News Flash: Bag Lunches Get Too Warm
Aug. 8th, 2011 11:05 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitouthttp://healthland.time.com/2011/08/08/study-preschoolers-sack-lunches-reach-unsafe-temperatures/
"In the first study of its kind, researchers in Texas visited nine preschool child-care centers on three separate occasions and measured the temperature of hundreds of sandwiches, yogurts, and other perishable lunch foods brought from home, using a heat-sensing gun.
What they found shocked them: 97% percent of meats, 99% of dairy, and 99% of vegetables were stored at unsafe temperatures. Of the 1,361 perishable foods that were tested, only 22 were at temperatures considered safe."
I'm not sure what to do with this. _Obviously_ this is true, but it's _been_ true forever and, arguably, things are better than they ever have been (refrigeration of lunches is actually sort of an option, and a mylar insulated lunch sack with space for an ice pack has become the standard at Gymboree when doing back-to-school shopping. It wasn't that long ago when I was making my own mylar lunch sacks out of a roll of mylar insulation and electrical tape, because you couldn't buy a small enough cooler to take on a day hike.). And that really is the point at which you _can_ both study and complain about a problem: when a solution is possible but the will is yet lacking to reach for that solution.
But shocking? Really? You find this shocking? I find two days of rioting in Tottenham shocking. I find a right-wing Norwegian bombing the oil ministry and massacring adolescent activists shocking. I find waves of revolution in the Middle East shocking. I find waterboarding and the Patriot Act shocking.
Warm school lunches? Are you kidding me? _YES_ we should fix this. I don't need to be shocked to feel that this is something we should add to the middle-class-package-of-parenting-expectations. (Altho _no_ I am not prepared to sign up for whatever their "safe" temperatures were. I leave baked goods out on the counter for two-three days sometimes and they're just fine.)
I'm going to go back to obsessive research into property management trends now.
"In the first study of its kind, researchers in Texas visited nine preschool child-care centers on three separate occasions and measured the temperature of hundreds of sandwiches, yogurts, and other perishable lunch foods brought from home, using a heat-sensing gun.
What they found shocked them: 97% percent of meats, 99% of dairy, and 99% of vegetables were stored at unsafe temperatures. Of the 1,361 perishable foods that were tested, only 22 were at temperatures considered safe."
I'm not sure what to do with this. _Obviously_ this is true, but it's _been_ true forever and, arguably, things are better than they ever have been (refrigeration of lunches is actually sort of an option, and a mylar insulated lunch sack with space for an ice pack has become the standard at Gymboree when doing back-to-school shopping. It wasn't that long ago when I was making my own mylar lunch sacks out of a roll of mylar insulation and electrical tape, because you couldn't buy a small enough cooler to take on a day hike.). And that really is the point at which you _can_ both study and complain about a problem: when a solution is possible but the will is yet lacking to reach for that solution.
But shocking? Really? You find this shocking? I find two days of rioting in Tottenham shocking. I find a right-wing Norwegian bombing the oil ministry and massacring adolescent activists shocking. I find waves of revolution in the Middle East shocking. I find waterboarding and the Patriot Act shocking.
Warm school lunches? Are you kidding me? _YES_ we should fix this. I don't need to be shocked to feel that this is something we should add to the middle-class-package-of-parenting-expectations. (Altho _no_ I am not prepared to sign up for whatever their "safe" temperatures were. I leave baked goods out on the counter for two-three days sometimes and they're just fine.)
I'm going to go back to obsessive research into property management trends now.