The issue is that people really don't want to know how their food is produced (remember the ol' adage about sausages and laws?). As soon as they learn what industrial-scale food production looks like, they begin to turn their noses. Did these parents really think that the hamburger a school was serving its kids was composed of anything more than the scraps from the proverbial butcher's floor?
As far as science proving things "safe and effective," this is a sliding scale, no? There have been plenty of things once declared safe and effective that ultimately were discovered to be not so safe and effective (particularly when the science comes from someone sympathetic to the cause).
That's not quite it. People pretty clearly do want to know. And they would like to believe their food is produced in a way that seems wholesome to them. So yes, I think parents did think that school hamburgers were of roughly the same quality that they'd get if they decided to make it at home.
Hoewver, I think that people a) like things to be cheap, and b) are too lazy to look into things in detail. That worked to the advantage of the meat producers for a while.
But this country has a history of panics around food, and there's been a trend for decades in the direction of less processing. So I'm not going to shed many tears for these folks. What they did may have been innovative when they started, but they shouldn't have expected it to continue happily forever.
I believe people actually prefer not to know. I can recall several instances where a friend would say "I'd rather not hear about that" when I point out how their poultry is injected, processed, killed, packed and shipped. If people really did want to know they would realize that it's actually difficult to find out first hand, and then laws would have to be changed. And people might eat a lot less meat.
I do agree that people would like to believe their food is produced in a way that seems wholesome to them. The way they do that is by not asking questions. Even something as simple as orange juice isn't produced in the way that most people would expect and accept.
Well, people wanting to know is a fairly new thing, and I think quite a few people still prefer not to know. I reckon that most people who truly care how their food is produced don't allow their kids to eat school lunches.
That said, I agree--I'm not shedding any tears either. Personally, I care quite about how my food is produced, and as a result, essentially all of the meat my family consumes is sourced from producers with a great deal of transparency.
"I think parents did think that school hamburgers were of roughly the same quality that they'd get if they decided to make it at home."
If the beef they were buying for their home burgers was from Walmart (or any one of the many retailers selling pink slime beef), then the parents were correct to think the quality was the same.
As far as science proving things "safe and effective," this is a sliding scale, no? There have been plenty of things once declared safe and effective that ultimately were discovered to be not so safe and effective (particularly when the science comes from someone sympathetic to the cause).