Food Nazis Ban Lunch From Home

Folks, we don’t make this stuff up.

Students in a Chicago Public School are prohibited from bringing their lunch from home because government thinks it knows how to feed kids better than parents do.

Fernando Dominguez cut the figure of a young revolutionary leader during a recent lunch period at his elementary school.

“Who thinks the lunch is not good enough?” the seventh-grader shouted to his lunch mates in Spanish and English.

Dozens of hands flew in the air and fellow students shouted along: “We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch! We should bring our own lunch!”

Fernando waved his hand over the crowd and asked a visiting reporter: “Do you see the situation?”

At his public school, Little Village Academy on Chicago’s West Side, students are not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they have a medical excuse, they must eat the food served in the cafeteria.

In a word, institutional food is horrible. Awful. Disgusting. School cafeteria food. Dorm food in college. Hospital food. Military food. Prison food. In college, the only way the cook’s meatballs should have been served is with a racquet. How bad? The cook left his dental floss in the kitchen and the cockroaches hanged themselves.

But no, government knows best, as evidenced by this government nitwit:

Principal Elsa Carmona said her intention is to protect students from their own unhealthful food choices.

“Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school,” Carmona said. “It’s about the nutrition and the excellent quality food that they are able to serve (in the lunchroom). It’s milk versus a Coke. But with allergies and any medical issue, of course, we would make an exception.”

Excellent quality of food???? Just what color is the sky on her planet? It’s all about control. Government control of what children — and eventually the rest of us — are allowed to eat.

Like in all stories like this, it’s easy to find out the real reasons the Nanny State Food Nazis leaped into action: follow the money.

Any school that bans homemade lunches also puts more money in the pockets of the district’s food provider, Chartwells-Thompson. The federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken, and the caterer receives a set fee from the district per lunch.

It’s been a dirty little not-so-secret for year. The more students a school can get qualified for “free (read: taxpayer paid)” or “reduced (read: taxpayer subsidized)” lunches, the more money gets kicked back from the federal government to that school or district — wait for it — to be spent in any manner that school or district chooses. It doesn’t have to be spent on actually feeding the students. Of course, Chartwells and its fellow food providers are involved in the money laundering and kickbacks as well.

Check this parent out. He’s all excited over the Nanny State controlling and feeding his children:

[P]arent Miguel Medina said he thinks the “no home lunch policy” is a good one. “The school food is very healthy,” he said, “and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food.”

The only ones who should control what kids eat are the parents. Not the state. Not educrats. Not school administrators. Not gummint union teachers.

By the way, they are coming for the rest of us. The likes of the First Yeti, Moochelle, and Mike Huckabee are taking aim at imposing government control and restrictions on what American adults eat. Remember this? From 2008 in Mississippi, two Republicans and a Democrat proposed making it illegal for restaurants to serve fat people. Again, this is not from The Onion.

The idea was eventually dismissed as it became a nationwide laughingstock, but when have we ever known liberals to give up after a defeat? A minor setback, they claim.

To paraphrase Ah-nold …. they’ll be back.