Bloomberg Against Free Breakfasts In Classrooms For Low-Income Kids Because Kids Are Too Fat Already
The Wall Street Journal reports that the New York City council “plans to approve resolutions on Wednesday demanding Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s administration provides breakfast in the classroom at all city public schools,” which the mayor is against because, apparently, he doesn’t want kids to get even fatter than they already are. And, boy, are they fat! Partly from all the soda they drink, but also, breakfast.
Council member Steven Levin said, “We can’t stand by, year after year, and be among the worst in the country in making sure our kids have access to nutritional food in the morning. It’s an injustice for our kids to go to school and sit throughout the school day hungry when they could be fed with federal dollars.”
The city already provides free breakfast to the more than one million children in the public school system, but this new plan would make sure that the breakfast is served in the classroom, rather than simply made available in the school cafeteria. Proponents of the resolution tout the benefits that children receive from having a nutritious meal served to them at the start of their school day. Opponents, well, they don’t deny that it is important to have breakfast. They just are worried that kids might wind up having two breakfasts, just like the hobbits in “Lord of the Rings,” and wind up obese from having an additional, estimated “90 more calories a day.”
Lauren Passalacqua, a spokesperson for the mayor says, “”We want to make sure that no child is hungry and every child has a healthy breakfast. At the same time obesity is epidemic nationwide, and 40% of the city’s public school children are either overweight or obese, so we are appropriately concerned in making sure that our work to solve one problem doesn’t inadvertently exacerbate the other.”
And Dr. Thomas Farley, the commissioner of the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, feels that “many more children are suffering from severe health consequences related to obesity than problems from ‘not eating enough calories.'”
Oh, snap! Fat kids just got told!
Sucks for all you kids who don’t get fed a proper breakfast in the morning. Just remember, nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Kate Moss said this and she is basically a goddess.
Follow Kristin Iversen on twitter @kmiversen
