Meanwhile in totalirian America

drdeadlift

Honestly the yanks are in a league of their own :mad:

thebigbiffo

ya see the teacher supervising lunch? a lard ass and most likely a feeder.

*not surprised by this

44leto

Some parents can't feed their children, that is becoming increasingly obvious. But chicken nuggets Gawd.

John Doe1

we need a war to liberate them from their idiocy

starbelgrade

I saw a bit of the Jamie Oliver 'School Dinners' program that he took from the UK to the US. On the part I saw, he had a load of kids in the kitchen & was making chicken nuggets from scratch using the same ingredients that they use in the processing plants - basically all the crap, sinew, bones etc that you'd normally fling in the bin.

It was vile & he said that without fail, it has always put kids off eating them after they've seen how they are made.

But not in this case... as soon as they were fried up, the american kids wanted them & gobbled them down without hesitating.

You could say, "only in America", but Europe isn't far from catching up in the fattie stakes with type 2 diabetes set to be the single most biggest health problem we are set to face over the coming years due to our own diets & the crap we're feeding our kids.

With that in mind, the lack of any type of government led task force for reform or education in this matter is striking.

44leto

I reiterate they take a lunch away from a child because it has no vegetables and is perceived to be unhealthy and fattening, that IMO is a good thing, but they give an alternative which is reconstituted chicken in breadcrumbs deep fried in oil.

Its like a comedy sketch you would see on Saturday night live.

Explosions in the Sky

Is that you Alex Turner

Duckworth_Luas

That's like totally totalitarian dude!

wes

This is the same country that gave us this:

Pizza still a vegetable for U.S. schools

So not surprised.

up for anything

Somebody ought to take that guy's side parting from him. Do they thank the barber/hairdresser after having been giving a monstrosity like that! :eek:

Wattle

John Doe1 wrote: »

we need a war to liberate them from their idiocy

That Col Sanders needs taking down a peg or two :mad:

Haelium

Couldn't they just give the kid some vegetables and let them keep their lunch?

danniemcq

deep fry carrots

problem solved

RachaelVO

44leto wrote: »

I reiterate they take a lunch away from a child because it has no vegetables and is perceived to be unhealthy and fattening, that IMO is a good thing, but they give an alternative which is reconstituted chicken in breadcrumbs deep fried in oil.

Its like a comedy sketch you would see on Saturday night live.

Well no, not really. A school has no right over riding what a parent says or does FULLSTOP! So that aspect alone is one thing, I'd kick up a helluva fuss if it was my child.

However, the child had a sandwich, a banana, apple juice and a hand full of crisps... Why would she need to have a vegetable with her LUNCH? I would imagine from the sounds of her mother she gets veggies for her DINNER. She had a piece of fruit, and then they take away her perfectly healthy lunch and give her nuggets?

FECKING MADNESS!

AngryBollix

Another reason to invade Iran

don ramo

why do they even have canteens, are these people incapable of making there kids lunches

MyKeyG

RachaelVO wrote: »

Well no, not really. A school has no right over riding what a parent says or does FULLSTOP! So that aspect alone is one thing, I'd kick up a helluva fuss if it was my child.

Surely they reserve the right to dictate what is brought on the premises whether they're acting ridiculously or not?

RachaelVO

MyKeyG wrote: »

Surely they reserve the right to dictate what is brought on the premises whether they're acting ridiculously or not?

They can of course dictate what is brought onto the premises, but they cannot insist that a child eats something that is not permissable by a parent. So if a parent says my child will eat a packed lunch, one that is perfectly acceptable, the school cannot over ride that. I can't imagine a banana will go on their banned list!

foxyboxer

Ah chicken nuggets and rat milk (much better than that Malk crap). Brings me back.

Wattle

A chicken nugget is a chicken product molded from meat slurry, :eek: breaded or battered, then deep-fried or baked.

Every kid needs their daily portion of meat slurry.

RichieC

Making the rounds the last day or two has been this story from the “Carolina Journal,” the monthly newspaper of the John Locke Foundation, which bears the headline: “Preschooler’s Homemade Lunch Replaced with Cafeteria ‘Nuggets’; State agent inspects sack lunches, forces preschoolers to purchase cafeteria food instead.” (The story was eventually supplemented by significantly better reporting from another outlet here, which still fails to make the case being pushed by the narrative).

The headline sounds horrible, and the body of the story only makes it seems worse, conjuring images of government agents rifling through four year old children’s lunches to enforce USDA standards on healthy lunches, prohibiting children from eating food deemed insufficiently healthy (including turkey sandwiches!), and forcing them to instead eat government provided and mandated food (to wit: oh-so-healthy chicken nuggets). The original story also claims that the relevant regulations here apply to all pre-K programs, including home daycare programs, with the obvious implication that “this could happen to you!” This hits all sorts of libertarian buttons: invasion of privacy by the government, nanny statism of the highest order, government incompetence, not to mention forced-feeding of children. It even has the initial appearance of a well-sourced story, with quotes from the parent, the head of the state agency, and the school principal, not to mention the tie-in to Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch platform.

Not surprisingly, this story has been picked up in large swathes of the libertarian and conservative blogospheres, including by Jacob Sullum, who is himself usually a pretty decent journalist, and entitled his post on the subject “North Carolina Food Inspector Rejects Little Girl’s Home-Packed Lunch in Favor of Chicken Nuggets.” The story even reached the pinnacle of attention within the right-of-center ideological media with a Rush Limbaugh segment (in which the “state agent” morphed into a “federal agent” charged with inspecting all lunch boxes). Predictably, the most outraged headline came from one of the folks at LewRockwell.com, “The Lunch Nazis are coming! No, They’re Here!”

One problem: the story is a load of bunk at worst, a non-story at best, standing for little more than the proposition that low-income children in NC’s low-income pre-K program whose parents don’t send them to school with enough healthy food will be provided with additional food to supplement what their parents send them to school with.

For starters, the context in which all of this occurred was a public school pre-K program run by the state popularly known as “More at Four,” but now called the generic name “NC Pre-K.” In order to have a child enrolled in this program, which has a limited number of slots, the parents must actively choose to enroll, with priority going to “at-risk” children, to wit: special needs children and (importantly) low-income children. Indeed, to even be eligible for the program, the child must either fit in one of those two categories or have a parent on (or about to be called on) active military duty. Enrollment as an “at-risk” child means that the child’s enrollment is fully subsidized by the state, regardless of whether the day care is private or public.

These facts are critical because the “state agent” in this story turns out to be nothing more than a researcher from a program that grades the performance of pre-schools and operates out of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also does not appear that this institute has any actual authority other than to provide assessments, which the state then uses in making licensing decisions and in setting the fees it will pay the day care provider for subsidized care.

Notably, as the second-linked story above suggests, the mother’s main gripe here does not even appear to be with this “state agent,” but instead with the school’s teachers, who continue to give the girl milk and vegetables despite letters from the mother asking them not to. Indeed, the notion that this “state agent” was going around inspecting every single lunch box brought to the school does not appear to have much basis, as the agent apparently ordered full school lunches for every single child in this program and was evaluating the school’s compliance with standards, not individual parents’ compliance. Even if he was doing such an inspection, there’s a pretty obvious context-specific reason for it: this is an opt-in program for parents who largely can’t afford to provide fully balanced meals.

Her other major gripe appears to be that she is worried about being charged for the additional food being placed in front of her daughter based on a letter from the school purportedly saying that kids who did not bring a healthy lunch would be offered supplements and that parents “may” be charged for the supplemented portions. However, as the second-linked story makes clear, no such charges have been issued nor apparently was there any actual chance that such charges would be issued.

The original story’s claim that the relevant regulation applies to all pre-schools is also false – to the contrary, it applies only to pre-schools choosing to participate in (and eligible for) the subsidized program.

The original story further obscures that in no circumstance was this child – or any child, for that matter – being forced to eat the school-provided lunch, nor was this child -or any other child – deprived of her boxed lunch. Instead, as the second linked story acknowledges, the child was just provided with additional food and given the option to consume that in addition to her boxed lunch. In other words, the claim that the school “replaced” this girl’s turkey sandwich, banana, apple, potato chips, and juice with chicken nuggets is totally bogus.

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. The mother apparently objects to this option being provided to her daughter, not because of any health concerns or the like, but because she incorrectly believes that she will be charged additional money for her child being provided this option. Since she won’t in fact be charged for this and there is no evidence she was ever going to be charged for it, there is absolutely no harm actually being done to her or her child.

Since this is also an opt-in program, there is no chance of this becoming some sort of generally applicable concern even to the extent there is some sort of nanny state concern here. If the mother has some sort of ethical problem with her child being provided with the option of drinking milk or eating vegetables at school, then she is surely free to send her child to an unsubsidized day care program.

At most, the only actual concern here, hinted at by the second-linked article, is the expense to the taxpayer of providing the extra food free of charge. Then again, since we are definitionally dealing with children whose parents will often lack the resources to provide a consistently balanced lunch, and since the whole point of the program is to provide those children with a pre-K experience that their parents’ income would otherwise prevent, this would not seem to be a tremendously important concern.

Continues here with embedded links throughout the story:
http://ordinary-gentlemen.com/blog/2012/02/15/a-north-carolina-non-troversy/

I realise this is a lot of reading for the folk I targeted this at, namely people who like fox news.

Dudess

How is this totalitarian? Doesn't seem like North Korea to me.

El Siglo

Dudess wrote: »

How is this totalitarian? Doesn't seem like North Korea to me.

+1
If it was N. Korea, she'd have no lunch, starve and die.

LH Pathe

Like economics, politics should follow suit to it's own forum this shît only kicks up a stink I wanna know what yer really about - more scratchy anus threads please.

Augmerson

Sorry OP but WTF is totalirian ?

For Forks Sake

don ramo wrote: »

why do they even have canteens, are these people incapable of making there kids lunches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw

ProudDUB

RachaelVO wrote: »

Well no, not really. A school has no right over riding what a parent says or does FULLSTOP! So that aspect alone is one thing, I'd kick up a helluva fuss if it was my child.

I disagree to an extent. Lots of American schools ban certain kinds of food on campus & I think that they are entitled to do so.

The school that my sisters kids go to do not allow the kids to bring their Halloween candy into school the next day. If they do, it is confiscated. The school is very serious about battling childhood obesity. It also used to be a US custom that when a kid had a birthday, the parent of said child would send in a platter of home made cupcakes or brownies or cookies, and a mini party for the kid would be had before everyone went home. Americans being Americans, some of the parents went totally over the top with what they'd send their little darling off to school with. With a class of 30 kids, there'd be a party at least once a week or so. Quite often, my sisters youngest daughter would come home from school so full with sugary snacks & soda that she wouldn't eat her dinner. This practice been recently banned too.

It may sound like overkill, but try telling that to a parent who is fighting a losing battle to get their already overweight kids to eat healthy, or the parent of a child with diabetes. So I do think that schools should have some sort of say in what is consumed on their premises. But obviously the over reaction of the school that thought that chicken nuggets were healthier than a turkey sandwich and a banana is ridiculous.

El Weirdo

up for anything wrote: »

Somebody ought to take that guy's side parting from him. Do they thank the barber/hairdresser after having been giving a monstrosity like that! :eek:

Clearly a syrup.

DjFlin

The school my brother went to banned a load of crazy things. Pretty much all processed food, including easy singles. Only real cheese sambos were allowed.

It always amazes me how quick the Irish are to ridicule other countries. My fathers favourite phrase, "Pot Kettle Black" comes to mind.

drdeadlift

Augmerson wrote: »

Sorry OP but WTF is totalirian ?

i mindlessly copied the thread from another forum,thought it would have been of interest to some.

token101

El Siglo wrote: »

+1
If it was N. Korea, she'd have no lunch, starve and die.

She wouldn't need one, she wouldn't be in school.

El Weirdo

token101 wrote: »

She wouldn't need one, she wouldn't be in school.

Do you need to be in school to eat lunch? My daughter was off school today and we still fed her lunch.

Gummy Panda

For Forks Sake wrote: »

don ramo wrote: »

why do they even have canteens, are these people incapable of making there kids lunches

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pyW6w5B7Aw

Haha the expensive cars they drive and they're moaning about not being able to buy $4.99 chicken.

"I just want to feed my family tonight" then buy some decent food

Killer Wench

drdeadlift wrote: »

Honestly the yanks are in a league of their own :mad:

You do realize that many American parents are against this action. Do not paint 400 million people with the same brush.

Dudess

Killer Wench wrote: »

drdeadlift wrote: »

Honestly the yanks are in a league of their own :mad:

You do realize that many American parents are against this action. Do not paint 400 million people with the same brush.

Ah but sense and logic aren't as much fun!

Killer Wench

Dudess wrote: »

Ah but sense and logic aren't as much fun!

My bad. My bad.

LH Pathe

n dat's totali alri, like. just tah go ahead n do dah

Overheal

Gummy Panda wrote: »

Haha the expensive cars they drive and they're moaning about not being able to buy $4.99 chicken.

"I just want to feed my family tonight" then buy some decent food

You forgot to mention the most important stereoptype of alll...