You can’t make this stuff up.
Via Poughkeepsie Journal:
While raw carrots call out for takers at a local school cafeteria, the line for the snack window is 10-deep with sixth-graders awaiting frosted zebra cakes, fried dough sticks and many more sugar- and fat-laden treats.
Why does Highland Middle School offer such junk food?
“Purely for money,” said Maria McCarthy, food service director for the district, which sold $52,000 in vending machine items and $189,000 in so-called a la carte foods and snacks in 2011-12, among them a high school favorite, nachos with cheese.
About one-third of public school children locally are overweight or obese — some district rates top 40 percent — and the numbers are rising to levels that one local pediatrician called “appalling.” Yet public schools sell sometimes-unhealthy snacks and fatty alternatives to balanced, government-regulated lunches for a simple reason: They earn hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to an exclusive Poughkeepsie Journal review of financial documents and menus and interviews with food service managers.
Ironically, schools need this income to fill growing holes in their food service budgets, the Journal found, as regulations require them to serve healthier — and expensive — fruits, vegetables and lower-fat foods with government-approved lunches. Further, new regulations effective in the 2014-15 school year will sharply restrict the sale of the sugary, fatty and salty delights that go head-to-head with healthier fare — and will undoubtedly compound the financial problem.