Thoughts from Lileks on school lunches:
I’m trying to think of a situation in which it’s permissible for a government official – not a school employee, even, but someone representing an agency outside the school – ask my daughter what she had for breakfast, then send me a letter informing me I have fed her the wrong thing, and must correct my ways. I can’t even imagine a state official demanding to look in her lunch to see if it conforms with national standards. If this is true . .
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.
And I say “if,” because years of getting collar-hot over this or that, only to find out that the situation was 17% less objectionable, which converted the situation from Ridiculous State Imposition to Idiotic Overreach Compounded by Misunderstanding and Mulish Defensiveness. But it seems to be holding up.
If this happened to us I would have to have a conversation with some people. Her lunch is simple: a piece of whole-wheat bread, a slice of bologna, half a slice of cheese, a bag of grapes, a ration of almonds, and a Roarin’ Waters pouch of flavored fluid with no sugar. It doesn’t have a vegetable because she wouldn’t eat it. In the case of this kid, the school made her a new lunch that included a vegetable, and she didn’t try it, either. You can lead a kid to watercress, but you cannot make them them eat.
There are two issues here. First, the overreach in general of having a bureaucrat police the contents of lunches brought from home. But the second is that junk science involved. There is abundant evidence that grain is not good for everyone (and perhaps not really for anyone), and yet the federal government demands that it be included in every meal. So even if one thinks that it’s acceptable for the government to act as a nanny food policeman, the law they enforce should conform to actual healthy nutrition, rather than the discredited food pyramid. As Glenn says, we used to have a remedy for this sort of thing that’s unfortunately gone out of fashion. It involves hot thick hydrocarbons and bird coverings.
How long will it be before we have the Peoples’ Republic of North America?
Check your rear-view mirror…
But it appears so far away…
Yeah, that frog is almost at full boil already. Lot’s of people know it but have been cowed into accepting it. Our founders had to have a revolution. Today that’s a crackpot idea.
Is liberty worth fighting for? I’m not advocating violence. I’m advocating not being cowed. It’s not the lefts fault. It’s those on the right that go along and work with the left to undermine what’s right.
Like nutrition is even clearly understood by specialists. Or that there’s not significant variation among individuals.
Next, it will be child abuse to send the kid in with lunch including animal products.
The kicker, of course, is that the USDA knows JFS about nutrition, the same as most public school districts and both tend to be rather corrupt and compromised institutions that are beholden to the powers of the big agribusiness conglomerates. Watch Jamie Oliver’s “Food Revolution” series (especially the one in Los Angeles) if you want an eye opening look at that mess.
Meanwhile, the basic premise that modern public schools are indistinguishable from prisons takes another step forward. Schools are expanding their authority into exciting new realms. They are policing students’ speech outside of class. They are policing students’ nutrition. They are increasingly relying on drug tests, wiretapping, etc. to keep tabs on students’ everyday behavior. And yet at the same time they are failing at teaching even basic subjects such as literacy or algebra. They are failing at keeping kids safe from bullying and even gang violence. They are spending more and more money on administrative staff while driving away good teachers and giving bad teachers tenure.
Make no mistake, this debacle is one of the foremost tragedies of our country in the present day.
It is one thing to have you local school or state government be the food police but why are federal emploees doing it?
In WA if you want to run some form of childcare facility, you have to meet similar dietary regulations along with many more regarding blackout curtains, miniblinds, numbers of employees per children, number of employees in the room at any given time, whether a door can be closed or must remain open, ect.
Many of the regulations make sense but in total they are overwhelming. It is really hard to open a daycare and there really isn’t much room to make any profits. If they get their wish of forced unionization, things will only get worse especially when you have to pay the neighbor girl that babysits for you union wages and benefits.
They’ll pry my Doritos bag from my cold, dead, hand.
Sounds like totalitarianism on the rampage to me.
The sad fact is that any parent who complains about the food nannies, and offends an officious bureaucrat, is likely to get Child Protective Services involved in their life. Which means that another officious bureaucrat gets to decide whether they’re raising their children right or not.
So which is it? Do parents get to raise their children, or are children the property of the State?
We are rapidly running out of peaceful options to resolve this.
So which is it? Do parents get to raise their children, or are children the property of the State?
Who’s the “qualified expert?” The child’s parents? Har har… Do they have degrees in Angry People Studies?
The people who post at this site (and at other conservative and libertarian sites as well) complain very actively about the growing encroachment of govt in their daily lives. They quiver with anger at thought of the Junior Commissar form Chicago being reelected by the drones come this November. This would an unmitigated disaster for the USA. But if the worst does come to pass, what are you people going to do about it-sit back and whine for another four years as The One and his cronies put the final nails into the coffin of our still potentially great country? Then people will have to revolt, peacefully, I hope, but a revolt there must be. Otherwise, The One and his cronies will succeed in their plan to transform the USA into the USSR lite. There are plenty of examples of peaceful resistance to follow, Martin Luther King in our south, Gandhi in India, and the ANC (usually, but not always) in South Africa. And I’m sure one Obama’s favorite books, Alinsky’s “Rules for Radicals,” can provide all kinds of useful advice. But resist you must if you want to prevent The One and his pals from finally achieving their long sought goal of making an already troubled America like the dying European welfare states. The trouble is, are American conservatives and libertarians up to the job?
Concerned expat in Seoul (I always vote by absentee ballot)
What part of “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated” do these people not understand?
Any part we let them get away with.
Mr. Gallagher – I do indeed worry about the Obamamessiah getting another term, and it is going to affect me. I also worry about any of the possible “Christian” zealots on the other side getting the job. And that would also affect me, eventually.
But seeing as I’m British, there’s damn all I can do about it.