New School Lunch Program

[nbcrusader]

Official wants coca fed to school children

LA PAZ, Bolivia (Reuters) - Bolivia's foreign minister says coca leaves, the raw material for cocaine, are so nutritious they should be included on school breakfast menus.

"Coca has more calcium than milk. It should be part of the school breakfast," Foreign Minister David Choquehuanca was quoted as saying in Friday's edition of La Razon.

The new leftist government of Evo Morales, Bolivia's first indigenous president, has vowed to promote the legal uses of coca, the plant used to make cocaine, which is revered in Andean culture and is commonly chewed or made into tea.

Morales, himself a former coca farmer, has pledged to fight the drugs trade but at the same time protect the cultivation of coca in Bolivia -- the world's third-biggest cocaine producer after Colombia and Peru.

A coca leaf weighing 100 grams contains 18.9 calories of protein, 45.8 mg of iron, 1540 mg of calcium and vitamins A, B1, B2, E and C, which is more than most nuts, according to a 1975 study by a group of Harvard University professors.

Will this make the students hyper or will they be really mellow?

 

[verte76]

It will probably energize them. Will it get them high? I doubt it, I don't think a coca leaf has that much of the drug in them.

 

[nbcrusader]

Just enough to "keep them going"??

 

[the rockin edge]

I don't think a coca leaf has that much of the drug in them.

probably similar to eating something like a poppyseed muffin?

 

[melon]

They should grow good old American "Jesus plants" instead (tobacco). Coca plants? Savages! They're going to destroy America! Let's destroy..."liberate" them first!



Melon

 

[martha]

Will this make the students hyper or will they be really mellow?

I don't know, but their stomachs will sure be settled!

When I was in Peru 20 years ago, I drank coca leaf tea to help with my incredibly upset stomach. (The water at the Lima Hilton was fine; I think what got me, and then kept me for the rest of the two weeks, was the water in Nazca. I really only brushed my teeth with it, I swear!) I managed to bring some dried coca leaves back home with me (Don't ask me how; I don't know how they got through the dogs.), and I lived on that and Pepto for a week or two here until my stomach recovered. I was, however, able to fit into much smaller pants after that.