Opinion

Lunch nazis on the attack

A North Carolina preschooler this week got a taste of the brave new school-lunch world.

As the 4-year-old entered the lunchroom, the state lunch inspector (!!) examined her sack and found the contents to be in violation of US Department of Agriculture nutrition guidelines. Herr Lunch Lady summarily threw the offending meal — including a homemade turkey sandwich, banana, chips and apple juice — into the trash; the girl was given a school-lunch meal consisting of . . . chicken nuggets.

Ah, yes, a vast improvement over the poison her mother packed. This is a perfect example of the Food Nazis’ victory over — not childhood obesity, but parental say in what kids eat. Nor is it an isolated case. Lunch inspections have been going on in Britain for years now, and the practice fits nicely with the Obama administration’s goals.

Last week marked the two-year anniversary of the Let’s Move Campaign. The Foodie-in-Chief, Michelle Obama, has been busy touring the country detailing the campaign’s so-called successes against our country’s epidemic of fat kids.

Thanks to White House efforts, kids are now being served “healthy” school lunches. Of course, no one in the administration is talking about the huge food waste as kids trash the redesigned meals.

The administration can also claim victory for . . . ahem . . .“encouraging” food manufacturers to lower the salt content in some of their products. An industry representative with a gift for understatement suggested it might be hard to comply with these regulations since it can be difficult to sell food that doesn’t taste good. Ya think?

The country has a lot to look forward to this year when the Food and Drug Administration announces a slew of regulations on food companies (covering packaging and marketing as well as limiting sugar and salt content), which are sure to boost food costs.

But perhaps the greatest “victory” that the White House can claim is to have further damaged already tenuous parent-child relationships by making parents’ involvement in their children’s nutrition an even more remote occurrence.

The administration has been working to push parents from involvement in their children’s eating habits, apparently because mom and dad can’t be trusted to make the right decisions.

To assist the president’s Let’s Move campaign, Congress in 2010 passed a bill that, among other things, set up automatic enrollment of low-income children in the school-lunch program. Why pack a lunch for your kids if the government’s more than willing to feed them for you? Heck, you don’t even have to fill out the paperwork.

Now parents who dare to pack a brown bag anyway are on notice: The Lunch Lady is watching.

It’s all packaged as anti-obesity efforts, but the McNuggets that replaced that North Carolina girl’s meal tells us it’s really about control.

Parents need to be aware of what’s happening in our schools. We’re teaching our children that government — not mom or dad — knows best.

Julie Gunlock is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum. Adapted from nationalreview.com.