In North Carolina, a 4-year-old student’s lunch was inspected and deemed unfit. So, the cafeteria gave her lunch and sent her home with a lunch bill for $1.25.
Photo credit: Yoppy (Flickr)
Because, obviously, cafeteria chicken nuggets are more nutritionally suitable than a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, some potato chips, and apple juice.
After the incident, a school manager said: “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” Duh. Grain+meat+dairy+fruit sounds pretty USDA satisfactory to me.
Really, the major problem isn’t with the lunch, it’s with the authority structure. It all boils down to what does the government have authority over?
“A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.”
-Thomas Jefferson
Government’s job is to keep us safe and free, not to inspect our lunches and tell us what to eat. And it’s our job to hold them to that.
Read more here:
Backyard Farming – School Lunch Shenanigans
The Blaze – N.C. Food ‘Inspector’ Sends Girl‘s Lunch Home After Determining It’s Not Healthy Enough
Carolina Journal Online – Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria “Nuggets”
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Madame Agrarian 
You mean deep fried mystery meat psuedo-ovals are better than a balanced home brought lunch? Thanks for the lesson North Carolina!
Stop that–you sound too sensible!
Thanks for commenting!
Amen Sista!
I would’ve loved to have known what the parents did in response. I’d be livid if my school threw away food – then billed me for the Frankenfood they fed my kid. I’d’ve raised [cain] at their audacity.
[This post edited by Madame Agrarian]
To clarify, Jill, the school did not throw the girl’s lunch away, they sent it home again with her. Still, their usurpation of parental authority is maddening.
The mother complained to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County, NC. The article I linked to by the Carolina Journal Online went into more of the aftermath.
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Outrageous! However there is a stupid little legal argument called en loco parentus (sp.?) which says that children at school are wards of the school and as such are not citizens with full legal rights. Sucks but it is just the way it is.. If i were the mom I would pull my kid out until the offender had been fired and see to it that there was such an uproar that the schools policies would change. As public schools these are our schools and we should use our power to change them if they are not up to par.