You’ll Eat It…Even If I have to Tempt you With an iPod!

As I drove north in the GoNOMAD Café truck en route to pick up supplies, I listened to Michael McConnell on the AM dial. He isn’t a total right winger either. He was talking about a new program that the Feds have implemented to get kids to eat their free breakfasts.

It seems that the government puts out a feed every morning at thousands of public schools, but there are few takers. Almost none of the poor starving kids want anything to do with the free cereal, OJ, toast and milk that the school dutifully doles out.

As much as ninety percent of the food is thrown away. Oh, God, what do we do? It reminds me of a story my cousin CT Tucker once told me, about a prison where they cook ridiculously enormous amounts of food and throw most of it away. But if they made less, they would have their food budget cut and that would be bad. So they keep on cooking and throwing away vats and vats of food.

But the schools are fighting back. They are now holding contests where any kid who eats the damn breakfast gets entered to win prizes like iPods. One girl said she’d now pretend to eat the food, just to enter the contest. Others explained their indifference to the chow, saying that they had to catch a bus, or that it just wasn’t that tempting.

Now that their being offered a chance to win ipods, I’m sure the nutrition of American school children will dramatically improve.