I Could Leave You Well Enough Alone

There are a lot of things that make me wonder about the South.

But this one just makes me shake my head in exasperation. First, a bit of context. I've been trying my very very best to eat healthily, and it's going quite well. But at work, I'm also trying to be more social, and so I'm accepting invites to receptions/lunches out/etc. This means eating cookies and ice cream while getting to know people better. Yesterday I went to a buffet restaurant and tried to eat salad and non-fried things, but of course the person I was with kept saying, "try this, try this." I suppose it's me not wanting to be rude that makes me hold my tongue and not say, "But that's so completely unhealthy." Anyway, I tried small bits of things. And I did indulge in a small bit of red velvet cake as that's one of my new enjoyments. But moving on. Today I was invited to order in with a bunch of others from a bbq/burger establishment that's only open on certain days. Someone told me that there was an article in the Starkville Daily News about this place. And this soundbite is what lead me to blog today:

"It's a unique dining experience,'"said Beverly Lowry, Child Nutrition Director at the Starkville School District. "You have to experience it for yourself. It's a great, great cheeseburger."

Does this not strike anyone as...well, at the least, an unfortunate quote? Here we have the woman in charge of children's health for the school district--the one whom, I assume, makes the choices on what these kids will be eating for lunch--and she's promoting a "great, great cheeseburger." This in a country in which the rate of obesity in children above age six is nearly 14 percent.

To be fair, I did my research. I attempted to find the school district's lunch calendar (these were posted when I was in school, but apparently Starkville is a bit behind). I'm not able to find it, but my roommate did tell me the other day that one of her school's specialties was pizza and french fries. That's right, together. And I used to think it was gross when people dipped pizza into ranch dressing. Pizza and fries as a lunch?

I used my nutrition facts website and determined that a small cheeseburger has 319 calories and 15 fat grams, translating to 23 percent of a person's daily saturated fat needs (which, really, aren't those totals awfully high? Can we really call saturated fat a need?) But it gets worse. A large cheeseburger--185 grams or roughly 10 oz, so a little over 1/2 lb--is 609 calories with 294 calories from fat, giving one 74 percent of their saturated fat for the day.

Yes, I'm going to eat one. So it may seem hypocritical that I'm criticizing a school board that is promoting a restaurant's delicious cheeseburgers. But I eat maybe 1 cheeseburger every three months. I am not in charge of promoting nutritional knowledge to young children. I only hope that Ms. Lowery's love for incredible cheeseburgers stays at the restaurant and out of the cafeteria.