[anthony60]

Preschooler's Homemade Lunch Taken Away Because It Wasn't Healthy Enough

After determining that a preschooler's homemade lunch was not healthy enough, a state worker required her to purchase a meal from the school cafeteria. The result was that instead of eating a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice, the student ate three chicken nuggets for lunch. According to the Carolina Journal, the state employee (who inspects each students lunch box) determined that the meal packed from home did not meet USDA nutrition standards. The girl's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

Is this freedom?

[anthony60]

Preschooler's Homemade Lunch Taken Away Because It Wasn't Healthy Enough

After determining that a preschooler's homemade lunch was not healthy enough, a state worker required her to purchase a meal from the school cafeteria. The result was that instead of eating a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice, the student ate three chicken nuggets for lunch. According to the Carolina Journal, the state employee (who inspects each students lunch box) determined that the meal packed from home did not meet USDA nutrition standards. The girl's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.

Is this freedom?

[laura80l]

No.... It's nuts!!!!

[nivri_bug]

They decided three chicken nuggets were better than a whole wheat ham/cheese, banana, chips and apple juice. Hope they also cut all chips, junk food, processed food, etc from being covered by food stamps. I would be livid! I send my child a cookie, along with the salad he loves, apples, peanut butter, whatever, all organic, whole wheat, etc.

[jabberwocka]

It's over the top, certainly.  But the story extract as posted in the OP didn't include all the facts (no surprise given the source) so here's a link which tells the story more fully and includes the detail (left so conveniently out of the conservative sites looking for hype) that the child ate the chicken nuggets and "everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste."  http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/homemade-lunch-replaced-with-cafeteria-nuggets.html

Context matters tremendously.  One can paint a totally misleading picture by choosing to omit certain details. 

[cmkellie]

I have so many mixed feelings about this story - which is probably why I'm a horrible debater!

I don't really think the lunch was that bad. I wouldn't personally send chips to school with my child, but we rarely have them at home either...maybe three times a year. I also send water in their lunches and encourage them to eat fruit instead of drinking juice that can be so high in sugar. But we also don't know what exactly she sent - it could have been baked, organic chips and natural juice. The fact is that she had a pretty well-balanced lunch and I'm shocked that the school decided to take that action. 

The more I thought about it though, the more I wondered this: How can we as parents and concerned citizens tell the schools what to feed our kids and not follow that ourselves? Is that fair? We've called for new and better standards for school lunches, yet we still want to be able to send whatever we want to school when we're packing it at home? As long as the cafeteria is giving everyone else's kids the right thing, it's okay for me to send anything?

DH sees his students bringing in bags of cheetos and soda or gatorade every day as "lunch." That is a completely unacceptable lunch, IMO, and the parents should be ashamed for letting their kids eat that. But where is the line drawn? Can you say "You can't bring that for lunch." without telling the other mom that her chips and apple juice were not adequate too?