Do you think there won’t be waivers?
Depends on what kind of assholes the school administrators are, and on who’s asking for one. We’re assuming there won’t be, or that, if there are, your kid won’t get one, assuming you still have kids.
If “culture of responsibility” means that we stick to the idea of independent action when independent action has proven to be ineffectual to solve a public problem," then it is a worthless concept.
Hey, if you want to be hyper-insistent that “tax-paid” and “free” are on two different moral planes, I hope you don’t think that clean air and water are “free”, or ever could be “free”, either economically or morally. Without governmental regulations and enforcement of those regulations, you get Beijing, the City Of Brown Air, and the US prior to the EPA, when the Berkeley Pit was created.
So… do you get this annoyed when people claim that the air is free, and do you remind them that the EPA and so on is very much tax-paid?
So if we pass laws that stop people from doing something, as we do when we forbid pollution, free food magically appears? I don’t think it works that way.
Regards,
Shodan
I get the impression that now schools are forced to offer more (expensive) fresh vegetables, which kids don’t like so they throw in the trash.
Kids don’t like healthful food. Story at 11:00.
Are you surprised a high school with an open campus is having trouble keeping kids out of McDonalds? Teens are pretty well known for making consistently terrible choices. I’m sure half these kids “don’t like” math class either. If gave them the option to goof around in the park instead, no doubt attendance in math class would fall.
It’s not “a” high school, this is from the auditor general’s report for all of Ontario. I’m just pointing out that kids don’t like healthful food. I’d rather pack them something they will eat than have them throw out what the school offers. And if they have money, they won’t eat at the cafeteria.
And if they have free time, they won’t go to math class.
I agree that pairing healthy food with off-campus options is unlikely to work.
So your plan is what? search their backpacks and frisk the kids for contraband lunches? Force them at the point of a gun to eat an apple? Suspend kids because they ate a contraband baloney sandwich?
How we managed to survive school before you came along is amazing. They should do a documentary on it.
Check on Netflix. There are plenty of documentaries on the reality that the number of obese (note that’s clinically obese, not merely overweight) adolescents has risen from 5% in 1980 to 21% in 2012.
I don’t know how we managed to raise our kids without starting them down a path of lifelong health problems in the 80s, but I can say that something has gone spectacularly wrong in the last few decades. Luckily, public health is a pretty mature field, and we are pretty good at improving public health problems if we decide to.
I don’t think you came up with a satisfactory answer for Magiver, who understood that you proposed the use of physical force to effect “healthy eating.” Healthy or not, I would not want to live in a police state. 
Again I’ll point to Guantanamo. Our guests there get a healthy diet of their guardian’s choosing whether they want it or not.
ETA 
Just sayin.
Which was quite the fallacy of the excluded middle. The schools I attended had a closed campus, meaning we couldn’t go to McDonald’s to get a fresh lunch instead of eating at school. Could we bring a cold Quarter Pounder in our lunchbag? Sure. But we mostly didn’t, ‘cause gross. even sven’s comment was a reasonable one in response to the open campus school noting that the kids were going off campus to purchase fast food. There’s a world of options between “let the kids leave school grounds to go to Taco Bell” and “force feeding.” Like, maybe start with closing the campus and not letting the kids go off school grounds. (I’m actually surprised when I see that allowed these days, whatwith the school shooter fears and secured campuses and the drugs and the loud music…if I was responsible for other peoples’ kids for 6 hours, no way in hell I’m letting them wander off at lunch time.)
I think this is a terrible idea because it limits freedom and puts health over taste.
Hear, hear! WhyNot hasn’t answered the question either. Excluded middle? Details, please. In grade school --where we got some down-to-earth education aboout nutrition that would hardly bat an eye today–my typical packed lunch (the grade school had no cafeteria) consisted of a lunch meat sandwich, a little can of fruit juice or V8, a small bag of potato chips or Fritos, a piece of fruit, and Sno Balls or Twinkies or some such.
Hear, hear! WhyNot hasn’t answered the question either. Excluded middle? Details, please. In grade school --where we got some down-to-earth education aboout nutrition that would hardly bat an eye today–my typical packed lunch (the grade school had no cafeteria) consisted of a lunch meat sandwich, a little can of fruit juice or V8, a small bag of potato chips or Fritos, a piece of fruit, and Sno Balls or Twinkies or some such.
Sorry about that–a quirk in the browser caused my post to appear twice. :o
Fallacy of the excluded middle means arguing as if there are no options besides two extremes. Extreme A: let the kids decide entirely where they go and what to eat for lunch, including nearby fast food restaurants. Extreme B: “search their backpacks and frisk the kids for contraband lunches? Force them at the point of a gun to eat an apple? Suspend kids because they ate a contraband baloney sandwich?”
There’s a lot of room between those two for other policies and strategies, including simply not letting them go off campus and limiting their choices to cafeteria food or sack lunches. Or providing additional cafeteria options, including meals actually cooked fresh on site. Or banning home brought food unless you have a waiver. Or giving kids rewards - call em School Bucks - for choosing the cafeteria food, and letting them pay for privileges with those. Or printing mazes and puzzles on the wrappers as an incentive to get the cafeteria food. Or having the kids plan the cafeteria lunches as part of their Health/Nutrition classes. That’s all just off the top of my head, and I’m not advocating for anything in particular, just pointing out that there’s a big middle between free for all and police state.
What question is it that you think I haven’t answered? “So your plan is what?” A) I did answer that, my plan would be to close the campus and not let them go get fast food and B) that wasn’t a real question. That was a launching pad for a diatribe.