Why not just pack a lunch? It’s not THAT hard. Fresh fruit, vegetables, whole grain pita/tortilla/bread/bun/crackers, real cheese, maybe a homemade oatmeal cookie, a little box of raisins and a cup of real juice. Not that difficult. If the schools are doing a terrible job feeding your kids, why not accept responsibility for their nutrition yourself? Why? Because you’re the parent, that’s why. It is not the job of the government to feed your kids. It’s yours.

The lunches in our school district are embarassingly, shamefully bad, and the district is considered a good one. I just don’t get it. I pack lunches every. single. day. It’s THAT bad.

Andrea, my son is on free lunch. It is such a struggle to decide whether to spend money we don’t have on packing healthy lunches or to let him eat the junk they sell at school. I end up packing his lunch, but I wish there were healthy lunches for him at the school.

I could not agree with andrea more. It is not the government’s job to feed your child. that is the responsibility of the parent. I grew up having both, school lunch and home made. I’m not obese, i was never obese and i guarantee that my school lunches growing up were absolute crap. we did have fruit available to go with our lunches, but i never ate it. (still not much of a fruit eater). But the point is, if you are so concerned, then you do need to pack your kid’s lunch. but i can also guarantee that your kid is playing “trades-ies” with the kids who have less healthy options (HELLLOOO kid with the snack-pak) or even the less healthy options from the school lunch. Kids are going to trade no matter what, it is a matter of right of passage when in school. And remember, it could be worse for those parents who have their kids on the free lunch…they could not offer it at all. At least they are eating something, and sure it may be packed with god-knows-what-mystery, but it will not injure your kid, and they are most likely running around at school during the 6 recesses they have, and P.E. so they burn off whatever they eat. Growing up there were very few kids in school who were obese. And the food at school was worse then what it is now, which goes to show, that its not the school fault nor is it their responsibility that your kid is fat. Get them out of the house, turn the tv off, and have them run around outside. Its amazing how many calories your kid can burn by playing tag outside without using the video game controller.

I don’t use the highways to get to work, but some other people do. Well, beggars can’t be choosers, can they? If you need the government to build and maintain roads, then you get what you get. Be grateful you get anything at all.

I never thought of it that way, the idea that “no one individual can reasonably be expected to…” I just always had a gut feeling about what makes sense that people should be able to do…

Andrea is certainly right that roads and other infrastructure are well within the government’s responsibility, while individual children’s nutrition is the responsibility of their parents. However, I don’t understand the “you get what you get” answer to the big basket of suck that is the School Nutrition Program. Andrea and Lulu, you’re paying for this program, don’t you want it to either be effective or be stricken from the budget altogether, rather than just wanting the recipients to stop complaining and be grateful?

Also, I think as long as the school is serving a meal, no matter what the teachers in health class say, the school is teaching that the meal served is healthy enough, to the lunchbox kids and the hot lunch kids alike. So, again, the program needs to be effective or be cut, it’s not as simple as just protecting your kids from actually eating the food. We have to try to protect all the kids from the dubious lessons that chocolate milk is every-day fare, that ketchup is a vegetable, etc.

Personally, I agree that children’s lunches are their parents’ responsibility, not the USDA’s. Furthermore, I think most parents will make better choices for their children’s lunches than will the USDA and they certainly can’t do much worse. And the original problem that prompted the creation of the school nutrition program—too many young men showing up for military service with chronic diet-related health issues that negatively impacted their ability to serve—can more effectively be dealt with through broader parent-controlled vouchers like food stamps. So I’m much more in favor of getting rid of school lunches or at least dealing with them through block grants to individual districts and schools as needed…but that still doesn’t work well with the “you get what you get” approach when the food is so wildly unhealthy. It would really suck if we started doing the school lunches 80 years ago due to malnutrition harming people’s ability to serve their country and had it end up with the pendulum swinging too far the other direction, leaving young people too obese to serve.

no, it’s not just the school lunches. we get it. BUT, if they are going to be giving “free” food (from taxpayers and subsidies) why not have it be healthy? is that so hard to grasp? the food is shit.

Kikiriki, you’re absolutely right. It is totally unfair to punish children because their parents have failed them in one way or another. Nobody picks their parents. I guess that’s easy to forget when it’s the parents who are whining and complaining about entitlements they themselves do not deserve/have not earned, but when it comes to children, they deserve a nutritious lunch.

Andrea, the federal government built interstate highways for military purposes not so you can quickly get around quickly; if the federal government wanted to it could bar private citizens from using the interstate. State governments orginally built roads to aid businesses. No where in the constitution does it say the government will provide roads for private citizen usuage – the same could be said about free lunch programs. You complain about people that use free lunches having a entitlement attitude but you exhibit the same attitude.

That’s so nice of you, M_S. I’m kind of hoping for the opposite.