Can Your School Afford Healthier Cafeteria Food?

What parent could disagree with new federal mandates requiring that school food be healthier? Up until recently, most of them were crying that the new USDA guidelines, proposed in January, weren't strict enough, allowing "flavored" milk (read: sweetened) as long as it's non-fat or low-fat so schools could "limit saturated fat in the school meals while maintaining key nutrients for growth and development found in fluid milk."

Nutritionist Marion Nestle came as close as one can to rolling her eyes in print, when she wrote, "Milk, as I keep saying, is not an essential nutrient. Chocolate or strawberry milk is a dessert. Chalk this one up to dairy lobbying."

There's also hue and cry over the requirements that highly processed faux foods -- Nestle calls them "strangely tasting miracles of food technology" -- like reduced-fat mayonnaise and margarine be included alongside real, non-processed foods like whole fruits and vegetables.