Is there anything the nanny state can't do?
Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”
State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food insteadIt's touching how much the USDA and the HHS really care about our children. What would we do without them intruding into our family lives, policing our meals, and forcing inferior substitutions on our little ones?
RAEFORD — A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
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.
The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
“I don't feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.
The girl’s grandmother, who sometimes helps pack her lunch, told Carolina Journal that she is a petite, picky 4-year-old who eats white whole wheat bread and is not big on vegetables.
“What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,” the girl’s mother told CJ. “I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.”
When the girl came home with her lunch untouched, her mother wanted to know what she ate instead. Three chicken nuggets, the girl answered. Everything else on her cafeteria tray went to waste.
“She came home with her whole sandwich I had packed, because she chose to eat the nuggets on the lunch tray, because they put it in front of her,” her mother said. “You’re telling a 4-year-old. ‘oh. you’re lunch isn’t right,’ and she’s thinking there’s something wrong with her food.”
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See also: Hyacinth Girl's post: You're not my supervisor
This story strikes a little too close to home at the Hyacinth household, as I recently received a weekly update from the little Bluebell’s new teacher at her publicly funded charter school, reminding parents to pack healthy snacks and informing us that anything deemed unhealthy by the teacher will be confiscated and discarded.RTR.
Needless to say, I did not take this news gracefully.
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Linked by Larwyn, IOTW, and Michelle Malkin. Thanks!
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I am so angry about this I cannot even discuss it coherently.
ReplyDeleteSo, I'll note a side issue, just for laughs:
While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem.
“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.
There are no clear restrictions about what additional items — like potato chips — can be included in preschoolers’ lunch boxes.
(My emphasis.)
So, another area of private life that the government decided to put itself in charge of, spawning yet another horde of "inspectors" who can "interpret" any guideline or rule to satisfy their own neuroses and/or hidden agendas.
And another thing! ;) I'd love to see a nutritional analysis of the "nuggets" that the State is teaching our children are a healthful protein. How much salt? How much fat? How much refined white flour in the coating? And what part(s) of the chicken?
Crunchy, salty... I bet that's how they got 'em to eat Soylent Green.
(Cross-posted at The Hyacinth Girl)
@HG -- I looked it up. "Chicken" nuggets are almost the perfect junk food. About 60% of the calories in the average nugget come from fat. They contain protein (supposedly), but almost 0 fiber, vitamins, or minerals (except iron) and a mere 2% (!) of that little girl's daily calcium requirement. Mothers don't even want to think about the additives in them.
ReplyDeleteSoylent Green indeed.
I don't need to tell you that the sandwich, banana, and juice were loaded with protein, calcium, Vitamin C, phosphorus, and tons of trace minerals, just for starters.
It is so past time to throw the bums out.
QR - No, time to apply some basic ingredients:
DeleteRope. Lamp post. Liberal. Some assy required.
How putrid and distorted. I've witnessed the massive waste in public school cafeterias and my heart cried out for all the children in the world who go without anything for lunch. There is no genuine reverence for food in our culture, and the more humble a food is, the more it is despised and disdained. Oh, there is worship of food, to be sure--witness on one end of the spectrum the Baconater and the Big Gulp, while on the other end are the altars to pesto and prociutto. Sigh!
ReplyDeleteIn India, poor children pick up banana peels and with their teeth scrape off the mealy stuff that clings to the peel and eat it. That might be lunch! I've seen street urchins there swarm first class once the train pulls into the station and suck up the last drops of juice left in juiceboxes left in the front-of-seat pouch compartment.
So a turkey sandwich with cheese doesn't pass muster? We are a society in deep, deep decline.
Where are the parents in this district? They get away with it only because the parents allow it.
ReplyDeleteSTAND UP FOR YOUR RIGHTS, BEFORE YOU HAVE NONE LEFT!!!!
The thing that bothers me most about this is what is not being discussed. Why on earth did parents ever allow the right to choose how to feed their own children to be given away? When the first ruling was decreed that someone would decide if a child's lunch, packed by a parent, was acceptable or not, where was the outrage? Mostly I see ire over the fact that some incompetent felt chicken nuggets, those lovely, overly-processed pseudo-food items, were more acceptable over a sandwich rather than directing the ire where it rightly belongs. That is, on the fact that the government knows better than parents how to raise our children. Bah!
ReplyDeleteIt smells like lawsuit bait to me. None of the state's damn business. The "nutritional guidelines" are pure bullshit, unbacked by science. It is my right as a parent to provide what I think is a healthy lunch for my child, even if that happens to be, say, a vegan meal (to take one extreme) or a paleo meal (to take a different one).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the shout out, Pundette. You're the best.
ReplyDeleteAs Cathy has already noted, it is hard to discuss this without a significant spike in my blood pressure. This isn't about the health of our kids, it's about control.
We've got to correct course. Now.
Curry7 makes a great point. The parents in that school district abrogated their rights by not dong something to stop this insanity before it even started.
ReplyDeleteI don't really mean that parents can't do anything but as far as the school district is concerned they seem to have at least taken the silence is consent approach and since parents did not blow a gasket when this was discussed,they have the upper hand.
Of course this whole thing could have slipped by them under the cover of darkness so to speak but still, parents should band together and protest this in some fashion.
Most of these parents went through government schools. They were taught the government is always all-knowing and has the best interest of them in mind. Why would they have fought the school district when the policy was implemented?
ReplyDelete@ thecurryseven
ReplyDelete... the ire where it rightly belongs. That is, on the fact that the government knows better than parents how to raise our children.
You are 110% right, of course. The side issues about potential abuses and obvious ineptitude are simply safety valves to keep my head from exploding.
I don't have children, and am woefully uninformed regarding dietary requirements for the lunches consumed on school property (so far) where I live (Virginia), but I need to find out.
There are already safeguards in place for children who seem routinely undernourished. The government deciding it can open a child's lunch and determine whether or not that is what the child should eat is preposterous. And yet, at least in California, that is what has been allowed to happen.
But this is far more significant than simply the intrusion into a family's food choices, and the audacity of dopes to presume they know better than the parents what their children should, or would be willing to, eat during the day. This is the government, in the sheep's clothing of The Grown-ups at School, undermining ( at a new record low age) the child's confidence in the parent's knowledge, interest, and ability, to do what is best for him. If Mom and Dad don't even know what healthy food is, how can they possibly be authorities on anything else? There's no need to wait for the natural pulling away of adolescence to make children question, or dismiss outright, any of the lessons that should be learned in the home. And no better time to cause a child to doubt his parent's love and concern for him.
Far worse than teaching 4-year-olds that "nuggets" are a good source of nutrition, is teaching 4-year-olds that The Government is a good source for guidance on what ought to be personal decisions.
WRONG: And yet, at least in California, that is what has been allowed to happen.
DeleteOh! My bad! The article is out of North Carolina, NOT California. (Talk about putting the ire where it rightly belongs!) Apparently, in CA, they just confiscate whatever they deem unhealthy. (see The Hyacinth Girl)
Coming to a Socialist country near you:
ReplyDelete1. All public school students have to eat the school provided lunch
2. All public school kids have to arrive early for the mandatory public school breakfast as well
3. Home schooling is banned, because the govt can't ensure "proper exercise and nutrition" for home schoolers. Of course no mention that the govt considers processed chicken nuggets to be nutritious, and that public schools are the ones who all but ended recreational and exercise time during school.
4. One child policy: since the government will be paying for your insurance, and kids raise the cost of insurance, the state will have a legal interest in limiting children. Of course they won't really limit them; you'll just get hit with a fee you can't afford.
Ok, let me take a stab at this. (using a spork, of course)
ReplyDeleteSuppose the school took away this lunch and gave the 4-year old chicken nuggets, which (in this hypothetical) she was alergic to, and had an episode because of it. Would the school wind up in the situation of saying in effect "Here is the body of your child, but don't worry, she died eating a nice healthy chicken piece instead of that poison you packed in her lunch."
You have to have a medical excuse to bring a lunch from home in Chicago. http://www.punditandpundette.com/2011/12/school-lunch-racket.html
ReplyDeleteI don't know why that comment is spaced like that. ?
ReplyDelete