Fox News’s Bill O'Reilly was really cranking up the right-wing propaganda on the Obama “nanny state” on his cable show last night. “The Feds want to regulate income, what kind of car you drive, what kind of food you eat! O’Reilly screamed at his guest. O’Reilly was referencing a story about a North Carolina pre-schooler who was provided with additional food through a subsidized lunch program and given the option to have that in addition to her boxed lunch. The school did not “replace” the girl’s turkey sandwich, banana, apple, potato chips, and juice with chicken nuggets, according to the principal of West Hoke Elementary, Jackie Samuels. Moreover, the principal says none of the children’s parents are asked to pay for the subsidized lunches.
Listening to O’Reilly however, one conjures up images of government agents rifling through a four year old's lunch box to enforce USDA standards on healthy lunches. It sounds like what really happened at this particular North Carolina pre-school, was there happened to be an inspector at the school who was checking to ensure the kid's lunches met nutritional criteria guidelines. When he saw that this kid didn’t have a vegetable, he gave her a school lunch that included a vegetable and she was given “the option” to consume that in addition to her boxed lunch. No one took the kid’s homemade lunch away or told her she couldn’t eat it. No one forced the kid to eat anything from the school.
The story is full of bologna (pardon the pun), a non-story at best. What it boils down to is that low-income children in NC’s low-income pre-K program whose tuition is fully subsidized by the state under a program that her mother “opted into”, was offered some additional food to supplement the boxed lunch she brought from home. The option was provided because the program in which her mother and school "voluntarily" participate requires that such an option be available. According to the school, there is no charge for the food and if there was a charge it was a mistake. So contrary to what O'Reilly will have his viewers think, since this is an opt-in program there is no "nanny state" concern here. If the mother has a problem with her child being provided with the option of drinking milk or eating vegetables at school, then she can send her to an unsubsidized day care program.
So while right-wing talking heads scream this is Obama’s “social engineering out of control!” what this really represents is a school lunch program that provides for kids in low-income areas to receive healthy school lunches - for many, the only nutritional food they get all day. Moreover, the teachers appreciate the kids receiving a healthy lunch because it reduces the number of kids returning to class “hopped up on sugar” that takes away from the kids ability to pay attention and learn.
While it is true that we didn’t have these types of guidelines and subsidized programs back in the day we also didn’t have the serious child obesity problem back then that we do now. Teaching kids to eat right from an early age will only reduce obesity-related medical problems later – not to mention higher insurance costs. But leave it to Bill O’Reilly to politicize giving a kid some additional healthy food or a serving of vegetables into “out of control social engineering” and nanny state socialism. Does anyone really believe this nonsense?
Comments