What's for Breakast:: Picking Through a Breakfast Bar

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Here's something I'd never seen before: This fifth grade girl for some reason was picking the insides out of her breakfast bar and making a mound of it on her tray. When I asked her why, she replied: "I just like the crust."

Kids' eating habits never cease to amaze.

Here's what the breakfast bar looks like on the tray before it's been picked over. (Sorry, Blogger won't let me display this photo horizontally.) This particular breakfast bar--called BeneFIT, made by a company called J&J Snack Foods in Pennsauken, N.J.--first appeared in D.C. schools this year.

For some reason, our lunch ladies have taken to removing the breakfast bars from the original packaging before serving it. Is that so parents can't see the nutrition label?

This is what the package looks like.

Here are the listed ingredients:

"Whole wheat flour, sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), dried apples, vegetable shortening (canola oil, palm fruit oil), oats, eggs, invert syrup, molasses, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, corn starch), whey, natural flavors, inulin, xanthan gum, cinnamon, salt."

And here's the nutritional information. As you can see, each bar contains a whopping 48 grams of carbohydrates and sugar is the second ingredient--nearly 23 grams of it. That's almost six teaspoons worth, or 84 calories from added sugar.

The American Heart Association recommends that an adult woman consume no more than 100 calories worth of added sugar per day.

READI-BAKE BeneFIT Breakfast Bars - Apple Cinnamon Manufacturer's Product Code 40403

Nutrition Facts Serving Size: 71 g Servings Per Container: N/A Amt Per Serving 1 bar Calories 289.35 Calories from Fat 79.03 Per Serving % Daily Value* Total Fat 8.78g 13.51% Saturated Fat 2.42g 12.1% Trans Fat 0.19g Cholesterol 17.67mg 5.89% Sodium 251.56mg 10.48% Total Carbohydrate 48.13g 16.04% Dietary Fiber 3.31g 13.24% Sugars 22.59g Protein 4.75g Vitamin A 0.76% Vitamin C 0.58% Calcium 2.55% Iron 9.22% Storage/ Handling: Keep Frozen (0° F or below). Shelf life up to one year when stored properly. When thawed at ambient temperature, shelf life is one week. Preparation Instruction: Thaw and serve.

Ingredients: Whole wheat flour, sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), dried apples, vegetable shortening (canola oil, palm fruit oil), oats, eggs, invert syrup, molasses, leavening (baking soda, sodium acid pyrophosphate, corn starch), whey, natural flavors, inulin, xanthan gum, cinnamon, salt. Allergen Information: Contains: Eggs,Milk,Soy Beans,Wheat Kosher Type: OU - DAIRY Child Nutrition Statement: The listed serving size contains 31.88g creditable grains of which 16.59g are whole grains. This provides 2 servings of breads/grains under the Child Nutrition Program. Product Specifications: UPC SCC/GTIN Case Pack 073321404031 10073321404038 1 48 Case Dimensions Case Length Case Width Case Height Case Cube Net Weight (Lbs) Gross Weight (Lbs) 12.6875 7.3125 9.125 0.49 7.5 9 Pallet Dimensions Pallet Tier Pallet High Pallet Count 20 7 140

What's for Breakfast: Tyson Chicken Sandwich

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

They're back!

D.C. Schools Food Services Director Jeffrey Mills has complained that Chartwells, the company contracted to serve meals to the system's 45,000 students, continues to dish up Tyson chicken products even after they've been asked not too.

I wonder if that includes these breakfast sandwiches, heated and served while still in their plastic packing. That's what kids were getting this morning at my daughter's elementary school. (The parents in the cafeteria did not blink an eye, as far as I could tell. They just watched their kids tear the plastic away and start eating.)

I wrote about these sandwiches a month ago. Here are the ingredients:

SAUSAGE: Boneless dark chicken meat with skin, seasoning (salt, dextrose, spices, beef extract, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast, natural flavor, modified food starch, onion powder, tocopherols, garlic powder, gelatin), modified food starch, water, sodium phosphates, caramel color, natural flavors.

BISCUIT: White wheat 100% whole wheat flour, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, shortening (interesterified soybean, with distilled monoglycerides added), sugar, honey, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, cornstarch, calcium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate), buttermilk solids, salt, xanthan gum, mono and diglycerides.

Nutrition Facts

• Serving Size: 1 PATTIE W/ BIS (94g)
• Servings Per Container: About 100

• Amount Per Serving
• Calories from Fat 90 Calories 260

% Daily Value*

• 17% Total Fat 11g
  • 20% Saturated Fat 4g
  • Trans Fat 0g
  • Polyunsaturated Fat 3g
  • Monounsaturated Fat 3g
• 12% Cholesterol 35mg
• 22%Sodium 520mg
• 9%Total Carbohydrate 27g
  • 8%Dietary Fiber 2g
  • Sugars 5g
• 28%Protein 14g

• Vitamin C 4%Vitamin A 2%
• Iron 10%Calcium 10%

Note the salt content: 520 milligrams. That's 22 percent of an adult daily requirement.

These little sandwiches are built to last. According to information Tyson provides via its website, this product has a shelf life of 270 days.

What's for Breakfast: Sausage and Egg Sandwich

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Kids seem to like these egg and sausage sandwiches. Finally, I broke down and tried one myself.

I've noticed before, the breakfast sausage is bland and spicy at the same time. Meaning, there's not much seasoning except what seems to be red pepper flakes. I'm surprised the kids aren't put off by it.

These days the eggs are not scrambled in a factory hundreds of miles away and shipped frozen. They're scrambled in the school kitchen from liquid eggs. They could use a little more salt. But the future of school food is no salt. In fact, even the USDA is at a loss to figure how schools will cut the salt in cafeteria food by half over the next 10 years. Does that mean school food will be healthier but flavorless?

Fitting perfectly in that category is this English muffin. It has no flavor at all. None.

What's for Breakfast: Cranberry Muffin

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Tuesday seems to be homemade muffin day at my daughter's elementary school. We see all different kinds of muffins--or "muffin squares," as Chartwells calls them--made by our kitchen manager. She's been working in cafeterias for 25 years, so I guess making a muffin is nothing new to her.

This particular muffin is made with cornmeal, flour, eggs, sugar and dried cranberries. I liked it--a bit sweeter than I'd make it for myself. But still, it was a good muffin. I could easily see it next to a cold glass of buttermilk.

But I don't think the kids liked the cranberries much. This is what I saw on quite a few trays: kids picking the cranberries out of the muffins.

"I don't like cranberries," one girl explained.

You can't really argue with that. Dried cranberries are definitely a matter of taste. And what kids don't like, they won't eat.

What's for Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs on a Muffin

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

A year ago this egg/muffin sandwich probably would have been made in a factory and sent to the school frozen, where the kitchen crew would have heated it in a steamer still wrapped in plastic.

Things are a bit different now since Jeffrey Mills arrived on the scene as the new food services director for D.C. Public Schools. He retooled the Chartwells menu item by item, replacing most of those highly processed frozen convenience foods with meals made from actual ingredients.

That means our lunch ladies are actually cooking from scratch in many cases. To make this breakfast, for instance, they scramble the eggs using liquid eggs that arrive in cartons. Okay, they're not whole, farm-fresh eggs from chickens raised on pasture. This is still school food we're talking about, made on a tight budget.

Also, most elementary schools wouldn't see breakfast served like this. They're eating breakfast in the classroom, which substantially increases participation for all those kids who might not be getting a good meal at home first thing in the morning and brings in extra reimbursement dollars from the federal government to help fund the program.

I've tasted this egg sandwich and the muffin is pretty bland. Imagine what the food will be like if they remove half the salt. That's what the USDA proposes schools do over the next 10 years in its new meal guidelines.

Some kids aren't interested in all that bread. This is how they eat the eggs--with their fingers.

What's for Breakfast: Blueberry Muffin Square

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

This "blueberry muffin square" is part of what has become "homemade" muffin Tuesdays at my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia. Yes, our "lunch ladies," some of whom have worked 25 years or more in school cafeterias, do know how to cook things from scratch.

The "muffin" is made with corn meal, flour, sugar and frozen blueberries at the bottom of a stainless hotel pan, then cut into squares. I've tried it and it's pretty good. But just in case there wasn't enough starch on the breakfast tray, someone in the Chartwells home office decided to add "oven-baked hash browns"--or so said the online menu. As you can see, these became the ever-popular tater tots.

One other thing you might notice: although our school has a dish washing machine and normally serves meals on re-usable plastic trays, some meals are served on Styrofoam. Turns out there's a reason for that. Blueberries tend to stain the plastic, according to the kitchen manager, and kids won't eat off trays with blueberry stains.

The "Healthy Schools Act" approved by last year by the D.C. Council would have schools discontinue Styrofoam and adopt more eco-friendly trays at some point in the future.

What's for Breakfast: French Toast

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Food service officials in D.C. Public Schools wanted to get rid of the frozen "French toast sticks" Chartwells served on a routine basis. So now we have French toast that's actually made out of toast and liquid eggs by our own lunch ladies.

And instead of serving it with high-fructose corn syrup masquerading as maple syrup, they offer it with a dollop of flavored yogurt. In this particular case, the "whole grain" French toast (it's really 51 percent whole grain, 49 percent regular flour) came with a container of juice, milk, a cup of canned peaches and a piece of string cheese.

Sometimes the kids dip the toast in the yogurt, or they don't eat it at all.

They probably could have skipped the juice. I wouldn't be able to eat the toast because of the carbs. Or the yogurt or the peaches, for that matter, because of the sugar. Otherwise, this seems like a reasonable breakfast for an elementary school kid, no?

Oh, No! They're Back!

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

I thought the D.C. Public Schools were done with branded processed convenience foods but apparently not. This is what they were giving the kids for breakfast the other morning: a Tyson chicken sandwich served heated while still inside its plastic wrapper.

Tyson calls it "Power UPZ," which I guess is supposed to help with spelling. Or maybe its supposed to send children the message that Popeye and his spinach are altogether passe. The way to grow big and strong is to eat processed, re-heated chicken patties out of a plastic pouch.

Here are the ingredients:

SAUSAGE: Boneless dark chicken meat with skin, seasoning (salt, dextrose, spices, beef extract, maltodextrin, autolyzed yeast, natural flavor, modified food starch, onion powder, tocopherols, garlic powder, gelatin), modified food starch, water, sodium phosphates, caramel color, natural flavors.

BISCUIT: White wheat 100% whole wheat flour, enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), water, shortening (interesterified soybean, with distilled monoglycerides added), sugar, honey, baking powder (sodium acid pyrophosphate, sodium bicarbonate, cornstarch, calcium sulfate, monocalcium phosphate), buttermilk solids, salt, xanthan gum, mono and diglycerides.

According to information Tyson provides via its website, this sandwich has a shelf life of 270 days. I wonder if that's frozen, or in its defrosted state.

• 
  

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Nutrition Facts

• Serving Size: 1 PATTIE W/ BIS (94g)
• Servings Per Container: About 100

• Amount Per Serving
• Calories from Fat 90 Calories 260

% Daily Value*

• 17% Total Fat 11g
  • 20% Saturated Fat 4g
  • Trans Fat 0g
  • Polyunsaturated Fat 3g
  • Monounsaturated Fat 3g
• 12% Cholesterol 35mg
• 22%Sodium 520mg
• 9%Total Carbohydrate 27g
  • 8%Dietary Fiber 2g
  • Sugars 5g
• 28%Protein 14g

• Vitamin C 4%Vitamin A 2%
• Iron 10%Calcium 10%

Note the salt content: 520 milligrams. That's 22 percent of an adult daily requirement.

Researching this little piece, I also discovered that Tyson has a K-12 homepage with lots of fun graphics and tips for food service directors on how to use frozen foods from the chicken giant to get kids' attention.

"Kids ages 5-8 love to play, so fun foods are what they want. Click here to stay in the game with entertaining foods that are yummy too," is one of the come-ons.

According to Tyson, there are plenty of fun ways to turn those USDA commodities into foods kids love. Take a look.

What's for Breakfast: Cranberry Muffin & Tater Tots

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook


The lunch ladies at my daughter's school are making muffins from scratch on Tuesdays. That's a whole lot better than serving them Otis Spunkmeyer muffins heated in their plastic wrappers, no?


But really. Tater tots with muffins? Hello! Kids just don't need all this starch--and a sugary juice to wash it down.

What's for Breakfast: Waffles? Pancakes?

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Kids got a choice of waffles or pancakes on this particular morning. In fact, unless my eyes deceived, it looked like there were two varieties of pancakes on display: whole wheat and regular.

These are prepared convenience foods that arrive at the school frozen and are then warmed in a steamer. The waffles typically are a little too crunchy for my taste.


The schools used to serve pancakes and waffles with high-fructose corn syrup masquerading as maple syrup. Now they get a pool of yogurt on their waffle--or to dip their pancake in, as the case might be.

Notice the plain milk. D.C. public schools no longer serve flavored milk.

What's for Breakfast: Kix

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Last year, after I wrote a series of articles detailing in part how kids in D.C. schools were pouring strawberry milk over Apple Jacks cereal and routinely consuming as much as 15 teaspoons of sugar for breakfast, school officials removed flavored milk and sugary cereal from the menu.

Here's one of the replacement cereals we see in school cafeterias now. Kix contains just three grams of sugar--that's less than a teaspoon--in a one and one-quarter cup serving.

There's more sugar--way more--in that small container Stonyfield yogurt. A four-ounce serving of Stonyfield's blueberry yogurt, for instance, contains 13 grams of sugar, or a little more than three teaspoons. That's only slightly less, ounce for ounce, than the sugar in a can of Pepsi.

Good thing, I guess, kids only see this yogurt in a four-ounce size.

For complete nutritional information on Kix, go here.

What's for Breakfast: Oatmeal

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Mark Bittman on the op-ed page of the New York Times recently took McDonald's to the wood shed for offering customers "healthy" oatmeal that actually contains 21 ingredients, including lots of sugar.

I'm happy to report that schools here in the District of Columbia are still serving an unadulterated oatmeal made very simply with Quaker quick oats and water.

As you can see in the photo, it was served this morning with a cup of canned fruit and string cheese. A four-ounce container of juice also was available, along with plain low-fat or skim milk.

The kids don't exactly tear into the oatmeal. But it's certainly better than the stuff McDonald's is serving.

But schools can get oatmeal wrong, too. Here's a photo of a similar breakfast served at my daughter's D.C. elementary school last year. Yes, that big blob of stuff that looks like a tennis ball left out in the rain is actually a scoop of oatmeal. They were serving some pretty nasty turkey sausages the as well, along with chocolate and strawberry milk, which have since been removed from the menu.

Best advice where oatmeal is concerned: keep it simple.

What's for Breakfast: Finger Food

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

One of the more amusing (or not) aspects of school meals is watching kids try to cope with actually eating the foods they are served with the available plastic cutlery, which does not include either a knife or a fork.

Using their "spork"--or combination spoon and fork--kids often will attempt to shovel unwieldy foods directly into their mouth. But just as often they dispense with the niceties of cutlery altogether and just go at food with their hands.

I've seen them scoop up mashed potatoes with their hands and plaster it on so-called Salisbury steak. I've seen them pick the noodles and cheese out of their spinach lasagna and eat it with their fingers. This morning, they were devising ways to consume a crusty waffle (reheated from frozen) and breakfast patty of turkey sausage.

As you can see in the above photo, one girl's solution was to make a kind of sandwich out of the waffle and the sausage. She proceeded to munch away at the waffle until it matched up perfectly with the sausage.


The brown stuff in the lower left was advertised at the Chartwells website as a "warm cinnamon apple topping" for the waffle. But I did not see any kids deploying it as such. Mostly it went uneaten and was thrown in the trash.

My daughter, who arrived a little later than most of the other kids, waited about 10 minutes for the kitchen to prepare a fresh batch of turkey sausage. But when she tasted it, she threw it back onto the tray. "That's nasty," she said.

This highly processed patty is colored to look like a traditional pork sausage, but the flavor is entirely missing. In fact, it is somewhat over seasoned with red pepper flakes, but otherwise is totally bland, as if it hadn't been salted at all. So between the soggy cardboard-like texture and spicy flavorlessness, this sausage is a turnoff. Although I must say most of the kids ate it anyway and went back for seconds.

What's for Breakfast: Scrambled Eggs with Veggies

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

The lunch ladies at my daughter's elementary school turned liquid eggs into this fabulous dish of scrambled eggs with broccoli, carrot, onion and cheddar cheese. It looked so good, I had to try some myself and it was terrific.


Unfortunately, the kids were less enthusiastic. "The eggs are different," said one fifth-grader. Well, of course they were. They were scrambled instead of being served cut into squares, explained the kitchen manager.


Chartwells at its menu website also advertised "whole wheat toast or all natural whole brain banana bread" with this breakfast, but I didn't see it.

Kids are often terribly picky sometimes. My daughter, for instance, would never eat this because of the bits of vegetables in it. She likes her veggies served separately in a recognizable form. But that just proves again that you can't just invent new stuff, re-write the menu and expect kids to eat it.

Most parents would never know. They'd look at the menu and think they're kids are getting an improved version of school food. But there's a step missing in the process: you have to market the new foods to the kids. That means getting staff or volunteers into the cafeterias talking to the kids, conducting tastings, coaching them on better eating habits.

This would be a great role for parents to play--cafeteria coaches. Schools in Boulder, Colorado, have had great success with this approach. But in D.C., the schools don't involve parents. They barely even talk to us.

Why is that?

What's for Breakfast: French Toast Except the Crust

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

I couldn't help being amused by the sight of how meticulously one child at my daughter's elementary school had avoided eating any of the crust off this piece of French toast.

To me, this is the perfect metaphor for how willfully kids will sometimes foil every attempt adults make to force "healthier" food on them. When all is said and done, kids will still be kids.

As I've written here many times, what I see day after day is kids throwing good food--typically vegetables and whole grains--into the trash. The reason: "It's nasty," the kids say.

So are we just throwing tax dollars drown the drain by insisting that schools put more vegetables and whole grains on kids' cafeteria trays?

For years, one of the biggest obstacles to better school food has been the people who run the cafeterias--the food service directors who insist "the kids won't eat it." Well, it seems they are right. But is that the end of the story? Will kids eventually eat this stuff if we just keep trying? Do we need adults in the cafeterias encouraging the kids to try different foods? Will the mere sight of sweet potatoes, broccoli and whole wheat french toast day after day somehow influence their food decisions tomorrow, the next day, years from now?

For me, this brings to mind one of the funniest lines from a great movie, Shakespeare in Love, when the theater manager is asked how the play will possibly go on when everything is falling apart.

"I don't know," he replies. "It's a mystery."

How we make school food work for kids and adults is still very much a mystery.

What's for Breakfast: Cheetos!

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Here in the District of Columbia, your nation's capitol, kids can bring just about anything they want from home to eat at school--and they frequently do.

Here's one fifth-grade girl grabbing a handful of Cheetos at breakfast. She has her junk food mostly concealed in a back pack. In fact, I think she had just finished the school-provided breakfast (it's free to all students) when she started on the Cheetos.

She just munched away while continuing a conversation with friends at their table in the cafeteria. No one took any note that she was eating this before classes even started:




Notice the trans fats (hydrogenated oil), artificial flavors, monosodium glutamate, artificial colors and of course the huge amount of sodium--290 milligrams in a single one-ounce serving. But I don't really need to point that out, do I?


What's more curious is that most schools seem to have absolutely no rules against this sort of thing or any kind of adult monitoring in the cafeteria. Or would that be too much like the "nanny state" that Sarah Palin rails against? Should kids really be able to eat anything at school? Or is it just the food schools offer for purchase the we should be concerned about?


Seeing this girl with her secret bag of Cheetos (actually, I think she had more than one bag) brought to mind some of the horrendous meals I saw last year at the elementary school my daughter attended then.



Get a load of this lunch brought to school by a fourth-grade girl: a bag of Oreo cookies, a huge cupcake (the icing has been licked off), a can of Sprite and a lollipop.


Thankfully, I haven't seen anything quite that bad this year. But I'm sure it still happens.

What's for Breakfast: Bagel and Egg

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

These scrambled eggs are made from liquid eggs--but that's an improvement over the eggs that were prescrambled in a factory and shipped to the schools frozen, right?

Any way you slice them, bagels are loaded with carbs--more than several slices of bread. Now they're billed as "whole wheat," but that only means they contain 51 percent whole wheat flour by law. The rest is starchy plain flour.

The USDA's proposed meal guidelines would increase grains at breakfast by 80 percent--and within two years, all grain products on kids' trays would have to qualify as "whole grain-rich." Meaning at least 51 percent.

Kids do seem to like the "whole grain" bagels better than the whole grain pasta, which typically ends up in the trash.

What's for Breakfast: Turkey Cheese Melt & Unbiscuit

Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Some things sound a lot better on a menu than they actually turn out to be on the plate. This "turkey ham and cheddar cheese melt" advertised on Chartwell's menu site is a perfect case in point. This is what it looked like on the kids' trays for breakfast yesterday.


As you can see, the "turkey ham," meaning turkey processed with chemicals to taste like ham, is sprinkled with grated cheese, then placed in the oven to melt the cheese. Mostly what I saw the kids doing was picking off the bits of cheese to get to the turkey. They ate the meat with their fingers.

The thing on the left that looks a little too much like it was found out in the woods is supposed to be a "whole wheat biscuit." I suppose you could conjure up a lovely mental pickture of ham and melted cheese sandwiched inside a fluffy biscuit. But I think we can conclude from this that the push for whole grains is definitely in conflict with our biscuit tradition.

I happen to love traditional southern food, and back when I was eating starchy carbs I loved nothing better than a good, homemade buttermilk biscuit. A biscuit made with whole wheat, as you can plainly see, comes nowhere close. In fact, I would call this inedible--and I think the kids agree. I didn't see any of them eating it.

We should just serve whole grains as whole grains and leave the biscuit tradition alone. But you know what? The USDA's proposed nutrition guidelines would eventually have all of the baked goods in schools made as "whole grain."

In my book, that spells the end of biscuits.

What's for Breakfast: Double Dose of Apple

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This breakfast looks healthy enough. You've got outmeal. You've got a carton of plain milk. But what's this? Apple sauce in one corner of the tray, and apple juice in another corner of the tray? Dueling apple products?

The apple sauce is unsweetened. That seems harmless enough. But the apple juice is another reminder that kids are exposed to entirely too much sugar--and especially fructose--on a daily basis. Fruit juice, while we've come to regard it as a healthy food, is actually a potent dose of fructose, which has been implicated as the prime culprit in our current epidemic of childhood obesity and related health problems: type 2 diabetes, hypertension, coronary artery disease and non-alcoholic fatty liver syndrome.

Among all the foods served in school, fructose stands apart for the potency of its ability to make kids fat and trigger a host of medical problems. Juice, while cheap and easy, represents nothing more than the sugary essence of actual fruit. Schools should probably just stop serving it altogether and focus on whole fruits, which contain much less sugar and more beneficial fiber.

With sodas, sugary chocolate milk and fruit juice, kids are swilling their way into a world of lifelong health problems. It's now estimated than adolescents on average consume more than 72 grams of fructose each day. That's the equivalent of 18 teaspoons worth.

We should just say no to fructose.

What's for Breakfast: Gorging on Carbs

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

It's always interesting for me after writing about national school food issues to visit the cafeteria at my daughter's elementary school here in the District of Columbia and see what's happening on the ground.

This week I've been spending quite a bit of attention on milk, sugar and the possible health effects of too much sugar and refined carbohydrates. So what did I see at breakfast on Thursday? Not one, but two breakfast bars on this girl's tray. She had gotten an extra one from a friend, and was trying to score a third from the other kids who were sitting at the tables.

This "BeneFIT" brand bar looks innocent enough. Lately the lunch ladies have been removing them from their original packaging and serving them naked as you see in the photo. Perhaps that's to shield kids from the brand labeling. But it also removes the nutritional information. But I already have a wrapper in my files.

A single "apple cinnamon" bar delivers 290 calories derived from 48 grams of carbohydrates, including 23 grams of sugar. That's the sugar equivalent of nearly six teaspoons. The label lists "whole wheat flour" as the first ingredient, meaning kids are getting the benefit of some fiber--3 grams per serving. Still, this is a huge load of carbs. And if this girl gets her hand on three of them, she will have eaten nearly 900 calories, more than in a Big Mac cheeseburger.

In theory, there is portion control in school cafeterias. Kids can only take so much in the meal line. But what happens after they leave the meal line is up for grabs. Often, it's the kids who don't need the extra calories or carbs who manage to eat the most--sometimes multiple servings.

Sadly, there's no one in the cafeteria monitoring these things. But try to imagine a school cafeteria where parent volunteers were on hand to help coach kids on better eating habits.

Can you imagine such a thing?