Free Republic

  The Food Police: Training Subjects, not Educating Citizens David C. Stolinsky Feb. 23, 2012 We need heroes in times of trouble. But we need self-reliant, independent citizens at all times. People can’t remain free if they are brought up to be subservient and dependent. And we seem to be doing our best to produce such people. Did you read about the four-year-old girl who went to preschool with the lunch her mother had made for her? The lunch included a turkey-and-cheese sandwich on multigrain bread, a banana, a small bag of chips, and apple juice. But her lunch...

North Carolina officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler’s homemade lunch was sent home for not meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter. Diane Zambrano says her 4-year-old daughter, Jazlyn, is in the same West Hoke Elementary School class as the little girl whose lunch gained national attention earlier this week. When Zambrano picked Jazlyn up from school late last month, she was told by Jazlyn’s teacher that the lunch she had packed that day...

Just the Facts: State vs. Federal School Nutrition ProgramsPosted by Courtney Rowe, Press Secretary, USDA, on February 16, 2012 at 1:21 PM In the past 24 hours, we’ve seen a lot of chatter online regarding a story from North Carolina in which a pre-school student’s lunch was deemed “unhealthy.” We’d like to set the record straight. As established by law, USDA promotes healthier lifestyles for our nation’s school children through the National School Lunch and Breakfast Program. The Department sets science-based nutritional standards for and oversees State administration of schools that choose to participate in these national programs. In exchange...

Who Is the Mystery Food Monitor?No agency has said it employed the person checking preschoolers' lunch bags By Rick Henderson Feb. 16th, 2012 RALEIGH — Three days after a Carolina Journal report on the plight of a 4-year-old preschooler and her lunch made national headlines, the identity of the person who determined that the youngster's homemade lunch was not nutritious remains unknown. Of the several government agencies who have been named in the controversy — the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Division of Child Development and Early Education at the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services, Hoke County schools,...

Federal Guidelines: The nanny state that tells us what cars we should drive, what energy we must use and what health insurance we must have is now telling mothers what they can put in their children's school lunches. We are all familiar with the Transportation Security Administration going through our stuff at the airport on the assumption all of us are potential terrorists. When a similar level of scrutiny is applied to our kids' school lunches on the assumption we are too stupid to feed them properly, we wonder if there's any place the nanny state will not reach to...

... A child’s mother sent the kid, a preschooler mind you, to school with a turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips and apple juice. Is there any conceivable grounds here for government intervention? No? Think again. Bauer reports that the lunch from home “failed the mandatory lunch inspection”...

WKYT Audrey Rowe is visiting schools all over the nation. “Everything we can do.. to make food taste good,” Rowe told students at Elkhorn Middle School in Frankfort on Wednesday. The USDA official from Washington, DC got a first-hand look…and taste of school lunches in Kentucky. “I think we can make it to where one day you’ll say ‘that lady was here and I like this food now.’ That’s what I’m working on,” she said.

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is from Rayford, North Carolina. Carolina Journal. I'm gonna read it to you exactly as it printed out here. "A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day." Again, let me read this to you...

WASHINGTON — A slice of pizza still counts as a vegetable. In a victory for the makers of frozen pizzas, tomato paste and French fries, Congress on Monday blocked rules proposed by the Agriculture Department that would have overhauled the nation’s school lunch program. The proposed changes — the first in 15 years to the $11 billion school lunch program — were meant to reduce childhood obesity by adding more fruits and green vegetables to lunch menus, Agriculture Department officials said. The rules, proposed last January, would have cut the amount of potatoes served and would have changed the way...

It has become all too easy today to receive government assistance. Half of all babies born in the U.S. today receive food assistance, and half of all children live in a home that will use food assistance at some point during their childhood. 40 percent of the population in Washington, D.C. is on welfare. Between 2000 and 2010 the number of Americans receiving food assistance more than doubled, expanding to over 47 million, which is more than one-seventh of the population. Forty years ago, only 4.3 million Americans received food assistance. According to a Heritage Foundation study, means-tested welfare has...

WASHINGTON — The government has some thoughts on how to make the federally financed school lunch program more nutritious: A quarter-cup of tomato paste on pizza will no longer be considered a vegetable. Cut back on potatoes and add more fresh peaches, apples, spinach and broccoli. And hold the salt. The proposed changes — the first in 15 years to the $11 billion school-lunch program — are meant to reduce rising childhood obesity, Agriculture Department officials say. Food companies including Coca-Cola, Del Monte Foods and the makers of frozen pizza and French fries have a huge stake in the new...

They say no publicity is bad publicity, and for that Paul M. Kramer must be truly grateful. Since word of his upcoming children’s book, Maggie Goes On a Diet spread throughout the blogosphere, he has received considerable bad press.

Many retailers and schools are advocating waste-free options for back-to-school shoppers this year, especially when it comes to lunch. School lists call for Tupperware instead of Ziplocs, neoprene lunch bags instead of brown paper ones, and aluminum water bottles, not the throwaway plastic versions. Sales of environmentally friendly back-to-school products are up just about everywhere. At the Container Store, the increase is 30 percent over last year for some items, said Mona Williams, the company’s vice president of buying. “We have seen a huge resurgence,” she said. The trend makes the schools happy (much less garbage). It makes the stores...

The L.A. school board's decision to stop serving flavored milks on campuses is just the beginning. A menu overhaul is underway that will mean fewer meals that resemble fast food and more vegetarian offerings. Spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce and California sushi rolls, along with many ethnic foods, are to be added. Corn dogs, chicken nuggets and other breaded items are out, said Dennis Barrett, food services director. Megan Bomba, a project coordinator with Occidental College's Urban and Environmental Policy Institute, agreed with the move, saying "the meal needs to be better, not [that] we need to keep chocolate...

If the federal government gets its way, critics are warning, school lunches will be more expensive and less appetizing and ultimately will leave school districts footing the bill for costly food going down the garbage disposal. Under regulations proposed this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture would have the final say on what students eat. Educators fear the guidelines, trumpeted by first lady Michelle Obama and others as a key to curbing childhood obesity, will take a huge bite out of school budgets while resulting in “healthier” meals that make youngsters turn up their noses. “Under the proposed rule, school...

A company that serves meals to 2½ million schoolchildren daily in more than 500 districts nationwide, with multimillion-dollar contracts in both Washington and Chicago, has a history of marginal quality and food-safety scares amid concerns over the nutritional content of its school menus, according to school and company records. Chartwells-Thompson School Dining Services, a subsidiary of the Charlotte, N.C.-based Compass Group, owner of Burger King, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, is one of North America's largest school cafeteria operators — its contracts with the Chicago Public Schools from 2001 to 2009 totaling more than $289 million and a D.C. operation...

And, no, the term “child dinner” does not mean that moppets are on the menu. They are handed one, though, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education. Via Julie Gunlock at NRO’s The Corner blog, we learn that the Obama administration is expanding its child-dinner program from 13 states to all 50 (or, if Obama gets his way, all 57 … or is it 58?). Anyway, Gunlock has the details: ... This bit of government expansion, by the way, is courtesy of the lame-duck session of Congress. ... And what’s next for the (nearly literal) nanny state after this? AmeriCorps...

President Barack Obama signed a sweeping overhaul of child nutrition standards Monday, enacting a law meant to encourage better eating habits in part by giving the federal government more authority to set standards for food sold in vending machines and elsewhere on school grounds. Among other things, the $4.5 billion measure provides more money to poor areas to subsidize free meals and requires schools to abide by health guidelines drafted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. To help offset the higher cost of including more fruits and vegetables, the bill increases the reimbursement rate for school lunches. The bill is...

First lady Michelle Obama shares a very dangerous belief with her husband when it comes to transforming things: that it is most important to be seen as the driving force behind over-reaching changes no matter who they hurt. Toward that end, Mrs. Obama has pushed hard for what has euphemistically been called a child nutrition bill but is in fact a $4.5 billion attempt to implement a high-end solution to unhealthy school lunch programs by stealing future funding for food stamp programs.

TAKOMA PARK, Md. – As back-to-back snowstorms shuttered schools for the week across the mid-Atlantic states, parents fretted about lost learning time, administrators scheduled makeup days and teachers posted assignments online. But Marla Caplon worried about a more fundamental problem: How would students eat? The two snowstorms that pummeled the region, leaving more than 3 feet of snow in some areas, deprived tens of thousands of children from Virginia to Pennsylvania of the free or reduced-price school lunch that may be their only nutritious meal of the day. The nonprofits that try to meet the need when school is not...