Chicago School Bans Lunches Made At Home

At the public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, 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 and their parents unhealthful food choices.

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

In any case, the Chicago situation is troubling.

Such discussions over school lunches and healthy eating echo a larger national debate about the role government should play in individual food choices, and really the wider, larger role government seems to be nosing into since the Obama's came to power.

"This is such a fundamental infringement on parental responsibility," said J. Justin Wilson, a senior researcher at the Washington-based Center for Consumer Freedom.

Michelle Obama has targeted public schools in particular, hustling federal monies, lecturing the public on eating habits, while sporting a hefty set of thighs herself, no doubt achieved dipping into her assumed expertise on the subject.

The ultimate point continues to be how many ways public schools are failing.  With public schools funded at the highest levels of any other country, failing in math, science and reading - are the schools now able to spare cycles policing student food intake?

How about the California Teachers Union focusing on the release of cop killers?

Public schools, the teachers unions, and the federal government (Dept. of Education) fully need a spanking of their own.  The public needs to demand a complete overhaul of these dysfunctional, destructive, and wasteful activities/policies in the public schools.

Related:
Rasmussen Report 4-15-2011 92% Oppose Ban on School Lunches From Home.