Can’t fault them for wanting to provide a nutritious meal for kids, but I included the Poisoning America banner to reward the school for giving the kid chicken nuggets, the Agra-biz fake food of choice for school lunches.
A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school 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 person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the 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. When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.
The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.
Dummies are in charge, who’d thought?
Food police?… nope, this is just another facet of that “Hope and Change” bill of goods that we were sold a few years ago.
Remember that moment?. So…how does disappointment churned with disaster taste when you’re paying for it?. There’s no doubt that “Leader Pelosi” concurs with the Anointed One, and we’ll soon have another chance to “pass the bill to find out what’s in it”.
The gift that keeps on giving- Obamalamadingdong strikes again!.
So you somehow linked this to Obama. You could just as easily linked this to Rebuplicans, who cut eduaction so much, that even teachers are idiots who don’t know what food is unless it has a brand name on it.
Teachers are idiots because of unions.
The return of Mystery Meat and a scoop of Dishwater Potatoes, with some kind of bean (or perhaps corn).
And fruit cobbler. First time I heard the word cobbler was in school.
The first time you heard the word cobbler was in school. You grew up in the city didn’t you.
Blackberry, peach, cherry, the hard part was picking the components. The best blackberries also had the biggest thorns, or pitting the cherries.
Nice and warm with homemade vanilla ice cream. There were some very good benefits to living on the farm.
Forgot to add this link:
http://fns.usda.gov/cnd/governance/regulations.htm
What you can and cannot eat whilst in school.
Take it up with Obama and Congress. I’m sure he will…do nothing. Congress won’t either. They know what is best for the plebs.
From the Carolina Journal: “While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem.
“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said. ”
It included a banana and apple juice. It met all of the standards but was rejected by an unnamed inspector. Who will undoubtedly remain unnamed because the inspector screwed up and got caught.
Exactly what I was thinking when this hit a couple days ago. It doesn’t make any sense.
There is something I don’t understand. The article says that the school is supposed to supplement the lunch with the missing food groups and that the kid’s lunch was missing a vegetable. So where do the chicken nuggets come in?
but if the Reagan administration taught us anything, its that ketchup IS a vegetable. the chicken nuggets were just the delivery system.
>_>
Unless chicken is now a vegetable, or like tomatoes, both fruit and vegetable?
Like my joke that bacon and chocolate are vitamins, and life would be impossible unless we had daily servings of them.
Good call on the Chicken McNuggets. They have a wheat based coating but I assume wheat is still called a “grain” and not a vegetable?
Only a little bit tangential, one of the most interesting “food” related articles I have read in quite a while. This is going to take a while to fully digest:
http://huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/wheat-gluten_b_1274872.html
Sorry–note on the link above: it is about modern wheat and why it and even whole grains may not be as healthy as we think. Frankenfoods in a way that may be very subtle, but very real.
Are we what we eat, or only what we think about it?==you know, like Politics?
I thought the “inspector” in this case was a teacher, obviously not a home economics teacher. Maybe the history/basketball coach teacher.
From The Carolinas Gazeteer:
“Outbreak of Hepatitis C in Pre-Schoolers Linked to Poor Hygiene of Home Lunch Inspector”
Okay. I made that up. But when I first heard this story, several days ago, my first thought was who was pawing through children’s food? Did this inspector was his/her hands between inspections? Wear gloves? Then I heard it was not a trained food inspector but a grad student doing the inspections. Ever seen how most grad students live?
Then, reading what the girl had in her lunch bag, I thought it sounded pretty nutritious to me. So, I figured, follow the money. You got a school lunch program to pay for, might as well force all the kids into it.
By the way, speaking of nutrition, the kid didn’t have her lunch replaced or supplemented, exactly. She was given a full school lunch in addition to her packed lunch. The McFrankenNuggets were just what she decided to eat from the tray.
Nice attention to detail there Animby. I think it outrageous after the good shepards at this school identified the dietary shortcoming they did not take the obvious step to tie the offender down to a cafeteria table and force the correct vegetables down her throat.
Isn’t that why we have schools?
And Federal Food Enforcement agents in them!
And why is the federal government involved in this at all?
How is regulating in-home day care centers’ lunches regulating interstate commerce?
Because they accepted a Federal grant to, say, build a swing set on the playground, the Feds now have the right to oversee the entire school program right down to which brand of chicken McFaggots to serve.
It’s for reasons like this, I’d like to see someone like Paul or Gingrich or Perry to get elected. The Education Department needs to be severely downsized and brought back to it’s original purpose: to evaluate and guide the educational system. Not to micromanage it.
At least it was chicken nuggets and not soy nuggets, which tells me …
Uncle Dave, this has been debunked: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/
The lady in question signed her child up for this program – it’s voluntary. Her only objection was apparently (she did not state this, but the article surmises) that she’d have to pay for the child grabbing a full lunch, of which she only ate a few nuggets.
It’s worth a read.
You base a refutation upon a surmise?
I wonder how many sheaves of paper she had to sign without reading to get her child into pre-school?
The first day this happened, I read she knew it could happen but thought the meals she was packing were okay.
And, apparently, as mentioned by Cap’n Kangaroo above (Thanks Dvorak for taking away our ability to refer t a comment by number) the meal was nutritionally compliant. And this lady is not the only case. Even as Sibelius admits to doing lunch inspections along the eastern seaboard.
Poop to you LtSiver, Poop. I say!
Just seems like a control issue to me.
So this whole story is horseshit to begin with.
Lovely.
simple corporate profiteering. they are making sure they get their cut of the mega, mega bucks spent in education market.
wait till bill gates and warren buffet their greedy paws fully into the mix, all under the “philanthropic” organization
In other news…
http://dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2092071/Stacey-Irvine-17-collapses-eating-McDonalds-chicken-nuggets-age-2.html
This is why straights should not be allowed to raise children
One can view pictures of McNugget stuff being extruded like bubble gum from a nozzle. Are the exact contents of that stuff listed anywhere? Like what gets ground up to make it? Everything but the bones & feathers, one might surmise. But are the intestines separated out or are they ground up too? Bird intestines don’t sound very hygienic. One would hope they get sent to the rendering plant with the chicken-heads.
What of hens’ reproductive apparatus—what happens to those? Anyone who has eviscerated a hen has seen the tube thingamajig with the little yellow eggs of various sizes attached to it. Not sure I want to eat that.
t0llyb0ng: “… are the intestines separated out …
What of hens’ reproductive apparatus…”
Hope I do not upset your delicate digestions, Tolly. Here in Asia, those parts are cleaned up and shrink wrapped for the shelf in the supermarkets.
this is what happens when you start with the idea that government knows best.
The world would be better if you were required to eat bacon at the polling place before being allowed to vote.
Behold the power of the food industry, which effectively controls the school lunch program. Just like big tobacco, big junk food works very hard to get our kids addicted early so later in life their minds are permanently imprinted with visions of chicken nuggets, burritos, corn dogs, and burgers.
Bring a health lunch to school…no sir, you gotta eat the junk food, we can’t have no nutrition hippies here.
And of course with lobbyist money supporting them, lawmakers are more than willing to enforce big junk food doctrine.
This story doesn’t even make sense. The law as explained requires the school to supplement the missing item. That lunch had all the items required:
1 serving meat: turkey
1 serving milk: cheese
1 serving grain: bread
2 serving fruit OR vegetables: banana, apple juice
Why was she forced to eat 3 chicken nuggets( and nothing else?). That doesn’t even meet the USDA requirements set. Could the mother sue the school for breaking the law by not serving her child the minimum requirement?
There has to be more to this story than it is reported.