Except it wasn't a tale, it actually happened. I meant to blog about it at the time, but I was too busy getting up at 4:45am to pack my children's lunches.
For the record, I H.A.T.E packing lunches. H.A.T.E. it!!!!! It takes me at least 20 minutes to pack every morning and it's just horrible. This would be a typical lunch for us, though. This morning the kids got tomato soup, crackers, (bread and butter for Austin, he doesn't like crackers), banana yogurt, salad, and orange slices.
Anyway, since the original story broke of the teacher taking away the lunch, she has since apologized and said it was a mistake, due largely in my opinion, to the enormous backlash.
Americans do not want people telling them what to eat or how to eat. It pisses us off. For all different reasons. Whether we like eating crap or because we like eating healthy, we just do not want anyone dictating to us what to eat and especially what to feed our children.
We all know that parents send their children to school with the most horrendous lunches imaginable. I'm at the school enough to see it firsthand. It's not unusual for me to see red fruit punch, Cheetos, and a Ding Dong as an entire lunch.
But the way freedom works is you have the right to feed your kids shit, like say...... a Lunchable, so I have the right to feed mine what I think is better than the USDA recommendations and certainly better than the airplane food that's served up as nutritious at my school.
And it might be argued that this is an isolated, one time incident. That teachers making judgement calls on the validity of a student's lunch never happens, except when I posted this on Facebook, another triplet mom friend of mine responded with this:
I got a call about my daughter's lunches - she eats cheese, triscuits, yogurt, grapes, strawberries, veggies with ranch dip etc and I only give them water in their thermoses (since I hate warm milk left in thermos cleaning) it is a peanut free and sweets free school. The principal wanted her to have the school lunch- frito pie since obviously I had not sent enough food. OMG frito pie???? How is that healthier. I know my kid and to be told my lunches were inadequate was infuriating. No common sense.
Can you guys imagine? I would have went insane!!!
This is a very important year for food choice. The 2012 Farm Bill will be decided this year by congress and with it, will come the recommendations of what we should eat and why we should eat it. As you can imagine, public policy on what we should eat is not dictated by what is actually healthy for us. It's dictated by the government-subsidized commodities that bring food processors the most profit.
So when you are told your child needs a certain number of servings of dairy, it's because the National Dairy Council has cut a deal. When you are told you need a certain number of servings of grain a day, it's because the National Association Of Wheat Growers and the National Corn Growers Association has gotten a piece of the food pyramid pie.
To learn more about how your voice can help shape the upcoming Farm Bill negotiations, please read this blog, A Citizen's Guide To The Next Food And Farm Bill at foodfight2012.org. We can make a difference.
We can also make a difference every day by choosing to take the extra 20 minutes to make sure our kids get a healthy lunch at school.
On that note, I've got to go feed my chickens. Keep up the fight, ladies. There's nothing I love more than a good food fight!!!
12 comments:
Frito Pie???? Who knew such a thing existed?
I didn't even touch this subject on my blog, because I would not have been kind about it. You know, because I only post if it's kind...
Kudos to you!!
Thanks for the nutrition posts. Like most people our age (I'm almost 43) I grew up thinking fat = bad, lots of low-fat crackers, snackwells, skim milk, etc = good. I've been reading a lot of diet/nutrition books lately trying to figure out what is really true and what is just fad diets to sell books. Some of what I've read has been because of your blog (China Study... it came up in teh comments section a couple of months ago). I would highly recommend Michael Pollan's book In Defense of Food where he talks about why whole real foods are so much more than the sum of what's on their label. Also the China study was an eye opener about dairy products. I've been working on getting a wider variety of veggies and fruits into my kids, and have cut out buying Rice Krispies (I already didn't buy sugary cereals except for special treats). Anyway, keep it up... it's really sad how much our nutrition 'knowledge' is from highly biased sources.
Frito Pie is awesome! In moderation, of course. :-)
Now I am forced to go Google "frito pie".
Kari- I just added an image just for you!!! Can't.stop.laughing.
The first time a teacher tries to tell me what to feed my kid, I will randomly start walking into her classroom and correcting her instruction methods.
...okay, no, but holy shit I will lose my damn mind.
I hate making lunches too. Ours are usually half a sandwich but sometimes something in a thermos, cheese or yogurt, fruit, a small snack thing and a small dessert. I know there is still some crap in there, but at least I limit the portion sizes, LOL! They buy milk at school.
However, I do let my kids buy school lunches sometimes. Frankly, ours aren't half as bad as your school's are. At least there is a real effort to improve the nutritional standards in our schools. I can't guarantee that my kids will eat all the healthy parts of the school lunches, but at least they are being offered.
http://www.fortmilltimes.com/2012/01/28/1872159/potboiler-fort-mill-staff-solving.html
One other thing I love about homeschooling. We get to feed the kids leftovers from dinner and no one can tell me their lunch is unhealthy...even if it is.
First, I totally thought the yogurt was ranch dressing for the salad. I had my super side-eye all cued up. :o)
Second, this reminds me of my last day at my in-home daycare. I was feeling really bad about leaving and taking away two of her incomes. Then this happened:
Daycare Lady: They had a good day. My mom brought McDonald's for lunch for all the kids.
Me: Wait, did my kids eat McDonald's too?
DCL: Well, yes.
Me: I've sent homemade, organic lunch with them every single day since they were 4 months old. WTF would make you think I'd be okay with my 17 month old children eating MCDONALDS?!
DCL: I couldn't give it to all the kids and not them.
Me: YES YOU CAN! They eat rocks. They'll get over it. And anyway, YOU SHOULDN'T BE GIVING IT TO ANYONE!!!
I thought I was going to come unglued. Any guilt I had over leaving was totally, completely gone.
That's what a Frito pie looks like? I've heard of it but never seen it. The fact that the school thinks that is healthier than what your friend was sending is extremely disturbing.
I Love Frito Pie, I make my chili with turkey and organic beans and organic tomatoes. We eat healthy 95% of the time so Frito's are a splurge but at least there are only 3 ingredients and they are all easy to pronounce and identify ;)
The day either of my kids come home with a note from the school that their homemade/homepacked lunch is not good enough is the day hubs and I come totally unglued!
Seeing what some kids have for lunch really saddens me. We don't have the same school lunch system you do. I'm in Australia... we don't have a cafeteria but there is a canteen where they can pre-order some hot food and sandwiches and then buy drinks - water, low fat flavoured milk, some 100% juice bottles, some other approved drinks but no soda etc - and ice blocks (water and dairy based) over the counter. Last years teacher actually took a series of photos of my daughters lunchboxes to use in a pamphlet for new parents about what is a good lunchbox... there were so many kids having their lunchbox packed full of packet stuff with high sodium, sugar, fats and artificial colours that it was frankly astonishing.
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