As part of a five-week “Occupy Occupy D.C.” counter-protest, The National Center For Public Policy Research held a massive brown-bag event in the nation’s capital today, in Freedom Plaza.
The “lunch-in” is, of course, in response to the multiple incidents of four-year-olds being forced to eat school cafeteria food rather than their own packed lunches.
Protesters to Resist Government, Eat Homemade Lunches
Washington, D.C. – Concerned parents and their supporters will be having a “lunch-in” on Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C. at noon on Thursday, February 23 to protest federal school nutrition guidelines that allegedly forced at least one student to forgo her mother’s home-packed lunch in favor of chicken nuggets.
Thursday’s protest is part of The National Center for Public Policy Research’s “Occupy Occupy D.C.” events at Freedom Plaza. The National Center obtained a five-week permit from the U.S. Park Service that forces the Occupy D.C. encampment to share the park between February 12 and March 15.
“Even though my four-year-old and two-year-old will both be starting at public schools in a few months, I did not agree to let the government make every decision about how they are raised,” said National Center Internet consultant Jennifer Biddison, who is planning to bring her kids to Freedom Plaza for the seditious lunch. “Just because I choose to let government schools teach my kids math and reading doesn’t mean I want them to dictate other things such as how they will eat and how they will dress. I’m quite content with the way I am raising them, and I ask the government to honor my choices in such family matters.”
On January 30, during a visit by a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services official to West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford, North Carolina, a four-year-old girl’s lunch – made by her mother – was determined to not meet federal nutritional requirements. The lunch consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice. The girl subsequently went through the school’s lunch line, where she received a lunch that included chicken nuggets.
Those attending the National Center’s lunch-in will be eating the same types of items packed for the little girl in Raeford, North Carolina on January 30. . . .
The original lunch-grab incident
The second incident, reported at The Blaze, in which the lunch-inspection regime is detailed, along with the “two fruits/vegetables” requirement. That last is absurd, of course: what four-year-old child can eat as much food as the guidelines require in the first place, and why is it that the Feds insist that an individual meal has to be balanced to its specifications, and taken out of the context of the child’s consumption over the entire day? Not to mention the starchiness of what the school substituted for the original healthy lunch, and the insistence on including dairy—which can be controversial among nutritionists, and discriminates against vegans and those whose lunch-packing skills are Asian-influenced. It’s maddening, and I’m not even a parent.
Via Insty, whose sentiments on this state-run lunch-grabbing (and a few other topics) are usually summarized with the words “Tar. Feathers.” He’s got that right.
- Excited
- Angry
- Not as Angry
- Bored
- Indifferent
- Sad
There are the objections that you listed. And there are more:
Presumably the milk in the school lunch was skim, yet there’s a body of literature suggesting that whole milk is actyually better for you (fat-police and calorie-police notwithstanding).
What about the chicken nuggets? Were they made with processed sugar? Gluten? factory-farmed chicken? Each of those ingredients is objected to by some parents who want to keep their children away from them.
I could go on and on. But the point isn’t in the specific complaints. It’s that, more and more, the government is encroaching on parents’ choices. More and more, parenting choices that were quite the norm are being frowned on or even criminalized. And parenting choices that are outside the norm but used to elicit nothing worse than eye-rolling lead to prosecution. See http://works.bepress.com/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1010&context=david_pimentel
There was the family in Washington state that had their child taken away because they made him go to church twice a week.
There was the couple that got prosecuted (and sentenced to 12 yerars in jail) after their children died because they supposedly should have foreseen that if they pitched their tent twenty-five feet from the river their children would wake up in the middle of the night, leave the tent, and drown.
I was with a couple when a police officer threatened to arrest them because he wasn’t wearing a hat on a snowy day. Never mind that the child made it clear he didn’t want a hat, and the parents had a hat with them in case he changed his mind.
I used to laugh it off when I heard people talk about a concerted effort to usurp parental choice. But I’m becoming less and less confident.
What really struck me is how ignorant this is of how children ARE. You would think that anyone regulating schools should understand little kids, but, apparently, using logic is “doing it wrong”, Mr. Mom style.
Little kids are picky. You personally may not think that a turkey-and-cheese sandwich is sufficiently healthy, but if the kid likes turkey and cheese, and the kid eats turkey and cheese, then you pack turkey and cheese. Even if it’s every day. If the kid hates veggies and you know that he just throws them out, you don’t pack them. You pack relatively nutritious things that you know he will eat, and then push the veggies when you are there to supervise.
As for milk v. other products? Oh, heavens, as a vegetarian since the ’90s, I’m here to tell you that there is no shortage of busybodies who have fantastic ideas (ha, ha) about how to run your plate. I’ve had people tell me that I should go gluten-free, low-carb, or vegan or what-have-you, to which I usually respond “Completely eliminating multiple food groups is objectively dumb.” Some people’s idea of “healthy” seems to be anything but.
Roxanne,
Sorry if I gave the wrong impression. I wasn’t advocating that people should go vegan, or gluten, or stick to whole milk. I was just noting that some people make those choices for themselves and their children, and that is their parental right.
You do what you want as far as food goes. None of my business.