posted February 15, 2012 10:32 AM            

According to a mother's statement, her daughter was forced to accept a school lunch over her mother's home packed lunch.

The school lunch consisted of chicken nuggets. The mother's lunch had a turkey and cheese sandwich. Since when are chicken nuggets nutritionally superior to turkey and cheese sandwiches? The home packed lunch also had a banana, apple juice and a bag of potato chips.

This is an example of terminal stupidity on the part of federal officials...led by and egged on by Michelle O'Bomber.

The real purpose of this nonsense is to discourage and prevent parents from sending their children to school with lunches prepared at home and accept the garbage served at school.

State Inspectors Searching Children’s Lunch Boxes: “This Isn’t China, Is It?”
February 14, 2012
Matt Willoughby

A mother in Hoke County complains her daughter was forced to eat a school lunch because a government inspector determined her home-made lunch did not meet nutrition requirements. In fact, all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home.

NC Pre-K (before this year known as More at Four) is a state-funded education program designed to “enhance school readiness” for four year-olds.

The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter a lunch that contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips. A state inspector assessing the pre-K program at the school said the girl also needed a vegetable, so the inspector ordered a full school lunch tray for her. While the four-year-old was still allowed to eat her home lunch, the girl was forced to take a helping of chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement her sack lunch.

The mother says the girl was so intimidated by the inspection process that she was too scared to eat all of her homemade lunch. The girl ate only the chicken nuggets provided to her by the school, so she still didn’t eat a vegetable.

The mother says her daughter doesn’t like vegetables and – like most four year olds – will only eat them at home under close supervision.

In an interview with the Civitas Institute the mother said “I can’t put vegetables in her lunchbox. I’m not a millionaire and I’m not going to put something in there that my daughter doesn’t eat and I’ve done gone round and round with the teacher about that and I’ve told her that. I put fruit in there every day because she is a fruit eater. Vegetables, let me take care of my business at home and at night and that’s when I see she’s eating vegetables. I either have to smash it or tell her if you don’t eat your vegetables you’re going to go to bed.”

The mother added, “It’s just a headache to keep arguing and fighting. I’ve even wrote a note to her teachers and said do not give my daughter anything else unless it comes out of her lunchbox and they are still going against me and putting a milk in front of her every day.

“Friday she came home and said ‘Mom, they give me vegetable soup and a milk,’” said the mother.

“So I went to the cafeteria to make sure she had no fee and it’s not being charged to her account yet,” she continued, ” but what concerned me was that I got a letter from the principal and it says students who do not bring a healthy lunch will be offered the missing portions which may result in a fee from the cafeteria. So if I don’t stay on top of her account on a weekly basis there’s that opportunity that charges could be put on her account and then if I let it go too far then it’s like I’m going to have a big battle.”

The principal of West Hoke Elementary, Jackie Samuels, says none of the children’s parents were asked to pay for the school food. While the parents may not have to pay, it was still an expense for the school to provide the extra food. A phone call to the Hoke County Schools Superintendent to inquire as to how much additional expense this would impose on the school was not returned.

The mother, who lives in Fayetteville, sent a statement to state Rep. G.L. Pridgen (R-Robeson) detailing her complaint. Pridgen says he was shocked to hear it. Pridgen has since learned this is a nationwide practice based on federal guidelines.

An assistant to Pridgen says the girl’s grandmother was also upset and asked, “This isn’t China, is it?”

The government inspector was from the Early Childhood Environment Rating Scale-Revised program at the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The program gives schools a grade based on standards that include USDA meal guidelines enforced by the N.C. Division of Early Childhood Development.

The nutrition standards for pre-K lunch require milk, two servings of fruit or vegetable, bread or grains and a meat or meat alternative. The school didn’t receive a high grade from the January assessment because the home-made lunches didn’t meet those guidelines. The mother points out the only thing on that list her daughter’s home lunch didn’t have was milk, so she doesn’t understand why the girl was given a complete school meal as a supplement.

posted February 15, 2012 10:44 AM            

Food police reject preschooler's homemade lunch... in favour of chicken nuggets
Meghan Keneally
15th February 2012

A preschool girl was told her homemade meal wasn't healthy enough so a school cafeteria monitor made her eat chicken nuggets instead.

What could be less healthy than chicken nuggets? A turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread with a side of a banana, potato chips, and apple juice.

'What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,' the mother from North Carolina, who wished to remain anonymous, told a local newspaper.

Homemade goodness: A 4-year-old girl was told that her turkey and cheese sandwich was unhealthy and a school monitor made her buy a lunch

Alternative: The school-made lunch included chicken nuggets instead

'I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.'

The Department of Health and Human Services requires students to eat lunches that consist of meat, milk, grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables.

It isn't clear what the entire meal that the cafeteria at West Hoke Elementary School consisted of, but all that the picky four-year-old girl ate were the chicken nuggets.

The mother still wonders what it was exactly that disqualified her meal, and she expects that the bag of potato chips were potentially the problem.

That said, Jani Kozlowski, the spokesperson from the DHHS children's division said that the meal sounds like it would have passed the federal guidelines test.

'With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,' Ms Kozlowski told The Carolina Journal.

'It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standards,' she said, not having worked with the school in question herself.

On top of the wasted food that was sent home with the little girl at the end of the day was a $1.25 bill for the 'healthy' school lunch.

posted February 15, 2012 11:01 AM            

Homeschooling is the only alternative to this police state our children are enduring.

I find it invasive ,frightening , costly and horrifying . Ms Obama needs Americsan Mothers to bombard the White House with mail, calls and protests like she has never seen before.

Come on mothers, UNITE!

posted February 15, 2012 01:11 PM            

this is not the feds, first off. if it were it would be happening everywhere, and i can attest that it is NOT.

secondly while i abhor chicken nuggets processed turkey is not much -if any - better and depending on how the nuggets are made could be worse!

thirdly..students who do not bring a healthy lunch will be offered the missing portions this is pretty dreadful arm twisting and mercenary in motive, however the word OFFERED is the parents' out. i wouldn't let them get away with it.

posted February 15, 2012 01:31 PM            

quote:

---

this is not the feds, first off. if it were it would be happening everywhere, and i can attest that it is NOT.

---

ONE school, one place is ONE too many. I am weary of state/fed eye poking in family life

Is family no longer sacred and private??

What one`s child eats is NOT state/fed business. Period

posted February 15, 2012 02:14 PM            

i took my daughter out of public school age 12, couldn't manage it before that but then before that she was in england and had either packed or school lunch whichever she decided. that was years ago..

when we got to cali and they were serving pizza and coke for lunch i called the whole thing off. though not JUST about the food issue, everything is wrong with the middle school scenario. i had a destructively stupid psychologist tell me that my daughter, whom she had never met, needed limits (presumably because i took her side in a conflict with a teacher who was well past her sell-by date!) constant interactions with a passive agressive principal, and a daughter going off the rails! in that order, not the other way around.

public school gives the same tests to the elephant, the monkey, and the fish, as in a cartoon with these creatures lined up in front of an examiner saying that to be fair, they must all take the same test, ie to climb the tree behind them.

posted February 15, 2012 02:36 PM            

quote:

---

when schools mind their business (teaching) and stay out of what is NOT, we will all be happier.

---

amen sister! My kids went to a private school as the testing of the elephant , monkey, and the fish wern`t what mine were going to suffer.

I did go to a small public school and such rot wasn`t a problem. I had a solid education and packed my lunch. By todays standards, my Mom would have been arrested for the contents.

posted February 15, 2012 05:05 PM            

The Department of Health and Human Services requires students to eat lunches that consist of meat, milk, grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables.

DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES...an agency of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

posted February 15, 2012 05:05 PM            

Again, the DHHS...DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES...an agency of the FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.

That said, Jani Kozlowski, the spokesperson from the DHHS children's division said that the meal sounds like it would have passed the federal guidelines test.

posted February 15, 2012 05:42 PM            

so why do these rules not appear to apply in california schools? hmm?

could it be that those are GUIDELINES not imperatives coming out of washington? and some states are taking them over-seriously?

i'll have to check that out! especially since you don't seem to believe me that your source, the daily mail, is not only english but frequently "liberal" with the facts!

i wonder why the daily mail is in NC interviewing disgruntled parents?

posted February 16, 2012 11:46 AM            

Make no mistake, Michelle O'Bomber IS meddling in the school lunch program...though Michelle and Barack O'Bomber DO NOT SEND THEIR OWN DAUGHTERS to public schools in Washington DC.

I'm not ripping Barack and Michelle for sending their own daughters to "private schools" in DC. ANY responsible parent who could...would or, if qualified, they would home school.

No, I'm ripping Barack for his hypocrisy in sending his daughters to private schools so they can get an education while at the very same time canceling the DC school voucher program which permitted intercity minority students to get out of the cesspool of the DC public school system and attend a private school.

You see, the National Teachers Association and the Federated Teachers Union...large contributors to O'Bomber's campaigns didn't wnat intercity children escaping the Plantation Ghetto school system and getting a real education.

So much for O'Bomber's hypocritical bleatings about "improving education" for America's children.

posted February 16, 2012 12:08 PM            

The Department of Health and Human Services, which thanks to ObamaCare will soon be the most powerful and unaccountable government organization in the Western world, has really been feeling its oats lately. Fresh from its triumph in forcing Catholics to pay for contraception, agents of the Division of Child Development and Early Education moved to seize an improperly packed lunch from a little girl at a North Carolina elementary school, and assess a modest fine against her mother.

The Carolina Journal reports on this thrill-packed adventure of the Food Police:

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.

What regulations empowered the Food Police to swoop in and make the bust, wrestling that deadly turkey-and-cheese sandwich away from the young citizen, and saving her from dietary child abuse with a timely infusion of State-approved chicken nuggets?

The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home.

**note** Well, let's see.
One serving of meat=turkey
One serving of milk=cheese
One serving of grain=bread
Two servings of fruit OR vegetables=a banana and apple juice**

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

I can hardly wait for the first Food Police no-knock raid of a home day care center. I bet there’s a lot of sliced turkey in those dens of iniquity.

The girl’s mother — who said she wishes to remain anonymous to protect her daughter from retaliation — said she received a note from the school stating that students who did not bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered the missing portions, which could result in a fee from the cafeteria, in her case $1.25.

“I don't feel that I should pay for a cafeteria lunch when I provide lunch for her from home,” the mother wrote in a complaint to her state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen of Robeson County.

The girl’s grandmother, who sometimes helps pack her lunch, told Carolina Journal that she is a petite, picky 4-year-old who eats white whole wheat bread and is not big on vegetables.

“What got me so mad is, number one, don’t tell my kid I’m not packing her lunch box properly,” the girl’s mother told CJ. “I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit. It never consists of a vegetable. She eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn’t really care for vegetables.”

Look, citizen, you’re going to have to understand that we are all property of the State now. Your parental authority, and the personal preferences of your daughter, are irrelevant when measured against the State’s fiduciary interest in your health. A highly qualified commissar of the Food Police explained the error of this misguided parental unit’s ways:

While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem.

“With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,” said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. “It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standard.” The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said.

There are no clear restrictions about what additional items — like potato chips — can be included in preschoolers’ lunch boxes.

“If a parent sends their child with a Coke and a Twinkie, the child care provider is going to need to provide a balanced lunch for the child,” Kozlowski said.

Ultimately, the child care provider can’t take the Coke and Twinkie away from the child, but Kozlowski said she “would think the Pre-K provider would talk with the parent about that not being a healthy choice for their child.”

(Emphasis mine.) “No clear restrictions?” Fear not, citizens. Clarity will be provided at the pleasure of the Department of Health and Human Services.

This principle will not be confined to children in schools. As we saw from the condom controversy, and King Obama’s “accommodation” – which involved ordering private insurance companies to provide contraceptives for “free” – the State now has limitless power to regulate the behavior of the citizenry, to control health care costs. The people will be compelled to provide each other anything the State deems good and proper.

This is really a modest expansion upon the principle of the “individual mandate” at the heart of ObamaCare, which compels private citizens to purchase a State-approved product from private companies. If the State can force you to buy health insurance, then of course they can force you to buy chicken nuggets. Or vegetables, gym memberships… anything that is deemed in the “public good,” which now includes anything related to the health of the population. You’ll be amazed how much is “related to the health of the population” a few years from now.

Hopefully the little girl rescued from her maternal unit’s foolish ignorance by the valiant Food Police won’t suffer any lingering psychological trauma, such as the conviction that turkey is poisonous, or her mother can’t be trusted to take care of her. Surely taxpayer-funded psychological counseling will be made available if necessary.

posted February 17, 2012 01:52 PM            

so i am concluding till further evidence that the school itself or the state who is angling for more money from the feds, are pushing school meals on kids with flimsy excuse.

on the other hand the idea that school lunches, sitting in hot plates and microwaved, contain much nutrition at all. the lunches i remember from grade school were ghastly, overheated and disgusting-tasting!

posted February 17, 2012 03:17 PM            

The facts are that the federal government has established guidelines which states and local school districts are expected to follow as a requisite for getting the School Lunch funds from the federal government.

Further, the feds have the authority to check to see that schools are following their guidelines. The feds have been in schools monitoring for some time.

Michelle O'Bomber is working hand in glove with federal agencies to force their ideas of what children should be eating and parents...when they find out about it ARE outraged. Right now, the outrage is in North Carolina but wait until another story breaks about a "monitor" trying to confiscate a home packed lunch and getting caught.

You may think this is over but it's just another event in a chain of events where the feds are sticking their noses in where they don't belong...in the guise of children's health under O'BomberCare.

posted February 17, 2012 04:08 PM            

this quote from the only federal person in the posts makes it quite clear that the school is being ridiculous if not fraudulent:

That said, Jani Kozlowski, the spokesperson from the DHHS children's division said that the meal sounds like it would have passed the federal guidelines test.

'With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that’s the dairy,' Ms Kozlowski told The Carolina Journal.

'It sounds like the lunch itself would’ve met all of the standards,' she said, not having worked with the school in question herself.

the federal guidelines says children whose lunch does not cover nutritional bases "may be OFFERED" things that would flesh it out. it doesn't say anything anywhere about confiscating kids' lunches.

this is a plain and simple scam on the part of the school to up their income.

as i've said, not one child i know in the california school system has had his lunch challenged or been forced to eat ANYthing, even from the school lunches. my grandson regularly tosses half his lunch, often the "healthier" items, and no one has said "boo" to him. they get their funding based on what they make AVAILABLE in the name of lunch.

posted February 17, 2012 06:57 PM            

only this time they are blaming the govt requirements for something they were not required to do. credit where it's due, hey?

the feds are NOT requiring that school lunches be confiscated and/or replaced, though schools are expected to OFFER missing ingredients. big difference.

meanwhile i notice that the feds are NOT sending round costly inspectors to make sure the food is edible! let alone that a child with a perfectly reasonable lunch be punished for bringing it by being forced to eat the institutional sludge that is legendary.

there is a difference between saying they need to offer certain things to receive funding, and saying the KIDS are required to eat it!

posted February 18, 2012 11:22 PM            

I don't think so.

It's time to cut the budget of these busybodies agencies in half and lay off about 50% of their busybody employees. If that doesn't send them a message they can understand, then give the ax to the entire agency. This is not a federal issue to begin with. It's a state issue...if it's not totally within the perview of parents.

2nd N.C. Mother Says Daughter’s School Lunch Replaced for Not Being Healthy Enough
February 17, 2012
Madeleine Morgenstern

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 did not meet the necessary guidelines and that Jazlyn had been sent to the cafeteria.

The lunch Zambrano packed for her daughter? A cheese and salami sandwich on a wheat bun with apple juice. The lunch she got in the cafeteria? Chicken nuggets, a sweet potato, bread and milk.

“She never eats breakfast or lunch at the school,” Zambrano said of her daughter during an interview with The Blaze. “We always wake up early and make her lunch.”

It happens “every so often”

That day, Zambrano said she picked Jazlyn up from school and asked if she ate her lunch.

“She’s not picky about food but you have to be on top of her,” she explained.

When Jazlyn said she didn’t eat what her mother had made her, Zambrano went to her teacher and demanded to know what happened. She said the teacher told her an official had come through that day to inspect students’ lunches and that those who were lacking certain food groups were sent to the cafeteria. After she received her cafeteria food, the teacher told Zambrano, Jazlyn was told to put her homemade lunch back in her lunchbox and set it on the floor.

Zambrano said the teacher told her it was not the first time student lunches have been inspected, and that officials come “every so often.”

Part of a regular program?

The policing of children’s food at West Hoke has been portrayed as an isolated incident, but a curious memo Jazlyn brought home to her mother seems to point to something more.

The memo Jazlyn brought from the school outlines the necessary nutritional requirements students’ homemade lunches must contain: two servings of fruit or vegetables, one serving of dairy, one serving of grain and one serving of meat or meat substitute. Included with the memo was a separate sheet, this one a bill for the cafeteria food Jazlyn was served.

The memo, dated Jan. 27 with the subject line “RE: Healthy Lunches,” was signed by school principal Jackie Samuels and said, while “we welcome students to bring lunches from home … it must be a nutritious, balanced meal with the above requirements. Students, who do not bring a healthy lunch, will be offered the missing portions which may result in a fee from the cafeteria.”

Zambrano, who’s volunteered at the school in the past, said she was never told about any such nutritional requirements before her daughter’s lunch was replaced.

“That‘s not really the school’s responsibility,” she said, adding she’s extremely health-conscious and doesn’t feed her daughter junk food or let her drink soda — or even eat the tater tots or other fried foods often served in the cafeteria.

“They give the choice of pizza and hot donuts…none of that is healthy,” Zambrano said.

According to the program requirements for North Carolina’s pre-kindergarten program, schools “must provide breakfast and/or snacks and lunch meeting USDA requirements during the regular school day.”

The partial or full cost of meals, the requirements state, “may be charged when families do not qualify for free/reduced price meals. 
When children bring their own food for meals and snacks to the center, if the food does not meet the specified nutritional requirements, the center must provide additional food necessary to meet those requirements.”.....
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/exclusive-2nd-n-c-mother-says-daughters-school-lunch-replaced-for-not-being-healthy-enough/