Yeah, if someone’s going to tell me what my kids are and are not allowed to bring from home for lunch, I’d like to have some confidence in their ability to know what constitutes a healthy lunch, and a quick look at my kids’ school-lunch menu gives me no such confidence.
As I said before, I can totally accept an argument based on facts-on-the-ground. I’m only arguing that it’s not a bad idea in principle, that there’s no principle of freedom that should recommend against school guidelines for food.
I feel that this thread has caused me to react as though I am somehow entrenched in my position, or that I feel very strongly about this issue. I would like to point out that I do not. My general inclination is to tell the schools to mind their own business when it comes to what I put in my kids’ lunches. That said, if the school decided to ban junk food, well, fine, whatever. I don’t send junk food with my kids anyway so this would not affect us.
Of course, there is the question of how you define “junk food”. Do you go beyond the obvious culprits like chips, candy, cookies, and Coke? Sandwiches made with salty nitrate-laden lunch-meats, fatty and/or heavily-processed cheeses, and mayonnaise probably aren’t that much more healthy than Cheetos and Snicker Bars. Peanut butter isn’t considered that healthful either even without taking into account the allergy problems. A lot of health experts recommend restricting–if not outright barring–the consumption of animal-based products along with anything with a high sugar, salt, or fat content. Fruit juices are sometimes suggested as an alternative to sodas but the amount of (natural) sugar contained in them can add a lot of calories. No matter how careful you are packing your kid’s lunch, chances are somebody out there is going to find it nutritionally objectionable.
It sucks when parents use their children to further their own political agenda. Couldn’t they just have pulled their children from the school without the chips and chocolate stunt?
If everyone’s opinion on the subject were equally valuable, or if humans were unequipped with the ability to make judgment calls, I guess I’d understand better where you’re coming from. But not everyone’s opinion is equally valuable, and the people who work at schools each make hundreds of judgment calls every days, so I’m not sure what you’re suggesting.
I don’t think I understand what you’re getting at. Whose opinion in this situation are you saying is less valuable?
Those whose opinions are not based on the mainstream science that informs our democratic society.
Someone who advocates the consumption of a varied diet based primarily on whole fruits, vegetables, and grains is on solid footing, scientifically speaking. The advocacy of a low-carbohydrate diet also has some solid footing. Raw foodarians, kosher advocates, those who freak out about artificial dyes, and the like do not have solid support from mainstream science. Their opinions are not, in this context, valuable.
Here is all I remember from school lunches:
Mine eyes have seen the gory of the Tuna Casserole,
We have seen the kids eat it then upon the floor they rolled.
Their agony was great because of the food upon their plate,
I can’t wait for the bell!
Gory, Gory it’ll kill ya
Don’t let the food get near ya
Gory, Gory it’ll kill ya
I can’t wait for the bell.
Fair enough. I agree that my example of teaching creationism was extreme - yes, most intelligent people can agree that’s wrong. But that’s my point: Nutrition is not as cut-and-dried as that. Yes, there are basics - most people agree vegetables are good, too much processed sugar is bad. But I think that is where any real agreement, both in mainstream science and in the minds of the general population, ends.
So let’s say a school says veggies only. Everybody knows veggies are healthy, so nobody can disagree here.
Except of course that most people think a little more balance is a healthy thing, so we should add some protein. Cheese? Yogurt? Meat? Milk? Ok, but which brands/types/styles are allowed? How much? You certainly couldn’t just say “Yogurt is allowed” and let kids bring in chemical and sugar laden crap while maintaining any credibility in your “healthy eating” campaign. But the same problems can be found with just about any protein source. How do you decide and enforce how much fat, sodium, sugar, or chemicals are in the cheese? The meat? So how do you propose your average, untrained teacher “guides” children through the protein section of lunch class?
And then, what about some grains? Can a kid bring crackers? Popcorn? Bread? Who is deciding (and checking!) what brands are being brought, and how could anything homemade be accurately assessed? Which probably means, nothing homemade, which obviously doesn’t teach anything good about nutrition. You can’t just say “Crackers are allowed” and let kids bring in any old thing full of fat, sugar, sodium and various artificial additives while denying some other kid his homemade flax and whole grain muffin sweetened with a drop of honey.
My point is that as much as we can all sit smugly and claim we know what constitutes a “healthy” food item (or what constitutes “junk” for that matter), as soon as you really look at specifics beyond a carrot or a bag of Doritos, I don’t think it’s easily agreed upon at all.
I seriously ask you, if your child’s school said “No junk”, tell me what you would put in their lunchbox? I promise you I can find something about your answer, anyone’s answer, that some perfectly reasonable, logical person could find fault with. So if you are going to compare a school “guiding” what children eat to the school “guiding” them through academics, then I think the same standards of research and consistency need to be applied, not just an individual teacher or school deciding “no junk food” without a whole lot of specific guidelines being applied and communicated.
Lunch is not “nutrition class”. It is non-class time afforded to students so that they may eat. Since it is non-class time, staff should not be forcing instruction on the students, merely ensuring that the meal time is appropriately managed.
As a parent, I get where the outrage is coming from, even if I wouldn’t be totally outraged if my school system implemented this. During class, you teach my child the things he needs to learn to be a competent adult. You teach math, science, language, even nutrition. You instruct your students in the correct facts and application of those facts.
However, once you put a limit on the types of food I can send in for lunch, you are no longer instructing my son, you are instructing ME. You are telling ME what I should and should not feed my child, under the assumption that I cannot make that choice without your direction. I am not your student, you are not my nutritionist, and my child’s meals are my responsibility.
This is circular reasoning: teachers may not teach nutrition at lunch because nutrition is not the time for teachers to teach nutrition. Some schools say that it is the time for teachers to teach nutrition, therefore teachers may teach nutrition at lunch. How do you refute them without resorting to circular reasoning?
And elret, your hypothetical about yogurt is a good example of Sorites’ Paradox. We may not be able to categorize every single food as healthful or unhealthful, but that doesn’t mean we can’t exclude certain foods from consideration as uncontroversially unhealthful. And yes, some foods like Gogurt might slip through the cracks. That doesn’t invalidate excluding Snickers bars from the lunch room.
What foods are uncontroversially unhealthy? Because I don’t think a Snickers bar fits that category. Nor does a 2 oz. serving of chips.
What’s to refute? Lunch period is a time set aside for children to eat. Not because they need eating instruction, but because our physiology requires multiple meals per day for us to be effective.
Want to change lunch into a food class? Fine, it doesn’t change my real point, instructing children in the finer points of nutrition is different than instructing parents in how to feed their kids. The school exists to instruct the children, not the parents.
No, they should not be teaching about nutrition at lunch because they are not trained to do so.
And the yogurt thing isn’t a hypothetical. In the same classroom where my daughter’s funsized KitKat was banned, other kids were munching on yogurt that was higher in fat, sugar, artificial chemical additives, and calories. How is this not a ridiculously clear example of why this doesn’t work? My daughter comes away learning what? That an occasional portion controlled treat is bad and unacceptable, but yogurt is uncategorically healthy and good.
A kid came to class recently with a copy of The Hobbit, which he wanted to read during reading workshop. After reading a page to me with a few errors, he was totally unable to explain to me what the elves were up to on the page–he’d basically missed the entire point of the page. I explained to him that, as awesome a book as it was, and as much as I loved it when I was his age, it was unsuitable for practicing the specific reading strategies I was teaching him, and that he therefore needed to keep it at home for pleasure reading, not for reading in class. I stuck to my guns even after he told me his dad wanted him to read it.
It’d be absurd to say that I was thereby instructing his father, not him.
Elret, at the point where you’re saying a Snicker bar’s unhealthfulness is controversial, I don’t know what else to say to you.
That life is unfair, adults can be idiots, and that the rulings of teachers should be questioned and vigorously challenged? All valuable life lessons IMHO. 
(That was actually Odesio).
Yeah, that wasn’t me. I am saying the complete opposite, really. I think it’s pretty easy to decide which things are obviously unhealthy. I think what’s hard is deciding on what is actually healthy and I don’t think it makes sense either in fairness or in the teaching of a lesson to ban something obviously unhealthy while allowing other unhealthy things out of ignorance. I’ve asked you to give me some suggestions of what you would consider an uncontroversially healthy packed lunch.
I have said that I don’t mind the concept of lunchtime being an educational part of the day, I just have a problem with the people doing the educating not having the same training and standards that are applied to the rest of the educating they provide.
You want to decide that The Hobbit doesn’t fit into your mandated curriculum that is consistent with that of every other kid that age in your district, especially in light of your ability to explain why? By all means. You want to decide my kid can’t eat a bit of sugar while another can based on nothing but your own unsupported opinion? No, thanks.
Then maybe you can kindly provide me with a cite showing that a candy bar in inherently unhealthy and has no place within a balanced diet? Do you really thing if little Susie brings to school for lunch a nice salad with some chicken breast, a few crackers, some water and finishes it up with a small Snickers bar that there’s a problem? Seriously? It’s not the Snickers bar that’s the problem it’s how much of that kind of stuff you eat versus the amount of fruits, veggies and other foods you do eat.
Absolutely! This post reminds me of the following article from the person I trust the most to dispense nutritional advice (Alan Aragon):