US Department of Agriculture under pressure to purchase surplus crops.

January 30, 2002 3:49 PM

US Department of Agriculture under pressure to purchase surplus crops. One solution is to use the crops in school lunches, so they are testing things like sweet potato pancakes and hamburgers with prune puree in them (which makes them healthier by replacing some of the fat).
posted by o2b (8 comments total)

Pardon my simple man's economics, but wouldn't this just lessen demand for other food items used in school lunches (meats, grains), and drive down prices for these items, prompting more pressure on the USDA to purchase surplus items?
posted by gyc at 3:54 PM on January 30, 2002

It's not hard to understand why the broccoli guacamole flopped.
posted by argybarg at 4:10 PM on January 30, 2002

> Both the government and the industry now refer to
> prunes as "dried plums."

My Ghod, we just CAN'T call a spade a spade. Is it some sort of universal birth defect?

> The prune burgers served Tuesday were flame-broiled
> by the processor to give them the grilled flavor.

Anything that's been flame-broiled tastes good. Look at hockey pucks. Like the school cafeterias are going to flame-broil their prune tofu disklets. Actually the kids will be lucky if they're all the way defrosted.

> John Lund, a USDA official who oversaw the taste test,
> said there's no reason for schools to disclose that the
> burgers contain prunes, since there's too little of the fruit
> to have the laxative effect for which prunes are known.

John Lund says "You don't have to be truthful about this since you won't get caught." Mystery meat indeed! Seconds, anybody?
posted by jfuller at 4:11 PM on January 30, 2002

Gyc: Yep. This is why the central planning always fails when it tries to meddle with the market. They can not possibly control the unintended consequences of even buying the surplus of one crop, because each crop has substitutes and complements whose demand is affected by the first crop.

For example, if they bought kids pancakes for breakfast, instead of cereal, sales of cereal would go down, but so would sales of milk. And sales of milk containers. And sales of spoons. And sales of the raw materials used to make containers and spoons. And so on.
posted by insomnyuk at 4:14 PM on January 30, 2002

...shouldn't we be cheering the fact that the kids will be eating more fruit & vegetables? (which doesn't mean that this is actually a good idea; the idea that nutrition should be controlled by market forces is a little spooky)
posted by aramaic at 5:08 PM on January 30, 2002

It is my understanding that most kids have been eating McDonalds and Pizza Hut for school lunches for years now...so how many will this actually affect?

Anything that's been flame-broiled tastes good.

...and is also suspected of being carcinogenic.

Broccomole...now THAT'S brilliant!
posted by rushmc at 5:26 PM on January 30, 2002

This is why the central planning always fails when it tries to meddle with the market. Amen! Subsidies, buy-outs, set-asides, market forcasts and the bankrupting loans that go with them; those getting big government money are agribusiness, not the family farm. So I guess tax dollars are spent to keep surplus foodstuffs off the market so taxpayers can pay more for food. Sounds sorta wrong.
posted by Mack Twain at 6:50 PM on January 30, 2002

While this is creepy, I'm hardly surprised. I was in school when The Keepers Of The Brain Trust (tm) tried to tell me that ketchup was a vegetable.

Add that to the already tenuous hold on culinary aesthetics that my cafeteria already had, and you can understand why the mere mention of "School Lunch" (duh duh DUHHHH!) strikes fear in my heart.

Nothing like losing at Lunch Roulette...
posted by verso at 3:35 PM on January 31, 2002