In recent weeks, the first lady has been touring the country on campaign stops celebrating the two-year anniversary of the Let’s Move Campaign. She’s bragged about the Obama administration’s so-called victories over childhood obesity including making school lunches “healthy” (never mind that no one appears willing to eat these new lunches), strong-arming grocery stores to change the very recipes for their house-brand products (even though many of these “healthy” new recipes aren’t selling), and requiring restaurants to post calorie information on their menus (even though this information is largely ignored).
Congrats!
The administration has also done wonders for the child-parent relationship by managing to remove thousands of parents from the role of feeding their children by automatically enrolling low-income children in school-run feeding programs. And just yesterday, news broke of a perfect example of this creepy, big-brother overreach.
In North Carolina, a state lunch inspector (what’s that?) declared one elementary-school child’s home-packed lunch of a turkey-and-cheese sandwich, banana, chips, and apple juice to be in violation of — wait for it — government nutrition standards. So, what healthy item did they offer this young child in place of her mother’s lovingly packed lunch. I kid you not: chicken nuggets!
Oh . . . it hurts . . . can’t . . . stop . . . laughing.
The Obama administration should be proud. It’s worked so hard to discourage parents to pack their children lunches (why should parents when their children are automatically signed up for institutional food), that now it’s had to dispatch lunch-room commandants to discourage those parents still determined to do it the old-fashioned way: at home using a brown bag.
Doubters that this is a real problem take note: Inspection of kids’ sack lunches has been happening in England for years. If you think this is an exceptional case of one food inspector gone rogue, don’t be so confident.
We as a nation are ceding our responsibilities to care for our children every day. Even the most basic tasks — like packing simple lunches — are being turned over to our government overlords who know much better than we simple folks how best to feed our children.
It’s unsettling, and it must stop.
Did the "inspectors", by any chance, check the child's records for allergies or religious preferences?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOh, Good One!!! Wouldn't THAT have been something, if the kid 'reacted', and ended up in the hospital!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo what? Should non-allergic agnostics be forced to eat government food?
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse'Twas ever thus, and there are no easy answers. I cannot fault Michelle Obama for trying to raise awareness of the situation. (May she also, inadvertently, be raising awareness of the horror of lunch-bag police.)
I had occasion to read the School Food-service Journal in the early 1970s; it reported that students dump 90% of school lunches directly into the trash. As a substitute teacher in the 1980s, I observed this phenomenon as I helped stack trays at the pass-through where grade-school children brought their trays at the end of lunchtime. Carton upon carton of milk, unopened. (One teacher gathered them out of the trash barrels and took them home, noting that, once a child had taken one, the school could not sell/give it to another.)
I also remember when one of my young charges dropped his home-packed lunch on the way to the lunchroom, and the box opened as it fell, scattering a dozen cookies along with a half a sandwich and a plastic bag full of crackers.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePlease, please feel free to "fault Michelle Obama for trying to raise awareness of the situation." Our awareness is already raised enough, thank you, and "raising awareness" higher always creates more problems.
I worked at a senior center in California where I served government-sponsored lunches to seniors daily. When there was a serving or two left over, I took it home (I was earning minimum wage). An inspector caught me and told me that I MUST throw any leftover food away! So I pretended to throw it out and took it home anyway. Just the tip of the government waste iceberg.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWow.
I grew up taking my lunch.. and I survived.
The Fed needs to do what they do best: waste. And btw.. leave us alone. We will be just fine by ourselves.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is not new ... just more blatant and perhaps illegal. Around 2001, a lunch room Nazi refused to check out my daughter at the cash register until she put an apple on her tray. She refused to listen when my daughter insisted she wouldn't eat it and it would be wasted. So my daughter reluctantly took the apple, picked up her tray, and on the way to the table, turned around and flipped the apple into the lunch room Nazi's trashcan. She was not harassed again.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is the natural result of the Left's campaign to make us all property of the Government until It certifies that we are (at least on probation) competent to mind our own affairs once we reach legal age. Children belong to the State and their parents are obliged to nourish them in accordance with State guidelines or suffer the consequences.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAt that point there will be no legal age. We will be children forever.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is creepy in so many ways:
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1. That there is an "official" or "agent" who inspects lunches (wonder what that pays?)
2. The Fourth Admendment must not apply to lunch pails
3. That the official decided that a turkey sandwich (a sandwich considered healthy by 99.9% of all Americans) was less nutritious than a chicken nugget
4 Where on the chicken are the nuggests? I've never seen a chicken with nuggets and if I did I sure wouldn't eat it.
5. That no one in the education industry considers this unusual or intrusive.
6. Imagine the long term implications. If a kid grows up allowing the government to inspect his lunch paid; what will he allow the government to do when he is an adult ?
Time for us all to read or re-read Stanley Milgram's _Obedience to Authority_.
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Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseQ.4. Where on the chicken are the nuggests?
A. Chickens have two small, ovoid "nuggets" of meat on their lower back. They are generally overlooked, but quite tasty. I doubt very much if they were the inspiration for the modern food product bearing the same name though.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI wonder when they will start showing up at the residences of home-schoolers and checking what's on the stove. What about kids who go home for lunch? If I choose to pick my kids up and take them out to lunch is there an "approved dining list"?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI for one welcome our new lunch inspector overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a good citizen, I can be helpful in rounding up other nutritional deviants to eat their chicken nuggets.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI for one welcome our new lunch inspector overlords. I’d like to remind them that as a good citizen, I can be helpful in rounding up other nutritional deviants to eat their government-approved chicken nuggets.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe most troubling aspect of this to me is that nutritional "guidelines" for schools are being used as "authority" where none exists to impose those "guidelines" on individuals as if they were law.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is tyranny!
It takes a villiage - inspector.
Hey Look at that. My CAPTCHA is "tastes like chicken"
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe CAPTCHA's are annoying, but they sure can be pretty funny at times!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe mother packed a nutritious lunch she knew from experience here child would eat, and a government moron replaced it with a lunch she barely picked at. The child finished the day undernourished. These people must need a respirator to survive.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusethis gives more meaning to the term Soup Nazi
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