I got home from work tonight and logged on to Facebook to see what my friends were up to. There I spotted a status update from one of my old high school friends, an ultra-conservative evangelical Christian, linked to an article headlined State Inspectors Searching Children’s Lunch Boxes: “This Isn’t China, Is It?”
My Facebook friend had written:
Say WHAT??? All I can say is it's a darn good thing this wasn't done to MY CHILD! Way to go NC! Bring your kids to FL - we aren't that out there (yet).
Find out what the outrage was all about below the fold.
The article my friend's status update linked to was published by an outfit called the John W. Pope Civitas Institute, which bills itself as "North Carolina's Conservative Voice."
From their mission statement:
The vision of the Civitas Institute is of a North Carolina whose citizens enjoy liberty and prosperity derived from limited government, personal responsibility and civic engagement. The mission of the Civitas Institute is to facilitate the implementation of conservative policy solutions to improve the lives of all North Carolinians.
The lede of this particular article was as follows:
A mother in Hoke County complains her daughter was forced to eat a school lunch because a government inspector determined her home-made lunch did not meet nutrition requirements. In fact, all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home (emphasis added).
This first paragraph - specifically the two words I've highlighted - immediately raised a red flag in my skeptical newspaper editor's mind. Would an inspector checking kids' lunch bags for dubious nutritional value (1) find them
all lacking, and (2) force every kid in the school who brought his or her own lunch to eat an
entire school lunch
in addition to their bagged lunch? Surely the "nutrition police" would find it problematic to have kids eating two entire lunches in one sitting. If they really were inspecting bagged lunches for nutritional value and finding them inferior to the school lunch offering, wouldn't they would force the kids to eat the superior one and lose the inferior one?
The red flags turned to flashing red lights and sirens in my mind, though, when I read the contents of the two lunches in question, to wit:
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.
[snip]
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.
Really? Chicken nuggets over a turkey and cheese sandwich? Granted, the potato chips leave something to be desired - a real vegetable (as I highlighted was included in the school lunch, although we don't know what
kind of vegetable it was) would be better - but what would be the problem with the banana and apple juice?
However, the Civitas story does claim that the lack of a vegetable in the lunch was the problem:
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.
Okay, so assuming there really
was a state inspector policing kids' brown bags for nutritional offenses, and the lack of a vegetable was found to be the deficiency, why order a full school lunch tray for the child? This is sounding wingnuttier and wingnuttier with every sentence.
And by the way, why did mom not include a vegetable in the child's brown-bag lunch?
The mother says her daughter doesn’t like vegetables and – like most four year olds – will only eat them at home under close supervision.
In an interview with the Civitas Institute the mother said “I can’t put vegetables in her lunchbox. I’m not a millionaire and I’m not going to put something in there that my daughter doesn’t eat and I’ve done gone round and round with the teacher about that and I’ve told her that. I put fruit in there every day because she is a fruit eater. Vegetables, let me take care of my business at home and at night and that’s when I see she’s eating vegetables. I either have to smash it or tell her if you don’t eat your vegetables you’re going to go to bed.”
But here's the clincher which strained my credulity to the limit:
The mother says the girl was so intimidated by the inspection process that she was too scared to eat all of her homemade lunch. The girl ate only the chicken nuggets provided to her by the school, so she still didn’t eat a vegetable.
So, to review: A Pre-K program in a North Carolina school has a
state inspector checking kids' brown-bag lunches to ensure they meet U.S. Department of Agriculture nutritional guidelines. The inspector finds a brown-bag lunch including a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, apple juice and potato chips nutritionally lacking because it does not include a vegetable. The inspector then orders
an entire school lunch tray, including chicken nuggets, which we are apparently expected to believe the inspector admonishes the child to eat
in addition to her brown-bag lunch. And the kicker - the child is so intimidated by this inspector, who one must imagine still has his eagle Nanny State eye glued to the child, that
all she eats is the chicken nuggets.
If, as it did to me, this sounds like something only the fevered imaginations of conservatives who spend all their time dreaming up conspiracy theories involving the government forcing kids against their will to eat chicken nuggets, you (and I) would be right.
Here's a more objective version of the story, courtesy of The Fayetteville Observer:
School and state officials say a misunderstanding resulted in a West Hoke Elementary School preschooler's homemade lunch being replaced with chicken nuggets.
An agent from the Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Child Development and Early Education was at the school Jan. 30 assessing the pre-kindergarten program, said Bob Barnes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Hoke County schools.
The agent examined the lunches for the six students in the class and believed one did not meet nutritional requirements spelled out by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Barnes said.
So, an agent from the NCHHS happened to be at the school that day assessing the Pre-K program, and, according to the county's assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction, decided to "examine" the brown-bag lunches of six students.
Or not:
The Department of Health and Human Services said in a statement that it is investigating. In the statement, the department denies that its employee inspected the lunch and denies instructing "any child to replace or remove any meal items." (emphasis added.)
Okay, how did the child get the idea she was supposed to get a school lunch in addition to her brown-bag lunch?
Typically, if a teacher sees a student with a lunch that does not meet the nutritional requirements, he or she will offer the child the missing components free of charge, Barnes said.
In this instance, Barnes said, the girl misunderstood her instructor and believed she had to get a new lunch rather than receive an additional element.
"We are not the lunch bag police," Barnes said. "We would never put a child in any type of embarrassing situation. But we are responsible to see that every child gets a nutritious meal."
Had I been the editor in this instance, given conflicting statements from the school official (Barnes) and the official version by HHS, I would have had the reporter try to contact the actual inspector for his or her side of the story, as well as teachers who were in the lunchroom and had witnessed the incident, and, if possible, the parents of the other five children whose brown-bag lunches were supposedly inspected in an effort to get a clear picture of what actually happened. Sadly, this didn't happen here.
I find it curious that while the Civitas Institute's report of the incident charges that "...all of the students in the NC Pre-K program classroom at West Hoke Elementary School in Raeford had to accept a school lunch in addition to their lunches brought from home...", and The Fayetteville Observer says six children's lunches were inspected, neither article makes any further mention of the other children involved or how their parents reacted.
Both stories mention that this particular mother contacted a state representative, Republican G.L. Pridgen. If I had to guess, I'd speculate that he was the one who put her in touch with the Civitas Institute, which broke the story to the conservative blogosphere. And how did it come to the attention of my Facebook friend here in Florida? Here's the last sentence of The Fayetteville Observer article:
The story gained national attention with coverage on Rush Limbaugh's morning radio talk show, in the John Locke Foundation's publication, Carolina Journal, and in the Civitas Institute.
Bingo!
I almost typed a comment to my Facebook friend with a link to The Fayetteville Observer story, urging her to try to put it into perspective. But really, who's she going to believe - the "Librul Media" or Rush? Can you say "Lost cause?"
UPDATE: In the comments, DollyMadison provides a link to much more information, which suggests there's less to this story than even The Fayetteville Observer article suggests:
"[Rush Limbaugh] claimed it was "Mooselle" (I guess making her sound like a moose maybe) Obama's dietary guidelines that were at fault, and that it was a federal agent since they mentioned the USDA in the story.
"But it has nothing to do with Michelle Obama, and it wasn't a federal agent - it wasn't even someone from the state! It was someone from a local college.
These facts are critical because the “state agent” in this story turns out to be nothing more than a researcher from a program that grades the performance of pre-schools and operates out of the FPG Child Development Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. It also does not appear that this institute has any actual authority other than to provide assessments, which the state then uses in making licensing decisions and in setting the fees it will pay the day care provider for subsidized care.
"There's a lot more info at the link I provided above - and you can pretty much ignore where he tries to walk it back based upon a link to a Glenn Beck source."