Colorado daycare workers required to wear burqas

OK, I exaggerate slightly for the purpose of generating a few hits. But seriously, I can’t really summarize it better than the source itself.

I could say a lot about the clothing requirement, which I think is the most heinous part of this bill. Colorado is not Salt Lake City, and no one should be required to dress like a Mormon to take care of kids. In 20 years (I used to say 50, and now with the rate of the downward spiral of this country, I've revised my thinking), I’ll be damned to wake up and find that everyone has to wear a burqa because some idiot thinks their three year old boy will be traumatized due to viewing my ankles.

But what really gets me worked up is food issues. There are simply few things more fundamental than the right to decide what goes into your body: whether it’s a pill or food or a doctor’s surgical implement.

The ignorance of a legislator thinking that our kids are unhealthy because they get too much whole milk really chaps my hide. Quiz time. 1) Does cow's milk or human milk have more fat? 2) How long do people in non-industrialized cultures without access to a grocery store breastfeed their kids, and how fat and unhealthy are they?

No one should need a doctor's note to feed their kid in a healthy way -- in a way that humans have done since the dawn of time. Period. The American Academy of Pediatrics lost all credibility when they said babies should get lowfat milk and approved statin drugs for 8 year olds. But then they were beyond redemption when they sanctioned female genital mutilation. I should require a pediatrician’s note to feed my kid healthily? If your pediatrician listens to the AAP then their advice is an impediment to health, not the other way around.

It seems that increasingly these days, only in America or the UK can you get away with proposing this type of garbage that regulates common sense out of existence. This is why I’m increasingly embarrassed to even call myself an American. This WAS the greatest country in the world. We have long ago lost that status and it is questionable whether we will ever regain it.

Back to the food. This is the way people in countries with a strong food culture feed their kids. Here are some school lunches in Slovakia, China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, and the Czech Republic. Even Kenya, dirt-poor, chooses something nutritious and fat-filled. I specifically chose countries that are more and less capitalist than the US, because the problem of non-alcoholic fatty liver disease to the rate of 25% of kids, and fat kids with heart disease and diabetes, isn’t rooted in capitalism or socialism. It’s about food culture, because the country with one of the worst food cultures outside of America (and also the world’s third most unhealthy and obese people) is the UK. What they are putting on their kids’ lunch plates doesn’t look much better than school lunches in the US. (But at least they can manage real plates and silverware instead of plastic sporks.)

Now watch how kids are fed in France. Watch and weep. (Of all the links I'm providing, this one is the most important.)

Real silverware, real plates, rotating food menus, and service at the table rather than having slop dropped on your plate by a “lunch lady.”

"You don't want a child to have fish for lunch AND fish for dinner...." Heavens, no! Seriously, is this the worst transgression the French can possibly think of when it comes to serving their kids?

See, it doesn’t matter what country or how capitalist. From Singapore to China -- veggies, meat and a starch, served with care and respect on real plates -- not slop in a trough without proper utensils -- is the predominant fare.

Now, I ask: Is it the whole milk and juice that is giving us the unhealthiest and most obese child population in the world? How about the quality meat and the salt (did you notice that part in the video above)? Or, rather, is it the mystery meat snausages in a can? How about the orange Goldfish crackers? No, not those? OK then, how about the fruit roll ups, the "breakfast" bars stuffed into a kids’ hands on the rushed drive to school at 7AM, the Gogurt, the Pop Tarts, the macaroni with fluorescent yellow cheese? If you can still think that it’s the whole milk (gasp!) and juice boxes that are giving making kids sick and fat then you’re deluded. Here is a 1936 school lunch in the USA, serving whole milk in a far bigger bottle than kids get today. By contrast, here are a few samples of what kids are getting in school cafeterias today. That is why our kids are fat. It ain't rocket science, folks.

In some regions of France, kids are being fed gourmet food in public schools for $2-$3 a day. That same amount of money puts a mystery “meat” burger with a side of tater tots and HFCS “strawberry” milk on a tray in the United States. Private or public, it doesn’t matter. I worked in a private school in Florida thirteen years ago. All of the five meals per week were sourced from local fast food joints.

Monday: McDonald’s.
Tuesday: Chick Fil A.
Wednesday: a local Cuban chain that served chicken, beans, rice and plantains... not terrible. Thursday: another fast food joint (can't remember which).
Friday: Papa John’s pizza.

This was a school with wealthy parents that drove Porsches and paid over $20k to send their kid to a private school. I think they could afford better, but they clearly didn't care. Neither did we.

And we wonder why kids can’t focus in school. Perhaps this, this, and this lend a clue: it’s the food culture and the culture in general in this country that are the problems. Coupled with idiots in positions of government who have zero scientific background doling out farm subsidies that make seed oils, refined grains, and refined sugars cheap, and who listen to CSPI, and then craft rules about what your kids should be eating. No conflict of interest there: none at all. Move right along, nothing to see here.

If people believe that our kids’ health depends on playing with multi-racial dolls -- that their health depends on never getting exposed to their daycare workers’ knees and elbows -- that avoiding whole milk or more than 6 oz. juice daily is the key to being thin and healthy -- then this country has sunk far below what I thought possible.