Parents Fined For Not Sending Ritz Crackers In Kids’ Lunches!!
It’s quite possible that the single stupidest school lunch policy on the planet comes courtesy of a strange interpretation of the Manitoba Government’s Early Learning and Child Care lunch regulations (an earlier version of this article incorrectly pointed at the Manitoba Child Care Association as the source of the strangely interpreted policy).
Apparently if a child’s lunch is deemed “unbalanced”, where “balance” refers to ensuring that a lunch conforms to the proportions of food groups as laid out by Canada’s awful Food Guide, then that child’s lunch is “supplemented”, and their parent is fined.
Weighty Matters Blog reader Kristen Bartkiw received just such a fine.
She sent her children to daycare with with lunches containing leftover homemade roast beef and potatoes, carrots, an orange and some milk.
She did not send along any “grains”.
As a consequence the school provided her children with, I kid you not, supplemental Ritz Crackers, and her with a $10 fine.As Kristen writes, had she sent along lunches consisting of, “microwave Kraft Dinner and a hot dog, a package of fruit twists, a Cheese string, and a juice box” those lunches would have sailed right through this idiocy. But her whole food, homemade lunches? They lacked Ritz Crackers!!! LOL
Let’s take a look at some of the ingredients of Ritz crackers just for fun: Genetically modified (GMO) soybean oil, GMO sugar (Roundup Ready sugar beets), cottonseed oil (Bt Toxin GMO cotton),high fructose corn syrup (Roundup Ready and/or Bt Toxin GMO corn), and soy lecithin (Roundup Ready and/or Bt Toxin soybeans). GMO isn’t necessarily the worst part – soy in general is not good for you!
Sooo? What do you think? Have you come across a more inane school lunch policy? Because I sure haven’t.
[Kristen also updated me that consequent to parents failing to pack “balanced” lunches they’ve moved to a hot lunch program that she describes as great. So perhaps some good came out of Manitoba’s idiocy after all]
Original Source: http://www.weightymatters.ca/2013/11/parents-fined-for-not-sending-ritz.html
