I agree. Potatoes on their own are not the problem. It's fried potatoes, whether they are french fries or tater tots, or whatever form they come in that should be under the spotlight.

Baked or boiled potatoes with their skins on are carbohydrate dense but otherwise nutritious.

I would think too that including potatoes would be a move to combat seriously hungry (in the not-getting-enough-at-home way) kids to be able to fill up on something.

Potatoes are not the problem; tater tots and french fries are.

The real kernel of the problem is that we have such low standards with respect to food. We do not teach our children to love and appreciate food like the French and Italians do in their schools. We care more about the financial bottom line than about the bottom line with respect to health and quality of life.

While not all French and Italian schools have wonderful meals, by and large, most of them have what we would regard as pretty good meals. My children's Swiss school has lovely 3 course meals every day -- soup or salad, main dish with vegetables and pasta or grains or potato, and either a simple fruit-based dessert or fruit and cheese. For their afternoon snack (they have activities until 5:30), there may be cookies or cake or yoghurt. European schools don't shy away from chocolate or cookies; instead, they teach children moderation and to learn to love different sorts of vegetables and meats and fish. Heck, in season, the children get game! And they have fish once a week, usually steamed with a sauce of some sort.

I'm so sad that we don't have the same approach in North America. I look around me here in Switzerland, and am hard pressed to see any overweight children in the primary grades.

It's all about teaching balance and how to appreciate different flavours and textures.

Are you going to ban flour as well? That's used in lots of terrible foods served at shools. They should get rid of the fryers and batter at schools. Of course, then the potato loses it's status as a lazy food for cafeterias at that point and this becomes moot.

If the school requests that only whole potatoes be shipped in, then baked potatoes will be the only way they're served.

If schools don't order frozen french fries, frozen tator tots or those revolting potato "smilies" that they're pushing these days, then the main problem's solved.

First things first - the government is the problem. It's too big, and it has too many fingers in too many places. "Let's ban peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because some kids are allergic to nuts... Let's ban lunch boxes because some kids could sneak in contraband... Let's ban potatoes because some kids eat too many fries and tots, and we as the government need to control what people eat."

I'll get off my soapbox now. But really, is it necessary?

I absolutely think they should ban potatoes. And replace them with eggplant. And you know what's really delicious? Fried eggplant. And tempura broccoli. And yam fries. Brilliant!

I don't see as much of a problem with fried foods and simple carbs as food additives and lack of portion control. In fact, certain oils (coconut, grape, canola, olive) are very healthy when used moderately. Bottom line, schools need to serve balanced meals and teach the importance of portion control and nutrition. Give the children the tools so they can make responsible choices all through life.

I think the potato is a food that is very fitting to bring the school, I often bring my child's lunch of potatoes and green vegetables

Fries and tater tots are not the problem. The problem is how we don't teach kids to eat healthy when they are young and we don't understand what moderation means.

Everything in moderation is the key!

In my elementary school, our tater tots were baked. And delicious!

The problem is not potatoes. The problem is the mindset whereby it's OK to feed children processed food made from nutritionally poor ingredients because that's the cheapest option (monetarily, though costly in terms of health).

@mschatelaine: "Potatoes are not the problem; tater tots and french fries are."

Here, here. At my school growing up, where any produce was typically rotting or canned, and the meat was truly "mystery meat," I often saw students cover a whole entire tray (!) full of french fries to tater tots and eat that for lunch. Probably a day and a half worth of calories and a few days worth of saturated fat with very few nutrients. Not to mention that it must make your digestive tract go haywire to eat that much grease every day. Figure out how to provide some at least moderately healthy and simply edible produce and entrees for public school kids in the US....

Beckyjo87, I think the problem is that the government is already involved with what kids are served at school. It's my understanding that schools don't get a whole lot of choice in what they get to serve under the Federal School Lunch Program--and due to a surplus or subsidies or the potato lobby or whatever, kids end up getting served lots of french fries and tater tots.

great. now i really want some tater tots.

The real problem? The loss of gym class - the opportunity to work out. We used to eat all of these foods in school and had very few fat children. Why? Because we participated in so many physical activities (at home and school). Instead of focusing on the food, we should focus on the physical activity for at least 30 minutes per day. Parents could try taking walks with their kids when they get home which is a great way of winding down (and getting a chance to talk). I still do it with my daughter (she's 21) and she loves it.

I agree with others here. Ban certain methods of cooking foods (fried, battered, over-processed, etc.) rather than the core foods themselves (actual potatoes are fine, french fries and tater tots aren't). If we did this, school lunches would automatically be healthier.

No way! Sometimes Tater Tots were the only thing that I would eat on the school lunch plate!

If you have a picky eater, maybe think of this this way: Is it better to have a kid eating baked tater tots (as I'm sure most elementary schools don't have deep fryers these days) or have them eat nothing at all? What would the alternative be from a food cost/ease of preparation standpoint, boxed mashed potatoes? Soggy baked fries?

Maybe some kid friendly ideas could be found here for at home eating?

We had really great lunches at my school in Canada. The culinary program at the local college did their practicum at my school so we had very healthy meals. I thought it was the best thing and it gave us all the opportunity to try less common dishes like duck, lamb, pheasant, and others. We got first class meals for a very affordable price! And for people who didn't want the main course, there was a huge variety of salads, healthy sandwiches, and fruit.

It's too bad they aren't enough colleges and culinary programs for every school!

Sheesh. This just after I hear they're trying to ban chocolate milk from schools.

I have no problems whatsoever with french fries in school lunches. Or chocolate milk for that matter, or anything served. I ate oh, at least 12 years of school lunches growing up and I'm not obese. Most people not in school now didn't come out of grade/high school obses because we knew we had to get off our butts once and a while.

We had fries I remember but it wasn't every day. I didn't (still don't) have a taste for white milk, so I got my milk chocolate. The little sugar added to it wasn't going to kill me.

It is not the school/ government's place to be so insane regulating what our kids can't eat. They have PE classes to promote physical activity but it's not their job to make sure your kid isn't fat!

This is solely a home issue and everyone knows it but it seems much easier to look at a rolly polly little kid and say "must be cause of those school lunches" Every generation has less physical activity at home and more feeding them garbage.

And I don't know why but that photo seemed perfect for this post- a nice healthy looking sandwich full of sprouts and veggies and a dumpload of tater tots in front of it!

First of all, these are public schools we're talking about. And the public should definitely have a say in what food is served in these schools. And since we, the public, are represented by our Representatives, this is a perfectly valid space for the government to be.

That said, I don't know how much value I see in banning potatoes. While I seriously question their efficacy as a "gateway vegetable", I also don't think they're all that bad in themselves. So, yeah, if fat really is a problem, get rid of the friers. Kids can work off the carbs in gym.

So dumb. Honestly, the lunches at my daughter's school are not egregious. She still won't eat most of them, and brings lunch from home (which sometimes includes a slice of Spanish tortilla, her favorite way to eat a potato). I don't even really have a problem with frying food. The school needs to provide a balanced lunch, ENOUGH TIME TO EAT IT, which is a big problem, and leave it at that. At my daughter's school, they actually have a school aid blow a whistle, I kid you not, to signal the kids to switch to eating the next food on their plate. They ARE trying to get the kids to eat a little of everything (instead of just the french fries and leaving the rest) but at a certain point you have to accept that children are not livestock and can't be force fed.

Oh and @beckyjo84, as long as I'm paying school taxes (I sure do), I want a say in how those taxes are spent. One way they're spent is on school lunches. So my representatives hear from me. One way or another gov't is serving our kids food. Just saying "less gov't" is thoughtless.

If my kid went to a private school, where I paid tuition, I'd expect to have some say in the lunches there, too.

I am in agreement with most of the comments. It's not that all potatoes are bad--just the convenient pre-made packaged foods the potatoes are turned into. I think the idea of cooking from scratch starting from the home is the best way to build a starting point for healthy eating habits in children. My daughter is only a year and a half, but I hope by the time she starts school there won't be any issues finding healthy choices for kids to eat at lunch in school...if not she can just take a home-packed lunch that will be packed full of fresh and yummy foods.

Yeah this is stupid. Potatoes are one of the cheapest ways to get lots of nutrients. They just have to prepared right, like anything else.

The problem is with the entire system, but that's not going to be suddenly overhauled over night.

Unfortunately, it might be the little steps like this that will lead to the greater change.

There is no doubt that it needs to change though.

I think the major problem is that tater tots and fries are served almost everyday. According to the gov. they count as a serving of vegetables when what they really are are highly processed, refined carbs with little nutritional value. (Check out the nutritional value here: http://www.oreida.com/products/or-tater-tots.aspx)

Consider this: we spend more money on the meals for prisoners than we do on meals for kids at school. The budget for ingredients for a school lunch is about $1.50. It is extremely difficult to make a healthy and appealing meal for that amount of money. The gov. has to get their priorities straight.

SAVE THE POTATOES

First off, now I want tots!

Secondly, it's the way that the food is prepared. And how often it's served. Not that it's served at all. Serving baked tots once a week or a few times a month isn't bad.

Hell, my school served (baked) funnel cake, with powdered sugar, for lunch. And while there was a percentage of kids in my school that could have stood to eat better (and exercise more), most of us were fine. Of course, most of us also learned to eat well at home.

I am so tired of people saying potatoes are bad. It is how they are prepared. And until local governments get their heads out of their backsides, trim fat from wasted depts and programs to properly fund school lunch programs and allow those lunch staffs to "cook" food (most of them know how to properly cook), the quality of most school lunch programs will never get any better. Check out this link for nutritional info on potatoes. A baked potato bar would not be a bad idea at all!http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/vegetables-and-vegetable-products/2770/2

I think what we're seeing here is a frustrated measure that is aiming to fix the problem, but right now is only touching on the most visibly exacerbating symptom.
The problem lies beyond tater tots, potatoes, food, school admin, and government. Tater tots are allowed currently in schools because we gave the OK to let the school feed the kids crap so they can stay within their budget due to state and federal regulations which I would assume were lobbied for by Ore Ida, Monsanto, and other big ag companies that served to profit from the situation.
Yes, perhaps a bit conspiracist. However, as people have mentioned, we have allowed money to become the issue over the health and happiness of our children. It's not the government's fault, it's our fault for letting it happen. If we're only jumping in now, then we have to also take the blame for not educating our children about food, diet, nutrition, physiology, or not pushing for it.

We have an opportunity I think, with this situation to turn it around. But I think people will just end up ranting about the ambiguous government because it's easier to do, and not get to the root of the problem.

Re: less government. One of my kids was educated in the French system. School lunches were cooked on the premises every day, according to strict government guidelines. They had 3 courses, and there was always salad, bread, and water. Eating well, and healthily, is considered an important part of children's education from the moment they start school. Here in the UK, it took Jamie Oliver to shame the previous government into doing something about the dire state of school meals, and standards did improve. The current government is now proposing less intervention, based on the argument that the state should not dictate what we eat.

Tater tots and fried food would not even be an issue if kids got off their butts and exercised, if parents taught them good eating habits so that they would learn themselves how make tater tots a treat (i.e. just because it's available every day doesn't mean a kid is obligated to eat them every day in schools where there's a choice), if kids were not so daggone busy 24/7 with the mountains of homework and extracurriculars that can have them burning the candle at both ends as if they were adults (stress can make even healthy eaters gain weight, and I've known kids who are busier than doctorate students).

We had chocolate milk, government cheese, pizza, tater tots, burgers, french fries, mystery meat, etc. when I was in grade school in the 1980s, and yet plump kids were definitely in the minority. Why? We were expected to run around during recess and/or gym class and thus burned off what we ate, and then we went home, did our homework, and then ran around again playing in the neighborhood. And we went to bed at reasonable hours and weren't stressed out. And if we started doing the I'll-trade-you-my-bag-lunch-for-your-Coke bit a little too often, our parents usually heard about it before we got home, and then we got disciplined and lectured at home and didn't do it again.

Why don't we change lifestyles and teach kids to be responsible eaters, rather than take away every possible problem food? I mean, really. If a kid who has a food allergy can learn responsbility to choose what to eat and not to eat, there's no reason that every other kid be taught this lesson. If we got rid of every food that might cause some kid some problem, we'd be down to serving water.

Banning potatoes while leaving tertiary corn-derived products available just seems silly. Corn (in forms other than just corn) is the truest satan in the American diet.

Oops -- that should read "there's no reason that every other kid can't be taught this lesson"

I can't believe that one of the healthiest vegetables is about to be banned! Not that Germany is famous for tasty or healthy school lunches, but banning one vegetable seems like a weird way to approach this problem!

I love potatoes but I don't personally consider them to be a vegetable, myself :S

Maybe they SHOULD get rid of them? I mean, if the only potatoes in school are fries/tots, and everyone is in agreement that fries/tots should be out, then what's the fuss?

When I was in school, there were so many kids that by the time I could get into the cafeteria fries and such was all there was available. I was poor and the school didn't allow "program" kids to "buy" unhealthy food, so that meant I didn't have anything to eat at all for the entirety of high school.

The worst case scenarios that we're worrying about is already happening then, isn't it?

I DO agree that banning potatoes is really shortsided and not at all addressing real issues at hand, though. Then again, government and businesses seem to be very good at missing the point entirely...

@cliokitty Less of a focus on "gym class," since that's just used as an excuse to laugh at the less-athletic kids. More of a focus on *basic* exercise - stretching, walking, swimming.

To everyone else: Yes, the government shouldn't be involved in feeding kids. Unfortunately, in most cases, either the school feeds them or no one does. If the school doesn't provide things the kids will eat, many of them will only get one mediocre meal at home. I'm not really sure what's more to blame here, though: The high cost of nutritional food in most cities, parents who simply don't care, or parents who allow their children to dictate meals.

@RvL --why the heck shouldn't the government be involved in feeding kids??!

In other countries, it is seen as a key component of public education -- as Pearmelon mentioned is the case in France, and as I have mentioned in the case of Italy, and also my children's school in Switzerland.

Teaching children to eat a balanced diet, teaching them to appreciate foods served many different ways, is key in raising healthy, educated children. My kids eat duck, lamb, fish and game in their Swiss school; back home, the public school my daughter will be attending has twice weekly catered food from "the Lunch Lady" featuring burgers, mac & cheese, stir fries and shepherd's pie. How... challenging.

I'm angry that we dumb-down food choices for our kids, and aren't willing to spend the little money it would take to serve them good, fresh food instead of processed crap.

Yeah, I'm furious about this issue -- we're moving back to North America, and it is going to be my kids' reality come September.

Jamie Oliver should be allowed to transform public school lunch programs across North America.

@dancedancekj -- couldn't agree with you more!

Every kid eats potatoes?

I didn't. I hated the nasty things. I hated mashed potatoes most of all (still do) but wasn't keen on fries, or tater tots either. In fact, the best use of the potato is vodka, and I don't see that making it into school cafeterias.

mschatelaine, the main reason the government shouldn't be involved is that they aren't very good at it. Neither health or cost wise. The recommended guidelines are tainted by the dairy and corn lobbies, the health standards are abysmal, (see ketchup, the miracle vegetable) and cost-wise, I'd rather put together a meal for my child than have a more expensive, more processed government-provided facsimile.

Why aren't you responsible for your kids' diet? Directly? If you want it to be challenging. Hell, I'd settle for nutritious.

"..the main reason the government shouldn't be involved is that they aren't very good at it."
Does that absolve the government from responsibility for children's health, just because they lack the will to do a better job? If other countries manage to provide their children with nutritious meals, why is this not a priority in the UK or US?

I think that "banning" is a bad concept.

Gets all this idea of a strict place.
Why so much fuss, why not just having professional nutricionists & nutritional plans where there would be a space for everything*?
So many days in a year school, there could be place for all

*within each kids/family health issues/beliefs, of course

potatoes are full of potassium, which nobody gets enough of! If they would serve baked low fat chips, or just bake their fries and tots, it would be really healthy. A lot of blood pressure issues are actually caused by a lack of magnesium and potassium rather than actual salt overload.

I don't think banning potatoes completely is the answer. The baked potato bar sounds like a great idea and they should offer regular and sweet potatoes, but they would need to limit the portions of junk to put on top of the potatoes. When I was in school we had a salad bar with prepacked salads that the lunch ladies made daily. Maybe making a prepacked portion potato bar could be the answer.

"mschatelaine, the main reason the government shouldn't be involved is that they aren't very good at it. Neither health or cost wise. "

That's just empty rhetoric.

First off, the idea that the government is not able to manage programs efficiently is utter nonsense, and has been perpetuated in the media through cheap shots and "gotcha" journalism. While it is true that the U.S. government is particularly susceptible to pork barreling as part of its inherent design, and now the scandalous clout of lobbyists, the nation has the ability to ensure better foods in schools.

The reason we don't is a particular aspect of Anglo-Saxon culture; because having lived in Europe for the past number of years, I can assure you that this is a unique characteristic of Anglo Saxon countries.

Most nations in western Europe have higher standards for food than the UK and other Anglo Saxon nations. It's that simple. The French, the Swiss, the Italians, the Germans, the Swedes, the Danes... all have higher standards than we do. It's amazing, but even hospital food here is great. In the French military, the chefs de cuisine are considered key to any operation. You are really hard-pressed to find a bad meal; you may have an indifferent meal, a bland meal, but a truly bad meal is hard to find. Not so in England. Or the U.S., or Canada, where it is hard to find a good one (it's getting much, much better in the U.K.).

Why? Is it because we value a deal? Quantity over quality? That has a lot to do with it. There's a fundamental frugality and cheapness in Anglo-Saxon cultures which precludes truly good food in a widespread sense. Or maybe it is religion -- that we shouldn't enjoy ourselves by indulging in carnal pleasures. The French, on the contrary, have a cultural sense that "il faut se faire des petites plaisires", and so take great enjoyment from a perfectly brewed cup of coffee, eating a delicious pastry or a chocolate.

Thus, in countries such as France and Italy, society considers it important to teach children about food and to appreciate good food. It is learned both in the home, and at school. In these cultures, it is considered unimaginable to not have a hot, fresh meal at midday, and carting around a picnic lunch with soggy sandwiches or something in a thermos just doesn't cut it. And have you ever stopped to think of what a waste -- of time, of energy, of resources -- it is for mothers across the nation to be packing lunches when it would be more efficient to provide each child with a lunch at school? At my kids' school, everyone eats the same meal -- kids and teachers. The only "special meals" are those for kids with allergies or for vegetarians. No one gets a choice. And everyone eventually learns to eat vegetables and salads, and what we in North America consider "adult" meals (i.e., foods not "dumbed down" for kids).

Jamie's School Dinners (the original UK program) demonstrated what a difference it makes to children on an individual basis as well as to schools and school boards: give kids good nutritious hot lunches, and test scores go up, and bad behaviour goes down. The results were shocking.

We have no good excuse to fail to provide our children with quality meals in schools. None.

@ mschatelaine: I think you might be onto something there. In a country where parents are willing to pay £15,000 a year in private school fees (double that for boarding schools), why are people so seemingly unconcerned with their children's diet? And believe me, private school meals in the UK are no better than public. Is it because people are working such long hours to pay for exorbitant school fees that they are also frugal with the amount of time spent in food preparation?

This is just crazy. Potatoes are a great food and can be served in any number of healthy, nutritious ways. The problem with mad suggestions like this is that they've identified what they perceive as the problem but rather than look at how others have dealt with it they invent their own bizarre solution.

Others have noted how children in France in Italy are taught about food at school. I live in France and every year we see the children from the local schools being taken to the market and taught about the produce that's in season. The menus for school meals are published in the local paper and I can assure you there's not a 'tater tot' (whatever that is!) or a turkey twizzler in sight.

And anyway I'm Irish, so hands off the praties!

Long overdue.