I don't eat a lot of fast food.  Aside from the fact that I try to watch my slim, girlish figure, I'm just not crazy about most of their food.  Their boasts of all-white-meat chicken and prime USDA beef never convinced me.  You ever eat a McDonald's burger or chicken nugget and had your teeth crunch down on something hard?  I have.  Hence, the avoidance of fast food.

Apparently, I should be comfortable with fast food - since, chances are, it's safer than your average school lunch:

In the past three years, the government has provided the nation's schools with millions of pounds of beef and chicken that wouldn't meet the quality or safety standards of many fast-food restaurants, from Jack in the Box and other burger places to chicken chains such as KFC, a USA TODAY investigation found.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the meat it buys for the National School Lunch Program "meets or exceeds standards in commercial products."

That isn't always the case. McDonald's, Burger King, and Costco, for instance, are far more rigorous in checking for bacteria and dangerous pathogens. They test the ground beef they buy five to 10 times more often than the USDA tests beef made for schools during a typical production day.

And the limits Jack in the Box and other big retailers set for certain bacteria in their burgers are up to 10 times more stringent than what the USDA sets for school beef.

For chicken, the USDA has supplied schools with thousands of tons of meat from old birds that might otherwise go to compost or pet food. Called "spent hens" because they're past their egg-laying prime, the chickens don't pass muster with Colonel Sanders — KFC won't buy them — and they don't pass the soup test, either. The Campbell Soup Company says it stopped using them a decade ago based on "quality considerations."

Kids in public school may be eating pet food.  This is why my daughter will not be going to public school.  The best line of the article, by the way:

President Obama noted earlier this year that, for many children, school lunches are "their most nutritious meal — sometimes their only meal — of the day."

Yummy, nutritious pet-food.

Posted by: Ember at 07:55 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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