Slashdot Mirror
School Sends Child's Lunch Home After Determining it Unhealthy
halfEvilTech writes "A North Carolina mom is irate after her four-year-old daughter returned home late last month with an uneaten lunch the mother had packed for the girl earlier that day. But she wasn't mad because the daughter decided to go on a hunger strike. Instead, the reason the daughter didn't eat her lunch is because someone at the school determined the lunch wasn't healthy enough and sent it back home. What was wrong with the lunch? That's still a head-scratcher because it didn't contain anything egregious: a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice. But for the inspector on hand that day, it didn't meet the healthy requirements."
1st post
Maybe it didn't have what plants crave?
- d
.... not so much the fact that this may have happened, but the fact that slashdot put it on the front page. This story has set the conservative blogosphere alight over "obama's nanny state" and what have you while overlooking one huge glaring problem here...
They are taking the word of a four year old kid to be god's-own-truth. I'm not saying she's intentionally lying, but how many reliable four year olds have you met in your life time? There could well be a very large gap between what she was told and what she thought she heard, and yet another between what she did and what she told her parents.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Just a damn sandwich and potato chip DOES not make a healthy meal for a child.
IF she is angry maybe she cannot understand what is a healthy meal.
Check her BMI (mother) surely we will know she does not know what a healthy meal it is...
Sure, the teachers might not be at fault her (I need to insert that comment to pretend I give a damn about the needs of the teachers) but what have they done to stop this nonsense? *cough*
All school kids need chicken nuggets.
I'll wait for some investigation into this. Note the source, TheBlaze, is an inquirer-like conservative rag.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Actual story:
- Lunch was not taken away from the girl; she was given extra food because they were worried she might not have enough.
- A standard form letter was sent to the parent, which said that she may be charged for the food - in fact, since the child was enrolled in the right program, she was not actually charged for the food
- The food given was milk and vegetables, not chicken nuggets.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/
This articles says a lot more about the editor that thought this was a credible story more than anything else. That credibility wasn't helped much by the the Goldline/Glen Beck add floating in the middle of it, either.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/
And I must say, it is rather embarrassing for this site to be spreading such sensationalist garbage around, especially when no one's done the background research to verify it. We all love knee-jerk reactions induced by rantings from a personal blog, but come on.
Because, you know, it's got electrolytes.
HSJ$$*&#^!#+++ATH0
NO CARRIER
Obviously, all of our rights are in danger! This is not an isolated incident, not just some person out there who's having a bad day, it's a slippery slope!!! WE ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO NIP THIS IN THE BUD!
OK, I'll get my breath back now.
I think it's a much bigger problem that anyone on Slashdot would think this story is worth posting.
Bruce Perens.
It sounds like the inspector just wanted a turkey sandwich.
Some of my family works in education and they tell me on a regular basis that few kids get to eat breakfast and many don't get lunches or only have pop and chips for lunch. Assuming the kid's story is true I think everyone should be glad the mom is sending lunches at all. Sadly it's not the norm these days in a lot of places.
Yeah, this story is bullshit. The school provides supplementary food for the kids because some parents can't afford to provide fully balanced meals, no one is throwing out anyone's lunch here.
and i do hope im not doing any egregious harm to this delightful piece of rightwing fearmongering.
"in North Carolina, all pre-Kindergarten programs are required to evaluate the lunches being provided and determine if they meet USDA nutrition guidelines. If not, they must provide an alternative."
the lunch contained the following:
turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice
apple juice, and potato chips are essentially nutritionally devoid; nothing more than sugar and fat. the banana is an excellent choice, but turkey and cheese on white bread is essentially the minimum effort from this parent.
im not trolling. the problem isnt the inspector, its the government presuming american parents after 40 years of fast food and processed meals from diners and grocery stores still remember how to construct a nutritionally balanced meal that didnt come out of a box, can, or bag. its the audacious assumption that politicians in north carolina who take months of vacation and certainly have time to prepare the aformentioned balanced meal, are identical to your average family working multiple jobs or shifts at a fraction of the wage of a politician.
i dont have a problem combating childhood obesity, but north carolinas proposal essentially forces millions of parents to do something that based upon american obesity statistics, most do not understand how to accomplish.
Good people go to bed earlier.
The fruit juice and the potato chips are a bunch of garbage carbohydrate -- if you're going to eat an apple do it in the form of eating an apple, not drinking the concentrated juice. Having said that, while I agree with the PRINCIPLE of the school's decision, I absolutely disagree with their perceived duty to ENFORCE this kind of thinking. If people want to feed their kids toxic garbage, they should have the freedom. I'd throw a hell of a stink if this happened to my kid (though it probably wouldn't (ever happen), seeing as I apparently take the same view of nutrition as the school in this case and would never send him with a lunch containing such an absurd item as potato chips)
But what was so wrong with the lunch the mother provided? Nothing apparently. A spokesowman for the Division of Child Development explained that the mother’s meal should have been okay.
“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division, told the Journal. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.”
It‘s unclear from reports who determined the lunch wasn’t healthy enough. ... The school denied knowledge of the incident and said it’s looking into it.
The real funny thing is at the bottom of TFA, people are posting rants against the Gov'ment and Michelle Obama, but it's a North Carolina rule, so people should be upset with their elected officials instead and, by proxy, themselves for voting for them...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Are we talking about the US here? The US is the capital of the unhealthy food market. The change in food quality and healthyness from Canada to the States is shocking, I couldn't imagine finding some of the food I see in the states in Canada. For a school to send a girls lunch back for being unhealthy is out of control, has that inspector walked into a grocery store down there.
Vouchers.
It solves practically every issue you could name with public schools.
A comprehensive voucher program that ensured that every child got a free education at a private school would solve pretty much everything.
Many states spend a LOT of money on public education. It's hard to see all the money because it's spread around in lots of different accounts that are rarely all taken together. But it's big money. And private schools designed to operate on that budget are very practical and would be superior in every way.
Parents don't like the school? In big cities there should be a dozen other options and in small towns there should be at least two alternatives. It's not a big deal. it's not that hard.
What we're suffering from here is over centralization. Well meaning people make up a bunch of rules from some central planning office and then force everyone else to follow them with no discretion. The larger a system gets the less efficient centralization becomes. Fragment the system and all those problems go away.
Rather then having huge school boards or state education programs. Break it down so that every school manages itself. Make them accountable for what their students achieve. And if they don't achieve make it very clear that parents can take the kids out at will and put them in a competing institution... leaving the first school starving.
Do that and schools will compete with each other for students. Teachers will compete with each other. And that competition will make our schools better.
Think about the real world. Where does competition not make people and companies better at what they do? Basically nowhere. Make this part of the system and this sort of mindless incompetence will vanish.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Could it be that most apple juices contain arsenic? Apple juice=Cancer?
Just twisted to support the usual right-wing scare agenda.
By and large, what this story boils down to is that a low-income child whose tuition is fully subsidized by the state under a program her mother opted into was offered some additional food to supplement the boxed lunch she brought from home. This option was provided not because of some overarching, generally applicable law or regulation, but because the program in which her mother and school voluntarily participate requires such an option be available.
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/
Hey! But don't let that bit of reality disturb the rest of your enjoying the fine entertainment provided on Fox News!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
True story. The lunch did not have a vegetable.
Our school district doesn't allow most potato chips either. Sun Chips are okay, but Doritos or any type of potato chips you cannot have. They will take it away from your kids.
samzenpus for Principal!
Unless you're suggesting the 4 year-old forged the note.
What we're suffering from here is over centralization.
I'll be first in line to say the American educational system has its problems, but by and large centralizaztion isn't one of them. In my state, which has 82 counties, there are around 150 public school districts, and God only knows how many private schools in addition. And that's hardly an outlier.
or, to put it more accurately, slashdot sends the lunch home.
I would agree with the inspector
Apple juice has high concentrations of sugar and pesticides.
Processed meat have preservatives proven to be carcinogens.
I don't know about the potato chips, but they are usually loaded with oil and salt.
clearly provides a superior nutritional experience for the young people of this great nation, which our troops fight so bravely to defend. it's science. you can't argue with science.
-sincerely, the orange juice growers group of greater floridia
What is ironic is that the State Inspector for North Carolina is almost certainly over 300 pounds.
Bullshit.
The invisible hand of the free market does not solve everything and vouchers are just a long term plan of privatizing profits and socializing the losses. Private schools get to cream-skim/cherry-pick pupils while public schools become basket cases over the long term due to falling budgets and thus no money for teachers to teach the pupils at the lower socioeconomic spectrum who have more family problems in general, creating even a larger divide than there is now.
>implying that centralization is a problem
No. Just no. My state is 47 miles the long way and it has 39 cities and towns, each with their own school systems.
You are on crack, sir.
--
BMO
Prisons have better food then some schools and prisons have a store where you can buy pop and candy as well.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/anime-news/2012/02/01/prison-food-is-better-than-japanese-school-lunches
http://www.cari-fit.com/2011/06/school-lunches-worse-than-prison-food/
Check out other great stories with the nottrue tag: http://slashdot.org/tag/nottrue
My favorite is "Michigan Teen Creates Fusion Device."
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
I was interested when I read this story elsewhere, but what is it doing on Slashdot? Our school lunch experiences are more along these lines. That or getting our lunch money stolen by brawnier members of the student body.
"The Greens lynched a hacker in Chicago. Last month, but I think the body's still hanging from the old Water Tower."
Okay... I know she's only 5, and someone with such little life experience is probably not going to be devious enough to outsmart an adult... but just think about it for a moment. The school claims no knowledge of the incident. Really, if the school wants to cover its butt, they should give the child a receipt or something that explicitly acknowledges that the child's lunch was inspected and it did not satisfy their criteria... with a verifiable paper trail, the school really couldn't claim no knowledge of the incident
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And it's an excellent way to put public money into private and religious hands.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but in my state, that was the only intention with vouchers.
Disclaimer: My mom was a public school teacher for years.
Poor Kids: Go to a private school their voucher 100% covers. That's all their parents can afford.
Middle Class Kid: Go to a private school their voucher 75% covers. They want their children to get a good education, so they chip in a bit extra.
Rich Kid: Go to a private school their voucher
It's a way to legally segregate schools by socio-economic status. Not cool.
Dude, she wasn't forced to eat anything. She was offered something else and took it. They may have not even known she had a home lunch with her. 4-year-olds aren't exactly the most forthcoming or entirely aware people in the world.
As for the political aspect, even if the lunch lady whacked her over the head with a yard stick and then force fed the girl cow shit, how the hell is it Obama's fault? What's next, Obama is to blame for all euthanized kittens?
Keep your kid at home and feed her whatever you want.
The banana is to keep the kid from dying of colon cancer.
Don't worry maggots, agenda 21 will be on your doorstep within the decade. Your feeble plans for a bright future are completely fucked. You sat an laughed at the electronic vote fraud, the us constitution being destroyed, and now you whine like a bitch when your childs is going to school with fema and the tsa.
Shut the fuck up now, and take your vaccines, drink your water with sterilization and lithium, floride, hexaflorine, gorge your pie holes with hormone meat, and fukushima/oil spill fish. Fuck your fireplace, it's a no burn day, only plutonium hot particles are allowed.
go support your local globalist psychopathic puppets, demand "democracy" fuck the constitutional republic, fuck your oath
don't worry, he will make sure this never happens again. once education becomes completely unattainable for these types of undesirables, every kid there will have either a lunch prepared by their nanny, or the money to go buy lunch from the cafeteria. meanwhile these kids will be working the coal mines for everyone else to provide cheap energy at market rates - while being paid slave wages - just the way the founding fathers wanted it.
three comments and I am forever at terrible karma
I'm gonna personally see to it that all you Progressive pukes get stuck with the bill for wasting food like that. There's starving children in third world countries, for fuck's sake. I'm not gonna allow you knobs to get rid of your toxic waste by putting it in chicken nuggets and feeding it to innocent school children!
Sounds like they gave her an additional lunch and told her that her mother didn't pack something healthy enough. That they might have called it a supplement doesn't change the fact that it was functionally a replacement. That would be reasonable if the USDA provided objectively good nutritional standards, but instead we have an organization which has been legally required to recognize the tomato sauce on pizza as a serving of a vegetable having their standards used to second-guess a good wholesome lunch sent by the parent.
My suspicion is that this is a way for the school to bring in additional revenue. If I were the parent, I would send the school a letter saying that you had not agreed to the transaction and that you will not pay it. If they send it to collections you send a letter of dispute. If they persist, threaten to organize a class action law suit.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
And that point is that is it really the place of government to decide these things? You may argue that it's in the interest of public health, but when we start rationalizing everything government does with "the greater good" argument then we are no longer free.
I just scrolled down to the comments to see what kind of names they had.
Wow. No, really. Wow. That's some serious tea in those bags. We're talking Earl Grey, hot, with honey and lemon.
[End Of Line]
Anyone that would turn their children over to agents of the state to be indoctrinated is clearly stupid or does not have their children's best interests at heart.
And since when are mechanically separated chicken ("nuggets") healthy?
Which is different from the current system of:
Poor Kids: Go to the public schools servicing the poorer areas they live in.
Middle Class Kids: Go to the public schools servicing the not so poor areas they live in.
Rich Kids: Go to a private school, unless the local public school happens to be very good in which case they might slum it with the middle class kids.
Sorry, don't buy this at all...
It is not the child, but the mother word. The mother prepared the lunch.
It amazing how far the left is capable of going in his assault on freedom!
For anyone who cares about freedom this is a front page news. Good that slashdot is not aligned with the totalitarian mind set of those who want the state controlling every aspect of our life !
Too bad this is bullshit: http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/
I submitted the debunking of this "story" to be a slashdot article. While we can't make this miserable piece go away, we can vote for the correction to go to the front page. Go to slashdot.org/recent and vote it up. Slashdot editors won't take responsibility for a crappy article posted, but we can use the system to get them to pay attention to a correction.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Or home school. That is a great big flashing warning sign that you child is being mis educated.
Run like hell.
This is idiotic--we all saw what was packed for lunch and it was probably better nutrition than many of us eat (especially the twinkie eating tech nerds--you know who you are).
This is another case of a "group" deciding that it knows better than another individual in an issue that does not affect the group, does not have a long term consequence for the child (it's only one lunch), and is really none of the group's business. How arrogant we are to dictate how and what other people pack for lunches or choose to eat. Shame on all of you who are arrogant enough to think you have the right to make decisions for other people.
I remember the "lunch nazis" when I was in elementary school 30 years ago who would watch to make sure we ate everything we needed--I often was not hungry enough to eat all the food and resorted to stuffing food I didn't want into my empty milk carton so I could throw it away without being forced to eat it "in the name of nutrition." I was not the only one--it is sad kids had to resort to that trickery to avoid eating things we didn't want and didn't need. We grew up fine and probably quite a few pounds lighter than if we'd been forced to eat the food by the monitors in our cafeteria.
This is just a case of the same 30-year-old arrogance I experienced in public school. People need to just shut up and leave the kids alone. If a kid is truly going hungry, they will ask for the food on their own--plenty in my school did on days that they forgot their lunch or lunch money; I know I did.
I just read through all the comments scored 3 or higher. Several of you said, sometimes in exactly these words, "Nothing to see here, move along."
Shame on you!
You are prepared to dismiss this story as being lies made up by a 4-year-old, or lies made up by crazy right-wing biased news sources? You can't be bothered to research it a little bit?
Put the words "West Hoke Elementary School" into Google News. Ignore Fox et. al. and look for local sources. Oh wow, looks like Google has started categorizing the links, and there is a link labelled "Local:" right near the top:
http://www.wcti12.com/news/30472198/detail.html
Or, if you can disdainfully read that horribly biased right-wing nutty web site The Blaze for a little bit, you can find their own link to the local newspaper story on the incident:
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/homemade-lunch-replaced-with-cafeteria-nuggets.html
So unless you are now going to tell me that the local news outlets are part of a vast right-wing conspiracy, I think it's clear there is indeed something to see here.
Now it does look like there is some backpedaling going on. This has embarrassed the authorities and they are downplaying it. But here are the facts as I understand them:
Now, as it happens, I heard the mother being interviewed on the radio yesterday. Her comment was that she can't afford to buy vegetables that won't be eaten and will be thrown away, and she can't afford to have the school charging her extra if the school doesn't like a lunch brought by the child.
She was also furious that the state officials implied that she is doing a poor job of looking after her child, and extra furious that they are confusing her 4-year-old daughter into thinking she packed bad food: "You're telling a 4-year-old. 'Oh, your lunch isn't right,' and she's thinking there's something wrong with her food."
Tell me, honestly. If you saw a news story on the Huffington Post that some right-wing outrage had been perpetrated in Alabama or something (I don't know, maybe paddling a child for not reciting the Pledge of Allegiance or something) would you immediately assume it was all lies because Huffington Post is a biased left-wing site? "Nothing to see here, move along"?
Don't blindly accept or blindly reject any news based on where you saw it. It has never been easier to check for alternative sources to corroborate a news story.
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
I used to weight 420 lbs. I had type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, severe sleep apnea (which could have literally killed me dead any night I forgot the CPAP), asthma, high cholesterol, IBS, and was diagnosed with type 2 bipolar disorder. I now weigh 194, have "the best cholesterol numbers [my doctor] has seen in a long time", energy to exercise, no breathing problems, I only poop when I want to now, and most of all I'm happy and stable without medication.
How did I do it, you ask? I realized that the USDA's purpose is to promote American grain-based agriculture (everything but corn, soybeans, and to a lesser degree wheat are considered "specialty crops") and not the health of Americans, and I quit following their stupid, lame, ineffective food pyramid. I save almost $10,000 in medications alone -- forget about all the other medical costs -- and I LOVE my tasty home-made bacon. That nasty corn, and wheat, and high-fructose-corn-syrup, and soybeans? Keep 'em the hell away from ME! I'd rather SMOKE than eat a school lunch -- it's better for me.
Want to lose weight? Grass-fed meats, vegetables (corn is not a vegetable -- except in school lunches!), fruit in moderation as a "treat". No added sugars of any kind. No wheat, corn, or god-help-us-soybeans-that-you-can't-even-eat-without-fermenting-them-because-they're-literally-inevitable-best-suited-for-feeding-pigs, ever.
Since the government started setting "preventative" nutritional guidelines, based on the then-unproven "low fat" theory from Dr. Ancel Keys, in 1977, have Americans gotten thinner or fatter? When the USDA publicly acknowledges that there is no "one true diet" for all humans, regardless of their ethnic background (and how recently that area developed agriculture) I MIGHT listen to them again. Until then, I think it would be insane to listen to them -- insanity being doing the same thing again and again and somehow expecting a different result.
It annoys me that the schools keep trying to tell my children that a low-fat diet is good for them. I can't imagine what I'd do if they started trying to force their hog-feed down my children's throats, but it would not be pretty.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
Otherwise, all it is is yet another massive tax break for the rich.
If the masses can keep you down, you're not the Ubermensch.
you are yet another kool-aid drinker (Ghana style).
Do you, um, mean Guyana style?
Space game using normal deck of cards: http://BattleCards.org
And the president cancels school voucher programs because he doesn't want the poor kids to mingle with his kids in private schools.
Why liberals hate poor kids so much that they REFUSE to let them use school money to pay for private schooling when the local schools are a failure is beyond me. I guess liberals don't care about poor kids, they only care about being able to tell others what to do even if it is not in their best interest.
voucher schools look good because they do not have to accept all comers equally and do not have to spend on special education
frankly the only way to get control of school spending is to cut way back on special requirements, if a child needs a full time aide or two to eventually learn by 12th grade how to pick their nose and sort forks from spoons, the schools should not be providing what amounts to insanely expensive retard day care.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
Well, to maintain a private school more expensive, they'd have to show that it produces better education. So they would do what expensive private universities do with poor kids: let them in based on talent and only let the very rich kids with a slightly lesser talent in. Basically, it doesn't produce segregation. Money in this case only acts as a tie breaker in the acceptance decisions.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Ok lets just nuke the planet and get it over with. Or at least lets just do it in the US (Because I'm sorry I live here and I can't figure out why we waste our time on this stupid crap). Of all the things to worry about your going to tell someone who took the time to make their kid a lunch that its not healthy and then you give them a school lunch (They show a picture in the story....A salad, Jello, Milk and Pizza...How many of those salads get eaten..)? And on top of that you throw in "which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.". Well f that what would you do if they don't pay that? I know I sure as hell wouldn't pay for a meal that I didn't request.
Sad to see Glenn Beck's site regurgitated here as if it had any merit to reality.
WTF should I care?
Isn't this site supposed to be about geek-tech news?
Provide me a story of some of those radio controlled quad-chopper powered by chicken nuggets
instead of this sad little earth-quake in the cafeteria of a young kid school.
Damn they didn't even take the effort to write an app to deal with these food harassment.
You're a moron. I doubt you're even able to attract a human female, let alone have a child.
The problem isn't any of what was in her meal, it's what it was lacking. Specifically, any fresh vegetables.
Why are you all feeding the machine? Why can't we trust that the local people in that area will take care of the situation? If you want to be outraged over nonsense go to your own townhall meetings. Instead of offering up what you would do, why not spend that time being a part of the community and actually do it?
And you, Slashdot. The only way this could be construed as news for nerds is if there was a statistician whose specialty is school lunch programs, and even only then as a humorous aberration. If the day is this slow at least go for some speculative articles vaguely resembling something techy. Most other sites just made stuff up about the upcoming Android 5.0, at least show some effort.
Sometimes, life itself is sarcasm...
The Federal Government would never interfere with school lunches. That's totally between a parent and her child. It's all 1-percenter propaganda!
And North Carolina? Why should we even believe such a place exists? These capitalist imperialists will stop at nothing to undermine the People's trust in the Revolution.
Do not listen to them. Be strong!
Yes, the food pyramid is complete BS. But fruit "as a treat" ? What do you think primates have been eating for the last 2 million years?
Here are the original articles:
http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/homemade-lunch-replaced-with-cafeteria-nuggets.html
Secondary article that appears to be researching into it:
http://blogs.ajc.com/get-schooled-blog/2012/02/14/a-turkey-sandwich-and-chips-from-home-versus-school-nuggets-sounds-like-a-toss-up-to-me/?cxntfid=blogs_get_schooled_blog
This (allegedly) happens to one four-year-old in Podunk, North Carolina and it's OMG NANNY STATE IS AFTER YOUR KIDS. If this incident had happened in Berkeley I might have believed it.
They didn't explicitly mention that the ingredients for the sandwich were all fresh, maybe the bread was a moldy or some shit. Maybe it wasn't kept cold enough and the cheese and/or turkey went funky.
Or maybe the inspector objected to the fact that some lunch meat is borderline poison.
Either way, this is a good thing that they have somebody checking this shit even if in this case they may have been a little over-zealous. It's kind of sad that the parents can't be counted on to provide a healthy lunch, but I guess that's the fucking way she goes.
What the hell is theblaze.com doing on Slashdot?!?
After reading the article, "School Sends Child's Lunch Home After Determining it Unhealthy" and then reading almost 2/3 of the responses. I am beginning to believe that my Dumb Man Out theory is actually an underlining factor in human culture. The Dumb Man out theory pretty much states. "In a large group of people, facing a difficult problem or decision making situation, the group will always revert to the dumbest suggestion in the room, because of the immediate satisfaction of current said issue is the quickest solution. Whether it has long term affects does not apply to the topic. But rather the quick decision of the entire group. Thus stating that the group of people will always equal in intelligence to the dumbest person in the room" Now that I stated this. Here is my response WOW... Thank you for being my guinea pigs. Because this is truly some dumb ass shit!
If a kid is truly going hungry, they will ask for the food on their own
The problem the USA has with nutrition isn't lack of food. The issue isn't kids "going hungry", it's kids eating crap that hurts their development and ends up costing society millions of dollars due to health problems later in life.
No one forced this girl to eat the school lunch in addition to the sandwich she brought from home. In fact, she chose to eat the school lunch and leave the sandwich, and the school was fine with that. So your rant about being "a few pounds lighter" because you weren't "forced to eat all the food" is a non sequitur.
How arrogant we are to dictate how and what other people pack for lunches or choose to eat.
First, a 4 year old girl is hardly informed enough to be able to "choose" what she should eat. Second, she didn't get to choose in the first place (the lunch was packed by her mother). Third, are you suggesting that if her mother had packed chocolate, vodka or broken glass, the school should have let the child eat that?
Stop foaming at the mouth for 10 seconds and consider this old saying saying: "It takes a village to raise a child."
Yes the "real story" is totally different from the sensationalist piece above, but I'm still glad to learn most people object to having "Government Inspectors" go through the kids lunch boxes to make sure it meets "regulations".
Now, how about Government Inspectors going through your Internet activity, making sure you're not visiting the "wrong" sites, downloading "objectional materials", engage in "subversive activities" or, God forbid, commit copyright infringement? Hello, anyone still there? I guess we lost most of the politicians in the audience
When the copyright term is "forever minus a day", live every day like it's the last.
A vegetable of some sort. If only mom had slathered tomato flavored high-fructose corn syrup (ketchup) on everything it would have passed inspection. Silly mom! When will parents ever learn?
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Just read the comments in this thread, for any proof you might need. Here we have a Glenn Beck story, sourced from a fake newspaper that tries to look like a real one. Even when pointed out over and over again, they basically stick their fingers in their ears and yell "LALALA" as loud as they can. I'm starting to agree with Bill Maher. The right-wing has their own little bubble that contains their reality, and they don't really care if what they're saying is true, or makes any sense.
How does this even make it onto /. This is a supposed to be a technology/geek site.
The problem with a large population is anonymity. Anonymity allows people to say/do things they would never consider if everyone knew who they were and what they were doing.
The solution is public humiliation. The inspector's name and job and decision needs to be published. Maybe s/he can find a like-minded society somewhere far away.
The school administrator is damn lucky for not substituting a kid's lunch who had a special diet, for instance food allergies, or heaven help them, a religious prohibition. I doubt that the State of North Carolina would bring their full resources to bear in this person's defense. Sooner or later an authority pinhead will do something that upsets a wealthy parent who has an activist streak, and their life pretty much ends.
It didn't have enough vegetable portions... the slice of pizza was missing
What are the sanitation rules for the inspectors.
One pair of gloves is not going to do it. What if the ....
food in lunch box A was contaminated by Mom-A.
then the inspector touches Lunch box B C D E
and then box-I which has influenza contamination by
dad-I who made a super lunch but sneezed in his
own home.
Next time you fly and the TSA inspects your kit.
Are the gloves that they push your tooth brush to
one side with clean (not the last time I was inspected).
Are the TSA inspectors required to take food and health
handler training and screening. Are they screened and
inoculated for TB, HEP-A, HEP-B etc.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.
It's a shit lunch loaded with refined carbohydrates, salt and sugar. But has a banana.
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
Not much for spoilage there, but even so you're probably pushing your luck with turkey. As I am recovering from food poisoning myself at the moment, this topic is very much on my mind. Not to mention a lot of my bathroom floor...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The same think happened to me at high school. The teacher could provide no evidence whatsoever that can of nut-brown ale was unhealthy.
First, some public schools are the same way. There are science magnets that only accept bright kids and are public.
Second, private and voucher schools have the best special needs education in the world. Their care far surpasses anything you'll find in public school. They also have the best schools for troubled children that have obedience issues.
You're addicted to force. Just because a school isn't forced to take certain kids doesn't mean that there won't be a private school that will take them. Maybe the troubled child won't get into the school that is designed around high achieving children. Maybe instead he'll get into a school meant for troubled children. And is that bad? No... they're getting exactly what they need rather then trying to jam everyone into a one size fits all system that is failing millions.
The existing system is a disgrace and vouchers could save the kids.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
that's already happening...
Think only rich kids go to private schools?
All you're doing is screwing poor kids by trapping them in a failed system. You're giving them no way out and you're not holding their schools accountable for failure.
Vouchers would give you both. Will the rich kids go to a nicer school? Maybe. They also might go to the same school only the rich family gave an endowment so all the kids enjoy a nicer education.
Don't think that can happen? There are a lot of schools back east that are private and are in small towns. The local town kids can't afford to pay for the private school. So what they do is charge out of town people a typical private school price and they ask the town to subsidize locals at a rate that public school typically pays. It works fine.
All the problems you have with it have been tested in the real world and it works... BETTER then the pure public system.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Anonymous mom makes anonymous complaint about unidentified gub'mint worker. Sounds legit.
They supposedly fed her McNuggets instead! "Supposedly" chicken nuggets are healthier than her tiny lunch. Unbelieavable!
Bottom line is that the 4-year old misunderstood what to do after being told that her lunch didn't have all the components of a healthy meal. I have friends who are teachers in the San Antonio school system who've told me that everyday parents send their children to school hungry, or with something like a plain slice of bread and a package of Fruit Fruit Roll-Ups or chips for lunch. One 4th grader recently came in with slice of American Cheese and three gherkin pickles wrapped up in a Walmart back. My friend bought the child a lunch. These kids spend the morning lethargic and disinterested, thinking about their first and only hot meal of the day -- the school lunch. Can you imagine what it's like to teach a hungry child (or in the plural) in a kindergarten or elementary school class of 22-28?
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/content/michelle-obamas-brownshirts-and-case-confiscated-lunch
Jackboots, indeed.
What was this mom thinking? The government says you have to have vegetables for it to be a healthy lunch.
She'll have to include a slice of pizza the next time to cover the vegetables requirement.
(Yes, the US government has decided that pizza is a vegetable!)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
At first I thought you were making a rediculous assumption, but when I checked the linked page I understood why. According to the nutritional value listing this product has 0% fibers, while apples are supposed to be full of fibers. That 'apple juice' you're talking about must be the kind of industrial produce you buy at supermarkets, right? The kind that looks like piss... that's horrible indeed. As professor Robert H. Lustig explains in this video, sugars without fibers are destabilising your metabolism, and thus mildly poisonous.
My brother has a small scale apple farm, and makes juice with a rented mobile juice press. In these presses very little of the fruit gets wasted. You can produce about 80 liters of juice with 100 kilos of apples. The end product looks and tastes more like a fruit smoothie, and surely fits a healthy diet. I'd even recommend it for athletes as an alternative to sports drinks (although not on it's own, take some salty food and plain water too).
Can you PLEASE start updating the summaries when it turns out they're just flat-out WRONG? This is happening more and more lately. It's not even a case of bias or interepretation--sometimes stories are just factually incorrect (and easily proven as such) yet they sit on the front page looking as true as can be, and you've got to wade through a bunch of comments to find out that the source, the submitter, or the editor were just fucking retarded.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Moreover, the smoke screen about 'low income program' and 'opt-in' is irrelevant. The mother was obviously able to send the kid in with a decent lunch ( better than I usually took to school ), and at no time was she asked to 'opt-in' on this program, the school had to. The mother repeatedly asked the school not to intervene. Why was it necessary to overrule her?
It's a DAY CARE program. All of the rest is state meddling. Sure it's subsidized, the mom would be paying for it with her tax dollars even if her kids wasn't enrolled. She was lucky enough to get access to cheap day care, that doesn't mean she should expect the government to rummage through the lunch and materials prepared. Hell, if the school said they were looking for drugs /. would immediately detect the Fourth Amendment violation this 'program' courts.
The fundamental line from the Carolina Journal story: "There are no clear restrictions about what additional items - like potato chips - can be included in preschoolers' lunch boxes." Where the hell does the government come off 'prohibiting' what a parent sends in. If Mom thinks a 'coke and a twinkie' is okay, that's her damned business. I would disagree, but it's supposed to be a free country not a nanny state.
#-#
Ad Astra Per Aspera
A rough road leads to the stars
Everything this person says is the truth. Added sugar and high carbohydrate foods (this includes fruits) are what're killing everyone. People have it in their minds that dietary fats get directly translated into body fat and sugar just makes you hyper. This is simply not how it works.
That being said, I tend to eat a lot of bread and fruits, but it works for me. I am extremely active. One thing no one should do however, is drink sugared soda, sweetened tea, or fruit juice. Not even a little bit. Yes, fruit juice is nearly as bad for you as soda.
Of course, you can always eat all these things if you don't care about your health.
A) The child should *never* be involved in a disupte such as this, only parents and administrators
B) Unless the child is deprived of food (starved) - which involves not the school but other authorities - wtf right does the government have to tell you how you should or should not feed your child?
It's all political. This looks like left-wing overreach to some, and it looks like right-wing fearmongering to others.
The truth is more complicated, obviously.
My simple and humble opinion is, it should be up to parents to feed their kids. Even if it becomes necessary to impose sane limits to this policy, I think we can all agree that the lunch in question should be permitted.
Wow... got a source for any of those assertions. Or are you wiggle words enough to prevent a quantatative analysis of your statement...
I'll back up one thing at a time.
Challenge one argument I made. Try to keep it simple. If you make it complex it will require disproportionate effort on my part and I have no interest in that game. I'm not writing a ten page essay for every sentence on your part.
We can go point by point. You can challenge something I said and I'll back it up or admit I've got nothing.
I'm game if you are...
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Thats not how argument works - you don't get to make some rediculous unqualified statement and then weasel out of providing support for it - but because its Friday and I'm up for a rabbit chase, start with this one
Second, private and voucher schools have the best special needs education in the world. Their care far surpasses anything you'll find in public school. They also have the best schools for troubled children that have obedience issues.
You're putting crisps (chips, for any americans) in a kid's lunch??
Seriously, WTF?!
This is *not* *healthy*. Nor is it good parenting.
Only true in strict essays. In a slashdot thread? Come now. Be reasonable... or you're unreasonable. ;)
That's two statements. I'll provide evidence that the best special needs care is private. I'm actually shocked you're questioning that one. This is going to be easy.
From google...
All private in dallas... at least according to ehow :D
http://www.ehow.com/info_7899398_schools-learning-disabled-dallas-texas.html
schools explicitly for learning disabled kids...
http://privateschool.about.com/od/schoolsneeds1/tp/toplearning.htm
I have to wonder, what would you consider as evidence here? Do you honestly think the federally mandated programs at the public school serviced by teachers with no special training in dealing with such children is going to compete with institutions that are set up from the ground up to address the problem?
You're basically arguing McDonalds is better at making sushi... then a sushi chef. I don't know if there is a study for that either I could quote, but it seems like a hard argument to argue.
The private schools hire specialists and have customized programs.
Another thing that is great about private schools is that they're incredibly diverse. None of them are the same. They're all different. And rather then a weakness that's a strength. Because while ALL public schools seem capable of showing degeneration the private schools have successes and failures. And that's something we can learn from. IF everyone fails that doesn't tell us very much. It just tells us what we're doing isn't working. But if we have successes and failures then clearly we need to stop doing what the failures are doing and do more of what the successes are doing.
Ultimately, I like the voucher system because it gets the government out of education, gives parents more how their kids are taught, makes the parents more active in the child's education, and solves all the silly political battles we've been having over education for years.
If we go full voucher then all the political problems with education are gone. Pick the school you want. Don't like that school? there are five more to take its place. And unlike the existing system where they won't let you leave and will keep bad schools on life support. In the Voucher system bad schools that no one likes die. No life support. Dead. And from the ashes new schools... hopefully wiser then their predecessors.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
i don't give a crap what was in the lunch.....i don't give a crap if they charged anybody for anything. i do give a crap that the food police are even a Real deal. regardless of where(what agency) they come from....... who decided to create these 'food police' i want NAMES.