eating their food.  I hope you recover soon.

I didn’t say I eat there.  I never eat there.

So you’re just concerned about people who lack your superior intelligence and ability to resist slick advertising.  Must be very flattering to view so many other people as your inferiors.

Well what about kids?  They don’t know any better.

That’s why there are parents.  Kids can’t eat at McDonald’s unless their parents take them to the restaurant and buy the food.

But kids see the ads and want the Happy Meals and badger their parents until the parents give in.

I’m sorry your kids badgered you into buying them Happy Meals.

I DON’T BUY HAPPY MEALS FOR MY KIDS.  I know better.

I see.  So you’re not really concerned about McDonald’s advertising to your kids.  You’re concerned about them advertising to kids whose parents lack your superior intelligence and ability to resist being badgered.

I didn’t say that!

…

No, they don’t come out and say it, but that’s clearly what they mean.  Which brings me to the interview with Hannah, the nine-year-old media hero.  Let’s look at some quotes:

Q. Why did you bawl out McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson?

A. Because I wanted to speak for all those kids and parents who wanted to have that voice and talk to McDonald’s.

Q. Can you sum up what you told him?

A. I said it’s not fair that big companies try to trick kids into eating food that’s not good for them by giving them toys — and with cartoon characters.

Okay, so she felt the need to stand up for all the kids who are tricked into eating at McDonald’s.  Surely she has bad memories of being tricked herself.

Q. How many times have you eaten at McDonald’s?

A. I don’t know. Maybe three or four times.

EXCUSE ME?!!  If McDonald’s is so good at “tricking” kids into eating their Happy Meals, why has she only eaten there three or four times in her entire life?  This isn’t a case of her mom taking her to McDonald’s for the hundredth time and then smacking herself in the head and saying, “Dangit!  Those sneaky bastards tricked me again with their cartoon characters!”  Nope, Mom doesn’t take little Hannah to McDonald’s.  She’s a smart lady, you see – an activist and all that.  But she’s very worried that the stupid people won’t be able to resist the cartoon-character ads.

Q. What’s your biggest problem with McDonald’s?

A. My biggest problem with McDonald’s is that they trick kids into eating their food by using toys and cartoon characters and sports icons.

Q. What if they stopped all that?

A. If they put more healthy food on their menu, I’d be OK with that. But when you think of the Golden Arches and McDonald’s, you think of Big Macs, fries and nuggets.

So Hannah and her mom would be “OK with that” if McDonald’s completely abandoned their business model and served the kinds of foods Hannah’s mom thinks other people should be eating.  Apparently Hannah’s mom believes people are automatons who will just eat whatever McDonald’s serves.  Riiiiight.  I’m sure the McDonald’s executives wish it were that easy — especially those who were around for the McLean fiasco.

If McDonald’s decided to serve the foods Hannah’s mom wants other people to eat, here’s what would happen:  their customers would start going to Burger King.

Q. What do you think McDonald’s should add to its menu?

A. Healthy things like kale chips and veggies on a stick and fruit on a stick.

Those must be your favorite foods, then – the kinds of foods you’d go out to a restaurant to buy.

Q. What’s your favorite meal?

A. Spaghetti, tomato sauce, garlic bread and Caesar salad.

What happened to kale chips and veggies on a stick?

Q. Where do you like to eat out?

A. Pizza places.

Pasta, bread and pizza … well, thank goodness you don’t eat at McDonald’s.  Those burgers are bad for you.

Q. Who wrote your speech?

A. Me and my mom wrote it together at home on the computer. It took about a day to write.

“Here, Hannah.  Mommy wrote a speech for you to give at the shareholders meeting.”

“Why am I am giving the speech, Mommy?”

“Because, Sweetheart, if you stand up and say Mommy’s words, the media will swoon and hail you as a brave little hero.  If Mommy stands up and says Mommy’s words, they might think I’m just a busybody elitist.”

And that’s exactly what she is.  Instead of insisting McDonald’s serve kale chips and veggie sticks, I’d suggest she open her own chain of restaurants and put those items on the menu.  I’m sure she’d sell billions and billions.

Interesting items from my inbox …

And if you do develop diabetes, you’ll probably laugh about it

At least the Feds won’t declare this possible weight-loss drug illegal — because it already is:

Toking up may help marijuana users to stay slim and lower their risk of developing diabetes, according to the latest study, which suggests that cannabis compounds may help in controlling blood sugar.

Although marijuana has a well-deserved reputation for increasing appetite via what stoners call “the munchies,” the new research, which was published in the American Journal of Medicine, is not the first to find that the drug has a two-faced relationship to weight.

Three prior studies have shown that marijuana users are less likely to be obese, have a lower risk for diabetes and have lower body-mass-index measurements. And these trends occurred despite the fact that they seemed to take in more calories.

Hmmm, if marijuana users are skinnier despite taking in more calories, that would seem to violate the calories-in/calories-out theory.  Naw, that can’t be.  Obviously, there’s something about getting high that makes people want to go jogging.  All that talk about a “runner’s high” was just a cover story.

Why? “The most important finding is that current users of marijuana appeared to have better carbohydrate metabolism than nonusers,” says Murray Mittleman, an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the lead author of the study. “Their fasting insulin levels were lower, and they appeared to be less resistant to the insulin produced by their body to maintain a normal blood-sugar level.”

Easy there, Professor Mittleman. If you go around suggesting that insulin levels and carbohydrate metabolism are involved, you’ll get clobbered by bloggers who insist insulin has nothing to do with obesity and is, in fact, a wunnerful appetite suppressant. (I guess all those obese people with high insulin levels are ignoring the wunnerful appetite suppressant and eating just for the heck of it.)

While marijuana may initially promote appetite and overeating, in the long run it has the opposite effect because it desensitizes cannabinoid receptors and may even protect against obesity.

So don’t skip the gym and break out the bong just yet: there’s still not enough data to tell whether marijuana, like alcohol, could have health benefits in moderation. Mittleman says the study relied on self-reported use of marijuana, which can be unreliable.

Gee, do you think? Food questionnaires are notoriously unreliable, and those people are trying to tell the truth. If we want to know who’s smoking pot and who isn’t, I’d suggest a survey question more like this:

Have you smoked marijuana in the past six months?

A. Yes

B. No

C. Oh, man, I can’t ‘t remember

Then mark down people who answer A or C as pot-smokers.

Media declares girl a hero for parroting her mother’s opinions

It’s the kind of story media reporters love — and makes me want to barf:

A 9-year-old girl from Kelowna, B.C. has become somewhat of an international star after speaking at a McDonald’s annual shareholders meeting in Chicago last week.

Hannah Robertson and her mother Kia were invited to the meeting as members of the watchdog group, Corporate Accountability International. They spoke on behalf of an online campaign created by the group called Mom’s Not Loving It and have also started their own healthy eating blog Today I Ate A Rainbow.

Got the picture so far? Hannah’s Mom is an anti-McDonald’s activist.

“Mr. Thompson, don’t you want kids to be healthy so they can live a long and happy life?” Robertson asks CEO Don Thompson during the question and answer period. “It would be nice if you stopped trying to trick kids into wanting to eat your food all the time.”

Cue the big cheers from the media and the social activists. Why, by gosh, it’s a pipsqueak version of Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Look at the little darling taking on the big, bad CEO.

Puuuuuke!

Seriously, does anyone who considers Hannah an “international star” for standing up and repeating her mother’s opinion believe she’s ever been “tricked” into eating at McDonald’s? And if so, where was Hannah’s mom at the time? Unless Hannah has her own money and her own car, I’m pretty sure she’s incapable of eating at McDonald’s without her mom’s approval. I’m also pretty sure her mom never approves.

If you’ve seen the bonus interviews on the Fat Head DVD, you’ll recall Jacob Sullum pointing out that people who get their undies in a twist over McDonald’s advertising to kids aren’t concerned about themselves or their kids — they don’t eat there anyway. They’re concerned about the people they consider too weak or too stupid to avoid the temptation of Happy Meals — in other words, people they consider inferior.  Here’s a perfect example:

Hannah and her mother acknowledge McDonald’s has stepped up efforts to offer healthy foods, such as fruit smoothies and apple slices in the Happy Meals, but suggest the company must avoid specifically marketing their fast food to kids. “Take toys out of the Happy Meals and not using cartoon characters and sports icons,” Hannah tells Global. “It’s kind of like tricking them into thinking that McDonald’s is good for them and it’s like this amazing thing,” she tells CBC.

I’m sorry you and your mom consider other kids your age to be such gullible idiots, Hannah. If only the kids who aren’t as smart as you had parents who could protect them from the Svengali-like powers of Ronald McDonald.  Oh wait, they do.  But of course, your mom thinks the parents are idiots too.  That’s why she believes they need her to protect them from temptation and thus from their own decisions.

The CNN and ABC star is now back in her Grade 4 classroom, but hoping to hear from Thomspon. “I gave him our business card and told him to email us about healthy eating ideas for McDonald’s,” she says.

Yes, I’m sure the CEO of McDonald’s is dying to hear how your mom’s idea for McTofu Nuggets will boost their bottom line.

More School Nonsense

Technically, butter’s been off government-approved school menus for a long time. But apparently schools in New York are now cracking down on illicit butter-buying:

Butter was exiled from school cafeterias as far back 2008 in an effort to make meals healthier. But some school kitchen managers say they are being ‘bullied’ on how to prepare meals and threatened with ‘disciplinary action’ should they go against the ban.

Well, I am shocked — SHOCKED! — that there could be bullying involved when people ignore government bureaucrats.

The spreadable delight has been banned from school cafeterias. It can’t be used for cooking or offered with bread.

And now it’s the subject of an aggressive crackdown that threatens the livelihood of school kitchen managers who’ve dared to order the illicit treat.

“Please explain why your managers are ordering BUTTER!!!” a Brooklyn regional school food manager fumed in an email last week to officials overseeing 25 schools.

Um … because it’s delicious and good for us?

Department officials say butter is one of several ingredients they’ve stripped out of meals in recent years to make them healthier. Also off the menu: whole milk and white bread.

Brilliant. Let’s ban water and broccoli next.

Greenpoint mom Brooke Parker was baffled by the anti-butter crusade. “I don’t understand why the mayor is attacking butter. What’s he got against butter? It’s not that bad for you,” she said. “How about making sure kids have gym classes before they ban butter?”

How about if they restore gym classes, then don’t ban butter?

Parker’s daughter Vivian, 6, a kindergartner at Public School 84 in Williamsburg, didn’t mind.

“They don’t have butter at my school,” she said. “They said it makes you fat. I don’t like butter anyway. They have cream cheese for our bagels instead.”

Head. Bang. On. Desk.

With such rampant anti-fat hysteria in the public school establishment, I’m surprised they just didn’t just ban meat from the menu.

Oh, wait … one school did:

There’s no “mystery meat” at one Queens public elementary school.

Public School 244 in Flushing is the first public school in the nation to serve all-vegetarian meals for breakfast and lunch, according to city education officials.

Chefs at the Active Learning Elementary School have swapped chicken, turkey and ham for black beans, tofu and falafel, and kids are digging in with delight.

“This is so good!” squealed 9-year-old Marian Satti, devouring her black bean and cheddar cheese quesadilla Tuesday at lunch. “I’m enjoying that it didn’t have a lot of salt in it.”

My bull@#$% meter is not only ringing, it’s gone all the way up to 11.  The kids are eating low-fat, low-salt, vegetarian meals and they’re squealing and digging in with delight? Well then, we don’t need to ban meat or fat or salt, do we?  Clearly the kids love the low-fat, low-salt, vegetarian stuff, so that’s what they’ll choose anyway.  Somebody call Hannah’s mom and tell her she can stop worrying about Ronald McDonald tricking kids into eating cheeseburgers.  They’d rather eat tofu and black beans.

I’m thinking what we’re looking at here is a rah-rah article by reporters who believe the all-vegetarian menu is a good idea.   Don’t worry about the school forcing its dietary preferences on your children, folks!  See – they love it!

The students are pioneers in a citywide effort to make healthy food a staple of every child’s day.

My b.s. meter was correct.  It’s a rah-rah piece, all right.  School officials decide the kids won’t eat meat anymore, and instead of calling the kids what they are – a captive market being subjected to someone else’s dietary preferences – the reporters call them pioneers.  I’d puke again if the media adoration of Hannah parroting her mom’s leftist opinions hadn’t already emptied my stomach.

Schools Chancellor Dennis Walcott, who often crows about maintaining a fit lifestyle, said the launch of the vegetarian food-fest should be duplicated in schools across the city and country.

Yes, by gosh, Chancellor, if only you could impose your dietary preferences on every kid in the country.  Well, perhaps in some future decade, when that annoying concept of individual liberty is finally gone, you’ll get your chance.

So … we have schools banning butter, whole milk, and now meat – all in the name of making kids healthier.  Anybody want to guess what the reaction would be if some school administrators who believe a low-carb/high-fat diet is best for kids tried to force their preferences onto the school menus?  Anybody want to guess what would happen if they ordered the vegetarian kids to put meat on their plates?