>A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
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>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 agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes in her More at Four classroom that day.
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>Can you guess why this lunch was rejected?
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>http://www.carolinajournal.com/exclusives/homemade-lunch-replaced-with-cafeteria-nuggets.html
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>If you answered because the State knows better than you how to feed your children, you are correct.

We are in agreement. I sure hope this kind of thing is not widespread.

What's funny to me is the school gave the kid chicken nuggets as a healthy alternative. If I am not mistaken those are the unhealthiest things on the McDonald's menu. The chicken in the middle is probably fine, but then you add bread crumbs and stick them in the deep fryer to make sure the fat soaks all the way through....

When my daughters were in the early grades I was working at home and helped out a lot at the school. Frequently at lunch time I would go over and help the beleaguered regular volunteers (this was a Catholic school with the same money problems as most Catholic schools) in the lunch room and at recess outside afterwards. We sure weren't checking to monitor the healthiness of the lunches. Actually it was quite amusing to me. Many of the children brought bag lunches which were not that unhealthy when they left the house. The typical lunch was a sandwich, a juice box, chips, and a piece of fruit. Now that is not exactly perfect but not too bad. It seemed like they all ate their lunches the same way. First they would eat the potato chips and drink the juice box. Then some or all of the sandwich. A lot of the fruit wound up in the trash.

Oh, here is another funny memory from that age. Our daughters ate the school lunch, which was pretty cheap. When Allie was very young, probably first or second grade, for some reason one day on the way home (I dropped them off and picked them up) I asked her how lunch was, which turned out to be spaghetti as the main course. "I didn't eat it." "Oh, how come?" "It was worms. Dead worms." "Allie, who told you that?" "The cooker."