Kids Forbidden From Bringing Lunch to School

by Dave Blount | April 11, 2011 3:17 pm

First they use your money to provide government cheese. Then they force you to eat it[1].

At Little Village Academy, a Chicago public school,

students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

It’s a weighty job protecting people from their choices, but Big Government feels up to it. Carmona describes the ban as common.

A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman said she could not say how many schools prohibit packed lunches and that decision is left to the judgment of the principals.

“While there is no formal policy, principals use common sense judgment based on their individual school environments,” Monique Bond wrote in an email. “In this case, this principal is encouraging the healthier choices and attempting to make an impact that extends beyond the classroom.”

You won’t find a better argument for private school or homeschooling than government educrats attempting to make an impact that extends beyond the classroom.

Being government-issued, the food stinks.

At Little Village, most students must take the meals served in the cafeteria or go hungry or both. During a recent visit to the school, dozens of students took the lunch but threw most of it in the garbage uneaten. Though CPS has improved the nutritional quality of its meals this year, it also has seen a drop-off in meal participation among students, many of whom say the food tastes bad.

“Some of the kids don’t like the food they give at our school for lunch or breakfast,” said Little Village parent Erica Martinez. “So it would be a good idea if they could bring their lunch so they could at least eat something.”

Public schools serve not only lunch but breakfast too. Maybe that’s what has replaced discarded old-fashioned activities like teaching the three R’s. Coming soon: government dinner.

The press dug up a parent who actually approves:

[P]arent Miguel Medina said he thinks the “no home lunch policy” is a good one. “The school food is very healthy,” he said, “and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food.”

Heaven forbidden there should be no control over food. As Rep. John Dingleberry (D-MI) revealed, controlling the people[2] is what the government’s ostensible concern with our health is all about.

Not all schools have progressed this far in their authoritarianism:

At Claremont Academy Elementary School on the South Side, officials allow packed lunches but confiscate any snacks loaded with sugar or salt.

Salt is an essential nutrient, but like CO2 it has been arbitrarily declared unholy according to the bizarre godless religion of our moonbat overlords.

If we’re seeing this level of totalitarianism now, imagine how much micromanagement of our diets bureaucrats will insist on imposing when they’ve finished consolidating control of the healthcare system under ObamaCare.

[3]

On tips from GoY, blue, and wingmann. Cross-posted at Moonbattery[4].