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

[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?

[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

[Louis VI the Fat]

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

Pizza! Yummie! That menu looks good.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

that French school menu looks like a Michelin star meal compared to what I ate in school! Maybe it's just the way it's formatted. The only cheese we ever got was American "cheese."

You must teach children to appreciate cheese! How else will they understand the fine things in life if not taught at a young age?


Cheese lesson at school, nothing fancy or elaborate, just a few simple selections for the youngest students:

[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.

[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.

[Shibumi]

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.

That almost came out as if it was a bad thing.

You have an obesity problem.
You have the chance to make sure kids gets one healthy meal a day.

Do I need to play dot to dot here?

As to the argument of "but I can supply my kids with healthier meals" - sure. You can also make sure the school meal is healthy.

As to the argument of "Kids are not where obesity is a problem" - laughable. Kids metabolism is grand, and they can soak up a lot of junk. However, normalizing having a healthy lunch (warm food, salad on the side and so on) will do them loads of good later on. Normalizing eating stuff out of a bag for lunch might prove detrimental later.

In Sweden every kid in school eat the school lunch. We usually have one fish dish, one meat dish, one veggie dish - along with a salad buffet. Paid for by the state (if you have a state unwilling to make sure kids gets good and healthy food, you might want to reconsider your stance on taxes and what the states responsibility is).

Is that unamerican - very much so. Is obesity as big of a problem over here - not really. Worth considering, no?

[ReluctantSamurai]

I would be very interested in seeing how this school treats other aspects of their students existence. Sustenance for the body is only 1/3 of the program. What do they do for students spiritual (note: I am not referring to religion) and mental well-being?

If they have no programs designed to educate students as to what actually constitures a healthy diet, and why eating such a diet is better in the long run, then this law will be counter-productive. What sort of physical education programs are offered? Yoga? Tai-Chi? Other programs that combine physical fitness with mental and spiritual well-being or help with self-esteem?

If nothing else specifically designed to further the well-being of the whole child is offered at this school, then I see it as a ploy to make more money off of their students...as has already been mentioned.

Obesity is not simply a result of poor eating. It is merely a symptom of a general overall malaise that encompasses ones entire being. Treating symptoms without getting to the root cause will not have much success, in the long run.

[Subotan]

Obesity is not simply a result of poor eating.

Obesity is primarily a problem of diet though, especially in children.

Treating symptoms without getting to the root cause will not have much success, in the long run.

...The root causes are a combination of poor diet and a sedentary lifestyle.

[Beirut]

That almost came out as if it was a bad thing.

You have an obesity problem.
You have the chance to make sure kids gets one healthy meal a day.

Do I need to play dot to dot here?

As to the argument of "but I can supply my kids with healthier meals" - sure. You can also make sure the school meal is healthy.

I guess it comes down to what level of state authority over their children the parents are willing to accept. The food isn't the problem; being told you have to eat the food is.

It also depends on what kind of a school it is. If it is a private school, then things are often done under stricter guidelines that the parents have to accept before they can enroll their kids. But at a public school, if the parents have not agreed to give that level of authority to the school, then there is a problem.

As to the argument of "Kids are not where obesity is a problem" - laughable. Kids metabolism is grand, and they can soak up a lot of junk. However, normalizing having a healthy lunch (warm food, salad on the side and so on) will do them loads of good later on. Normalizing eating stuff out of a bag for lunch might prove detrimental later.

In Sweden every kid in school eat the school lunch. We usually have one fish dish, one meat dish, one veggie dish - along with a salad buffet. Paid for by the state (if you have a state unwilling to make sure kids gets good and healthy food, you might want to reconsider your stance on taxes and what the states responsibility is).

Is that unamerican - very much so. Is obesity as big of a problem over here - not really. Worth considering, no?

A school is for education. So, let the schools educate the kids on what constitutes good food. Spend a half-hour a day on healthy living. That would be great. More gym classes, that would be great, too. And if the school wants to offer the lunches and encourage the kids to eat school lunches with different kinds of incentives, great again. But to turn the issue into just more more level of the state saying "do as I say or be punished", is not a good thing unless arrived at through clear deliberation involving all the parties affected.

My guess is that this decision was arrived at by a select few seeking to impose their idea of a common good upon people who have no choice in the matter.

[Scienter]

Louis, that French school menu looks like a Michelin star meal compared to what I ate in school! Maybe it's just the way it's formatted. The only cheese we ever got was American "cheese."

[a completely inoffensive name]

You have an obesity problem.
You have the chance to make sure kids gets one healthy meal a day.

Do I need to play dot to dot here?

I don't think anyone willingly wants school lunches to be a can of coke and a two pack of twinkies, just that it is improper for the school to impose itself on the youth like that.

I don't think anyone here can dispute the process of normalization that all humans go through to become accustomed to the society in which they are brought up in. I personally feel that such a blatant measure of control on the youth will normalize the nation's youth to a level of government involvement in their personal lives that is unhealthy for a future citizenship.

As to the argument of "but I can supply my kids with healthier meals" - sure. You can also make sure the school meal is healthy.

Exactly, we should strive for both.

As to the argument of "Kids are not where obesity is a problem" - laughable. Kids metabolism is grand, and they can soak up a lot of junk. However, normalizing having a healthy lunch (warm food, salad on the side and so on) will do them loads of good later on. Normalizing eating stuff out of a bag for lunch might prove detrimental later.

(Oops I didn't see you mentioned normalization here, anyway...) You are not normalizing them to eat a healthy lunch. Normalization is what it says, the gradual learning of what is normal in society. By having the school tell them to eat the lunch, they are learning it is normal for government to tell you what to eat sometimes, but american society is amazing in how children are susceptible to hundreds of advertisements every week that tell them to eat unhealthy stuff. Most people eat unhealthy, most restaurants are fast food. The normalization process on eating healthy is countered by consumer driven capitalism but the lesson of government sometimes can get involved in what you consume goes unchallenged.

In Sweden every kid in school eat the school lunch. We usually have one fish dish, one meat dish, one veggie dish - along with a salad buffet. Paid for by the state (if you have a state unwilling to make sure kids gets good and healthy food, you might want to reconsider your stance on taxes and what the states responsibility is).

I actually agree with you that we should provide a great set up like that for students. Still don't think they should be forced to eat it though.

Is that unamerican - very much so. Is obesity as big of a problem over here - not really. Worth considering, no?

Simple questions that to me, cannot be adequately responded to without an entire paragraph elaborating on how before we start this comparison, our respective cultures need to be analyzed and compared first. To say that the relationship between an American and his food is different from a Swede or a Brit or an Indian is...simplification to the extreme.