One more thought about food waste numbers-a lot of that includes product that never gets to the store or factory, foods that never leave the farm for all kinds of reasons. The total amount of product grown is counted, then how much was sold. Any discrepancy is called waste. If rodents got into your stored grain, you can’t sell it, but it wasn’t exactly wasted.
Minnesota rep prioritizes son's taste buds over access to nutritious meals for thousands of students
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Faith in Minnesota restored! I’m maybe a touch surprised a representative from White Bear Lake/ Vadnais Heights put 2 and 2 together, but it’s a pleasant surprise. 
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My MN pols working at the national level:
(You can follow the progress of it here https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/senate-bill/4602?s=1&r=92)
It’s not exactly free meals for all, but will be progress if enacted…
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Hey! GenX invented that!
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… canned and frozen foods are tremendous technological accomplishments that nobody should be ashamed to take advantage of 
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It sounds like there are multiple issues at hand.
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Provide free lunches to kids.
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Provide healthier/better tasting menus.
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Don’t force foods onto kids they won’t eat to reduce waste. I remember as a kid when we were little, we had to raise our hand to be excused, and there would be a lunch person who would make sure you ate most of your food - and at least trying something. Part of that needs to be on the parents. Some kids just will never eat a green bean and it would be more on them to get them to “try it”. Though oddly, I was more receptive to people OTHER than my parents telling me that a food was good or to try it. I am pretty sure I remember we could tell the lunch lady “No XYZ” as they were dishing it out. At least when we were a little older.
I’m embarrassed and annoyed that many of us have been successfully dragged into bickering about the details, by bad-faith creeps who use the sophistry of “asking questions” and “having concerns” to create the illusion of scarcity. As one poster replied to me earlier: There is no food shortage. There is no scarcity. The extractive capitalists among us want everyone to think there isn’t enough of anything to go around. Food, shelter, water, political power, the game is to present every conflict as zero-sum; a battle over a shrinking pie. It is more manipulation and propaganda by those who always stand to gain from our distraction and disagreement. Of course they won’t do anything to help the have-nots. They may actually believe in scarcity. Either way, it serves their interests to do everything possible, including lie and distract, to hoard any resource. In their minds, profit and economic supremacy override any and every other concern in human life or the life of the planet. NOTHING is more important than protecting their interests. So everything they say is distracting garbage.
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This guy is exhibit A for how we avoid ensuring that there is a robust safety net.
We can 100% afford to do so, and in many cases the people opposing it realize that directly arguing against it just makes you look like a cartoon villain.
Instead the argument becomes against the idea that some “non-deserving” people might get some benefit, or that there is some form of waste involved. Basically pitting the unattainable perfection of an imaginary zero waste, zero benefit to anyone except the strictly “deserving” program be the enemy of the good of “spend $x to help people.”
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