School lunch: should children or parents choose?

CSARdiver

Children should have a say in the matter as long as it meets their nutritional and calorie needs. Parents should be guiding children through the process to ensure wise choices are being made. Wise parents will learn that to outsource without accountability produces poor results.

lynn_glenmont

SnifterPug wrote: »

Children should have a say, and should be involved in order to learn about good nutrition choices. Assuming the parent is capable of teaching this. There was a report in our papers recently of an adolescent who has gone blind. This is because around age 8 he decided he would eat nothing but white bread, French fries and Pringles. And this was allowed to go on until he went blind. I kid you not.

I think this thread addresses the news story you're talking about.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10762871/does-a-diet-high-in-ultra-processed-foods-cause-deafness-blindness#latest

KerrieA87

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

SnifterPug wrote: »

Children should have a say, and should be involved in order to learn about good nutrition choices. Assuming the parent is capable of teaching this. There was a report in our papers recently of an adolescent who has gone blind. This is because around age 8 he decided he would eat nothing but white bread, French fries and Pringles. And this was allowed to go on until he went blind. I kid you not.

I think this thread addresses the news story you're talking about.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10762871/does-a-diet-high-in-ultra-processed-foods-cause-deafness-blindness#latest

In fairness that child had a psychological condition, you wouldn’t say that an anorexic person was choosing not to eat because there’s a large awareness around it being a psychological disorder.

nuzziek

seltzermint555 wrote: »

MikePTY wrote: »

pancakerunner wrote: »

MikePTY wrote: »

I think that school meals should be free for all public school students, regardless of income. They should provide several healthy options for the children to choose from. As long as the school is only providing options that have good nutritional value, I don't see any harm in letting the children choose themselves (minus any allergy issues).

I like this idea, but can only imagine the politics behind it.

It actually is something that is implemented now in some school districts. Under the federal free and reduced lunch program, any school where at least 40 percent of students qualify for free meals is eligible to provide free breakfast and lunch to their entire student body for free. I am not sure how many schools take advantage of it. There are a couple of reasons for it, but one of the main ideas behind it is to reduce the stigma associated with being one of the "poor kids who gets free lunch".

No idea if this is true, but I have also heard that some school districts have discovered the hours & money that go into their systems of digital payment cards, cafeteria cashiers, and managing/collecting on negative balances, is not cost-effective. The profit is so small (or nonexistent), and they are actually better off just providing free school lunch to all students with no payment involved. It seems a little difficult to believe but when you really think about it I can imagine this holding truth in some situations.

I work in administration at a school district in the US and can provide some clarity on this. The schools that are in a situation with 40%+ students being free/reduced, that are eligible to then provide free lunches to all, have the lunch cost reimbursed by the federal government. It is not a cost that the school has to cover.

JeromeBarry1

The only place I know of where the parents are welcome to say anything about the school food is in the small and very wealthy town of Highland Park, Texas. Perhaps I'm thinking of the even smaller and wealthier University Park. Both are surrounded by Dallas. In whichever it is, parents volunteer to serve as cafeteria workers. This allows the cafeteria director to use the budget for better food, rather than for both cheaper food and wages.

CSARdiver

JeromeBarry1 wrote: »

The only place I know of where the parents are welcome to say anything about the school food is in the small and very wealthy town of Highland Park, Texas. Perhaps I'm thinking of the even smaller and wealthier University Park. Both are surrounded by Dallas. In whichever it is, parents volunteer to serve as cafeteria workers. This allows the cafeteria director to use the budget for better food, rather than for both cheaper food and wages.

There's a fundamental flaw in the concept of parents being welcome to provide input into a service they pay for.

I grew up in a small town with a very high sense of ownership and participation. I recently moved into a small town with a similar, if not greater sense of personal responsibility. Over 90% voter participation rate and basically the whole town shows up at every meeting.

Not surprisingly the school is one of the highest rated in the state due to this personal and local investment.

lynn_glenmont

KerrieA87 wrote: »

lynn_glenmont wrote: »

SnifterPug wrote: »

Children should have a say, and should be involved in order to learn about good nutrition choices. Assuming the parent is capable of teaching this. There was a report in our papers recently of an adolescent who has gone blind. This is because around age 8 he decided he would eat nothing but white bread, French fries and Pringles. And this was allowed to go on until he went blind. I kid you not.

I think this thread addresses the news story you're talking about.

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10762871/does-a-diet-high-in-ultra-processed-foods-cause-deafness-blindness#latest

In fairness that child had a psychological condition, you wouldn’t say that an anorexic person was choosing not to eat because there’s a large awareness around it being a psychological disorder.

I wasn't saying that. Do you think there were a lot of kids in the news recently who went blind from eating a severely restricted diet of white bread, fries, and potato chips (also I believe ham or bologna, which the person I was responding to omitted)? I'm confident that the news story discussed in the thread was the same one the person I was responding to was remembering, and I was just trying to divert possible derailment of this thread to a more appropriate venue.

montyeva1114

I work at an elementary school and part of my job is lunch duty. Kids throw so much of what you pack for them away!! But one thing I do notice is that the kids from different cultures who meals look more like what they eat at home with their families tend to eat their lunches. For example: chicken dumplings. Sushi. Etc. I would eat their lunches!!! Just think, if they are not eating it at home, they probably won’t at school.

phx92

Obviously parents get to choose, ultimately they are responsible for their kids health. But I think it’s good to give kids choices if the options are healthy. They will be more likely to eat their food and help build better habits. And a lot of times they will make good choices. When I was in elementary school, kids could get lunch from the cafeteria or pack it. The cafeteria lunch you had a choice of salad bar or hot lunch (a kid friendly entree, usually fruit or veg except some fridays when there would be a cookie)—and a lot of kids ate the salad bar every day and probably more veg than the kids whose parents packed a meal. Middle school we had no salad option. But once we were in high school the cafeteria would offer a handful of premise salads every day, and those were always the first thing to run out.

maiomaio71

I used lunches to help educate my boys about food. We don't have school lunches here, it's a packed lunch or nothing. There was no school canteen. From the time they started school they helped make their own lunch. We had strict rules....they had to choose minimum two proteins (yoghurt, ham, cheese, brown rice, tuna etc) I had checkboxes on the fridge they could look at (pictures at first but once they could read it got easier), minimum two fruit, maximum one treat. They dobbed each other in if they took too many treats! What I couldn't control was if they swapped food at school....I discovered my youngest used to swap a yoghurt for a bag of crisps in year 5. By the time they were year 3 they made their own lunches. I bought the food, often they requested specific things eg smoked salmon for bagels etc but usually they picked a selection from what was available. By Yr 13 my youngest would cook bacon in the morning for bacon sandwiches for lunch.

kshama2001

In junior high (8th and 9th grade), I used to chuck the lunch my mom packed and buy ice cream sandwiches with money I'd earned from babysitting.

IIRC, by high school I was eating school lunches.

runnermom419

We rotate through a few staples in our house for lunches. For my daughter (2nd grade), it’s often a tuna sandwich or mac and cheese in a thermos. For my son (5K), it’s either turkey cheese or mac and cheese. We’ll sometimes put spaghetti in a thermos, but those are their staples. Both LOVE vegetables, so I’ll put slices of cucumber, green pepper, baby carrots, etc in. I’ll add a little treat (chips or a chewy bar) and a fruit along with their bottle of water and their good to go. They’ll give input for the “main” and sometimes the side, but neither are super picky. My daughter will study the hot lunch menu and will let us know the days she’d rather have hot lunch.

Our daughter was adamant this year that she did not want milk at snack time. She takes after me; we can’t stand the taste of milk. We allowed her to make that decision for herself.