We previously discussed whether England was becoming a “Nanny State.” (here and here). As much as I love London (and Londoners), it appears to have plunged into realm of government regulation of virtually every aspect of life and family management. An example is the new directive from the British government to school officials that they can and should use their “common law powers” to search student lunches to remove and destroy “unhealthy or inappropriate.” Education minister Lord Nash issued the directive to cover unhealthy items listed by the school that are now barred. Teachers can now “confiscate, keep or destroy” such snacks.
As the parents of four, my wife and I tend to be fairly strict about junk food, but we try to find a happy balance. We work hard to put together healthy lunches. A couple days a week, the kids may have a cookie or other treat to jazz up their lunch. The idea of a teacher then overriding our parental judgment and confiscating such an item is otherworldly.
Nevertheless, Education minister Lord Nash has said that such searches are permitted, though he added that they should be done with the consent of the pupils: “There is nothing to prevent schools from having a policy of inspecting lunch boxes for food items that are prohibited under their school food policies. A member of staff may confiscate, keep or destroy such items found as a result of the search if it is reasonable to do so in the circumstances.”
On the list are such items as sausage snacks and the delicious English breakfast of Scotch Eggs (something I enjoyed virtually every morning recently in London). Cereal bars have also been seized.
We have seen similar moves in the United States, though there appears far greater public backlash to trend. I am not one of the critics of the First Lady for her effort to improve the healthy content of school lunches though the management of program has been rather . . . well . . . hamhanded. I think it has been a great idea to remove soda machines and candy machines from schools and reduce fried foods. However, the resulting menus have often been distinctly unappetizing. If the kids are not going to eat the lunches (which appears a widespread problem), it defeats the purpose. Regardless, there must be a line preserved around parental authority and family choice in the rising (and feeding) of their children.
What do you think?
Source: Express
I think it is a total waste of resources to continue this practice.
You know what I really like to see are school gardens. The kids help tend the garden, and are more interested in trying the fresh, local (hopefully organic) produce. Plus it helps if someone with some imagination and a sense of taste develops recipes from their garden that the kids will enjoy.
They have a name for slop like food in the military that my dad called SOS. I will not spell out the first word for poo poo, but the next two are “On a Shingle.”
DBQ – that is so true. The food is not doing any kid any good from the inside of a trash can.
Grrr another html formatting goof up. /sigh
Massive amounts of health food is getting thrown away because kids don’t suddenly have the palette for it overnight.
No lie. I have a friend who works in the elementary school cafeteria. Often she will ask if we want some of the stuff that is being thrown out. She is NOT supposed to do anything but throw out the unused food or extra items, but cannot bring herself to do it. So it was….take the food and pretend we threw it in the dumpster. wink wink
The last item that was going to be just trashed was pounds of fresh blueberries. The kids didn’t like them raw, unsweetened and they were not allowed to cook them into cupcakes or anything tasty. We got 8 POUNDs of blueberries, which I froze in serving sized and cooking batch size portions. Another time it was pounds and pounds of green apples. Yay….free food for us. Super expensive for the tax payers and more to the point. What A Freaking Waste of Food.
It doesn’t matter what fat @ss Michelle Obama thinks we should be feeding to the kids. If they won’t eat it or it is unappetizing……it will be wasted and the kids will be even hungrier and want to snack on junk.
Just Google some of the disgusting photos of the school lunches the lunch ladies are mandated to serve. It looks like warmed over vomit or something you would get if you were a prisoner in a Chinese work camp.
If you want the kids to eat, you have to make good food and serve them what they want to eat (within reason of course). Tasty food that has some seasoning and is recognizable as food. This soulless, tasteless, fat free, no salt, no sugar crap is not going to be eaten….by anyone.
Those of you who have been watch Season 3 of Orange is the New Black can see the food the kids are getting. It starts about half-way through the season.
Riesling – the German brunch snacks sound lovely. I think the French have also figured out cafeteria food that completely outclasses our own. Heck, their version of military MRE also sound like something I’d like to take on a picnic with a nice, cold bottle of Gewurtzraminer.
Isaac:
“When I taught at inner city schools, half the kids were hopped up on sugar and were not eating properly. The mood swings from hyperactivity to lethargy is definitely food related. The week or so after Halloween was a thrill. Done right American kids getting one main well balanced meal a day would be a good start. Of course this is infringing on the rights of Americans to do what ever they want…….”
I completely agree with you that many kids have difficulty functioning because they are on a sugar high. And processed foods are very like sugar in their simple carbohydrates. I like the idea of getting rid of soda vending machines, not offering sodas in the lunch cafeteria, and having healthy choices in vending machines without processed food.
I disagree with the school investigating the contents of my lunches and throwing them out, forcing me to use the cafeteria. That’s too far.
The entire food pyramid was based on a flawed study. (The investigator did not realize he was studying a Catholic population during Lent, and the observed diet was not standard.) I do not want schools forcing the food pyramid on us, or forcing non fat milk on everyone.
We’ve already seen that the “healthy lunches” program has been an utter failure in how it’s been applied. Kids are going hungry and food is getting thrown out. That is not an acceptable solution to me.
I would like to address another problem of the schools getting into the food business. Some kids were not getting fed breakfast, because either their parents are poor or too lazy to feed them. So schools started offering free breakfast – bagels and yoghurt and the like. But they didn’t want to stigmatize the poor kids, so every kid is able to eat it. The kids liked that bagel breakfast (with all the carbs similar to sugar), so they stopped eating at home. So now the schools are paying to feed kids who don’t actually need it. Instead of having a high protein breakfast at home to help them concentrate, they’re eating bagels and then digesting them in class, which takes energy away from their focus.
Now they’re adding dinner.
Schools are failing, badly, at educating our kids. That’s their purpose. They are overlapping their efforts with other government nutrition assistance programs, when they need to focus on education. That is their primary directive. This drains funds away from education and adds to government overlap.
I do not want any child to go hungry. I want the correct organization to ensure they are fed, and if a parent can, but will not, feed their child, then they need to be referred to CPS.
Make sure your store bought milk is pasteurized, but not homogenized.
Another example of the problems with government parenting our children is this insistence on non fat or low fat milk at schools and daycares.
My child has a healthy weight, is very active, plays a lot outside, and does not need to lose an ounce. He drinks whole organic milk. I do not want or need him to drink low fat or non fat milk.
Both contain oxidized cholesterol in the form of powdered milk solids, used to lessen the blue color and chalky last of non fat milk. It’s not healthy.
But the government has mandated that less healthy milk be fed to all of our kids regardless of their weight.
They need to bud out.
Government is forgetting its place.
If a child is malnourished or morbidly obese, that’s a case for CPS. It’s not the school’s job to monitor what a parent decides to provide their child to eat, as long as the child seems healthy.
There are so many opposing points of view on nutrition – vegan, vegetarian, omnivore, grain free, no processed food, red meat, no red meat . . . That’s a parent’s decision not the school’s. If I want to send a homemade cookie to school with my kid once in a while, it’s none of the school’s beeswax.
Clearly I disagree with various school districts on what they think is healthy based on various offerings at the cafeteria.
Taking soda vending machines out of school is a good idea. So are nutrition classes. But putting every kid at the school on a diet, is irresponsible. I’ve read stories about student athletes being so hungry they can’t concentrate in class. Massive amounts of health food is getting thrown away because kids don’t suddenly have the palette for it overnight.
The government is not the parent. I am. It’s supposed to educate my child, not parent him. And from the dismal education results, they need to focus on their core responsibilities instead of branching out.
IMHO, “How in the world did these central planners ever manage to survive their own childhoods without the heavy hand of the State?” — 2 salient points: depending on the ages, and/or economic class, of said central planners,
1. as mentioned above, Mom was more likely to be home after school, and to be packing real-food lunches before school, and
2. the manufactured “food” industry was not as elaborate as it is today — there were many fewer “convenience” items like Twinkies, Lunchables, etc etc etc, the alternative being real food, like those marvelous German snack-packs Riesling mentioned (sounded FABULOUS!) and the Bento lunches Japanese stay-at-home moms still make (and that you see occasionally on-line, google “Bento lunch”) (and that some American moms have taken up, too)
oh, about how healthy Scotch eggs are? MAYBE if you do manual labor, AND have no family history of heart problems!!!
When kids went home from school for lunch and Mom was there with all the good stuff, well those times are gone.
Those times may have existed for YOU….but not for everyone. My parents both worked and until my brother and I were old enough to be on our own before and after school….about the age of 9…..they worked alternating shifts so that for a brief moment in time someone might be there to make breakfast and pack a lunch before going to school and someone MIGHT be home when we got out of school
Usually, we made our own breakfast, and packed a lunch if my mother or father hadn’t already done so. When we got home we let ourselves in and made a snack after school. There was no such thing as a cafeteria until junior high.
I learned how to cook at a young age and made oatmeal with fruit, or scrambled eggs with cheese and toast, or french toast or pancakes with bacon or sausage for breakfast. Our lunches, which we wrapped in waxed paper since there was NO such thing as plastic bags in those days was a sandwich of some sort, pb&j, lunch meat and cheese, tuna or egg salad. Chips, pretzels or crackers. Apple, orange or other fruit and a thermos of juice or milk (for my brother. I hated milk since they forced me to drink curdled milk in kindergarten). Occasionally a cookie or muffin or if we were really really lucky a hostess cupcake.
We didn’t starve. It wasn’t gourmet. It was food and no one would dream of trying to take our lunches away from us or interfering with how we were being raised.
It isn’t our job to raise everyone’s children either. The government isn’t our Mommy or Daddy. If the children are starving or coming to school hungry it is the parent’s fault and something should certainly be done about it. If the parents are not taking care of their children, spending their money on other things than food….like drugs, tattoos and nose rings….then foster care is a solution. Controlling everybody else’s life and demanding we all eat the same things is NOT a solution.
A cupcake or a cookie or even a G-D scotch egg is not going to hurt anyone.
If Isaac doesn’t want to eat lunchables then fine. Butt the h#ll out of everyone else’s business.
Punctuating random thoughts with ad random hominem attacks does not help your argument. YOU are still being the arbiter. I have no argument with your opinions about diet. In a free society, you might choose to persuade others to choose a diet you approve of. And if you think that it should be offered free, you can engage in providing a free alternative. However, in addition to forcing people what to eat, you want to force others to pay for your largesse.
I used to teach in a German middle school. They didn´t have a school cafeteria at the time because school was over at 1 pm. Back then it was still very important to eat the midday meal at home (the main meal of the day). Since school started at 7:30, most kids ate a snack they had brought from home during the long recess. I wish I had taken pictures of these “2nd breakfasts”. A typical snack was 2 or 3 or the following: hard boiled egg (already peeled), carrot sticks, cherry tomatoes, cheese cubes, small sandwich of brown bread and cream cheese or ham and butter, cucumber slices, apple, mandarine orange already peeled, jogurt, a banana. The snack was always arranged appetizingly in a little plastic container. Seriously, they looked so good I wish I could have confiscated one! The children ate everybite. I never saw a cookie or a granola bar or anything packaged besides yoghurt.
Paul
There have been studies, controlled studies, historical data, etc and etc that attest to the relationships between moods, food, and rest. The lower down the socio-economic ladder you go the higher the percentage of kids being neglected regarding food. When I taught at the inner city schools the ‘lunch box’ packed by most parents who did pack one, maybe three or four out of twenty as the rest ate at the cafeteria, contained fruit juice or sugar and water, lunchables or crackers and cheese, and ding dongs or twinkies. Lunch is the most important meal of the day. The kids who ate in the cafeteria did better but not by much. The sugar content and hyperactivity followed by drops in energy was noticed, has been documented numerous times, and is a well know fact.
The society must adapt with the times. When kids went home from school for lunch and Mom was there with all the good stuff, well those times are gone. When Mom packed a nutritious lunch with an apple, well those times are rare. Today’s society demands both Mom and Dad work and the kids often get the ‘lunchables’ treatment. There is a better way, a way that reduces the garbage eaten and increases the nutritious stuff eaten and it is not the ‘every man for himself’ philosophy. Kids spend the lion’s share of their day at school for fourteen years or so and these are the most important years regarding eating habits and nutrition. It only makes sense that the societal environment, whether it be full blown ‘Stalanist’ or not be designed to ensure that they get at least one well designed meal a day, and it’s the most important meal of the day.
Obviously the school cafeteria must serve nutritious food. Just as obviously the student who wants to scarf down crap should be left to his own and/or devices. However, a cafeteria serving good tasting and nutritious food, perhaps for free, finds no argument, except the John Birchers. There’s always Texas.
issac – every school I worked at (full-time) at least 75% of the student body qualified for food stamps. I wanted them to have good food but I was not their parent. I did make sure that during high stakes testing they were all fed PB&J sandwiches prior. It was amazing how many those kids could go through. 🙂 It did help with the test scores.
This is what happens without constitutional protections that circumscribe the power of government. Ours have been slowly eroded – always for the common good, of course, as specific people in power decide what is good for us, rather than laws made within constitutional boundaries. The Supreme Court, over many years, has eroded the protection of the constitution. Perhaps school officials will bank Tom Sawyer, and Mark Twain on general principles, from the school library. Or confiscate a catechism, or worse yet a bible from public school libraries. Not to far away from book burning. Welcome me to your world, Isaac, if i can pass your tests.
It’s snack time in the teacher’s lounge !
The parents should send a notice to the school directing that they refuse consent to this “common law” search.
Food police.
Completely lost somewhere back in history was the concept that government should provide for the common, not necessarily the individual, welfare; and that its primary role might actually be to protect and preserve the hard won liberties and freedoms of its individual citizens. That would include their freedom to fail, their freedom to govern their own lives, their own body’s (including what they choose to put into it, and what it experiences, and whom they may chose to love and/or have sex with – two completely different issues), their freedom to die if that is a natural consequence of their actions.
Instead we get Governments like micromanaging HOAs… Telling us what color our houses should be, how big is too big for a soda, we can’t play with guns, knives, matches, a whole list of hypocritical chemicals, dogs of certain breeds or too many of them, we can’t own chickens in the city, fly the wrong flag, say the wrong thing – unless we are a historically oppressed minority or have a third world religion, then we can chop heads off…
We can’t be trusted to even have a private phone conversation, or own a phone capable of one, because now – we are all just criminals waiting to be caught, and looking at the sheer volume of Federal, State, Local, Regional, Special District and Agency laws, rules, regulations, codes, and unwritten secret gotchas that they will lock you up for now I have no doubt whatsoever that is true. Why wouldn’t it be, we’ve had almost 230+ years of making those things up, with very little repealing going on. Every law needs an expiration date, if it was good enough to pass the first time, it should be good enough to keep passing – and keep legislators busy so they are not cooking up new ways to restrict Liberty.
How about we just recommend they stop effectively endorsing Sharia Law.