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Big Mother Is Watching
theodp writes "Newsweek reports that high-schoolers are being denied the joy of ordering unhealthy lunches thanks to their schools' adoption of services like MealpayPlus. New web-based services allow moms to prepay for cafeteria food, specify what their kid can and can't buy, and go online to track his purchases." From the article: "If the child tries to buy a prohibited item, an alert flashes on the cashier's computer. Of course, the system isn't foolproof. According to a KRC Research survey, 73 percent of 8- to 12-year-olds are throwing out part of their lunches at least once a week; 36 percent are trading them." All I ever got was PB&J.
If you feel the need to control what your kid eats in high school through a system like this, you've allready failed as a parent.
"The more you tighten your grip on the galaxy, the more star systems will slip through your fingers!"
I realize that is not the original text of the quote, but I revised it for clarity. Also, before you mod me offtopic, how many of you won't admit that your parents were like the evil empire? I know mine were.
Ah, nothing beats the love and care put into making your child's lunch... ...checklist.
When your in school, you're already bound by what you can and can't say, write, hear and wear. That said, why not just serve only HEATHY food in the first place!!! Now that would be something worthy of enforcing.
The amount of porkers I see in the malls these days scare me! Their shit diet is going to cost society massive amounts in health care!
Life is not for the lazy.
Too much is made about child's rights and too little is spoken about dubious advertising for unhealthy food items. In Japan, there is a huge promotional campaign to get kids eat Whale Meat for Lunch!
Obesity in kids is the no. 1 health problem facing the US today, and if parents can have a say on what their kids can order, it's great! The choice is between listening to one's parents and listening to (untrulthful) advertisemsnts. Parents ought to know better.
As usual, the title Big Mother is misleading and mischevous. Parents watching their children cannot be equated to the Government spying on citizens. The former is a duty, the latter is a violation of rights to privacy.
Too bad, Slashdot is resorting to Flamebait to ensure more replies.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
MealpayPlus doesn't charge for its system; it makes money on transaction fees when parents put money on kids' accounts.
If this is like some offices, you can't pay in case (article doesn't specify). Approach the counter without a card and you're just met by a queer look from the cashier.
The site says it's a flat $2.00 fee per transactions. Now you're torn between a 1% tax to give the kid a whopping $200 on the card (max) or a 10% tax if you just give them a benjamin every few days.
Bill Thompson, the only kid at Deerbrook High School still granted pizza privileges, has become the youngest person ever to retire at age 17.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
In Finland school lunches are free. Not only are they free, but kids get a healthy meal including fresh vegetables and often fruit every single day, bread and milk is included as well. Everyone eats the same meal, including the teachers. The only exceptions are people with allergies / ethic issues (vegetarians etc). You're free not to eat if you don't like the food, of course.
I strongly believe that good eating habits at an early age is paramount for learning a healthy lifestyle. One can have many opinions of socialistic solutions, but when it comes to nutrition and education I'm all for it. Having seen the muck english school kids have to eat I'm rather grateful I was born in Finland.
My 2 cents, anyway.
.: Max Romantschuk
Y'know, some of these kind of practices produce some surprising results in the real world. Whilst you or I probably look on slightly bemused, this kind of behaviour in schools can produce some interesting quirks.
Here in the UK, there has been a similar kind of healthy food drive. Although parents are not given the levels of oversight seen here, fast food and vending machines are quickly becoming dirty words.
However, in some cases children are fighting back in rather funny ways. In one school (I'd find the link if I wasn't late for work!) a group of children started buying snacks, cans of fizzy drink and chocolate from a local wholesaler, and then sold them on to children during break time and lunch.
Expect to see something similar happen here; and make a note of the kids that start doing it, because they might just be the kind of people we see doing well in the business world in a few years time. Of course, it'll cause this prepay system to fall apart and be branded a failure as well, which is probably no bad thing.
I hear so many people talk about how Americans eat too much, how kids are too fat, and how it's always the parents' fault if a kid is fat.
Now here's a way for parents to control what their kids eat, and people are screaming about how it's invasive and controlling.
Screw you guys. If you're gonna play two sides of an issue, at least seperate it by a few degress, don't sit here and say how it's wrong for parents to let their kids eat crap and then say it's wrong for parents to NOT let their kids eat crap.
Christ.
And am whole-heartedly offended by a lot of these comments. This program is yet another level of abstraction between parenting and the children.
I have raised my kids, taught them right from wrong. I am also smart enough to realize that my kids are not idiots. They are not stupid and will find ways around things they don't understand or agree with... Just like I did as a child. When that happens, all you can do as a parent is hope you instilled the proper morals into the child.
I'm sorry, it is NOT up to the lunch lady to determine what my kids eat. If I am that concerned about what my children eat at school, I'll make it myself! At one school they attended, this is exactly what I did. "Some parents don't have time for that!", you might say... Bullshit. If you have the time to screw around and have kids, you MAKE THE DAMN TIME to raise them. It's called parenting.
This shit ranks right up there with Net-Nanny type things. If you mistrust your children to these kinds of extents, then you have failed as a parent and nothing can fix this. More and more the definition of "children" is getting pushed further up the age curve. This lunch program is in High-Schools for crying out loud. Kids who have their driver's licenses and are nearly the age of majority, yet they can't pick their own lunches? Um, yeah. That makes sense.
I could rant on, but I'm tired. Night.
Fathers can't participate in this process then?
Indeed, about a third of my pay goes to taxes and other similar fees. I'm quite happy about it, as the money is mostly used for sensible spendings. How many medical procedures have you had for free? Education? Real social security?
Yes the system has flaws, and no it's not free as in magically free. But it is parctially free, for the one using the services. It's a matter of opinion if it makes sense to take from those who have and give to those who need, but I'm not complaining as long as I find I can use the services paid for with my tax money when I am in a time of need.
.: Max Romantschuk
I couldn't agree with you more
It's also worth pointing out that in a system of socialized or largely socialized healthcare, in a democratic and transparent state (like you have in the scandinavian countries), the state has an incentive in promoting a healthy lifestyle for its citizens, and they have a stake in keeping the healthcare system from bein overburdened. It isn't surprising, then, that the most agressive anti-tobacco campaigns in Europe were launched in Sweden before being imitated by other governments.
Of course, many libertarians will tell you that you have a right to pay for you own unhealthy behavior, which is true to a point, but if they believe your health exists entirely in a vacuum without affecting anybody else, they have no understanding of how social costs are... well... social.
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Even in High School. If you're a parent and you eat junk or have junk in your home, ie: buy it for your kids or have it around for 'snacking' then you're responsible for your child's bad eating habits. You want your kids to eat right? Keep good healthy food in your home...
Fresh vegetables and fruit.... once a week buy fresh stuff and put it out where it can be seen... fruits in a bowl and vegetables on display, both in fridge and on counter in a nice container or basket. Pre-make good salads... don't keep them in the pre-mixed bag you buy them in.. put them in a nice salad bowl that has a freshness feature (clay to keep moist but also has holes in bottom and sides to let extra moisture out... and add in some extras, carrot slivers, almonds, cranberries, etc. make them look tasty... if you eat meat add some hard-boiled egg white slices and turkey chunks
Make good meals and stick them in the fridge as instant left-overs. These will be cheaper and better than a frozen dinner (less preservatives, etc.) and your teen will actually eat them, cause they can grab them late at night or whenever and heat them up on their own schedule, instead of grabbing a bag of chips or something.
Easy pre-made meals: Lasagna or any Pasta dish, Stir-Fry, Burritos, Taco ingredients, Pre-made sandwiches and wraps, Roasts that can be sliced into cold-cuts (teen-age boys love cutting stuff and they'll just slice off a hunk and grab some cheese and bread), hard-boiled eggs (peeled or not), sliced up veggies (carrot sticks, cucumbers, brockley, etc.) with a good dip (humus or veggie/cream cheese is great).
This might not sound like health-food but compared to the crap they'd stuff their faces with (think any fast-food or junk from convenience store) it's completely healthy and they'll eat it if it's made convenient for them.
In the end you'll find that they will end up looking for similar foods when they are out of the house too. They might even end up taking their lunches to school because the food that's available at home is so much better than the crap at school... but let them keep their 'lunch money' as a reward or else they'll stop taking their lunch just to get the money so they can spend it on other things... who cares what,
Point is they'll be healthier and it will only take a few hours a week on your part to make the food available in a appetizing form that's also convenient.
BTW same thing applies to drinks... get rid of the canned sodas.. just put some pitchers of old-fahioned lemonade (cut the sugar down) and Iced tea and juice and plenty of water bottles.
They'll still have some junk in their diet when out with friends but they won't be creating a habit while at home and the reality is that we all really spend the longest part of our 24 hour day at home... so make it a healthy one and you'll have healthy kids.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
You, on the other hand, have too much confidence that the parents won't be control freaks. "Over-protective" doesn't sound that bad until you end up basically in a straitjacket of motherly love that crushes the life and sanity out of you. Don't underestimate how much "over" there can be in "overprotective."
/. it contained such gems as one mother getting horrified and confronting her daughter because... said daughter had bought 3 ounces of juice to wash down the food with. "Noooo! Think of all the calories in 3 ounces of juice!" Not an exact quote, but the same idea.
The last time such a system was discussed on
To start with the _lesser_ problem, she was trying to raise her daughter as... what? An Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder case? Yes, obesity is bad, but if you're at the point where you count the few calories in a quarter of a cup of juice, do yourself a favour and kill yourself. We're not talking buying a big bottle of Coke, we're not talking even a can, we're talking 3 ounces. Of juice.
Moving a bit upwards on the scale, such a remotely-controlled kid will grow to be completely unprepared for life. They never were trusted with making a decision of their own, and seeing the results, so they (A) just don't know what to do when mommy isn't around to remote-control them, and (B) completely lack the data to base a decision on. Playing and exploration in childhood are learning. Someone who has grown up with mommy taking all their decisions for them, hasn't learned anything.
I know I basically went off guidance as every time I was out of reach of my control-freak parents. I ended up in an alcoholic coma in one of the few summer camps where they didn't tag along, as well as doing a thousand other stupid things. Partially because it was one occasion to vent all that built-up frustration of being little more than a remote-controlled puppet to my parents the rest of the time. But in retrospect the largest part was the aspect that I just had no freaking clue how to function without them remote-controlling me.
Even after finishing college and moving away, it was like running into a brick wall as learning curves go. Without mom telling me what to do and when to do it, I suddenly had no flipping clue what _am_ I supposed to do and when. It took some rediscovering from scratch how to even function as an adult. (In all fairness, mom still tries to remote-control me. She'd be more than happy to still tell me exactly what and when to do, but at that point I had decided to at least try functioning as myself for a change.)
But maybe more important is the psychological damage. Kids like adults (and like most animals, including your dog and cat) need some breathing space. Even the most affectionate lap cat needs its moments of being alone or doing its own thing, or it will go neurotic.
E.g., I only have to look at my brother who at one point had a fit of anorexia over my parents complete control over his food. At one point as a kid he just stopped eating, and eventually ended up in hospital. They even ran all sorts of medical tests on him, because they suspected cancer the way he was losing weight. He was basically deflating as fast as, well, someone who doesn't eat at all any more. I can easily see that possibility in the future of such kid as the girl with her 3 ounces of juice.
I managed to do somewhat better (or at least not swing to such extremes), partially by finding refuge in programming, partially by cherishing the moments I was finally out of my family's reach. I certainly didn't hate school too much. I actually had more freedom there than at home. Still, I ended up with some long term damage of my own anyway.
E.g., I basically have to roll for willpower (if I'm allowed the D&D metaphor) to do anything, because some circuit in the back of the brain says "you know, mom would disapprove of me doing that. Or doing it that way." And I don't mean doing bad stuff, but even stuff like taking the trash out. Mom would certainly find something to complain
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
So they pay 33% taxes. So do we, the difference is in what you elect the government to spend the money on. They got free lunches, we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire solar system several times over. Now since it really doesn't matter who destroys the planet as we all die anyways, I'd rather have the free lunch.
You can get 15 minutes of fame, but you can go down in history for infamy.
Saying stuff can be restricted, reading stuff can be restricted, the gender of the adult you can marry can be restricted, your movement can be restricted, your access to a fair trial can be restricted, your ability to sue for redress from government wrongs can be restricted, but if any corporation is blocked from marketing to you or in some way making money off of you, then that is the very freedom for which the forefathers fought, and a great wrong has been committed. All other freedoms are really luxuries.
HALT CITIZEN
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