Chicago school bans homemade lunches

[Bramble]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theloo...nal-food-fight

Either the students eat the school lunch or they eat nothing that day. The only exception is for kids with allergies. So if you don't qualify for free or reduced price lunches you're forced to speed $2.25 a day & $11.25 a week just so your kid can eat 'healthy' Soooooo Big Brother now -.-

[AdminAssistant]

Oh, that's ridiculous. No cupcakes in classrooms? No chocolate milk? Not even the occasional freakin' tater tot? (My school had rockin' tater tots. I never brought my lunch on tater tot day.) This is just as bad as banning peanut butter sandwiches.

[MaggieTheCat]

One more reason I'd be homeschooling my kids, if I ever had any.

This is ridiculous. To tell parents that they have no say in their child's lunch is...just...I don't even have words for it. What if the child in question didn't have allergies, but instead had some other disease such as diabetes or celiac disease which restricts their diet? What if the child CAN eat whatever they want, but chooses a specific diet, such as vegetarian, vegan, or no pork, etc? Are they going to tell those kids they can't have their own lunch and instead HAVE to eat a hot dog if that's what's being served, or eat nothing at all?

There have been a lot of articles about over the top rules that schools have been enforcing lately, but this one really makes me sick.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

What really gets to me is that what is considered "healthy" is generally the exact polar opposite of "healthy". It's a huge inconvenience to me if I find myself at the mercy of what Big Brother wants to feed me for the sake of my health.

Don't even get me started. You should have seen the screaming and hair tearing the "nutritionists" had over me when I had to go in for "counseling" for my gestational diabeties. What a fucking joke that mess was.

Short version: they really didn't like me very much over there.

I am at some point in my life going to end up being "that parent." I know it.


Okay, from the article:

ucson, Arizona's Children's Success Academy allows home-packed lunches--but only if nothing in them contains white flour, refined sugar, or other "processed" foods, the Arizona Republic reported in a story last year. The school has no cafeteria, so some parents told the paper they struggled to find foods to pack that meet the restrictions. Many schools ban fast food or other take-out meals.

WTF was that pink glop in the carton? Was that supposed to be milk? Isn't pink shit made of refined sugar, or do they have a pink cow that squirts out pink glop without being processed? And I'm assuming there is a penis shaped, nitrate filled tube of ground up snouts and assholes in that so called hotdog "bun". Is that refined, too?

I'd tell them my kid was allergic to horseshit and send a big damn greasy, mayo slathered chunk of dead cow every freaking day. I'd even paint the bag with lard so it would be good and shiny.

[Andara Bledin]

This is nothing but a money grab hiding behind a 'think of the children' banner.

I am at some point in my life going to end up being "that parent." I know it.

And your children will thank you for it.

Maybe not right then (I know my brother was always mortified when my mother stormed in somewhere), but they'll understand when they're older.

^-.-^

[blas87]

People who do not qualify for "free" or "Reduced" lunches are going to end up paying a shit-ton of money to eat the school's rancid food.

I'll pull my kid out of that school, pronto. We were dirt poor growing up and still didn't qualify for free or reduced lunches. I can't imagine my parents having to spend upwards of $3 a day for lunches for two kids.

[MaggieTheCat]

For what it's worth, the picture used in the linked article is supposedly from a completely different school district not even in Chicago -- I think it was somewhere in Washington State, according to a couple of the comments that I read.

I don't care how "healthy" the school lunch is, though, they've still no right to tell a parent that they don't have a say in their own child's diet.

[Kheldarson]

What's really fun is now you'll see an increase in the amount of food thrown out. Almost every child at my school was on free or reduced lunch. Every day, I'd see kids get their meal, sit a moment, trade nearly all of it away, dump the tray, buy a cookie and then buy chips and powerade out of the canteen. And the kids they gave the food to? May or may not eat all of the food they now have.

It's ridiculous.

[MadMike]

Unless things have changed since I graduation almost 25 years ago, school cafeteria "food" is gross. I flat-out refused to eat that crap. I packed a lunch every day. Even if the food was halfway decent, I'm kind of a picky eater, and there's a lot of stuff I just don't like.

I've seen some shitty moves by our schools, but I never thought they'd pull something like this. I hope some parent takes them to court and the school board gets their asses handed to them.

[RecoveringKinkoid]

I like how it's either that or go hungry.

Oh, yeah, that really does help convince me it's all "for the children."

My entire ass.

[Rageaholic]

I am at some point in my life going to end up being "that parent." I know it.

And you would be perfectly justified in reeming those idiots a new one. There is just so many things wrong with this I don't even know where to begin. I remember those school lunches. GOD I remember them . Horrible doesn't even begin to describe it. I remember when they took some of the halfway decent items off the menu because they weren't "healthy" enough. Yet they still kept their god awful frozen pizza that made Sbarro look like a five star restaurant.

And this school has the BALLS to limit students to these choices?! As if they're crap is even remotely eatable. They might as well just have a sign that says "pick your poison".

This is yet another case of the schools not only trying to control what students eat, but get more money out of their taxpayers. Like it's not enough that the taxpayers pay their salery. Oh no, they gotta control the students and make sure that they have both them and their parents by the balls. There is absolutely no justification for this kind of shit, as what the kids eat has no bearing on them. It's just more big brother bullshit, trying to more aspects of their students lifes and in this case, still making a buck off of them.

I think it's time people use their voting rights to put these school heads in their place.

[insertNameHere]

I can only hope, teachers and administrators are FORCED to lead by example. My brother is 4 years behind me in school. I graduated in 05, 2-3 years later they ended up trying to ban pop/soda (whatever you call carbonated sugar water) and not allow it to be sold by the school district OR BROUGHT IN because it was healthy.

I can understand them wanting to provide good meals for the kids but not FORCING students to purchase the horrible meals they offer. In all my years in public school I never ate the traditional cafeteria food more than 10 times, as it was complete crap. I love my good old PB&J X2 with no crusts till Highschool which I found cheese filled pretezels they sold. Along with one sweet teacher who would order breadsticks from the local pizza place till the admin stopped that too.

[gremcint]

do the teachers, principles and other staff have to eat the caf food as well?

[Greenday]

We never would have tolerated such a policy back in my high school. We would have just completely ignored this policy and brought in our own lunches. We would have walked out of school. We would have started mass food fights with all the food they were serving. We literally would have raised hell.

My class had a zero tolerance policy for bullshit policies. We never followed policies didn't agree with and there wasn't shit they could do about it because they couldn't give detention/suspend us all.

[Kheldarson]

Probably not, gremcint.

But can I say that school food isn't as bad as some are making it? Main issue with most of it is that it is bland as white walls in a hospital. Doesn't make it appealing, but still. Doesn't mean it's going to make anybody sick.

What is ironic is that most of the foods they supply are just as "unhealthy" as the meals packed by parents. It's loaded in preservatives, can be greasy, fatty, whatever because it's already prepared and just needs to be warmed or mixed at the school. Kind of defeats the purpose