Leave It to the Corrupt City of Chicago to Take the Lead in the UN's Plan to Strip Parents of Their Rights - Communism is Alive and Well in America Thanks to the Obamas and the Many Other New World Order Cronies in D.C.

Chicago Public School Bans Homemade Lunches, the Latest in National Food Fight

April 12, 2011

Students who attend Chicago's Little Village Academy public school get nothing but nutritional tough love during their lunch period each day. The students can either eat the cafeteria food--or go hungry. Only students with allergies are allowed to bring a homemade lunch to school, the Chicago Tribune reports.

"Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," principal Elsa Carmona told the paper of the years-old policy. "It's about ... the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It's milk versus a Coke."

But students said they would rather bring their own lunch to school in the time-honored tradition of the brown paper bag.

"They're afraid that we'll all bring in greasy food instead of healthy food and it won't be as good as what they give us at school," student Yesenia Gutierrez told the paper. "It's really lame."

The story has attracted hundreds of comments so far. One commenter, who says her children attend a different Chicago public school, writes, "I can accept if they want to ban soda, but to tell me I can't send a lunch with my child. ARE YOU KIDDING ME????"

For parents whose kids do not qualify for free or reduced price school lunches, the $2.25 daily cafeteria price can also tally more than a homemade lunch.

"We don't spend anywhere close to that on my son's daily intake of a sandwich (lovingly cut into the shape of a Star Wars ship), Goldfish crackers and milk," Northwestern education policy professor Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach told the paper in an email.

She told The Lookout parents at her child's public school would be upset if they tried to ban homemade lunches.

"I think that lots of parents at least at my child's school do think that what they pack is more nutritious [than school lunches]," she said.

A Chicago public school teacher started a blog to protest the city's school lunches, and last year the schools tightened their nutrition standards for cafeteria-served school lunches. Every lunch must contain whole grains, only reduced-fat salad dressings and mayonnaise are offered as condiments, and the meals must feature a different vegetable each day. Meal providers also must reduce sodium content by 5 percent annually. About 86 percent of the district's students qualify for free or reduced price school lunches because their families live close to the poverty line.

Change in Chicago's school cafeterias feeds into a larger effort to combat the country's childhood obesity epidemic. About a third of America's kids are overweight or obese, and since children consume at least 30 percent of their calories while in school, making lunches healthier is seen as one way to counter that problem. Poorer kids are also more likely to be obese or overweight than middle class kids, and to consume a bigger proportion of their calories while at school. Forty-four percent of American kids living below the poverty line are obese or overweight, according to a 2010 study published in Health Affairs.

While we haven't been able to track down another school that bans homemade lunches outright, many smaller food battles have been playing out in cafeterias across the country. As principals try to counter obesity in their schools, healthy intentions can come across as overreach, occasionally sparking parent and student anger.

Alabama parents protested a school's rule that barred students from bringing any drinks from home, as ice water was provided at lunch. East Syracuse, New York schools have outlawed cupcakes and other desserts. And schools around the country have kicked out chocolate milk and soda vending machines. Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin even showed up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, with dozens of cookies to express her disdain for a debate in the state about recommending teachers limit the number of times per month the sugary treats are eaten in classroom birthday celebrations.

Tucson, Arizona's Children's Success Academy allows home-packed lunches--but only if nothing in them contains white flour, refined sugar, or other "processed" foods, the Arizona Republic reported in a story last year. The school has no cafeteria, so some parents told the paper they struggled to find foods to pack that meet the restrictions. Many schools ban fast food or other take-out meals.

Soon, cafeteria offerings across the country will all be healthier, whether students like it or not. Last year's Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, calls for higher nutritional standards to serve the 32 million kids who eat lunch every day at school (most of whom qualify for free or reduced price lunches through a federal government program). For the first time, the USDA will set calorie limits for school lunches, and will recommend they contain more vegetables and whole grains, and less salt, USA Today reports. French fries should be replaced by vegetables and fruit, the guidelines say.

The bill also calls for stricter food safety checks on cafeteria food.

Michelle Obama Wants Public Schools to Control Your Child's Nutrition

Democratic President Obama has signed a child nutrition bill after a lame duck Congress passed it. This child nutrition bill gives the federal government the power to limit school bake sales and other fundraisers that so called “health advocates” say sometimes replace wholesome meals in the lunch room. Lucy Gettman of the National School Boards Association said “This could be a real train wreck for school districts. The federal government should not be in the business of regulating this kind of activity at the local level”. Wow! Those are pretty strong words from a national education association. But a pretty wise observation considering that education itself should be left to the individual states and not be controlled and regulated by the federal government. - Democratic President Obama has signed a child nutrition bill after a lame duck Congress passed it, Think About It, February 2, 2010

August 3, 2010

Hyscience - I don't recall anyone electing this Michelle Obama to give us her two-cents worth, do you?

Nevertheless, she's givin' it, and she wants to liberate parents from their basic fundamental role of feeding their children by urging them to rely on the public schools to usurp that role:

[...] In this op-ed in the Washington Post, the first lady pushes for congressional passage of the Child Nutrition Act, a bill that would not only increase funding for the already-wasteful and badly managed school-lunch program but relax eligibility requirements so that more children can be enrolled. It's clear that Michelle Obama, like her husband, sees government as the great fixer. In this case, the fix is simple: The more often a child eats a government-provided meal, the healthier he or she will be.

But the first lady isn't considering a lot of newer research on childhood obesity. Just a few months ago, Ohio State University released a major study that found that children are at a lower risk for obesity if they observe three easy rules: eat dinner with their families, get adequate sleep at night, and watch less television. All of these activities fall under the control of parents -- not schools, and not government.

Read more ...

The Obama's ambition to intrude into every aspect of our daily lives seems endless. Before you know it, there'll be food police and lunchbox inspectors.

And as the Daily Caller suggested back in February of this year, Mrs. Obama appears all too willing to toss aside her first lady title in favor of "First Nanny." This, despite the fact that the American people damn well didn't elect her to control their lives, and a multibillion-dollar federal government "investment" will never accomplish what greater parental supervision and more healthful decision-making by parents will accomplish. Besides, it's not government's role to tell parents what they can and cannot feed their children. Nutritional advice is one thing, a "Food Nanny" is quite another.

The Federal Fat Police: Bill Would Require Government to Track Body Mass of American Children

A bill introduced this month in Congress would require states that receive federal grants under the bill to annually track the Body Mass Index of children ages 2 through 18 annually and to report that information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for analysis.

May 12, 2010

CNSNews.com - A bill introduced this month in Congress would put the federal and state governments in the business of tracking how fat, or skinny, American children are.

States receiving federal grants provided for in the bill would be required to annually track the Body Mass Index of all children ages 2 through 18. The grant-receiving states would be required to mandate that all health care providers in the state determine the Body Mass Index of all their patients in the 2-to-18 age bracket and then report that information to the state government. The state government, in turn, would be required to report the information to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services for analysis.

The Healthy Choices Act--introduced by Rep. Ron Kind (D-Wis.), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee--would establish and fund a wide range of programs and regulations aimed at reducing obesity rates by such means as putting nutritional labels on the front of food products, subsidizing businesses that provide fresh fruits and vegetables, and collecting BMI measurements of patients and counseling those that are overweight or obese.

Section 101 of the bill amends the Public Health Services Act by stating that health care providers must record the Body Mass Index of all children ages 2 through 18.

"The provision relates to all children in states that accept grants under the bill," a spokesperson for Rep. Kind told CNSNews.com. "However, it is important to note that no one is forced to come in for a doctor’s visit to get their BMI tested. BMI will be taken at times when the child makes an otherwise scheduled doctor’s visit."

BMI is calculated by taking one’s weight in pounds and height in inches, multiplying that number by one’s height in inches and then multiplying that number by 703. Any number over 24 is considered overweight, with higher numbers resulting in a diagnosis of obese (BMI = [weight / (height x height)] x 703).

To pay for implementing BMI data gathering, Sec. 102 of the bill states that the federal government will give grants to states that meet certain criteria, including having “the capacity to store basic demographic information (including date of birth, gender and geographic area of residence), height, weight, and immunization data for each resident of the state.”

The grants also will pay for personnel and equipment necessary to measure patients’ BMI.

The grants also require that if a child’s BMI is greater than the 95th percentile for the child’s age and gender, the state will provide “information on how to lower BMI and information on state and local obesity prevention programs.”

Rep. Kinder's spokesperson said that any data used to generate a report on the BMI data collected would not include patients’ names.

The bill also requires HHS to share with Congress and other government officials, including the secretaries of education and agriculture, its analysis of the BMI data collected not more than one year after it gathers all of the data from states.

This analysis, the bill states, would attempt to identify obesity trends in regions of the United States and how those trends vary according to gender and socioeconomic status--although the bill does not spell out how socioeconomic status of patients would be determined.

On May 6, the bill was referred to the House subcommittee on Highways and Transit.

Co-sponsors of the bill are Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.), Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) and Gregorio Sablan (D-Mich.)

At a press conference last week to announce the introduction of the bill, Kind emphasized it would help “busy American families.”

“Making the healthy choice the easy choice for our families is essential to ensuring our quality of life,” Kind said. “I am pleased to work on legislation that helps provide the opportunities that meet the needs of busy American families.”

Read More...