Honestly?

[Kitt]

For your confusion and frustration:

 

http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/15404/

 

 

Are they kidding?

[MikeL]

Expensive crackers.  Canada must be trying to outstupid the US.

[Zombie]

Sometimes you have to stand up to authority and just say "No!" Let the law take you to court, use that platform to name names - those who passed such a crass law and those who enforce it without common sense - refuse to pay and tell the court that you hold IT in contempt, contempt for basic common sense. Let it send you to prison and then crank up the heat on those named until they crumble.

 

As Dicken's Mr. Bumble observed "the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

 

Experience and common sense. Because no single meal has to be "balanced", it is diet that has to be balanced - the child's intake over days, and weeks, and months - and the idiots who passed and enforce this ass of a law are taking no account of that.

 

Shame on them. Name them and shame them!

[Y_B]

Of course it's unbalanced. She supplied milk but no cookies??? And carrots with orange are total color clashes. Shoulda picked an apple, and a sour one because there were no greens.

[iSimba]

It's finally not America. Wahoo! 

[Conner]

This story is too stupid to be true.

[K.C.]

When our daughter was in elementary school (think it was 1st grade) it was a few days after Halloween and she got in trouble for eating one of those little bite-size candy bars before eating her lunch.  The teacher stopped her and told her she had to eat her meal before dessert.  Of course as soon as the teacher walked away she at the candy!   The teacher turned around and saw her and gave her detention and made her stand with her forehead against the wall during recess for disobeying a direct order.

 

We got a letter send home detailing our child's "offense."  We were furious! The next day my husband took her to school, marched into the principal's office and went off on those people.  He told that woman that we pack JJ's lunch and any items in her lunchbox is for her to eat and he didn't care what order she ate as long as we have approved what she eats.

 

Also, just to prove his point, he went and got a bunch of full-sized candy bars and labeled them: sandwich, fruit, vegetable, chips....  and filled JJ's lunchbox and dared the school to say a word.  OMG - I laughed so hard that principal was terrified!!  

[rustle]

I'm amazed.

 

Zombie's right - this should be fought, tooth and nail. But how hard do we have to fight just to have a modicum of control over our lives, and on how many fronts? And, for pity's sake, Ritz crackers? Healthy?

 

KC, keep fighting the good fight, and telling us about them. I, for one, can use the laugh.

[Cia]

Schools are pretty serious nowadays about nutrition. What I've found is ridiculous is how the schools have begun to limit caloric intake. For the elementary school kids, it's not too bad but a lot of high school kids, especially athletes, are being restricted from even making additional healthy choices because they've had 'too many calories'.

 

My kids are fortunate to not be in that school or the one JJ was in. I'd flip my gourd. For example, tomorrow my daughter plans to take meatloaf, a cheese stick, a yogurt tube, a orange, and flavored water. Occasionally I do allow the kids to take small candies, especially around Halloween. No one's ever said anything. Now, I do know that a few times the school's told kids getting hot lunch that they have to go back and get some veggies or fruit. Considering my kids' school offers 4 entree choices, both meat and meat alternatives/free, 2 kinds of fruit, a hot veggie and a salad bar... it's not hard to find things the kids will eat on a daily basis.

[wildone]

Sorry to squash this story (punny, eh? ). I don't know of any Canadian teacher, or school that would misspell the word Centre as Center here in Canada.....

 

With it repeated a couple of times it just makes me believe this is a hoax.

[knotme]

The fine was levied 11 months ago, so the recent spate of Internet stories in the last couple of days is suspicious and perhaps political (enough about that ). Here's what I found out by poking around: Both USA and Canadian food guidelines are insipid, vague, inoffensive, subject to interpretation, and apply to daily intake. A Manitoba agency decided to apply them to specific school meals. Then one small day-care facility decided to get literal and impose fines for violations, although I'm not sure how many fines were collected. Mrs. Bartkiw pointed out that potatoes can substitute for grains and did not pay the fine. The day care must have taken some heat, because by the time Manitoba pointed out that their regs do not authorize fines, the facility had instituted a hot lunch program that they can manage to their literal hearts' content. 

 

Cia's comment gets to an issue that rings my bell: Can we let silly examples like this scare off public policy? Where I live, most kids living too close to school to be bussed are driven to school, but I observe that many of the walkers are chubby. If these kids don't slim down, enough of them will contract Type-II Diabetes to bring down our state's health care system. These kids are expected to get fatter after growth spurts. Super sized drinks and multiple starches (e.g., rice and macaroni salad) are engrained in our culture. Any laws, rules, or regs to combat this serious problem are going to result in absurdities, because public policy cannot discriminate. Go easy on thin kids? Unfair to fat kids! Let or encourage athletes to eat more? Unfair to the other kids!  Maybe the best we can do is try to make reasonable public policies and let citizens deal with exceptions case by case, as in this case. Keep your sense of humor. As one Canadian wrote, "Grains? Hey, give 'em a beer."

Edited November 23, 2013 by knotme

[Zombie]

*is wondering what happened to common sense ... *

[Sasha Distan]

as a teacher of Food Technology my only reaction to this is:

 

ARRGHHH!!!

[rustle]

*is wondering what happened to common sense ... *

oxymoron alert

 

BTW, Zombie, is that a new cap? Stylin'.

[Zombie]

oxymoron alert

 

BTW, Zombie, is that a new cap? Stylin'.

 

Heheh

Glad you like the stylin'. Another GA member was traumatised by my nekkidness - those Swedes are such prudes

[Henry_Henry2012]

My god, my mum was too busy doing bypass surgeries to even bother with making me lunch at school and yet this mother hands out to her offspring some homemade cookies and she gets a fine for doing a motherly deed because it's not nutritious? All I wanted want some fattening hearty homemade macaroni and cheese that would clog my arteries sometime in the future and her kids get something home made and she gets fined?

 

Haha! I sound like I have some childhood issues. I don't.