Comment by jakejake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jakejake | Hacker News Reader

The wired article makes it sound like the girl was a political activist trying to force a change in the school lunch program. But if you read her blog, the photos of lunches look pretty good and her "reviews" are mostly positive. It almost struck me that people with agendas are projecting onto this girl's blog, which doesn't seem to be intended to be controversial at all, rather just a chronicle of her lunches - including how many mouthfuls of food each meal contains as well as the color of the wristband needed to get your lunch that particular day! I don't know why the school shut her down, it certainly was not a negative reflection on their lunch program at all.

This did make me remember my school lunch days - basically tv dinners served in aluminum foil tins. I would have loved to have these lunches instead of the crap we had to eat!

Here's one of her typical reviews "Today's Shepherd's Pie was really nice. The mash on top was really creamy and the mince was in lovely gravy. I wonder where their meat comes from. The salad was lovely and crunchy. The cake looked really difficult to serve because the icing was so sticky. I saved my melon until last and it was a great way to end my lunch. Food-o-meter - 9/10, Mouthfuls - 32"

> I don't know why the school shut her down

The school were supportive of her. The decision was taken by the local council after a headline appeared in a newspaper.

Local councils are baffling to people living in the UK. Here's a wikipedia article about Scotland's local councils. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_government_in_Scotland)

As part of their classwork on healthy eating the teaher should take a photo of a meal or two each day and post them on the school website. That would avoid any problem of the pupils using their own cameras in school; it would also I feel make a stand for the autonomy of the School unit and demonstrate that the school is behind pupils efforts to eat better and support this child's self-education.

Giving a 'screw you' to the council might be a happy side effect.

> But if you read her blog, the photos of lunches look pretty good and her "reviews" are mostly positive.

Because of her blog, look at the earliest items and things were... http://neverseconds.blogspot.com.es/2012/05/tuesday-8th-may....

The council deny that and while you could say "they would" the pressure on improving school lunches over the past few years her in the UK is such that changes for the better could well have been in the works.

that is true her day #1 post has a sad cheeseburger and the lasagna looking thing. I was hoping to see an amazing transition in the food quality.

But, that was just the first day and the school didn't change their entire lunch program in one day. In fact the article says that the food didn't actually change, they just changed the policy to allow students to go back for as many fruits and veggies as they like. (well technically they claim that was the policy all along, but nobody knew, but whatever)

Initially, she did start her blog to change the program - and it worked! The school started allowing students to come back for seconds of veggies and sides. (You can read more about it in the original article, which was posted to HN: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4009404)

I went through her blog from the beginning posts hoping to see the meals change from terrible to awesome. I didn't really see a dramatic change - the quality seemed consistent (which is to say, pretty good quality to my eyes) Her very first post has a somewhat sad looking cheeseburger, but that was the only bad one I saw.

Her recent posts show how much the food has improved with a little bit of scrutiny.

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