At least they wouldn't get the bad food from a place that's funded by tax payers.

If you think kids will go to fast food chains, why are you against making it harder for them to eat unhealthy? Can you really not see the difference in offering a healthy option versus handing kids cholesterol on a silver plate?

Why do I care if they have bad food at a place funded by tax payers? I'm bothered schools are wasteful with tax payer money.

I have no desire in making laws on how people are allowed to eat. Especially at a place they're forcing kids to be at. There should be healthy options, that's where schools often fail. But this isn't about options, this is about letting laws strip away peoples rights.

The law of product management: Cheap, fast, good. Pick 2.

Up until now, government schools always picked cheap and fast to save on money and effort. This mandate is for cheap and good, which involves more labor costs. In so many words, this is a mandate for a tax hike.

Really, the state of our cafeterias is deplorable. I work at the closest thing to a fine-dining restaurant my town can afford. My boss did his best to copy a 4-star restaurant menu and ambiance, repackaged it at a third the price, and while the menu is not quite that elaborate or complicated, he still basically succeeded. That's what private sector competition is all about.

My university cafeteria cooks what I would call "average" cafeteria food, but they charge $7 for the same buffet I could get for $4.50 at a local dive. They have no sense of competition.

Really want to give students better meals? Offer Subway a chance to cater food to the students on the taxpayers dime and have them compete with school cafeterias. You will see those cafeterias cooking some great, healthy food the next day.

You said yourself they they could just go to MacDonalds if they wanted to. Noone is taking away any rights. Also, if there only was one healthy alternative at the school, it would cost less than having all the options, and the costs of supplying bad food would be pushed into the private sector (which is what you want anyway, right?

Bold part is completely irrelevant because you can make healthy food both cheap and fast. And it goes against your point about subway, because Subway makes decent food both cheap and fast :P

No, they can't just go to McDonalds. Maybe at some high schools that's an option.

I'd be fine with private sector companies peddling food to kids. I remember they used to sell Pizza Hut at my high school, it was great! But laws like this want to deter that.

Also, this doesn't stop at what kind of foods kids can eat. They also want to control the amount of calories they can eat. Once again, everyone being punished because of fatties.

If you think you can make cheap and fast food that's also healthy, start a fast food chain. You'll be a millionare overnight. Subway is neither particularly fast nor cheap, at least compared to bulk cafeteria fodder.

No, the real problem is that without competition there's no sense of efficiency and quality of service. Compared to what the free market offers, school cafeterias really offer terrible value despite having an advantage of producing in bulk and in controlled waves.

Of course, that's also true of schools as a whole. I went to private school for a while, and it barely was eking by on 2/3rds the tuition per student public schools get from taxes. School services don't have to compete with anything besides vending machines.

Eating healthy is not 'being punished'

If parents want to feed their kids crap, they're perfectly free to do so at home.

It needs to be done. After the initial disgruntled reaction from students who are used to having more choices it will just become the norm in not too long for new students. About time the nation made some kind of action towards fighting obesity.

Parents don't have much to do with what a child decides to buy at a school lunch.

In any case, these rules are fine, though I'm not surprised people are complaining. If you don't like what's being sold, many students can just bring their own lunch. I understand not all students can afford to do that, but school lunch was never exactly great to begin with. If your going to sell kids crap, might as well be healthy crap.

Hahahahaha.

You know what's funny about that suggestion? My high school actually DID that. It's how I was introduced to Subway. The food was better, but it was also several dollars more expensive and most of my fellow students didn't go for it. Only the ones who could afford it, like me, did. It didn't really encourage my cafeteria to suddenly try to find a better supplier and offer better food. Being private sector doesn't somehow mean something will offer something that is both better AND cheaper. If anything, including the private sector in something like this would just cost tax payers more, because unlike the public sector, the private sector will need to make a profit. They may offer better food, but they will also charge more.

My current university, FAU, also has both a food court with stuff like Wendy's and Quiznos, and a $7 University buffet. Food ranges from shit pizza to a pretty nice deli, and both places are generally pretty packed. Hell, the buffet gets more traffic, even though makes you bring cash because they don't take cards, adding inconvenience on top of the price.  That private sector competiton doesn't really seem to mean much.