Another Brick In The Wall

By now I am sure you heard the story of the North Carolina school whose food inspector who thought that chicken nuggets were a healthy food choice.

A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because the school told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious. ...

...The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs - including in-home day care centers - to meet USDA guidelines. That means lunches must consist of one serving of meat, one serving of milk, one serving of grain, and two servings of fruit or vegetables, even if the lunches are brought from home. 

When home-packed lunches do not include all of the required items, child care providers must supplement them with the missing ones.

But as Paul Harvey used to say - there is a "rest of the story".

First, the offending lunch...

..The girl’s turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the person who was inspecting all lunch boxes in the More at Four classroom that day. ...

....was not as "unhealthy" as the Nanny Inspector would have some think...

While the mother and grandmother thought the potato chips and lack of vegetable were what disqualified the lunch, a spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development said that should not have been a problem. 

"With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that's the dairy," said Jani Kozlowski, the fiscal and statutory policy manager for the division. "It sounds like the lunch itself would've met all of the standard." The lunch has to include a fruit or vegetable, but not both, she said. 

Emphasis mine and remember it.....it will be vital information shortly.

So here is the rest of the story.  The Nanny Inspector apparently decided that they knew better than the law AND mommy.

NC Pre-K (before this year known as More at Four) is a state-funded education program designed to “enhance school readiness” for four year-olds.

The mother, who doesn’t wish to be identified at this time, says she made her daughter a lunch that contained a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips. A state inspector assessing the pre-K program at the school said the girl also needed a vegetable, so the inspector ordered a full school lunch tray for her. While the four-year-old was still allowed to eat her home lunch, the girl was forced to take a helping of chicken nuggets, milk, a fruit and a vegetable to supplement her sack lunch.

So the sandwich, according to federal standards covers protein, grain and dairy and the banana covers the required fruit OR vegetable.  But Nanny inspector says that is not enough - the child must have a vegetable so she orders - at a cost to the parent a fully lunch, not a supplementary vegetable (as the law allows).  

Now instead of eating the healthy lunch her mother packed, the pre-schooler ate a whole 3 fried chicken nuggets that Nanny Inspector demanded that the child be given.  The rest of the meal, including the vegetable, was thrown away.  

This is why many conservatives fight the type of legislation that lead to Nanny Inspector being in the school.  This was an unelected bureaucrat deciding that he/she knew better than the law that he/she was there to enforce.  As a result, the child (remember this legislation was supposed to benefit the childreeeeeeennnnn TM) ended up getting a less nutritious lunch than what was packed in from home.