A few months ago, the blogosphere was in a tizzy over an episode in which a North Carolina “government inspector” allegedly forced a child to trade in her home-packed lunch of a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice because the meal did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines; instead the child was forced to take the school meal of chicken nuggets. As you might imagine, conservative commentators in particular, including Rush Limbaugh, seized on the story as evidence of the nanny state run amok.
But as I shared with you at the time, an intrepid blogger named Mark Thompson dug into the story and concluded that the “forced swap” never actually occurred. Instead, he reported that the child — a preschooler –was simply told to go through the lunch line to get a milk to round out her meal but mistakenly took the entire school lunch instead.
Regardless of what actually may have happened, the North Carolina state senate has now unanimously passed a bill which would prohibit schools from supplementing home-made lunches that don’t meet minimum nutritional standards.
Jerry Tillman, the state senator who crafted the bill in an effort to “take a little bit of the nanny state’s authority away from them,” told the Fay Observer:
The kid may be making their own bad lunch, they may just have Oreos and a candy bar in there. Sometimes that will happen,” Tillman said. “The school then has the responsibility at least to warn the parents that ‘I don’t think this is a good, nutritious lunch, and we will have to make a call to Social Services.’ That’s fine for school people to do that.
As my school food colleague Dana Woldow pointed out to me in an email, it’s pretty amusing that an opponent of the nanny state somehow thinks it would be less intrusive for a school to get Social Services involved, rather than just handing the child a piece of fruit or a carton of milk.
But, that said, I know many Lunch Tray readers of all political stripes were offended by the notion of anyone having the right to peer into their child’s lunch box.
The bill is now pending before the North Carolina House of Representatives. I’ll keep you posted here.
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Chris says
umm wow.. yeah, social services is much better than a milk…
june says
That law is so stupid that I can barely stand it. All this supposed non-intrusiveness is so fricking intrusive! (Can I say “fricking” in the comments?)
Bettina Elias Siegel says
You can! 🙂
Julia says
I don’t think, in fact I know, the Gov’t doesn’t have the right to give your child a milk “to round out the meal” nor should SS be involved. I am so tired of this!! I’m on the verge of sending my child to private schools or homeschooling as I, THE PARENT has the choice in what my child does and does not eat. If it is my child, keep your nose out my child’s lunch box. I don’t care if they don’t have a fully balanced lunch every day nor do I think I need to be reported to SS bc of a non-balanced meal from time to time. Who do these people and parents think they are? What they Hell gives anyone the right to override another parent(s) choice or actions when it comes to food? These are not your children, butt out! Nanny your our children but leave mine alone. You have no right to infringe upon my children and my home, none. What little rights we have left in this Country, I will not allowed to be taken away from me. Insane. And to think that some parents actually support this behavior and make excuses as to why we need Govt oversight. Get a clue and mind your business.
EdT. says
‘I don’t think this is a good, nutritious lunch, and we will have to make a call to Social Services.’
Sweet Jeebus… if this was Texas, the school administrator would call the cops, who would haul the kid off in handcuffs, then when the parent called the cops would arrest them too, then CPS would force the parents to “voluntarily” turn the kids over to CPS under threat of permanent removal…
I mean, what part of “keep your nose out of my kid’s lunch bag” are these politicians having problems understanding???
~EdT.
Nancy Myers says
This is just wacky. This goes overboard on so many counts it makes my head spin.
Yes, it’s a nanny state run amok that would oversee home-packed lunches, but it’s an entertainment & opinion & legislative state run amok that turns “How ’bout you pick up a little milk to go with your lunch, hon” into legislation probibiting involvement of any kind.
Yes, I think if kids aren’t getting good nutrition – in knowledge and practice – at home they should get it at school. BUT why are they not getting good nutritional info at home? is it because the parents don’t know better? is it that they don’t care, or are lazy? Or is it that the food industry advertisers are much better funded than organizations that can provide better, health-based information? Call me paranoid, but I do not believe the food industry has my good health in mind when they create and market their products.
I would welcome it if somebody involved themselves with the kids who have no clue about nutrition. I’d welcome a little ‘nannying’ now if, in the long run, these kids learn how to make good food choices. I’d also welcome it if someone would offer parents better information than what the food industry throws at them.
The societal costs borne of poor nutrition are absolutely staggering and they come right out of my pocket – why do I pay increasing insurance premiums (not to mention medicare and medicaid) if I’m healthy and don’t burden the insurance system? Why don’t the conservative voices in our country ever bring this up?
Bettina Elias Siegel says
If you’ve posted a comment and don’t see it appear after a reasonable time, the comment is in violation of The Lunch Tray’s comments policy. No comment is ever censored for expressing an opposing view; comments which include personal attacks, ugly language (or even just a needling, snide tone) will always be censored. Some might object to this moderation policy as too strict, but I am deeply committed to keeping TLT a pleasant, safe space for all. If I receive several comments in violation of the policy from a single commenter, all future comments originating from that IP address will automatically be placed in my blog’s spam filter and I won’t see them for moderation. If you care to re-write and re-submit your comment in light of the policy, please do so.
EdT. says
I think you pretty well summed up the ‘debate’ on this issue, at least as I have read it. I can’t tell you exactly *why* the change in the level of nutritional education has occurred, but I suspect it is a combination of habit (ingrained by experience at home) and the removal of courses like Home Ec. in favor of more test preparation time.
As a ‘conservative’ (probably more like ‘libertarian’), my position is fairly simple: I am opposed to mandates – whether from government or private sources – which tend to compel people toward compliance with the “conventional wisdom” (which is oftentimes neither conventional nor wise.) As to what is being touted as “health insurance”, I think it quit being insurance (meant to spread out risk over a larger population) back about the time someone figured out how to apply the principle of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” to it (probably the early 1980s.) What used to be called “major medical” or “catastrophic health coverage” – that’s insurance. HMOs, prescription drug plans, etc? – those are “group health plans”, which are a totally different animal entirely. And, I am very leery of the philosophy that gives me the right to tell someone else what they can/cannot eat, based on the fact that they are (or soon will be) required by law to have “health insurance”.
~EdT.
mommm!!! says
What happened to just plain common sense? How hard is it to pick up the phone and just call the parent and say hey, we just wanted you to be aware that your kid’s lunchbox has just a coke and a snickers in it? I think most parents (hopefully) would take steps to prevent that from happening again on their own.
What I find in the public school system is that the teachers and administrators have grown increasingly reluctant to reach out to the parents by simply picking up the phone. The break down in communication is not helping anyone.
jenna Food w/ Kid Appeal says
i think the school has the responsibility to make sure that students are equipped for a day of learning. schools don’t allow tank tops, short skirts and shirts with profanity because they are distracting to the learning environment. if schools can enforce a dress code, there is no reason why they can’t enforce a lunchbox code too. a lunch made up of junky processed food void of nutritive value will create a child who is not able to learn in the classroom setting.
i’m not asserting that the lunch in question would or would not be a learning distraction. i’m saying that parents do NOT have a right to send their kids to school with food that is a distraction to the learning environment. it’s no different than restricting a parents right to send their kids to school with profane language/images on t-shirts.
more schools should create and enforce lunchbox codes, not just for the health of children, but also for the benefit of their education.
margaret says
This sort of thing and food in the classroom is exactly the reason we homeschool. My child has severe food allergies to dairy with lesser but still serious allergies to nuts, peanuts, and seeds. Our food and food pairings often appear unusual to many people because of our limitations. We have to work extremely hard to get proper nutrition, which is much harder and requires much more knowledge than a food commandant could every imagine. While my child eat a balanced diet, each meal in and of itself may not be especially if she has to eat away from home because the food she can eat with that nutrient may not be easily portable. Also, one of my greatest nightmares if she were in school would be a substitute, food inspector who doesn’t know her, some other clueless staff member ordering her to drink milk or eat a cheese sandwich because her home lunch lacked dairy; both of which would likely kill her. Government needs to stay out of parents food choices with their kids.