Tag Archives: Nutrition

Welcome to the Nanny State…School Lunch Inspections?

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Remember the days when you could take a Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwich, along with a snack bag of Doritos and a Twinkie to school for lunch. Well, those days are gone like the wind.

Welcome to the Nanny State, where state officials can take your lunch and replace it with what they feel is the healthier option. Recently, a student at West Hoke Elementary School in North Carolina had her lunch removed, because a government inspector thought her lunch was not healthy enough.

According to the John W. Pope Civitas Foundation, the student brought a lunch packed by her mother, which contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice, and a snack bag of potato chips.

What is so unhealthy (maybe with the exception of potato chips) about the rest of the student’s lunch? The real question that should be brought up: Whatever happened to parental rights? Is it not the right of the parents to pack a lunch that best fits the nutritional needs of their children, without government intervention?

So, what did the government give the child in return for the so-called unhealthy lunch? Chicken Nuggets. They are supposedly healthier than a turkey and cheese sandwich, apple juice, and a banana. I wonder where the government official and school system took their nutritional courses.

Welcome to the Nanny State…where parental rights are assaulted every day and a freedom destroyed.

Packing Your Child's Lunch…think again

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Would you want a school principal to determine which lunch option is better for your child? Just think about it for a second. You are the parent, and you prepare food for your child on a daily basis, meals that are nutritious for the most part. You send your child to school with a packed lunch, only for a school administrator to make the child throw the lunch away for one that is made by the school.

This situation is one that many parents are facing in Chicago, Ill., as schools are forcing children to eat their lunches. These lunches are often unappealing, as the Chicago Tribune points out, but this is not the point I am trying to get to here. A school administrator actually thinks that she can determine what is better in terms of nutrition for children, not their parents. Many school lunches are loaded with preservatives and sodium, which does not bode well for nutritional quality. The other point that is often ignored is how much will the school cafeteria benefit from such a decision. In Chicago, the company that services school lunches will receive financial benefit from such a decision and create a monopoly of sorts.

While you may or may not disagree with the decision in Chicago, this should pose a question: How would you feel if you were told how to raise your child? It is not the responsibility of the government or the school system. It is the parent’s responsibility on how they raise and feed their child.

Cross posted at Bearing Drift