Chicago School Bans Home-Packed Lunches

A Chicago school's controversial policy of banning pupils from bringing lunches from home is aimed at encouraging healthy eating, the principal said.


I think it imposes on parent's rights, even if it does have good intentions. Your thoughts?

10 comments:

  1. That's a tough one. On the one hand, school lunches in America are often awful, and so sometimes lunches brought from home are healthier than what the school is serving. I was a substitute teacher for a little while, and the teachers got all mad when a parent brought cupcakes for one kid's birthday, while on another day the cafeteria served cake as a side dish! WHAT IS UP WITH THAT?

    On the other hand, plenty of home-brought lunches consist of things like a can of Coke, a Little Debbie cake, and a bag of Doritoes.

    Yeah, I dunno. I think both parents AND the schools are failing kids.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This isn't tough for me at all. Our public schools are there to educate students. If they want to teach a course in nutrition, that's fine, in fact I would encourage that. It was part of the general health education I received growing up. But to ban students from bringing lunches and making the school lunch manditory is either a fascist overstepping of bounds or as graft laiden a batch of corruption as Chicago has ever seen. What happens to the kids who have food allergies when their manditory lunch includes nuts or shellfish? Will the Chicago PD have a manditory lunch division to shove manditory hotdogs into the mouths of Jewish kids? What if a kid just don't like a particular manditory food? Do they no longer have the right to have personal preferances? This is way out of bounds.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Processed foods and convenience items are often used in the school food service operation to save time and labor.


    http://just-me-in-t.blogspot.com/2011/04/i-asked-question-i-found-answer.html

    ReplyDelete
  4. These kinds of decisions and rules indicate inexperienced management. They will learn, usually after a few weeks go by and they discover none of the staff are willing to eat in the cafeteria...

    I fail to understand why cafeteria staff are not cooking from scratch. It is the highest quality, least expensive, healthiest, easiest-to-store and least wasteful approach to institutional or home cooking. We cook our meals every night from scratch and all three of my sons cook for their families. It's fast and easy and everyone flocks to the table.

    BTw, I rarely comment but I really enjoy What's For School Lunch and have for several years now. Thanks for keeping it going! :-)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I didn't see the article address the economics of the school lunch. Are the children required to pay for lunch or is it provided free of charge?

    In one high school, lunch is too short and takes too long to serve for the kids to eat and get to their next scheduled class. One girl's solution is ramen noodles, the kind that comes in the styrofoam. So, loads of sodium, no fruit, no vegetables, heating things up in styrofoam (and I don't think that is completely safe, but I have no data) and a wasted, non-degradable container.

    I don't know what the answer is, but I also don't know what the school was trying to solve by making this ban. All in all, the article did a poor job of reporting the story.

    ReplyDelete
  6. If I was a parent of a child in that school I would be outraged. How can the school tell parents that they can't pack lunches for their kids because of nutrition? So instead they have to eat a school lunch and if they don't like the lunch then my child doesn't eat for the day? How is that better. I would like to know that my child has a good lunch and of things that she likes to eat. The school is taking all responsibility away from the parents on proper nutrition for their children.

    This seems to be about government funding. If the school gets money for every child who eats lunch then they could use it and pay for the lunches. If my family makes just enough money so my child doesn't receive free lunches or reduced lunches then I am paying for my child's lunch and as a tax payer I am paying for other kids lunches too.

    If it isn't about the money and schools want to really watch out for children's diets then lets educate them. Schools educating the children, try teaching nutrition or bring back PE classes so the kids can get active. Maybe kids will find a sport or activity they enjoy in PE classes and that could help them in the long run as well.

    ReplyDelete
  7. this crosses the line. I am so tired of the government getting involved in our lives. They treat parents like morons and think they can educate our children better. It is not about teaching children to be healthy, it's about money and what they will use that money for. If schools really want to target healthy eating for children, then they need to focus on the influence they have. Instead of having items on the menu that traveled across the country, they can find local sources and include more healthy fruits and vegetables in the lunches. Also we are talking about an issue that goes far deeper than the public schools. The problem is advertising and what people will allow companies to feed them. GMO's mass processed foods, if we stand up and demand better food, we can get it. Power to the people!

    ReplyDelete
  8. The governnment could stop subsidizing corn and then the junk food wouldn't be so cheap. They could stop overtaxing us and then we could afford vegetables. The government is way over the line. if the school my child was in demanded that, it might be time to start home schooling. This is about rights, and the government will never stop until they take away all our rights little by little, or we start reclaiming them.

    ReplyDelete
  9. This just isn't right. I know a girl who can't digest animal products so she has to be a vegan (if she eats anything that has animal products in it, she ends up in the hospital). If she went to a school like that, she'd have to starve until she gets home and eat a vegan-friendly lunch.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Don't ban home lunches. Some parents probably get it right. Educate the parents. Set up simple guidelines. Offer healthy alternatives at school in case parents can't follow them.

    ReplyDelete

Please no foul language.