You may have read about this last week, but I can’t get it off my mind, so I thought I’d write about it and see what you all think.
In Hoke County, a preschool child had her home-prepared lunch taken away by a state worker who was inspecting all the lunches of the school children for healthfulness. The worker decided that the girl’s lunch, which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, a container of apple juice, and a small bag of chips did not meet state standards. She took the girl’s lunch away from her and replaced it with the lunch provided for that day by the school cafeteria. That lunch tray had chicken nuggets and corn, among other things. The girl ate three chicken nuggets and nothing else.
The mom indicated that her child eats vegetables at home while the mom watches, but that she had not put a vegetable in the lunch box because she knew her child would not eat it, according to an article in the Carolina Journal.
There are so many issues here that it is hard to know what to focus on. I’m all for the elimination of childhood obesity and for children to be eating healthy food, but when a lunch that a parent prepares is deemed not good enough and replaced by a meal that has fried nuggets in it – something is wrong here.
The article in the Carolina Journal also indicates that upon further investigation, the child’s lunch did in fact meet the USDA standards outlined for school aged children. A healthy lunch, according to our esteemed USDA should include one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables. The girl’s lunch apparently met that standard, even with the chips.
What saddens me is that this child is probably now confused. Who is right? Her mom or the school official? What message does this send to children and parents everywhere?
What are your thoughts on this? Is the right way to handle a child who has a relatively healthy lunch packed from home to not allow her to eat it and give her a less healthy meal? Diane
This is a terrible thing that have happened to this child. I also agree with the fact that the child is now for sure confused as to who is right – her mother or the school?
I thing I can’t understand though, is why the food was taken away from the child in the first place? I do get that there are standards to be met but what if that parents were poor and that they can’t afford her to buy school lunches and therefore packed her the school lunch?
That school official must be questioned.
I totally agree – it was sad for the child and upsetting for the mom. The financial aspect is concerning too – you are right. It is often cheaper for a parent to make a meal than purchase them.
This really surprises me, especially coming from the US. I guess you have food police in schools there. Why didn’t they just remove the chips? This doesn’t make sense.
It surprised me too. Although I guess it shouldn’t because it seems that the government here is treating Americans more and more like we are children who can’t run our own lives.
Oh my, I had not heard this and my initial reaction must’ve been similar to yours. Anger is the word that comes to mind. How I wish all parents cared enough to a) pack a lunch for their child at all, and b) pack one that is most definitely BETTER than anything that child would’ve gotten in the cafeteria that day.
I often question my own wisdom in this arena, but this is one prime example of why I no longer watch, read or listen to very much “news” at all. Yes, we need to practice awareness, but my goodness, some things are too upsetting to know especially if we are not in a position to affect change.
I wish all parents cared to. I know that some just don’t know what to pack, but I also know that there is a lot of guidance from many schools on what constitutes a healthy packed lunch. I just wish that the schools would take their own advice.
Well, I am all for educating people on healthy eating and such, but that is plain ridiculous. No one has got the right to take away a perfectly balanced meal and replace it with something fried. (I have heard lots of nasty stuff about US school lunches, by the way…) I mean, even if the meal had not been balanced, what if that was because of money issues? We all know how expensive it can be to eat well, and I know people who, at times, only survived on noodles, toast and ketchup.
It would be one thing to offer GOOD, HEALTHY FOOD for everybody at school, including vegetarian, gluten-free, lactose-free and possibly even fructose-free meals, halal and kosher meals. But of course that would be pretty expensive. It is, however, completely inacceptable to force parents to pack a certain “standard” lunch, regardless of what their kid will eat.
(Most kids eat fruit rather than vegetables, so why waste veggies? As long as the kid in question eats vegetables at home, everything should be fine.)
I agree – it is ridiculous. And you have heard truth about the school lunches in the US. I don’t know a single parent who thinks the school lunches are fabulous in their child’s school. I’m sure there are some – I just haven’t met them!
I think it’s crazy. I’m not sure how I would have reacted (well, in the comfort of my own home I may have a few choice words..). As a parent for 20 years now, we are having our first experience in the public school arena having homeschooled for 9 years and private school. *Personally* speaking, ridiculous situations like the one mentioned is reason 9,876 why I tried to avoid public school. I do not believe it’s their job to tell me what I can and cannot feed *my* child. I’m thankful that our local school district is very community oriented. I just can’t see that happening here.
Seems like the state worker was just ignorant of what is “healthy”. I appreciate that schools now are really trying to encourage a balanced lunch for children, but this was over the top in my opinion. It’s not like the kid went to school with fruit punch and Ding Dongs!
It isn’t their job – I agree. We as parents need to assert our rights to feed our children the foods that we know are healthy. Now many do need education, but such a strong reaction from the school officials doesn’t do a think toward making the parent-school relationship better. I hope that your child’s experience with school is going well.
The issue is that children are in a government schools and the government continues to increase its reach into our personal lives.
My children eat well at home but I pack a sandwich, chips, and juice for lunch because they will eat it. Our teachers say, “Pack a lunch your child will eat and not what you think we would approve of because a hungry child is hard to teach.”
That is a much more sensible thing for the teachers to advocate!
I agree too Barbara and Taryl. Much more sensible and affirming to the child as well.
I heard that it was a misunderstanding with the girl.. that all she needed was milk & the rest of the lunch was fine but the girl thought she had to take the school lunch & not just milk. Hard to say what really happened but her lunch was fine & just adding the milk would be an OK thing to say… the school lunch was horrible! That is what we have to change!
I’m baffled at this. I can’t seem to see what is wrong with the packed lunch that made it so offensive? Was it not unhealthy enough? lol….I mean coming from the school system that counts ketchup and pizza as a vegetable I’m just not sure they should be the ones pointing the fingers. School lunches are well known to be completely unhealthy. It kind of amazes me that they are going around inspecting kids lunches. Weird! I can understand being concerned over a child that brings NO lunch but a turkey sandwich,banana, apple juice and a bag of chips. I think the lunch minus the bag chips would have been better. I suppose they really would have freaked out then!
It is ironic that the school system, which has long been known to have less than healthy or tasty foods, is sitting in judgement of a lunch packed by a child. They would have freaked out if the chips were gone!
This is the most bizarre thing I have heard in a long time, and I live in Belgium, where we have some pretty bizarre things that go on (like no government for over 500 days)! My first reaction is disbelief, and then I wondered, what if this child had an allergy and the school lunch contained something she was allergic to? This could have had a deadly outcome. I think it is completely unacceptable that a school would do something like this, without parental consent or knowledge.
Good point about the child having a potential allergy – I hadn’t even thought about that. It was completely unacceptable to me too. I think the school system owes the mom an apology.
This makes me so angry I would burst. If someone took away the lunch I made for my child and instead gave her a state-supplied meal without talking to me first – I would have torn that worker a new place in which to store her paperwork.
Granted, many parents do not know what is healthy and do not provide a healthy lunch. TALK to the parents. DO not mandate state food is better and insist on it.
I have to wonder what the mental, emotional and physical condition is of this worker. I say that because my husband works with social workers, guardians, counselors, and investigators that he wouldn’t trust to water his plants, let alone decide something for the welfare of a child.
I would burst too. I can’t even imagine how mad I would have been. I haven’t read a lot of information about the social worker’s background, but she was clearly either uninformed on the actual policies or overly enthusiastic.
I am absolutely amazed by this story on so many levels. What if the child’s parents packed her lunch because she was extremely allergic to common allergens and had to make sure she ate a very controlled meal? Or what if she were gluten intolerant, or vegan, or any number of things that it is the parent’s duty to monitor, not the school’s.
I truly don’t know how I would respond if I was the parent in this situation. I do feel like we are too lawsuit-happy in this country as it is, but I would definitely demand a reassurance that it wouldn’t happen again, along with a sincere apology.
I would want a reassurance too, and an apology.
I saw this at the bottom of your post last week and I am seriously outraged (doesn’t happen often). It’s common sense to know that what that mother packed was a good lunch, how dare they tell her otherwise.
My sister who is an R.D. and I talk about the flawed school luch system. She worked in the schools for a while and was saddened to see what did and did not meet the standards, it doesn’t make sense sometimes.
I think stepping in if a child brought soda, chips and candy would be appropriate, but not in this case. They owe her a huge apology.
They do own her a huge apology. You are right – it’s not as though the child had a cookie and a Coke. Her mom had clearly packed a lunch she knew her daughter would like and eat.
Yikes! I had not heard about that. I shudder when I think about what my boys ate for school lunches and even packed from home.
Ha! Since we homeschool, we haven’t had to pack the lunches. But I can imagine what my child’s lunches would have looked like when I was overweight and honestly didn’t know a lot about healthy eating. I might have put a cookie or two in there.
Everyone makes good points…and here’s another one: making food “good” and “bad” is what sets kids up to have issues. Teaching moderation (sure, have a few chips) is the key. As someone else pointed out, we probably didn’t the whole, real story. Too often the press sensationalizes, overreaches, leaves pertinent facts out, etc.
I agree. We teach moderation in our family. No foods are off limits but not all foods are available at all times.
I do not think the schools have a right to monitor what the students eat. Offering a healthier school lunch is fine, but if a child’s parents want to prepare their child’s lunch the school should not have the right to interfere with what that lunch contains.
If a school sees an obese child eating a lunch full of junk on a regular basis and is truly worried about the health of the child, then there are proper ways to go about contacting the parents and expressing a concern. However, this should be taken up with the parents and not the child.
There have got to be ways to address individual children when needed without taking their food away, embarrassing the child, and making the parent feel inferior. I too agree that schools should not have the right to dictate what kids eat. Most parents want their kids to eat healthy and are active participants in that.
I hadn’t read this, but how sad. Poor kid….
It was sad Roz – I agree.
The act was kind of cruel. School officers should be very wary about their food policies because it may bring psychological trauma to the child. Was the school punished because of negligence? I hope so.
-Evelyn
I don’t think they were punished at this point, but I feel certain that at some point there will be some legal action. This is litigious American after all.
No, you may not have a banana and a turkey sandwich. Here’s some garbage instead. o_O
Exactly.
I heard about this story and was horrified! Lunches from home are NOT the culprits – it’s what the schools are feeding the kids! How does the school have a right to pick over a lunch brought from home anyway? My mom works in a public school, so I see first hand what kinds of lunches these kids are being served by the school and it’s just not acceptable. I don’t understand why they aren’t fixing the real problem. Obviously a healthy lunch from home is always going to be better than fried foods from the cafeteria – why isn’t the government being blamed (for allowing awful food to be served) instead of the parents (who, in this case, are providing a much healthier option)?
Great point that lunches from home are not the culprit for the childhood obesity problem that we have here in America. The school food is notoriously bad – unhealthy, not tasty, and sometimes inedible.
I wonder if we have the whole story. I worked as a school social worker for many years, and there is no way that anyone would be so presumptious as to replace a lunch from home with a school lunch. And I have to say, I have seen some pretty outrageous lunches from home. For example, one child consistently brought gummi bears, Cheetos, and cookies, along with a box of Hi-C juice. His parent said that he ate the same type of food at home for his other meals. She had quit fighting with him about his food. The point is that no school personnel would or could exchange the lunch, even if it had no nutritional content.. If this is a true story, as reported, then that school has a big problem!!
The lunch from home sounds reasonable to me.
It is true from everything I’ve read. A follow-up showed that the state has regulations in place that require that children’s lunches meet certain standards. In this case, it was shown later that the child’s lunch in fact did meet requirements. Very sad.
I am horrified. It sounds far, far off .. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with her packed lunch!
I was horrified too Maren.
I think that no governing agency has any right or purpose to judge the parenting process. This sickens me beyond sick. As a (true) Libertarian, I am disgusted with the idea that any government agency will inspect a child’s lunch. I think children should eat healthy of course. Childhood obesity rates haunt me. But these are the same people who want to control sugar as they control alcohol. Wrong. Society is going to follow it’s own direction. The last thing we need are bureaucratic hypocrites doing one thing and telling us to do another. America is almost over.
Me too – I know I wouldn’t want anyone pawing through my child’s lunch. Children do need to eat healthy, but the school lunches are so full of fat, sodium, and far from “natural” foods that it sickens me.
That’s wrong on so many levels. For one thing, I think it was governmental interference with a parent’s say in raising (in this case feeding) a child. For another, if the object was to teach this preschooler, the better way would be to develop age appropriate lessons on nutrition and to get the parents on board with the plan. Who is to say that over the day, the child’s nutrition wasn’t spot on perfect? How do they know that the pre-schooler didn’t OD on broccoli at dinner as my 2 yr old grandson is liable to do? t don’t think you can or should judge the quality of a child’s nutrition by looking at just one meal. Hoping this is something that was blown out of proportion in the reporting and/or that the lunch snatcher was able to re-think that particular tactic for ensuring healthy eating in schools.
They don’t have the whole nutritional picture of that child – you are right. I don’t think you can just look at one lunch or dinner in isolation and make a total judgement. After all, we eat all day long. We might miss a vegetable at lunch and make up for it later.
I have been disgusted with school cafeteria options for years, as a students and now as an onlooker. In elementary school, I remember chicken nuggets and weird tasty pizza as the options almost everyday. The times vegetables and fruit were offered they were not appetizing in appearance, being overcooked, mushy, or drowned in sugary syrup. Middle school was similar, except now it included 3 special lines where students could buy any number of slices of DELIVERY PIZZA that was brought to the school every morning. Fresh baked chocolate chip cookies (from pre-made frozen cookie dough) could be bought in any quantity. Luckily, in high school the culinary department hosted a daily restaurant for students and faculty that served freshly made, healthy food, including salads and wraps, that were much preferable to the cafeteria food that echoed the same options from lower grades. That is, UNTIL THE SCHOOL BOARD SHUT THE PROGRAM DOWN!
This was dispicable to me! They shut the program down, not for health or safety reason, but because it was cutting into their profits. They did not make any improvements to the health or quality of the food they gave us. They simply took away the healthy options.
This case sounds so sketchy to me. Who in their right mind, would consider the school lunch the better option? As a few commenters have said above, there must be something missing from the story. I would be livid if I was the mother in this situation!
I have the same memories. And I have friend’s whose kids can also choose from fast food meals as an option to school food. I think to myself, “Really?” I would love to see schools get involved with local farmer’s and local food growers to incorporate healthy, fresh food into the children’s meals.
As a teacher I agree with the mom. She has given her child a great lunch and I agree give kids what they will eat when it is healthy. Like a sandwich and a banana.
Good to hear from a teacher who has real life experience. Thanks Liz!
This is one of the big reasons we homeschool – we don’t want the state or their employees undermining our parenting and confusing our kids. The story infuriated me, but it didn’t shock me. When we give others outside the home responsibility for the care of ourselves or our children, we give them control over our lives. No thank you!
And corn is NOT a vegetable! It is a GRAIN. They can’t even get that much right but expect us to abide by their food pyramid/plate recommendations? puhLEEZE!
Corn is not a vegetable and neither are those big huge green peas! I remember those a lot from when I was in school. I am a big advocate of parental rights, and this story was just stamping all over those rights.