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."
Maybe it didn't have what plants crave?
- d
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/
The parent states she received a note and bill, where exactly is someone taking the 4 yr old's word on anything?
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.
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.
Since when is apple juice healthy?
I presume the letter the school sent home with the child, explaining their reasoning and charging the parents $1.25 for the chicken nuggets - which was provided to the original reporter - was enough for the original and more reputable news source to go ahead and print the story.
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. . . .
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..."
"If you (a consenting adult) wants to eat toxic garbage I have no problem with this (provided your insurance covers the costs)"
Ding-ding-ding-ding... this, right here, is why we will never have socialized medicine in the US: because people like you see it as an excuse to start designating what is "right." It is exactly the reason there was such a fuss, and while largely unfounded, it obviously had some truth as long as this sort of nonsense gets spewed.
Great Intellect...
The mother voluntarily enrolled in a program to give her kid extra food, since she was unable to provide full meals every day. She received a note from the school that she may be charged for such extra portions in the future, but not a single parent has been charged to date.
So please, enlighten us as to how this is "the nanny state gone mad", and not just a case of morons being fooled into thinking that a mole hill is a mountain?
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."
From the article:
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
Sandwhich was turkey and cheese and was made of bread, so that's the meat, the dairy and the grain, and the banana covers the "fruit or vegetables". A reasonable quantity of potato chips isn't unhealthy, and neither is apple juice. Also, the alternate meal that the girl was given apparently consisted of chicken nuggets.
The USDA requirements are a bit of a joke anyway. They're not really based on particularly good dietary science, they mostly conform to politics rather than real nutritional standards. Meat, vegetables and fruit sure, but dairy and grains? They're not necessarily bad for you, but they're also not requirements. Calcium is important, but you can get it in other ways than dairy, and you can certainly get better sugars, proteins and fats from other sources once you're no longer an infant. Pretty much anything you could get from "grains" (which covers a range of things that are mostly nutritionally just carbohydrates) you can get from a larger vegetable serving.
There are certainly meals that can be put together that aren't healthy, but you probably have to put a lot of effort into doing worse than the typical school lunch in the first place. If the mother in the story had sent her child to school with a big cube of liver, a raw brussels sprout and a bottle of beet juice it would have been a lot healthier than the USDA requirements or the school lunch. Her child would probably beg to be taken away by social services, but the meal would be healthy.
It's about as un-healthy (or healthy, as it may be) as eating the equivalent amount of sugar and washing it down with water. I'd take the water without the sugar, please.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
taking the word of a four year old kid
In what way, exactly? The girl's mother says she received a note from the school regarding the incident. Are you claiming the 4 year old kid faked the note?
No, I am not claiming the note to be fake.
Go back and re-RTFA. They did not say that the note was specifically in response to this lunch, only that it came from the school - time not specified. While the receipt was from the same day, the note could have been a school policy that was handed out when preschool first started.
Even more so, people are taking the girl's word that the school somehow ordered her to not heat her own lunch and have only three chicken nuggets. I'm not accusing her of lying, rather I am inclined to believe she did not understand what she was told.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
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."
Yes. Obviously conservatives are taking the kids word for it. Not the physical evidence, like the note, or demands to pay, or anything else.
As I've already said in other replies, the note is questionable as to when it was sent home. The article linked to from this story did not specify that the note regarding the school checking lunches was received the same day; it could have been a policy note that was sent home earlier.
The receipt for the chicken nuggets only shows that the girl bought chicken nuggets. It does not, however, support the allegations that she was ordered to not eat her own lunch and have instead only the chicken nuggets as many "news" sites want us to believe. It does not support in any way her being separated from her lunch at any time during the lunch hour, for that matter.
How the hell your post got to +5 boggles my mind.
Maybe because it was a more reasonable evaluation of the facts provided than the summaries that are flying all over the conservative blogosphere?
Don't worry, though. The drugedot conservatives will have it down to (-1, flamebait) soon enoiugh.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
The mother was NOT charged. She received a form letter, sent to all parents, that the school might start charging for extra food given to students at some point in the future. However, since she is voluntarily enrolled in a program for poor parents, she would be exempted from paying regardless.
Please stop repeating these right-wing, scaremongering lies.
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?
rather I doubt that a four-year-old girl is capable of giving a completely accurate account of what happened
OK. I've give you that.
It's refreshing to see someone approaching this from a reasonable standpoint. Most people thus far who have disagreed with me have not wanted to meet anywhere in the middle. I thank you for not being one of them.
But if start with that as an assumption, then I think that you also have to accept that a 4 year old is NOT capable of understanding when teacher / other school official says (with dramatic license) "That lunch does not meet the appropriate nutritional guidelines. We are not replacing your lunch that you brought from home, but merely supplementing it in order to ensure you have the proper diet of a child of your age."
That is pretty much where I was going with it. I'm not trying to accuse the girl of lying or trying to pull one off on someone. I figured she was probably told to get something (maybe something specific) from the line - or given something from the line by an adult - and misinterpreted what she was said.
Someone else pointed out that the whole story has already pretty well been debunked:
a north carolina non-troversy
If a teacher / school official really believed the child's lunch was inadequate, was it absolutely essential that action be taken immediately / that day?
As I read it, apparently the girl was instructed to get some milk from the line, and - I would wager through confusion and nothing more - grabbed chicken nuggets, milk, and some other items.
So basically, someone felt she either didn't have enough dairy in her lunch, or not enough to drink in her lunch, and suggested she get some milk. I don't think that is any kind of grave or sweeping action being taken.
I'm assuming these people at the school are themselves educated past the high school level, but perhaps I am wrong.
It's a North Carolina pre-school program. I have no idea what kind of qualifications the people there do or do not have. One would hope they at least graduated high school though we certainly know that is not a prerequisite for having children...
Given the description of what the kid brought from home, though, if I were the parent I would probably tell them to pound sand.
I could understand the frustration, if the incident actually occurred as suggested by the article that slashdot posted to.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
No, that would only be the message if they do start charging and charge everyone no matter how nutritious the packed lunch is. The far more likely scenario is that they either will continue their current policy of providing the food for free, or they will only charge in cases where the lunch is clearly inadequate.
Stop listening to demagogues. They're making you paranoid. Your kid's lunch lady isn't out to get you, I promise.
I am no fan of Obama but I can't see how such a school district policy can remotely be tied to the federal government.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
He wasn't referring to the student, he meant the Conservative blogger.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
So saith "Adult film producer"!
However, the moment you say "at our option we may charge you for things you did not request" you set up all sorts of nasty incentives.
Right. Just look at the phone company.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
I don't advocate this sort of thing but in response to how bureaucratic and legalistic we're becoming as a society, I just want to remind everyone of how things were once done.
There was a time when the father would have a personal one-on-one chitchat with a government agent who, under color of authority, decided that intimidating a little girl and decided that he is better able than her parents to decide how she should live. This may involve a discussion, a shouting match, or it may also involve said government agent getting the living shit beaten out of him in a fistfight. That would depend solely on whether he admits fault and changes his policies. Of course, this was a time when two men could have a fistfight so long as it was understood that when the man stays down, he's had enough. One way or another, this kind of overreach was not tolerated and being that kind of a jackass became increasingly painful.
Was the result more people getting yelled at and beaten up? Not at all, because everyone knew there was a line that you did not cross without consequence. The result was that the school officials tried at least to appear to be reasonable. The message was, you can screw with my taxes, you can screw with my vote, maybe you can even screw with my car, and I'll go through the bullshit motions of working with the system and seeking redress etc, but if you screw with my family you're going to have a war.
We've become so pussified that we think that's somehow savage or too extreme. The truth is, when you're not going to take this kind of shit no matter what, people recognize it and they rarely if ever try it. The result is better for everyone. Why should decent people be frustrated by this kind of soft tyranny? Those who would inflict it should be frustrated at how afraid they are to try it.
I know it can't be true, but sometimes it seems like nobody appreciates what you're actually teaching the next generation of children when you train them from a very young age to expect that authority is arbitrary and can come along and screw with you for any reason or no real reason at all, that even the relationship between mother and child is not too sacred for their interference. When they're all on antidepressants and antipsychotics long before they get driver's licenses, I guess you'll blame TV and video games, right? Never having the security of boundaries that will be respected has nothing to do with it, right?
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Please stop repeating these right-wing, scaremongering lies.
What right-wing, scaremongering lies? Okay, so the school didn't go through with charging this particular parent the $1.25.
But still.... Turkey sandwich with cheese and lettuce = BAD
Ground up chicken slime nuggets = GOOD ?
Sure, right-wing blogs could be wrongly blaming Obama, but if the above is truly what being a left-winger means, then I'm going to have to turn in my socialist card.
How is this story a right-wing lie? As an old leftie I'm horrified by the idea of the USDA mandating what foods should go into a healthy school lunch. The USDA is an organization set up to protect factory agriculture interests, not your child's. These were the people who determined that ketchup counted as a serving of vegetables. They have absolutely no business overriding a parent's food choices for their children. If the right-wing is up in arms about this, then more power to them.
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
The thing is that back in the '30s most people viewed the government with a great deal of suspicion. Outlaws were held up as nobel freedom-fighters. Even the the Barrow gang was fine until they apparently shot a traffic patrolman in cold blood. If the government went to kick a family off their land, the nation was incensed by it.
These days, the balance of trust has shifted. People don't trust each other at all, and they often view the government as the lesser of two evils (even though they don't trust it either).
So standing up to officials is likely to get your children taken by social services, and it isn't likely to get you much sympathy. And getting in a fist fight over it will get you jail-time.
The problem isn't that we don't stand up for ourselves (the fact that 3 million people are in jail is a testament to that), but that we put our faith in the government to save us from each other, when the government is what we should be mainly worried about.
But the USDA isn't involved. Even the original scare mongering story didn't mention the USDA. It was a North Carolina program, open only to volunteers who opt in, and only to poor at-risk children.
However did the parent actually say this? So far the school has said no one is being charged for the food. Original pseudo-journalist probably just making a bunch of stuff up, the mother is angry and shouting about having to pay (there is a hint in the rules of the voluntary program that they might have to pay for extra food the child takes).
The story has been corroborated by the Hoke County Assistant Superintendent.
http://www.wxyz.com/dpp/news/childs-lunch-allegedly-taken-by-teacher-told-it-wasnt-healthy-enough
It appears that it wasn't the "pseudo-journalist" just making a bunch of stuff up. I can't say the same for you.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The USDA has been setting guidelines for decades.
An activity which is not at all inconsistent with the prior poster's assertions.