The USDA is issuing edicts that result in at least one local school inspecting and summarily rejecting a perfectly fine home packed lunch.
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.
Not your job, USDA or HHS. Now shut up and leave people alone. HHS in particular needs a whip cracked to it.
When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
They only know if the lunch meets the guidelines — aka mandates — if they personally inspect each individual lunch. That’s on the state of North Carolina for passing a regulation that has set off schools inspecting home packed lunches.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation —
Fear is the jackboot government’s ally. Here, it’s fear that the local elementary school will retaliate against a four-year-old or her mother if she objects to an obviously insane policy. Land of the free?
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.
It’s nice to know that life in America is so perfect that we can afford to pay government agents to rip turkey sandwiches out of four-year-old mouths.
Seriously, did no one in the school stop to think that inspecting kids’ home packed lunches, and essentially telling the kid that her mother is incompetent to pack a lunch, was just wrong? That this was something they ought not do?
This line in the story is touching, in the same manner of the TSA:
There are no clear restrictions about what additional items — like potato chips — can be included in preschoolers’ lunch boxes.
Restrictions. In kids’ school lunches. Land of the free?
Apologies won’t do here. Firings have to happen. Start with the school’s idiot principal, who probably makes six figures for being a useless tool of the state, and fire everyone down the line who had anything to do with this. A message has to be sent that free people won’t take this petty thuggery anymore.
Absolutely disgusting!! Were I the parent of the child, I would have sued as far up the chain of command as I could because of a massive violation of RIGHTS. Next time they want to inspect a kid’s lunch they should show the kid their SEARCH AND SEIZURE warrant, granted from a court on the suspicion of whatever bologna (pardon the pun) they can come up with.
They don’t have the means to affect the rate of salmonella infection in our food chain, and yet they have the resources to pry into kindergartener’s lunches.
I wouldn’t close them down, I would instruct them to do the jobs they have.
Chicken nuggets are more nutritious than a turkey and cheeze and sandwich? Oh, please. That school’s officials need a nutrition course. Processed food is NOT as good as what a mother would make in a turkey sandwich. These officals are teaching these kids that their parents don’t know how to make lunches too… and that the processed food was something they should eat.”
If I were a parent and this happened to my child, I would be hopping mad.
The whole shebang stinks to high heaven.
On the face of it, the mother not only complied but exceeded the standard:
One serving of meat = turkey (check)
One serving of milk = cheese (check)
One serving of grain = bread (check)
Two servings of fruit/vegetables = banana, apple juice, potato chips (check, check, check)
Perhaps the official Lunch Box Inspector didn’t approve the mother’s brand choices?
Yes, every single person involved in this needs to be fired.
It gets worse, Bryan.
According to The Atlantic just last November, the USDA was going to classify the tomato paste used on a pizza as a “vegetable.”
The Atlantic flashes back to an earlier school lunch brouhaha:
Remember the sturm und drang over that one?
I guess it’s different when an Obama is in the Oval Office than when a Reagan was.
Actually, I don’t have a problem with counting tomato sauce as a vegetable — that’s what it IS, after all.
And given the amount of ketchup some kids use…
My point was the difference in reaction amongst the chattering classes between when Reagan’s USDA tried it and when Obama’s USDA is trying it.
Dear Republican Party,
You want an issue to run on? Here’s a good one for you, on a silver platter.
Hugs and Kisses,
Frank.
P.S. Didja ever notice how “it takes a village” always seems to involve bureaucrats lightening people’s wallets?
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Dear Kids,
When things got particularly oppressive where I went to school, we used to take our lunches and toss them around the cafeteria. Gosh, dont you just know it made one hell of a mess. It was called a “Food Fight”. I think of it as a a little exercise in civil disobedience.
If that doesnt work, have everyone in school request the kosher meal for school lunch. Stand back as your principals head is likely to explode when you do. If that doesnt work, have your parents send in a stack of excuse slips for various food allergies. Have them vary the allergies on a weekly basis.
Go ahead and try it kids. Its fuuuuuun!
And we’re still calling our national condition a ‘soft tyranny’? When government rifles through your child’s lunch and then confiscates it in lieu of government approved victuals, something arguably less healthy but government approved, this tyranny is no longer ‘soft’.
First they came for the peanut butter and I said nothing because I don’t eat peanut butter….
We, the people, are under a multi-front assault from our government.
I would merely take any measures necessary to home school at this point.
And fight this tyranny hammer and tong.
38 weeks until the election. Are you doing all you can to defeat the statists? What will it take to motivate you?
Yes.
That’s why I accepted Bryan’s invitation.
I’m disabled, I can’t fight on the front lines, but I can make sure valuable information gets out.
And the result of all of this is that a little girl not only didn’t get a nutritious meal, she didn’t really get a meal at all. She probably spent the rest of the afternoon hungry. Inexcusable.
If we can’t eliminate the serious parts of government control, then we must allow or even encourage the mindless intrusions into personal life.
Students will not rebel against Social Security and Medicaid, or all of the other hidden controls on their lives. The intrusions into daily life will be the things that put rebellion against the nanny state into the hearts of the children.
“Tuesday is Soylent Yellow day! Yum!”
There are more reasons than I knew to homeschool …
I guess since as adults we are not going to develop the backbone to say ‘nope’, then maybe we need to train up our kids, something like ….Miss Jones, you touch my sandwich and I’m gonna stick this carrot up your nose’….
http://www.ushistory.org/declaration/document/
_Declaration of Independence_:
“… The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
… He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.”
Good one, Tom.
I cannot wait to hear the excuses that will issue forth when this happens to a child with a food alergy and a disaster occurs.
Of cours the Mother’s lunch will be deemed inadequate, but they will immediatly impune the Mother for NOT providing proper warning to authorities regarding the child’s particular alergy (which of cours would have presented no problem at all if the school had remained out of the personal business of the family and focused on teaching, which is their job.)
You know this is coming.