Tuesday, March 09, 2004

Something's fishy

Back when you were a kid and the cafeteria lady used to serve up some highly suspicious grub, did you ever imagine that she was pouring cod liver oil on your mashed potatoes or slipping sardine shards into your mac 'n' cheese? Well, your nightmare is coming true today in Texas. In an effort to make school lunches more nutritious without removing deep-fried kid favorites from the menu, lunch ladies in South Texas will be quietly injecting the goodies with fish oil. The thought is that the dangerous fat content of, say, a breakfast taco with bacon and cheese will be knocked out by the omega-3 fatty acids in the herring derivative.

Other nutritionists, who never met a fried food they liked and would probably actually enjoy eating fish oil, think this is all a bad idea, and that what Texas schools should really be doing is teaching kids how to select healthy foods like fruits and vegetables and lean non-fried meats. And that's all well and good, I guess. But I think the point that everybody's missing here is, THEY'RE PUTTING FISH OIL IN THE FOOD. If this gets out, the nutritionists won't have to worry about kids eating those unhealthy deep-fried treats, because no child in his right mind would even go near the cafeteria. Better start sending notices home telling parents how to prepare healthy sack lunches.

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