I vividly remember lunchtime in elementary school. We lined up in the cafeteria and waited for the lunch ladies to open up the enclosed kitchen. As soon as they pushed back the collapsable doors, a wave of warm bleach and dirty soap water washed over our little faces. At the front of the line was a large heated cabinet full of smelly, wet trays. Above the entryway was a glossy “Got Milk?” poster which would be swapped out with a new one every few weeks.
The milk mustache grossed me out. The adult strangers with white stains above their mouth made my skin crawl. Despite my distaste for it, I learned to enjoy guessing when they’d change the posters to a new set of jerks.
It’s the first piece of propaganda I remember hating with my friends. So, I kinda have a special place in my heart for it. Regardless, the posters had a greater function than just entertaining us. They judgmentally foreshadowed our lunch line journey. Milk was the first item we had to put on our trays. When we reached the register, we better have gotten milk or else we couldn’t purchase the rest of our food. Some tried to haggle by getting water instead, but there was no way out. Water cost extra, since it was not built into the meal plan. Plus, we still had to grab milk. Even feigning lactose intolerance failed. This initially puzzled my friends and I, but we eventually realized what this was really about—profit and control.
Looking back, I am grateful that it was milk which was absurdly forced down our throats. Welsh children in eco-possessed public schools are not so lucky, as bug protein is being served in some of their cafeterias.
A brief scroll through the internet will assure you, the children enjoy eating bugs. Though, it doesn’t matter what the kids really think. What matters is optics.
The Welsh government and Innovative UK awarded a research grant to Bug Farm Foods (a bug protein retailer) through the Small Business Research Initiative to experiment on children’s diets. To be completely transparent, it does not seem like the bug campaign has fully taken hold in Wales or Western Society just yet. Currently, four Welsh public school cafeterias have been selected for this. Upwards of 200 Welsh public schools may have experimented with feeding insects to children over the past decade. Further digging shows that this experiment has been off and on with research conducted by Cardiff University and the University of the West of England. Dr. Christopher Bear, a department director for Cardiff, claims that this plan hasn’t officially rolled out yet. Other spokesmen for the universities hope that the trial will begin in Spring of 2023.
I can’t help but wonder if Mr. Prince of Wales himself is a fan of this scheme. You can’t find much connecting him to it. His ideals just align so well with brainwashing peasant Welsh kids into eating bugs. At least his grandson isn’t a hypocrite. Georgie supposedly ate an ant to impress Bear Grylls. Grylls called him a “little hero” for it. God only knows why the royals are promoting that story.