After you read the following news article I would love to hear your opinion on it. My kids are all to young to be in school, but in the future if I ever receive a note saying I am not a “good dad” because I did not provide a certain food that the state wanted me to, my blood pressure will shoot through the roof.
Chicken nuggets, really? That is the missing ingredient in a healthy lunch?
I understand the point of providing a healthy lunch and if they want to regualte what goes on the tray they are preparing then I guess go for it. But, if I am sending my child to school with a lunch prepared at home, it is probably because that is what I want my child eating. Duh!
Maybe I don’t want my kids having access to processed nuggets. Do the state agents even care about that?
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A Hoke County preschooler was fed chicken nuggets for lunch because a state worker felt that her homemade lunch did not have enough nutritional value, according to a report by the Carolina Journal.
The West Hoke Elementary School student was in her More at Four classroom when a state agent who was inspecting lunch boxes decided that her packed lunch — which consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips — “did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines,” the Journal reports.
The decision was made under consideration of a regulation put in place by the the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services, which requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs to meet USDA guidelines.
“When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones,” the Journal reports.
The student’s mother told the Journal she received a note from the school about the incident and was charged $1.25 for the cafeteria tray, from which her daughter only ate three chicken nuggets.
The note explained how students who did not bring “healthy lunches” would be offered the missing portions and that parents could be charged for the cost of the cafeteria food, the Journal reports.
The mother, who was not identified in the report, expressed concern about school officials telling her daughter that she wasn’t “packing her lunch box properly.”
article and photo via Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced With Nuggets | Fox News.
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How does this article make you feel? Do you want total control of what your kids eat, or do you think the government should play a role?
Is this even legal? What if the child had an allergy, or needed something specific in that homemade meal? It’s absolutely shocking that this can even happen! And, what was wrong with the lunch in the first place? Horrible.
Thanks for the post!!!
Yeah. It’s not like the child had a bag of chocolate. Turkey, banana, not that horrible.
This is just going too far! If this were my child, I’d raise the roof!
I would be furious if someone accused me of not knowing what is best for my child to eat. I would be even more furious that they insisted she ate fried, processed, hormone-induced chicken nuggets (and assuming that is better than what I sent).
The other factor is allergies that children suffer from, many times without even knowing it.
This is a great post and really struck a nerve with what is quite possible in the society we live in. Homeschooling looks more appealing every day!
Thanks for this important post. I ran a healthy school lunch program for 5 Boulder County schools and it is amazing how the state and federal regulations at the time dictated how i was to prepare the lunches. Most of the recipes contained large amounts of sugar, salt and hydrogentated oils. I decided to provide free lunches to the free and reduced students and not take federal funds in order to prepare healthy meals instead of the federally regulated meals. This is all changing due to hard work from such people as Ann Cooper, Alice Waters and Jamie Oliver. Not to mention our lovely first lady! I still work with schools but at an outdoor education center and am surprised at what the free lunches look like that children bring up. Not enough food to get them through the day and all of it carb loaded and salt loaded. Things are much better but need serious improvement.
I too have see this news story & am totally appalled! Just do a simple search online about the contents of those “Chicken Nuggets ” and you will find way more than you bargined for and an accurate representation of the ingredients would reveal meat being washed by various chemicals & it you really want to call it meat in the first place.(Most Chicken nuggets are barely meat but rather, beaks & other parts from the chicken that used to be disposed of). Even if the turkey was processed, it did not contain the breading with all the added high fructose corn syrup & other food additives that can be found in the coating of most “Nuggets”. This is a sad commentary on what is happening in this country & evidence that food safety & nutrition is now in the hands of people with litle or no knowlege of what healthy food really is. Check out my healthy bog for many artilces regarding what healthy eating is supposed to be at http://DJKatiegreen.wordpress.com . Thanks for listening & keep on writing, Paul. We’ve got to wake people up in this country regarding health & even more importantly, the freedoms that we have been losing too often recently. -DJ Katie
Holy crap!
Yet another reason why I’m homeschooling my preschooler and (God willing) will continue to do so until she graduates.
This is crazy! Are parents rights being totally eroded in America?
Absolutely demented. I hope that woman has raised an enormous stink about it! That state worked should be fired for a start, i also heard that there is a school that has banned potatoes, saying that mashed potatoes are too starchy and do not pass the test.. WHAT!? This MUST be stopped. i do hope the woman REFUSED to pay as well. i can see where homeschooling will be taking over soon and then they will have to legislate that too.. c
See my comment above here. I wrote a blog this morning on this & am very angry for the infringement on our freedoms as well as their choice of replacement food
Have to add I got so inspired this morning, that I joined you & blogged about this as well. I think I added a few good points & again I am upset for two reasons. One being the infringement on our freedom & the other with the “healthy” food that they replaced it with, not! Please click on my site & see my latest blog. I’m joining you in voicing out on this-DJ Katie in Miami
That’s a horrible story–I can’t find anything in that homemade lunch that wouldn’t fit the dietary needs of a child. What’s worse, those chicken nuggets are overprocessed and wholly unhealthy. It reminds me of when I was in preschool, and we had to bring “healthy” lunches to school. I was sent home with a note one day because my parents gave me yogurt-covered raisins as the snack in my lunch box, and they were deemed too sweet to be healthy.
And, of course, once I was in first grade, no one gave a damn what was in children’s lunch boxes and everyone brought heavily sugared, overprocessed crap every day.
BIG BROTHER, STAY OUT OF MY (GRAND)CHILD’S LUNCH
BOX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I am so, so embarrassed that this happened in my state. I also am a bit fed up with the regulation of 1 protein, one GRAIN, and 2 fruits or veggies. I don’t eat grains, and if I had a kid he or she wouldn’t either. So to pull my hypothetical kid’s lunch because it would have been meat and veggies only to be replaced with process junk would make me crazy.
I think I would have gone through the roof. The nerve of the school personal. Sounds like a way for them to earn 1.25
It wasn’t the school personnel, it was the government officials enforcing under new laws people havent’ been paying attention to that have passed recently & under the department of agriculture & paid for by stimulus money!!
Sadly this is where our government is headed, largely in part to the fact that we have been pre-occupied with paying our credit card bills, our status symbol cars, our 3d/hd televisions and facebook. Until we wake up, realize that we’ve been neglecting OUR true responsibilities and begin refusing to accept that those in power want to rule every aspect of our lives, we will get more of the same. If we don’t want this kind of encroachment on our liberties, we must vote, but be conscious enough to vote for candidates that want to protect the constitution by their actions, not their words.
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When I was in grade school my parents would send me to school with snacks like trail mix, carob and fruit salad instead of the more common potato chips and pretzels.
My packed lunches included tabouli and tzatziki and I never had soda.
The other kids thought it was weird (and probably the adults too) but 30 plus years later I eat a much healthier diet than most people my age and have an easier time maintaining a healthy weight. I don’t drink soda and almost never have junk food.
I thank my parents for exposing me to these foods that probably didn’t meet USDA guidelines (if there were guidelines back then.)
My parents forced me to eat my vegetables when I was a kid and I thought I hated it. I am glad they did because now I love the taste and I am sure that is part of the reason why.
If you had been given soda and junk as a kid you would probably hard time parting from it. Good thing your parents stuck by the healthy stuff.
I agree. I find my body craves what I give it. If I eat healthy food it wants more. If I start eating junk – and there are times when I indulge I’ll admit- it starts to want junk.
It’s too much. The child had a healthy lunch. Isn’t tomato paste considered a vegetable under govt food standards? Imagine packing a vegan, or special diet meal for a child only to have them be forced into eating something not part of their program…unacceptable!
This is deplorable. Your temper would only shoot through the roof!!? Mine will shoot through the whole universe and I will take everyone involved to court and if possible imprison them. Chicken nuggets!!!??? That’s the most unhealthy food possible. Yes, if parents make it using everything organic and even mincing the chicken in home, that’s fine. But chicken nuggets sold in stores are one of the worst foods. And the child already had turkey and everything and thus it was not that animal protein was missing. And, what was that inspector going to do if the child came from vegetarian homes?
Ridiculous! And just what exactly does meet these ‘USDA guidelines’?! A tray full of fat and processed meat by the sounds of things. Jeez.
Confused European here… on the one hand, I hear people complaining that making sure everyone is covered by health care would give the government too much control over it – and on the other, the government gets to decide what children have to eat for lunch?
Well, just one more item on my list of reasons why I’ll never move to the US.
An a perfect example of why I’ll never move back.
Oh my goodness. This makes me so upset! Chicken nuggets are not exactly healthy at all. And her initial lunch wasn’t that bad! Sure it could have been healthier, but it sounds like every single lunch I ever packed and took to school…
I think that the government should be more concerned about malnourished children and families that might need help sending their kids to school with healthy lunches. I volunteered with a program that provided free lunches to children over the summer, setting up stations with food in parks all around the city at a designated time each day. They had requirements for the food we served there, because it might be the only good meal the kiddos had the entire day. But replacing a perfectly fine lunch? That’s just nonsense.
I’m with you, I would have been fired up if this was my child. I would have had words with these people and refused to pay the money. This is ridiculous and forcing a child to eat processed meats, when the turkey sandwich she had was just enough is wrong.
I don’t even know where to begin with this so all I have to say is BS!
Oh my goodness!! This is absurd! I don’t have children yet, but I would have thrown a fit. Do we know how the mom responded?
Other than reporting it, I don’t think the mom made a big stink about it. I am pretty sure she paid for the food and just complained about it a bit.
This sounds like a complete over-reaction to a government initiative to bring healthy food into schools. The packed lunch sounded perfect and the school’s actions unacceptable. However, coming from the country that brought you “Jamie’s School Dinners”, I do know that there are many parents out there who really do not know how to feed their children healthy food. I remember a conversation with a mother who had something similar happen to her – she had received a call from the school about her daughter’s packed lunch and could not understand what was wrong with a jam sandwich, a chocolate bar and a bag of chips! The UK conversion to healthy food put so many restrictions in place (no chicken nuggets there) that many of the catering companies running school cafeterias could not produce meals with the funds they were given – not even St Jamie himself managed it.
Good heavens! Chicken nuggets are healthier than a turkey and cheese sandwich? This is crazy! Thank you for posting this!
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Just a way for the state to make more money if you ask me. Forcing kids to buy their horribly-put-together-not-nutritional-at-all-freezer meals to make a few bucks off of each of them, based on standards THEIR organisation put in place to decide whether they need to step in. Obviously another law passed to make it look like they care about the health of who they’re looking after, when it’s really all about profit in the end. Shocker.
They should make the specific nutritional guidelines available to parents, on paper, before school starts. That would give the parents educated choices, to avoid the school substituting unhealthy or unwanted foods.
Looking at the ingredients in the lunch, it’s actually lacking vegetables, not meat. Why didn’t the school provide the child with a serving of vegetables? Dumb, dumb.
yes. i want total control.