The Lunch-Packing Police

I'm all for encouraging healthy eating habits, but lunch inspections like this one seem like a huge waste of time, energy, and money. Hopefully it's just a freak story, and that's why it's making all the news. Our hero (or victim) is a four year old girl who had her lunch confiscated by school officials because it was not "healthy" enough. The lunch consisted of a turkey/cheese sandwich, a banana, some chips, and apple juice.

Lunches like this don't meet USDA guidelines for Pre-K programs (the little girl's lunch should have had TWO servings of fruits/vegetables). Needless to say, she didn't pass inspection. She was charged for a new lunch, but all she ate from the new lunch was a few chicken nuggets. Well at least they followed the rules, I guess.

Mom wasn't too happy though:

"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."

I agree with mom, seeing as I've rarely seen a kid under the age of 12 who eats veggies on his/her own. I have to resort to outright trickery to get my kids to eat vegetables (we tell them that spaghetti squash is "noodles"). 

There has to be a better way of going about this. All of the energy is focused on the wrong sort of person, in this case. I'm not sure what the answer is, but this is big fat waste.