The Hidden Cancer Risk In School Lunches w/ Chloe Waterman Of Friends of The Earth |EP963

[00:00:00] All men are created equal, but they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. By Liberty and the Beautiful. If Liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.

[00:00:33] America Great Again The Big Mig Well, good morning and welcome back to The Big Mig Show. Of course, I'm your host, Lance Migliaccio, with my co-host, George Balentine. It's ride or die, tip of the spear. You know how we do it on this show, each and every single episode. It's educating and unifying the country. What we do. George B., good morning, man. How are you? I'm good. I'm good.

[00:01:00] I would have been a lot better if someone didn't text me at 1 a.m. this morning. You know, we had a discussion about that, and you were going to turn your phone off. I said, no, we, no, I told you. No, no, no, no, no, no. We can go back to videotape, bro. I do not turn my phone off in case emergencies for anything. Interesting. Let's say my mother calls me. She fell or something. Have you done the research? I've done it. Sleeping with your phone close to you and the impact on your sleep.

[00:01:31] It's not facing up, so there's no light or nothing. They say it's not good for the EMF, but okay. But did you see what I texted you? Did you see why I texted you? Yeah, you texted me something that didn't need to be texted at 1 a.m. in the morning, bro. Strictly from your back. I just didn't want to forget. That was the problem, and I saw it last time. It doesn't matter. I fixed it anyway, so it was still good, but I don't even know what you did to it. But that's regardless. All right. As long as I'm back there laughing, like, look at these two. Are they married? I sent sure you text about the health of his back.

[00:01:57] There's a new injection product, and I know he's got to get surgery, and I was kind of hoping maybe he wouldn't have to. What are you talking about? That's what I sent you in that text. Oh. There was actually an ex-text about your back. I'm looking at the – I'm looking at the – There's a loving – I redid the thumbnail and shared it. Yeah. All right, but that still could have waited until today. It's not like – Yeah. What am I going to do with it at 1 o'clock in the morning? I wasn't expecting you to look at it. I appreciate you caring and looking out for me. I do.

[00:02:25] But, you know, it's like you're killing two birds. Like, you're looking out for me, but then you're harming me because you're, you know, texting me at 1 in the morning. I keep thinking. See, I turn my phone off at night. I don't leave it on. So, it's just – it's one of those things that I assume yours is off. But don't assume. All right, listen. Let's give a shout-out to our sponsor. If you love the show, the easiest thing to do is thumbs up, comment, share, subscribe, leave a comment, share the live link during the show. And, of course, you can always take our short-form and long-form content, share it to grow your own social media.

[00:02:52] George creates a bunch of short-form that he puts up on Rumble and other places. So, feel free to take that short-form and use it to do what you ever can to grow your own account. All right, listen. There's something truly remarkable happening in the world of cancer care just south of the U.S. border. And, you know, on this show, we love our alternative medicine. Of course, since 1963, Oasis of Hope Hospital in Tijuana has been quietly redefining what's possible for patients facing late-stage cancer.

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[00:05:07] And we always like to have people on that are giving you something you can apply in the real world, you can apply in your real life and be aware of. It's always about educating yourself. And today, we're going to be talking about the hidden cancer risk in school lunches. We were just talking backstage. And it's incredible how other countries are getting this right. And here, we're allegedly not a third world country, although we do have third world voting. We can't get it right. It's incredible. Today, we're going to be joined by Chloe Waterman.

[00:05:37] She serves as Deputy Director for Food Systems and Agriculture Policy at Friends of the Earth. She leads policy and markets campaigns to advance a healthy and environmentally friendly food system. And she works to achieve a transition away from factory farmed animal production towards a regenerative plant-based production and a sustainable amount of higher welfare pasture-based animal agriculture.

[00:05:59] And on Capitol Hill and state houses and across city government, she's aspiring healthy and environmentally friendly food procurement policies, initiatives to expand healthy school meal offerings, and other policies to build a healthier and more sustainable food system. All right, she's backstage. George, let's go ahead and bring her in. All right. Welcome to the The Big Mig Show. Hello, Chloe Waterman. How are you doing? I'm doing well. Thank you guys so much for having me on today. Hey, Chloe, we appreciate you joining us.

[00:06:26] You guys have been exposing this sort of thing in other areas for a long time. You've been on our show before. You know, I'm always, I don't know, is it just me? Do I seem shocked and appalled that knowing that we've got our kids in school, knowing that we're trying to achieve, you know, we're trying to improve their intellect. And yet, here we are not doing anything about their food. You and I just discussed a minute ago about the school lunches in Korea and Japan. And how incredible they are.

[00:06:56] They look delicious. They're nutritionally correct. And they're not the only place. Russia does the same thing. There are many countries that seem to have figured this out. Why are we struggling with this? Why is it so tough for us to get this right? You know, our policies are favoring school meals that have ready-to-serve products, processed, industrially produced products, because we're not investing enough in our school meals in the U.S. It's not the fault of the school nutrition directors.

[00:07:25] I mean, they want to do better. They want to serve meals that look like those meals that you're talking about in Japan. But they have kitchens that are outdated so that they can't even scratch cook. The food that they're getting, the food that USDA supplies to them are from these industrial supply chains. The big beneficiaries of these systems are Tyson Foods and JBS.

[00:07:46] So we need to reorient our policies so that our school food is healthier and is actually supporting our small, local, sustainable American farmers as well. Yeah. Let me ask you this, because I always wonder about payola. Do you think it's because, do you think this food that's being supplied by USDA, are there people that are benefiting within our executive branch of government?

[00:08:14] Do we find there's ownership of the food sources? And that's why they've got these contracts for this processed product? You know, I'm not aware of evidence of kind of individual people in the executive branch personally benefiting. But I will say that the system is corrupt. You know, JBS, for example, gets these big contracts with USDA to supply foods to schools.

[00:08:41] JBS has been convicted of corruption, bribery, and yet they still have this contract. The USDA should cut off those companies, should cut off the companies that have labor violations, environmental violations, corruption charters, and instead give schools the freedom to take those funds and spend it on local food from sources that they trust, from sustainable farms that are doing things the right way. Yeah.

[00:09:09] You know, it's interesting because we see that different times different companies get caught with their hand in the cookie jar. And you would think that would be an immediate, nope, you don't get any more contracts or you're done. There are no more government contracts for you. But that's not the way it goes. Sometimes they get a fine. Sometimes they get a slap on the wrist. And the corruption continues because, of course, without any real consequences, they feel like, oh, yeah, no big deal. It was worth it. We got a billion-dollar contract and we got a $5 million fine. Absolutely.

[00:09:37] It's the cost of doing business to pay these fines. And then if you're rewarding these companies, on the other hand, with lucrative contracts that end up sending food to kids from these companies, then, yeah, that's not what accountability looks like. No. And that's the problem, right, that we don't have any accountability and consequences for just about anything when it comes to government. And it's a struggle. So let's talk about, first of all, for the audience, this has got to be something you're worried about.

[00:10:06] I mean, the kids are eating this stuff. And it's just, you know, forget about macros. I don't even know the macros are being considered. You know, I used to think that they, you know, and I don't agree with the food pyramid. I know that thing is flawed in its own way. But, you know, what happened to that? It seems like we were told they were going to really give our kids the right thing to eat. That's what USDA was supposed to be all about. The school lunch program was supposed to help kids that were, you know, struggling financially in the public schools and otherwise. And it was supposed to be a well-balanced meal.

[00:10:35] Now, you guys analyzed 10,000 school lunch entrees. And you found that our school lunches are dominated by industrial, you know, produced, often highly processed meat and cheese. 28% of the entrees contain processed meat. What about, you know, the rest of it? You know, the vegetables, I'm sure they're not fresh. You know, the carbohydrates, the simple sugars. Kind of, you know, give me the overview.

[00:11:04] Give me every piece of this, not just the protein, the alleged protein. I don't even want to know if I want to call it protein. Let's just call it the alleged protein. Yeah, you know, I actually think that the rest of the tray is looking better than the entree. And that's part of why we decided to focus on that entree component. It's also the most consumed component of the school meal that includes the grain. And it does have to be at least 50% whole grain, but that should be higher and includes that protein component.

[00:11:33] And that's where school lunches have really fallen behind. I will say that there's been improvement in school meals with the fruits and the vegetables being offered. Those serving sizes have increased. There are now limits on added sugars, on saturated fat, on sodium. Those can be stronger and should be stronger. But students are getting fruits and vegetables as part of their lunch. Whether they're eating those fruits and vegetables, you know, we have to do more on nutrition education, on getting fresh fruits and vegetables.

[00:12:03] As you mentioned, you know, it's a lot more appealing to eat a delicious local apple than, you know, peaches that are preserved and come in a plastic dish. So there still is improvement that's needed with those other meal components. But what I actually think has been neglected in the improvements that we've seen in school meals is that entree component. Because the sourcing, we're getting these products from factory farms. They're coming from these industrial supply chains.

[00:12:32] The products are high in saturated fat. They're loaded up in sodium and added sugars sometimes. And they contain these potential undisclosed contaminants because of the supply chains they come from. Things like veterinary drug residues and dioxins. Yeah. None of that sounds great. You know, as you examine these school lunches, and were they from all across the country? Were they from a specific, you know, region? Or how did that work?

[00:13:00] Yeah, we looked at 45 school districts across the country to try to get a good sample. So we looked at the largest districts and then random samples of mid-sized and small districts. And the trends were similar among these school districts. You know, chicken nuggets were the number one school lunch protein, breaded chicken products. They were served on more than half of school days. And chicken nuggets just should not be the defining protein of the American school lunch. We can do better than that.

[00:13:30] Now, I'm assuming they were the processed paste nuggets, the ones that they kind of dump everything in? Exactly. I mean, breaded chicken products are inherently processed. You know, we're happy to see a whole chicken breast, for example, particularly when it's sourced from a place that is using regenerative practices, that's not using organic feed, that's not using hormones and antibiotics.

[00:13:59] And we feature, you know, there are school districts that are swimming upstream and going against the grain to serve better food in schools. And we feature one of those districts, for example, in Azusa, California, there's a school district that's serving delicious, you know, chicken wings that's sourced from a local chicken provider that is not processed. It doesn't include the breading. And the kids love it. Yeah. You know, I think the kids would probably eat the better product. Do you think this is at all?

[00:14:28] Is it a budget constriction? I mean, George, I don't know about you. I'm trying to remember that, you know, it's a long time ago now. I'm trying to remember school lunches. I don't remember as much processed stuff. But I went to private schools, so that might have been part of it. I went to Archbishop Stepanak High School when I was in New York. I'm thinking of the lunches there. I don't know. Public schools. They didn't supply lunches. They supplied the milk. Yeah. My mom would make our lunches. We got milk. Is that the same for you? So public school, like grammar school, we brought our own lunches.

[00:14:57] They give you milk. Yeah. What do you do? Yeah. I went to private high school, so you had to buy your lunch. It was Catholic school. You had to buy your lunch. Yeah, right. That's correct. Yeah. I remember chicken fingers and fries a lot. I couldn't remember what they had. I don't remember our lunch being. It wasn't that bad. I mean, how do you expect? I do remember whole chicken, though. I do remember chicken breasts and thighs and drumsticks. And I don't remember any breading on those.

[00:15:27] And I don't remember chicken nuggets at the school I was at. But I do remember pizza. And so let me ask. Wait, wait. Hold on a second. How do we expect them to feed these kids, give them good lunches when they don't even feed America the right way with all the crap that's put in the food? We've seen a little bit Kennedy trying to get out dyes and certain things. But we always look at the fact, like we talked about Korea, Japan, whatever, China, all these other countries.

[00:15:56] There's stuff that's banned from food that we allow here. So, I mean, they got a million times head start over us. And why do you think this nation is not healthy? Well, I got a comment on that, Chloe. You know, if you look at the beaches now, right, you look at the obesity that people are facing. Of course, everybody's turning to Ozempic. And, you know, I don't think the GLP-1 drug, I think the GLP-3 is somewhat better.

[00:16:23] But, you know, aren't we struggling all across the entire country with the way that we're – because, of course, we're facing massive inflation. The grocery store prices still aren't down. I've seen some reductions, sure, in eggs and a few other staples, you know, under this administration. But in general, God, you go to the meat aisle and you feel like you've got to take out a loan to buy what's available in there.

[00:16:47] And, of course, you start looking at organic and you're trying to buy, you know, unprocessed products, right? You're trying to buy pasture-raised meats or organic. And who knows? And sometimes I even struggle with is the label correct? Are you really getting organic? You know, when you go to Whole Foods or you go to Sprouts, hopefully they're giving you the right thing. But, of course, at that grocery store, the prices are insane. So do you think that's the struggle? Is it the cost? Is that why they're giving us this subpar protein here at the school lunches?

[00:17:16] Yes. Right now, schools get reimbursed at only around $4.70 per meal, per lunch that they serve. And that has to cover everything, the cost of the food, the labor, the administrative costs. And those costs are rising, right? Food costs are getting more expensive for schools, just like they're getting more expensive for consumers at the grocery store. And so if we want higher quality foods in schools, we do need to invest more.

[00:17:45] But it's an investment that's going to pay off. You pointed out that, you know, Americans are struggling with health. We struggle with diet-related disease. And the government spends a lot of money treating preventable diet-related diseases. So it's going to cost more to feed our kids better in school. But I guarantee we're going to get a worthwhile return on that investment when it comes to improving the health of the 30 million kids that are eating these lunches every day. Yeah. Yeah. Listen, there's no doubt.

[00:18:14] I agree with you. You know, but for regular Americans, you see the struggle. And the schools, I don't know, you know, maybe it's just me, but I feel like too many times what's going on there is an afterthought. You know, we get these school conferences and we get these committees at the local level and county level. And they're not, you know, they're not pushing the government. Of course, how much more do you think it would require financially? Let's just talk about that number.

[00:18:43] You guys analyze it all because you're talking about processed meats. And for the audience, let's be clear. Of course, processed meat is classified as a carcinogenic to humans. There's a bunch of potential other exposures, which I don't know enough about this. So I'm going to throw to you. How about the veterinary drug residues and the dioxins? You know, what are we looking at levels when you guys tested? Give me some examples. Yeah.

[00:19:09] So for this report, we didn't directly test school lunches, but we looked at government testing of foods that are in the supply chains that end up in schools, as well as other third parties that had done this testing. One example is the group Moms Across America. They did samples of actual school lunches that were served across the country. They found glyphosate in 93% of samples, cancer-causing pesticide.

[00:19:37] They also tested 11 samples for veterinary drug residues and found veterinary drug residues in nine of the 11 samples. Those include things like nicarbazine, which is an aviary contraceptive. So not something that you want to end up in our food supply. Sounds delicious. I always want my aviary contraceptives. I like to dunk my food in those to get a nice side of that. Exactly. What's the impact?

[00:20:03] Wait, are they giving these kids any lab-grown meats or anything yet? No, those aren't available on the commercial market. Okay. Thank God. Of course, we're concerned about that. We wonder about the reporting on that. But you found that, let's talk about the 88% of entrees contained antelope products as the primary protein, 53% contained dairy, and 47% contained cheese as a separate category. But what about, was vegan present very much at all?

[00:20:33] I mean, do you see any nut butters or, you know, I mean, what's available? You know, it's very limited. Plant-based options, once you take away those nut butter and jellies, which, you know, we barely want to count those, right? Those are available as grab-and-go options on the lunch line, often in the form of like an uncrustable. But when we're talking about hot, appealing plant-based entrees, those were 5% of the offerings that we found in schools.

[00:20:59] And that's concerning because there's that lack of protein diversity. The dietary guidelines under the Trump administration, under the Biden administration, under administrations before, have all said that we need to have a diverse amount of proteins in our diet. From plants, from animal sources. So beans, peas, lentils, nuts, seeds. Those were lacking in school meals.

[00:21:24] And so we need to see a greater balance of higher quality animal proteins from those sustainable supply chains that aren't going to include these potential undisclosed contaminants or that have lower risk of including those contaminants. As well as ideally whole plant-based foods so that kids are exposed to a wider range of healthy proteins for a good diet. It's got to be, hold on, Lance. When you talked about like, what did you guys bring up, peanuts or nuts or stuff?

[00:21:54] I mean, you look at these kids today. Would all the, so many kids have allergies, gluten, peanuts, this and that. It's got to be tough in the schools too. Yeah, schools are definitely looking for allergen-free options. And those top nine allergens, nuts are in those too. But dairy is one of them as well. And so that's one of the reasons why the prevalence of cheese is concerning is just the lack of options. Cheese is totally fine to be served in school meals.

[00:22:24] But when it's included in about half of the options, that's excluding kids who might be lactose intolerant, who might have dairy allergies. And that's one of the other reasons why we need a diversity of protein sources to accommodate students that have these different food restrictions, allergies, religious food restrictions, et cetera. You know, I'm curious, and you mentioned education. You know, to me, the kids don't really understand nutrition. I think it's flawed.

[00:22:53] You look back into our education, you know, sure we had some stuff. It was always the food pyramid, which a lot of people have attacked and said that food pyramid is not accurate. Do you feel like that if they started with education, the kids would even push? And maybe that would create more momentum with the parents? Because I don't think any kid wants to be fat. But they don't necessarily know what causes that. And, of course, currently, gaming has a big impact. You know, we were kids.

[00:23:22] Our parents threw us out of the house, and then they had to be reminded at 10 o'clock, you know where your children are. You know, we were out running the streets. I don't know if all of that was good, and I don't know in this environment you could do as much as we did. But we were out playing stickball and, you know, dodgeball and, you know, street hockey and you name it. That was what we were doing. We weren't sitting on a game console sitting on our asses. And, you know, TV, I mean, you know, the TV wasn't very good, of course. There wasn't as many options.

[00:23:49] I mean, in my house, we weren't very wealthy, so we had a black and white, you know, with the rabbit ears and a tinfoil at times to try to get the signal. And you were the remote control often. You know, in my home, you know, my parents would be like, hey, go change the channel. You know, there wasn't an error. It was a workout. You didn't necessarily want to watch TV with your parents. But that's a struggle.

[00:24:12] Michael, do you think that if we had a program that really explained, you know, show a fat kid on a beach and say, if you don't want to be this, you better pay attention here. Because most classes don't do that. They don't connect real world, you know, real world results with what's going on. The education, has that improved at all? Do they take kids? Do they even understand what a nutritional macro is and how much protein you need to develop muscle?

[00:24:38] No, nutrition education, sadly, is not standard in the American educational curriculum. And most of the nutrition education that's happening in schools is being provided by, like, the nonprofit sector. And teachers are on their spare time inviting in a food educator. You know, there are programs and grants with school gardens and field trip visits to farms. But that is not the norm.

[00:25:02] And, you know, I go to school cafeterias and I ask kids, you know, where does that food on your lunch tray come from? And they don't know. They don't know if I asked a kid recently, you know, where does your strawberries come from? And they said a strawberry tree. They haven't seen strawberry plants before. A strawberry tree. A strawberry tree. And so I agree with you.

[00:25:23] I think that bringing kids out, that's also the exposure to different foods, to fruits and vegetables, to new foods that they haven't tried, to the unprocessed foods. It takes many exposures for kids to want to try those foods, to begin to like those foods, to acclimate their taste buds to those foods. So we do need to couple an investment in school cafeterias and the equipment they're using, the ingredient costs, with an investment in education for the kids so they know where their food comes from.

[00:25:54] Yeah, I think connecting it to real-world results, like I said, I don't think any child wants to be obese. But you see it's rampant in there. You know, and I saw something really disturbing that you had in here. So when a vendor has a problem, right, when a vendor's had lots of recalls, and let's say those include listeria, salmonella, some of the other things, is there any penalty?

[00:26:15] Do these USD, you know, these food suppliers, if they've had a bunch of food safety recalls, do they all of a sudden get a warning like, we're not going to be using you to buy school products if you can't, you know, fix this? Or is that just they get a recall and then no big deal, we'll just, you know, rush them under the rug? Because I would think that the sourcing for vendors that have violated, you know, their food safety protocols, it seems to me like you wouldn't want them supplying to the school lunches. Are they still, do they still have contracts, as you mentioned earlier?

[00:26:44] Yep, they still get contracts. I really have not seen the withdrawal of contracts to USDA Foods used as a penalty for food safety issues, for worker issues, environmental issues, corruption issues. They're not leveraging that contracting power. And that's one of the big challenges and opportunities, I think, for this administration or any administration to improve our school meals.

[00:27:09] You know, 20% of what ends up on a kid's lunch tray is food that is procured directly by the federal government. Right now, most of that food is, you know, from that status quo, industrially produced food system. There are not organic options that are available. There are not, there's not grass-fed beef or chicken raised without routine antibiotics in these programs.

[00:27:31] So the federal government should put its money where its mouth is and say, look, if we want to improve the food in schools, let's start using our taxpayer dollars to buy higher quality ingredients for schools. Or even better, just give schools that cash if they want it to be able to buy their own local fresh food. Yeah, which would be great for the local farmers, the local ranchers, you know. Exactly. It's a great opportunity for us to grow that.

[00:27:58] You know, some of the stuff, we found some disturbing information about, you know, MREs and how a lot of those products were being supplied from China. We're supposed to be, you know, giving our military the finest food possible. And those MREs were full of Chinese product, which is really frightening because, of course, I would think China is one of the most dangerous places when it comes to our military infrastructure. You wouldn't think that they would be sourcing materials and giving those to our U.S. forces.

[00:28:27] Of course, we want them to be as, you know, well-tuned as possible. And here they are getting a bunch of crap that's being, you know, processed and prepared by the Chinese government or the Chinese community. I just, for me, that should have been an immediate no-no. But what do you think? Let's talk about the dollar amount for a minute. What do you think it would take for these lunches to improve? Is it a dollar a lunch, two dollars a lunch? How much larger would the USDA funding have to be?

[00:28:56] Because, you know, one of the things we've covered on the show so many times is the waste. You know, you look at USAID and what they discovered. The amount of money that was stolen for transgender operas and, you know, condoms for different countries and all sorts of things that have nothing to do or should matter to this country. I don't really care if India has condoms. They can deal with that. I don't know why the U.S. government has to give them $50 million for a condom. I don't understand why we're obligated.

[00:29:23] If we're going to issue condoms, again, they're doing it here in the U.S. And they can justify the reasoning. But to me, that seems flawed. So how much money would you have to do? And do you find that when you try to talk to D.C. about this, it just goes on deaf ears that they don't think about the need for more money in the school lunch program? Yeah. Well, there's two types of investments I think that we need to make in schools. One is more of a one-time investment in kitchen infrastructure and staff training.

[00:29:53] And that is expensive because we're talking about upgrading school kitchens from around the country. And, I mean, there are more school cafeterias that need these upgrades than there are Starbucks and McDonald's and Subways combined. So there are a lot of schools that, you know, they have school kitchens that need to be updated and actually have equipment that's necessary to scratch cook. So that investment is a really big investment, billions.

[00:30:22] And then we also do need. Can we stop you there for just a minute, Chloe? When you say, when I hear the billion word, to me, it doesn't mean much with this federal government. We're $40 trillion in debt. They give away the bees so readily and so easily. How many billions are we talking about? If we were going to fix the school, you know, the equipment in all these different schools, how much would we be talking? What do you think the total number is? Do you have any idea?

[00:30:46] You know, our co-author of this report, the Chef Anne Foundation, did this analysis for the state of California. What would it take to bring California up to this amount? And I can't remember up to the standard where all kitchens are able to scratch cook. I can't remember the amount, but it was over a billion in California alone.

[00:31:04] But you're right that these are small numbers when we're talking about the larger context of U.S. spending and even in the context of U.S. spending on health care and preventing, again, these diet-related diseases that are already costing taxpayers billions of dollars to treat. So it is a worthwhile investment. Let's make sure we get that exact number for you and your viewers. I don't want to make a guess at it. No, I get you. I was just curious. And listen, let's take a short break. We'll hold right there.

[00:31:34] We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back here with The Big Ming Show. We'll be here with Chloe, myself, Lance, and George Valentin. As always, it's tip of the spear, edge of the knife. Today we're sharing what's going on in the school system, and maybe you guys need to get louder as you have children in the school system. Because, boy, what they're feeding them doesn't sound very good to me. Stay tuned. We'll be right back.

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[00:34:36] Created for adverse conditions. The one he carries now. Grab yours at sawmantacticalblades.com All right, welcome back to the The Big Mig Show. Here are your hosts, Lance Migliaccio, George Balentine, and our special guest, Chloe Waterman. And our Big Big Mafia out there in the chat. Don't forget to hit that thumbs up button, the like, follow, share.

[00:35:04] And if you can subscribe, $5 a month, we truly appreciate you. Follow us on YouTube. It's a new account there. They gave us our account, but we had to start over. And just put in the Big Big Show. You'll find us on any audio podcast. We're everywhere. You can't miss us. All right, let's get back to these food, lunches, and kids. You know, I'm a food guy. I love good food. But we're talking about kitchens and, you know, what? Do they need upgrades, equipment? How many of these people that actually work in the school, Caffiers, can actually even cook?

[00:35:33] Never mind, you want to give them new equipment. Do we have to hire, like, chefs? Is it going to cost more money? I don't know. What's the answer? Yeah, we have to invest in the school kitchen workforce. You're right. And a lot of school kitchen employees want to gain these skills. And they need training. And that costs money and investment as well. But we want our school kitchens to be scratch cooking for students.

[00:36:00] That's what's going to enable them to use those fresh and local and whole ingredients to create delicious and healthy meals. Do we know what kind of number or estimated figure would be for the whole country to do this? I don't know. I think it would be billions, like we said before. I don't know what the exact figure would be. I think we first need to invest in a scoping study to really understand what those costs would be. But we can invest in them over time.

[00:36:26] So California, for example, has a school kitchen infrastructure and training fund that was first established in 2022. And the legislature puts money into this fund every year to support schools in outfitting their kitchens and improving. And we actually do see, you know, while at the national level, we found that 28 percent of school lunch entrees contain processed meat. In California, that number was only 18 percent.

[00:36:51] And I think that part of the reason why California is doing better than the rest of the country on that is because the state has been investing in the school kitchens and the school kitchen workforce there for years already. Much more investment is warranted and needed. And we'll have to get there over time. But we can at least start somewhere. Well, I have a great idea. Hold on, I have a great idea, America.

[00:37:16] If we just stop, we cut off all the USAID money to all these other countries for the BS, we can fix our school kitchens and get proper people working. We have the money. We just don't waste it on BS overseas. We could do it. I mean, we can grab $84 million from Chelsea Clinton for $84 million. What's more important? The kids here in America or supplying the world with transgender QBT, whatever that shit and condoms and all the other stuff they want to do to all these other countries?

[00:37:46] I don't know. I'm voting for the kids here. That's just me. But, you know, it seems simple enough, a redirection of the money. And, of course, the fact that California did something right, I'm actually shocked. I mean, look at the billions missing on their rail system. If it took a billion to upgrade their kitchens, they could have just taken the money that got stolen on there. You know what, Lance, about California? They're very vain. So they actually take care of their looks and weight and stuff. And I've been out there, so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, I do agree with that, of course.

[00:38:17] Maybe that has to do with Hollywood. You know what? They don't. Hollywood's failing now. They took out of schools. What is it, home ec? Didn't they take that out of schools? They were teaching home ec? And they stopped that? You know, I don't know because I went to an all-boys Catholic high school, so I don't remember us having home ec there. You know, is that possible? Maybe. But, you know, listen, I do remember the nutritional education I got. I remember a lot of it. It was really substandard.

[00:38:47] I didn't really understand it. You know, to be honest with you, I got more from the book Education of a Bodybuilder by Arnold Schwarzenegger that I, you know, I got involved with early on. So that's really what got me on the focus. And, of course, we also had the Presidential Health Initiative where you could do that as kids. I don't know if that's been restarted. I understand they were discussing it. I don't know if that's back in. But we had that in grade school, which got us exercising and moving, and it was teaching a lot. It was a pretty interesting program.

[00:39:15] And at the private schools, you would have thought that the system to teach us the nutritional necessity of how you would eat, you know, understanding what would cause you to gain weight and what didn't. I don't remember that being all that great, although it was probably better than the public schools. But, you know, haven't we seen, Chloe, isn't there a large increase in childhood cancer? And do you think that's linked to these nitrates that you found in these foods? Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:43] As you mentioned earlier, we found that 28% of the entrees in the school lunches that we looked at contained processed meat. Processed meat is a group one carcinogen, a known carcinogen, meaning we know with a high degree of certainty that it causes cancer. In particular, it's linked to colon cancer. And what's concerning about colon cancer is that the rates of colon cancer among younger people, 18 to 35, have been rising.

[00:40:10] And so we need to particularly focus as a public health priority on phasing these processed meats out of schools and replacing those with higher quality, non-processed animal proteins and quality plant proteins as well. So, you know, there's been a lot of discussions about plastic, right, that the average adult has a teaspoon of plastic in their brain if they haven't done anything to cleanse it at all.

[00:40:36] Did you find a lot of, you know, of the plastic residues or did you guys even test for that? I know you tested for pesticides, dioxins, PFAs, heavy metals. And what about the heavy metals? That's another big concern, isn't it? Yeah, and in the testing, again, we didn't do direct testing ourselves, but would refer your listeners to testing that the group Moms Across America did. And they actually found heavy metals in 100% of the samples that they tested. So there are a lot of concerning residues.

[00:41:05] And, you know, in the U.S., we have less strict limits on what we tolerate for these residue levels than, say, European countries do. And so sometimes these residues are often, they're coming in below the tolerances that we have. So even if they're tested for, okay, they're under the tolerance, that's okay.

[00:41:24] But we're setting those tolerances too high, particularly when we consider that children in their small and growing bodies, smaller amounts of these contaminants can be more harmful, particularly when we think of the cumulative effects. And so if kids are eating these foods five days a week for, you know, 180 days in a year, then that's going to add up if they're having these small amounts of antibiotic residues, hormone residues, dioxins, pesticide residues.

[00:41:54] They can accumulate in children's bodies and be really harmful. You know, you had mentioned that the number is $4.70. Is that right? Did I remember that correctly? Okay. So here's a curiosity question. I have no idea what you're going to tell me. Do you feel like any of these programs, they're intentionally trying to keep the numbers down by using these processed foods? Because maybe they want to try to keep as much of that $4.70 and maybe that's being funneled elsewhere.

[00:42:23] Did you see any evidence of anything like that? Because I always wonder about the money. Do some of these school programs think, hey, if we only spend $4, we'll take the 70 cents and multiply it over the year. And that can be used for a budget somewhere else. You know, I haven't seen anything like that. And school lunch budgets are kept separate from the rest of the education budget. So school meal programs are operating independently. They're not funded by like local property taxes like the rest of the education system is. So that money has to stay in the school meals.

[00:42:52] And that $4.70, it's not enough to cover the cost of school lunch. 81% of school nutrition directors surveyed said that that amount is not covering their actual costs. We're seeing a lot of these school nutrition programs go into debt. But you know who does benefit most from this $4.70 is the multinational corporations that are able to provide such inexpensive, often processed, industrially produced food to these schools.

[00:43:22] That's who's benefiting from these programs. The Tyson Foods, for example. They are the number one beneficiary most years of that USDA Foods program, the number one company that's getting those dollars. And they are serving kids these easy-to-serve, ready-to-eat, cheap products. And, you know, they have a low sticker price. They can fit within that $4.70. But at what cost?

[00:43:47] At the cost of our kids' health, at the cost of the communities that are impacted by their environmental pollution, for example. So it's a wrong pocket problem. And the folks who are benefiting from these, these multinational corporations, that's who wants to keep the status quo in school meals. The schools themselves, the nutrition directors that we work with, they want more money to buy higher quality, better ingredients, serve healthier food.

[00:44:12] You know, and I don't know the answer to this either, but I'll ask you, maybe you will know the answer. Are there specific lobbyists that focus on these programs and the money that comes out of them, say, for like a Tyson Foods or otherwise? Are there lobbyists focused on trying to keep this, you know, this process system grinding away? Do you find that that's why D.C. doesn't move? Because often when I get down to a program, and it seems like common sense, right? You would think that Congress would look at this and say, wow, this isn't good. And let's try to fix it.

[00:44:42] We'll move the money from here. We'll stop giving money for ridiculous programs at USAID. I mean, when they discovered the 14 magic money computers, I still haven't seen any consequences for that. And those were computers you could basically go in. And I could just issue, if I wanted to, the school lunch program, $10 billion school lunch program. And it wasn't connected to the Treasury Department. I haven't heard any consequences for that. You know, Elon Musk exposed it. And then crickets.

[00:45:07] Do you feel like there's a lobbying group that's trying to continue to support these industrial food suppliers? Yeah, the big beneficiaries of the USA Foods program, the multinational companies, they have lobbyists in D.C. And certainly, they are advocating to keep the status quo when it comes to our school meal program.

[00:45:27] So, for example, one of the things that we're advocating for is for school districts to be able to take the dollars that are going to the Tysons through the USDA Foods program. Instead, get that cash to spend on local food. That benefits the school. It benefits the local farmer. But it doesn't benefit Tyson.

[00:45:49] So, that's who's opposed to these policies, is the companies that are getting these millions of dollars in USDA contracts to supply these foods. One other thing that I'll share with you is that out of that 20% of foods that are provided to schools through USDA, 40% of those dollars are diverted to a program called further processing. So, that means that they're buying ingredients like chicken and cheese and beef.

[00:46:16] But then they're sending it to companies that are transforming that chicken, beef, and cheese into products like cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and pizza. And that's the product that they're getting. So, that program should be reformed. We shouldn't be sending these whole ingredients to further processors that are adding ingredients of concern like those nitrates, other ingredients of concern, food dyes, the things that have been in the news and that a lot of parents are worried about. Those products are being supported by taxpayer dollars.

[00:46:47] You know, it's interesting. I always start thinking, okay, well, what's the real scheme? You know, I don't know, George, have you ever watched how they make chicken nuggets? Have you ever seen the Discovery Channel or the manufacturing process? No, I don't want to know. It's freaking horrible. What you see getting thrown into these big vats and the way it's all churned together and then they add the dye to make it look like it's something else.

[00:47:16] You know, I think if any kid actually watched what was in that chicken nugget, they might not eat another chicken nugget. Even they would look and be like, what the hell is this? You know, just for the audience, can you give them an idea of what's in a chicken nugget? Before you say that, I'm going to say in my defense of what I like sometimes chicken nuggets, there are chicken nuggets that are not churned, that they're real. Yeah, I mean, a chicken strip or a whole white breast chicken nugget is different. I'm talking about the ones that's a paste before it's breaded.

[00:47:45] Oh, just for the audience, maybe some parents don't know. I know what's in them and it's horrible. And, you know, my daughter loved chicken nuggets when she was a child. It was really difficult. She was a very, even though we offered lots of healthy options and tried to push and started her very early with healthy options, even as an infant, hoping that I could get her taste buds. I didn't buy her the processed chicken nuggets. I would get white meat chicken strips that have been breaded. I don't think that's called a nugget. I think it's called a chicken strip. And it was a whole meat product.

[00:48:15] It wasn't processed. Of course, it was still breaded because she was just, man, she was a tough kid when it came to eating when she was little. Now, all of a sudden, she's like a holistic eater. Her whole world is turned around. I only wish that had happened early on as a child because we all struggle with that. But you want to tell the audience what's in some of these nuggets? Yeah. You know, one ingredient that shows up in chicken nuggets that's concerning is sodium phosphate. And that's an additive. It's an ingredient of concern.

[00:48:44] It is linked to kidney damage. So, yeah, these chicken nuggets have a long ingredient list. You know, some of these ingredients are concerning. Some of them have hard names to pronounce but actually aren't concerning. But we've got to look at each ingredient individually as well as the level of processing and the evidence around these products. And with chicken nuggets, the concerning things are the sodium phosphate and the link to kidney damage as well as the evidence that processed meat, these chicken nuggets are processed meat.

[00:49:11] You know, they're meat that goes through an industrial process to be shaped and formed into what they are. That's what is linked to that cancer designation. And so when these are showing up on more than half of school menu days, that's concerning. And let's add the fact that a lot of times as chicken is being processed, when you buy the white meat breast at the grocery store,

[00:49:37] they add lots of additional sodium for weight because they want the product to be as heavy as possible so that you get less. So and then on top of it, of course, that chicken breast, the skin was taken off of it. The fat was taken off of it. And that is put into the processing vats when they're making chicken nuggets. There's a lot of extra material. The other pieces of the chicken, the bones and otherwise, it just could ground up. What about all the meat like burgers and stuff they make out of soybeans?

[00:50:06] Well, go ahead. No, go ahead. It depends on what the ingredients are. Look, the evidence shows that whole plant-based foods are the healthiest form of plant proteins to have. Plant proteins, just like animal proteins, can have additives that are ingredients of concern or unhealthy ingredients. But soy in itself is a healthy protein. I personally eat soy pretty much every day.

[00:50:35] The question I'd ask is, what are you serving that with? So soy in the form of tofu or tempeh or edamame, perfectly fine. Great review. Soy that has been processed into a burger that may have additives of concern, you know, it probably is still healthier than the processed beef burger that it's replacing. There's evidence of that. It's going to have no cholesterol. It's going to have less saturated fat. It's not going to have veterinary drugs like hormones, contaminants like antibiotics.

[00:51:05] But is it as healthy as eating a whole food, an unprocessed food? No. I mean, eating too much soybeans does lead to digestive issues and actually severe hormonal disruption. You know, I have a different perspective on that. You know, soy includes phytoestrogens. And there's a lot of misinformation around there that confuses phytoestrogen with estrogen. But it's different and it doesn't bond to it.

[00:51:33] So some people, soy is also a top nine allergen. So some people have an allergy to it. Some people may have digestive issues with it. But a lot of the world eats soy every day. You know, think about Asian countries. Soy is a super common protein there. So I do think that soy unfairly gets a bad rap. And eating soy, particularly in its whole forms, like the tofu, the tempeh, that amame is perfectly safe. Yeah.

[00:52:02] But if you eat too much of it, it's like in the servings. No. If you eat regular, yeah, it's okay. But too much in a day is not healthy. That's what I know. You know, some people would argue with that. I don't know for sure. I've heard the stories about the estrogen for a long time. I got studies to show it does. There's clinical studies on it. So just saying. Yeah. I mean, I feel strongly about the studies showing that soy is safe to eat.

[00:52:31] You know, you want to also have organic soy so that there are not pesticide residues included in that. But yeah, I'm personally powered by soy. It's worked out well. What about the GMO issue that we're facing here across the nation? What about that as far as the soy and some of these other products? Do we see a lot of GMO foods being used in the school lunches? I assume we do. You know, yes.

[00:52:58] Unfortunately, organic foods are still a really small total share of the market and the commercial market as well as in schools. When I talked earlier about what are the foods that the federal government is supplying to schools, there are not organic foods that are available, say, through the USDA Foods Program. There are some good signs and progress that that can change.

[00:53:20] So, for example, again, in California, which is where we do a lot of our work, that's the only state where the vendors who are providing the produce for the federal program that provides produce to schools are offering organic options through that program. And those have been steadily increasing over time. But we need to see more of that. And we need to recognize that schools can actually be a driver of increasing the organic market overall.

[00:53:52] Let me ask you, are the parents, you know, so many parents are struggling, right? They're two income households. They're just trying to get by. They're doing the best again. Are they concerned? Do you find that the parents want to fix this? And are they, you know, are they using their voices? Are they putting the pressure on? Or are they just kind of status quo? They kind of know what's going on. But, you know, they're lackluster in pushing to make things happen. You know, it's some of both. I think a lot of parents are concerned, but parents have a lot on their plates.

[00:54:22] And we shouldn't have to expect that parents can also be activists within their own schools pushing for better food. You know, school meals are part of how we're supporting low-income families, middle-income families in this country, making it easier on parents so they don't have to pay for and pack a lunch every day. I think parents have an expectation that, you know, the food that their kids are being served at school should be healthy.

[00:54:46] And I do think that a lot of parents, once they learn about what's actually in those foods, learn about the supply chains, they don't feel like those school meals are yet meeting the standard that they should. Yeah, it's always interesting. You know, I'm always wondering, you know, parents talk the talk, but do they always walk the walk? Are they putting their mouth where it matters or are they pushing? You know, the health care costs are way out of line right across the nation.

[00:55:14] You know, people's health are failing and we're seeing this massive amount of fraud and waste. But I think the economics of change are an important issue. Tell me about, you know, is that one of the big pushes here by you guys in D.C. trying to talk about, you know, the short-term savings versus long-term health costs that we're really going to be looking at in the future for these kids? Exactly. We spend billions of dollars treating preventable diet-related diseases in this country.

[00:55:43] And the school meal program is one of the most important public health investments that we have because of the scale of students that it reaches. 30 million kids eating these school lunches every day. Many of those kids eating breakfast at school, too. It's a significant source of calories and of nutrition for so many kids in America. Seven billion meals served a year. And so if we can transform these school meals, yes, that's going to be a cost up front.

[00:56:10] But that's going to pay dividends when it comes to these kids having lower incidences of preventable diet-related diseases, less cancer, less heart disease, less obesity. So it's definitely a worthwhile investment. Yeah, and I think sometimes, interestingly enough, you know, because of the economy, so many restaurants have gone out of business. They used restaurant equipment business, you know, nearly brand-new equipment at a big savings.

[00:56:36] You know, I kind of wonder if they couldn't use some of that to rebuild some of these kitchens because there's lots of that equipment available at really way below market prices because we've seen a massive amount, especially because of the pandemic, a massive amount of restaurants went out of business. And, of course, that equipment went into the secondary market. And a lot of it's, like I said, damn near brand-new. So let's talk. What happens next? I mean, how do you fix this? Where does it go from here? Are you having any success on the Hill?

[00:57:07] Kind of talk about the policies or maybe what the next steps are. And then I want to make sure we get some time to tell people where to find you, you know, where they can find the website, get more information, and how maybe they can get involved and maybe make a difference in their local school system. Yeah. Well, I'll start with how these issues have been received on the Hill. I think, you know, when we go and we talk to offices or we bring parents or students to talk to members of Congress about the importance of school lunch,

[00:57:33] we are getting a lot more recognition that school lunch is important, that we want to be serving more scratch-cooked, healthy, higher-quality meals in schools. The problem is, are those elected officials putting their money where their mouth is? And to that, I would say no. So we're not seeing movement on that kind of investment and increasing the reimbursement rate, investing in the kitchen infrastructure and training that we need to see.

[00:57:58] And so one thing that people can do about this is ask their members of Congress, you know, to prioritize this, to invest in our school meals and improving the quality of school meals. We have new standards that are expected to come out from this administration on aligning school meals with the latest dietary guidelines. We need to make sure that those standards are prioritizing healthy, fiber-rich meals, but also that schools are given the resources that they need to align with those standards.

[00:58:27] So in terms of how people can get involved, get engaged, I would say call your member of Congress, ask for that investment, get engaged with your school nutrition director. If you have a child, a grandchild, a niece or nephew in schools, Friends of the Earth has a lot of resources for those schools for how they can start shifting to healthier plant-forward scratch-cooked meals, source higher-quality organic animal proteins. And so we'd encourage those folks to get involved.

[00:58:57] Our website is FOE.org. We also have resources that are specifically for parents, for educators, if there are any teachers that are among your listeners and want to invest in that kind of food education that you were speaking about. Lance, that's really important. Yeah, it's one of those things. You can't sit on the sidelines if you want to fix this.

[00:59:20] You have to push on your congressional members and reminding them of the money they're wasting versus where they should be putting the money, you know, is a great way to do that. I'd recommend that you focus on making a difference by maybe being the squeaky wheel rather than just sitting on the sidelines.

[00:59:40] Just curiosity, do you guys have any packets of material available on the site where a parent can take that and kind of shove it under their school's nose and maybe take the same packet and send it to congressional members? Is that available on there? Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. On the landing page for the report, which I know you had up earlier, FOE.org slash beyond dash the dash nugget. There's actually a letter on there that parents can fill out to send to USDA asking for healthier school lunches.

[01:00:08] There's that companion resource that we created that highlights schools that are serving healthier proteins at lunch already that they can send to their schools. Hey, look what your peers are doing as an example of healthier school lunch proteins. Here's how maybe you could do that, too. I'd like to see this in my child's school. One of our listeners said you should get Gordon Ramsay. You should do school kitchen nightmares. Imagine that. Yeah. It probably could make a difference if you did something like that.

[01:00:38] Could. Yeah. All right. So we appreciate you coming here today, Chloe, and thanks for all the information. How about social media for you or social media for your company? Yes. Friends of the Earth Action. We are on X. We're on Twitter. We're on Facebook. You can find us there. I'm no social media myself. You can find me on LinkedIn, Chloe Waterman. Happy to connect with folks. We're Friends of the Earth. Theory of Change is really around building grassroots power with folks.

[01:01:06] So we'd be eager to connect with any of your listeners who are passionate about seeing healthier school lunches and working with them to make that vision a reality. All right. Thanks very much. Listen, you guys, and you know what to do. You got to be the squeaky wheel. Get out there and make a difference. These are your kids. And, of course, you don't want them to face any horrible consequences. And this is a big issue. And the money's there. They're stealing it left and right. They're wasting it in all these foreign programs that I could give a shit about. And I'm sure you could either.

[01:01:37] The kids are more important than any of that. And, you know, if my recommendation on top of this is maybe focus. Maybe you can't do the program at school. Maybe you need to be sending your kids with lunches interim of getting this fixed. I know it takes time. But, of course, you care about your children. So, I know this. I don't want my kid. If I had children now, my daughter's older. I don't have to be concerned about this.

[01:02:03] But if I had children, I sure as hell wouldn't want them eating these nuggets and the rest of this process trash. All right. George, last words as we're heading out the door today. Thanks to you, Lance. I will never look at chicken nuggets the same. Yeah. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm just kidding, man. It's Thursday. Look, it's always good to be healthy. It's always good to be healthy. But as far as the kitchen school nightmares, I was just watching the chat.

[01:02:27] You honestly think any school would have let someone like Gordon Ramsay come in their kitchen and expose them? No. Never happened. Y'all have a blessed day. We'll see you Friday. Schwartz and Rooney will be on with us. Otherwise, stay blessed. Stay safe. And, Chloe, thank you so much. I'll look you up on LinkedIn. Y'all, peace, guys. Thanks so much for having me.

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