Today's topic. Lunch. Or rather lunch inspectors.

Within about a week two stories of a lunch inspector, no joke, for lunches sent from home for preschoolers have emerged.  In both stories the home lunches seemed pretty healthy, but were rejected by the inspector/s as not healthy enough.  So the children were fed school food and the parents were charged for the meals.  

I should be torn.  I mean it is a good idea to make sure our children are offered healthy foods.  Right? That sounds so good.  But, do we need some stranger inspecting our children's lunches to make sure they are healthy enough?  Do the inspectors take into consideration food allergies or religious strictures?  Or that preschoolers go through phases were they will or won't eat certain foods for whatever mercurial reason suits them?  I don't think they do.

When you look at what is required and what was provided from home, honestly I was impressed. Especially, considering at least one of the mom's didn't have any idea there were mandates.  I truly expected to see the children were sent things like snack cakes, cookies, and other gross prepackaged foods.  When I first heard the story, I thought that the parents had provided crap repeatedly and there needed to be an intervention. This was not the case.  The parents sent good food.  There were items such as sandwiches on whole wheat and fruit.  One of the lunches did have some chips so I guess maybe you could say something, if you have a stick stuck in a dark place.

My concern is that though standards exist for the schools the people who enforce the standards have their own ideas of what is appropriate.  As evidenced by perfectly good lunches were rejected because the inspector/s deemed the lunch/es inferior.

Which brings me to the real topic, Child Rearing.  This is an incredibly slippery slope.  It sounds so good to have someone looking out for the children.  This is a topic incredibly important to me. Children desperately need good strong advocates.

That being said, we cannot, cannot decide how parents should raise their children.  Obvious exceptions apply so don't get your panties in wad.  Parents feed, clothe and discipline as they see fit. What values they want to instill in their children are their business.  This includes the children's eating habits.  It pains me but there it is.  Unless the parents are being truly neglectful or abusive we need to keep our noses out of their home life.  A lunch sent from home is part of that life and none of our concern.  The inspectors should make sure the school provides good, healthy food that is paid for with our taxes, period.

We cannot allow any institution or agency to make decisions in our lives unless we choose to allow such.  And I don't know many people who want someone telling them how to raise their children.  We think the bad parents are someone else, the children that need inspectors checking up on them someone elses children.  That may be true for now.   But if you let little things like this go by you may find, much to your surprise and chagrin you are the so called "bad parents".  That, my friends, terrifies me!  Like the food inspectors illustrate so clearly, everyone has their own idea of what is right and wrong, their own agenda and their own ax to grind.  I don't think you want a government flunky deciding how you should parent.