Chicago school bans homemade lunches, the latest in national food fight

[Strike For The South]

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

You can't fix stupid

[Centurion1]

what people eat is their choice as it is my choice to ridicule them for being fat.

[Tuuvi]

From what I remember of elementary school, homemade lunches were usually healthier, and much better tasting, than cafeteria food. The article mentioned that, so it seems like nothing has changed 10 years later, despite the effort to make school lunch more nutritious.

If the schools want to join the good fight against childhood obesity, they should focus on making their own food better, rather than forcing people to eat it.

[a completely inoffensive name]

If the schools want to join the good fight against childhood obesity, they should focus on making their own food better, rather than forcing people to eat it.

This is the end of the thread.

[Shibumi]

If the schools want to join the good fight against childhood obesity, they should focus on making their own food better, rather than forcing people to eat it.

"Better" - relating to what? More healthy, better taste, fit for the individuals need?

I think one of the main problems is the junk food culture of america. Children who have a choice between pizza and a balanced diet will go for the pizza. I would have done that too when I was a child. So I disagree, the schools should serve healthy meals, and the parents should support this.

I complained a lot about the school lunches in Sweden growing up, with adult eyes though I notice they are not that bad tasting, and very healthy. Granted, Sweden generally have better food now than in the 80's.

Look at children obesity rate between Sweden and America. In Sweden the kids get at least one healthy meal a day with salad on the side and milk to drink, wheras last I visited a American school the kids ate pizza and drank coke. I am sure the American kids were more content with their food and drink choice, but what is really best for the kid?

[a completely inoffensive name]

"Better" - relating to what? More healthy, better taste, fit for the individuals need?

I think one of the main problems is the junk food culture of america. Children who have a choice between pizza and a balanced diet will go for the pizza. I would have done that too when I was a child. So I disagree, the schools should serve healthy meals, and the parents should support this.

I complained a lot about the school lunches in Sweden growing up, with adult eyes though I notice they are not that bad tasting, and very healthy. Granted, Sweden generally have better food now than in the 80's.

Look at children obesity rate between Sweden and America. In Sweden the kids get at least one healthy meal a day with salad on the side and milk to drink, wheras last I visited a American school the kids ate pizza and drank coke. I am sure the American kids were more content with their food and drink choice, but what is really best for the kid?

He is saying that they should serve healthy meals, just that they shouldn't force kids who bring their lunch to eat the school lunch as well.

[Shibumi]

He is saying that they should serve healthy meals, just that they shouldn't force kids who bring their lunch to eat the school lunch as well.

I agree that they should not be forced. However, I do not think encouraging private lunches are a good idea either. School cafeteria should have same rules as any other restaurant, you cant eat food you brought with you. If you want to sit somewhere else and eat home made food, then by all means do. But it is nothing the school should encourage.

[a completely inoffensive name]

I agree that they should not be forced. However, I do not think encouraging private lunches are a good idea either. School cafeteria should have same rules as any other restaurant, you cant eat food you brought with you. If you want to sit somewhere else and eat home made food, then by all means do. But it is nothing the school should encourage.

I don't understand. What would this do other than separate students into "brown-bags" and "trays"? So kids can't eat home brought lunches in the cafeteria....ok?

[Shibumi]

I don't understand. What would this do other than separate students into "brown-bags" and "trays"? So kids can't eat home brought lunches in the cafeteria....ok?

Can you eat home brought lunches in any other type of restaurant?

And yes it would separate students, hopefully making them eat the school lunch if for no other reason than that they want to sit with their friends. You have an obesity problem, why not do something about it?

[a completely inoffensive name]

Can you eat home brought lunches in any other type of restaurant?

And yes it would separate students, hopefully making them eat the school lunch if for no other reason than that they want to sit with their friends. You have an obesity problem, why not do something about it?

Christ man, this is school, not Dr. Drew's obesity rehab center.
A) In many schools students are not required to eat in the cafeteria, at my school you could eat anywhere just as long as you didn't make a mess.
B) Most students who bring lunches from home are wealthy, while most those that rely on school lunches are poor from the article. You are now basically segregating the wealthy from the poor.
C) Students will not care because they are students and will simply swap out parts of their lunch so there isn't one with a noticeable "bag". Hell, just empty the lunch onto a tray and sit right down unless you suggest having security guards watch over them at lunch like a prison.
D) It's a school cafeteria, not a restaurant. it's publicly funded, a restaurant isn't. There are so many differences between a cafeteria and a private restaurant, I can't list them all.
E) The obesity problem is not from school lunches. I know the obesity crisis at an acceptable level and all the stats showed that young kids were the last group to start the upward trend towards obesity. Adults started hitting them high figures before their children.
F) How is social isolation ever an acceptable solution to a social problem? How is ever acceptable to socially isolate a student from his friends?

[Beirut]

I've been making my kids' school lunches for years. And health wise they are better than what the school offers. And if they said I couldn't send them to school with a homemade lunch - I wouldn't send them to school.

That idiot law won't stand, it can't. It's not only un-American, it's un-everything.

[Husar]

Absolutely, forcing the kids to eat at the school is unacceptable and I can't even think of a valid justification for doing that.

It may be healthier than what some of the parents provide their kids with but a school's job is not to force people to do something but to educate them to be able to decide for themselves.
As such they could educate the kids about healthy food and make them more likely to demand healthy foods from their parents in addition to offering it in their cafeteria, but forcing "healthy" food on everybody is just wrong.

[Scienter]

This is so stupid. What about parents who can't afford to give their kids lunch money every day? When I was a kid, school food was like taking a giant needle of cholesterol and stabbing yourself in the heart with it. I agree that childhood obesity is a problem in the US, but this is too much state intervention. At the end of the day, people choose to eat what they want, and they're responsible for the consequences. The role of the state or federal government should be to educate people and then step back and let them make their own choices.

[Beirut]

When my youngest was still in elementary school, the school-parent association planned to have a lunchroom monitor who would inspect the kids' from-home lunches and confiscate anything they thought was unhealthy.

I typed out a lovely note, in big easy to read print, listing a few articles from the Canadian Constitution and a threat to sue the living out of anyone who so much as glanced into my kid's lunchbag. I included my cell number on the note with instructions to call me if they thought it was a joke. The note went into a little compartment in her lunchbag and I told her that if anyone ever asked her about her lunch, just pull out the note and hand it over. I heard that the school-parent association got so much flack for their idiotic plan they shut it down poste haste.

Chicago sounds like it needs some parental civil disobedience.

[Lemur]

Dumb rule is dumb. Agree with posters who suggest it won't last; it's too abysmally stupid to stay on the books for more than a year.

[Rhyfelwyr]

This rule is the stupid.

Anyway, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't with school meals. There's pretty much an inverse relatioship between how healthy the food is, and how many kids will eat it. So you have to compromise.

lol, this thread reminds me of Lunchables, they were little packets with some crackers, plastic cheese, and processed ham. I thought I was being healthy when I had one because it was a 'balanced' meal.

But most of the time I didn't even have a school lunch because I wanted to play football the whole time. The first thing I would eat all day was when I got home and had a McDonalds or chippy or whatever. I was an unhealthy kid...

[Louis VI the Fat]

I, for one, fully support these measures. They should go several steps further still.

Children are not the property of their parents. They have a right to be raised healthily. Good food is a basic human right. Many of the parents of these kids either don't know how, or can't afford, to feed these kids properly. The school must step in to protect these children.

Now to hope the school will not succumb to the many pressures to feed these children unhealthy junk.

[Rhyfelwyr]

In fairness, I guess there is a point where obesity is a kind of cruelty the parents inflict on their children. Put extreme cases don't justify this.

[Greyblades]

Oh, yay, lets make the last refuge before society shows kids how harsh the world realy is even more of an orwellian

[drone]

When I was in school, the cafeteria food was terrible for you. Greasy, fried, it's cheap food for the masses. So I'll play the cynic, this being Chicago and all. I'm betting this has less to do with the health and well-being of the students, and more to do with the company contracted to supply the meals.

[gaelic cowboy]

It wouldnt have lasted long anyway someone would cut the budget for dinners and they would end up buying frozen ready meals and soft drinks etc etc, basically they would be back where they started but now all the kids would be eating unhealthy food.

[Greyblades]

Isn't it interesting that in ye olden days fatty foods were quite expensive and healthy things were cheap as dirt, funny that nowadays its the other way around.

[gaelic cowboy]

Isn't it interesting that in ye olden days fatty foods were quite expensive and healthy things were cheap as dirt, funny that nowadays its the other way around.

No I think you mean foods high in sugar were expensive, fatty food was always cheap hence poor people ate it to ensure they had enough energy to work hard.

In the old days people would eat dripping and fatty bacon or a breakfast fry no problem and never have a clogged heart cos they burned it all up in manual labour. It is today when people eat even more meat, fat, sugar and salt than they used to while only doing soft jobs that has us in trouble.

[Strike For The South]

No I think you mean foods high in sugar were expensive, fatty food was always cheap hence poor people ate it to ensure they had enough energy to work hard.

In the old days people would eat dripping and fatty bacon or a breakfast fry no problem and never have a clogged heart cos they burned it all up in manual labour. It is today when people eat even more meat, fat, sugar and salt than they used to while only doing soft jobs that has us in trouble.

That's not entirely true

We still eat more than ever before

[Veho Nex]

2.25$ for a lunch, thats more than I'd spend in a week on lunch. (Mostly cause I used to go without)

I think this school just wants to make money off its students.

[drone]

2.25$ for a lunch, thats more than I'd spend in a week on lunch. (Mostly cause I used to go without)

I think this school just wants to make money off its students.

[Louis VI the Fat]

$2,25.
In France they charge you that much to look at a lunch menu.

America is dirt cheap, especially food, but still... Nowhere in Europe, not even in countries without much culinary priorities is food that cheap. So little money, for such an improvement in quality of life.

Get your priorities right! Buy a smaller car. These will get your children to school just as fast, and you will have saved enough money on gasoline to spend on a proper lunch for them.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Dang it, why won't the world listen and live like Frenchmen already, like the entire world is supposed to do, save for a few tribes we'll keep for nostalgia's sake.


They're mad these Americans, they're mad!

Here's what an average school lunch menu looks like, nothing fancy, just the bare necessities that any eight year old is entitled to:

[Shibumi]

Louis, that is not fair, any food sounds good in French.

[Strike For The South]

here is what I was served

and back in my day it cst 1.50

http://www.neisd.net/foodserv/pdf/ElemMenuApr2011.pdf

I <3 pizza thrusday

[Subotan]

It's interesting how people treat this as an issue of "freedom", and use terms such as "Orwellian" to describe a school dinners policy - hardly the stuff of a boot stamping on a human face, forever. If anything, it is giving the children a shot at freedom from obesity and ill-health, as opposed to a metaphorical shackle and chains put around the child's neck.