Piggybacking on a post from Josh yesterday...this is getting utterly rediculous. State inspectors in North Carolina forced a 4-year old to eat an entire school lunch because some government inspector declared that the lunch her mother prepared for her didn't have enough vegetables in it.
WHAT????
I'm sorry, but if I'm 4 years old, I'm not exactly concerned with how much greens in are in my lunch on a daily basis, but apparently your federal (emphasis on FEDERAL) government is. This inspector was from the (ready for this?) Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised program at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
How's that for a mouthful (no pun intended)?
Josh brings up a good point that back when we were kids, our lunches probably would have failed any and all "nutrition" standards that our ever-present and omniscient government sets forth, but in all honestly, we turned out alright (we think?). Just because our lunches didn't have any green beans in it didn't make us any more developmentally disabled. Besides, kids have food envy anyway, and when nobody is looking, they'll steal somebody else's cookies and throw the veggies in the trash.
You can lead a 4-year old to vegetables, but you can't make them eat them. Now, I wonder what Big Brother is going to do to combat THAT problem.
This year, the cafeteria at RSPS has been outsourced for the first time since I have been a teacher here. Every day (except for Papa John's Fridays...which is bad enough), the hot lunches have some kind of vegetable in it, and can you guess what food product I see more of being thrown in the trash on a daily basis. These are kids, it's not the government's job to tell kids what is and is not good for them. That's the job of the family, the central unit in American society, no matter what the smarter-than-you government says.
Oh, thanks for asking. My lunch today consisted of a deli rotisserie chicken sandwich on Italian bread with string cheese, Cheez-it crackers, chewy Chips-a-hoy. Not a veggie in sight.
I sort of had vegetables in mine - if you consider lettuce and tomatoes on a sandwich to count. Thanks for the link love. This whole story is sordid and where does it end?
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