‘Healthy’ lunches take a step backwards
Dear Editor:
I am responding to the articles in the paper regarding the changes to the Delta County School lunches. I have two boys who have always eaten school lunches until this year.
They have always enjoyed the lunches, and I felt that they were getting a much better deal than I could send with them. A hot lunch in the winter to warm you and fill you is better than a cold one, right? I guess not so much now.
The prices did go up, which is now making it more affordable to send a cold lunch, but not only that, the kids appear to be getting much less food. It was my understanding that when the government started serving hot lunches it was for the poor children who did not have lunches, and therefore could not learn because they were starving. They could not focus on their studies. Well, I believe with a school lunch we are right back there. Both of my boys started out the year eating hot lunches, and both are now included in the children who have stopped eating school lunches. Both of my boys came home for a month starving, absolutely starving, every day after school. They would come in, make sandwiches, eat snacks, eat apples, and eat everything in sight, because they were so hungry.
Now, tell me, if they were that hungry when they got home, how is that helping the children who don't get a breakfast, eat a school lunch, and their parents can't afford to feed them an evening meal, so the only meal they got that day was a school lunch? Seems to me that we have gone backwards on this school lunch thing. Sure, my boys can come home and have a snack and I provide healthy snacks for my boys, but what about the children who don't have that snack. And, what about the children whose parents don't really care what they eat, or are not there when their children get home? I am sure those children who have an abundance of junky snacks at home are eating as much as they can to fill their little bodies. Won't that defeat the purpose of these healthier lunches? What about those kids that are not getting filled up at school and do not get decent meals at home? What about those parents who do not realize that their children are not getting full and they are counting on that meal at school?
I know there is not much that our school district can do about these lunches as the rules are coming down from a higher power in our nation. I just think it is sad that something that was meant to be something good is now something that is not all that helpful and costs a lot of money. Since my boys started taking cold lunches, they have not come home starving and really slowed down on the snacks. They can actually make it to dinner time. I am not sending junk either; they are eating a nice lunch, sandwiches, fruit cups, yogurt, enough to fill them up and it's good food, too.
What's my point in all of this? Maybe we should get the government out of our lives, or at least go back to some of the reasons that these institutions were created in the first place. Our forefathers knew what they were doing; sadly, I think we do not.
Michelle Shelden
Hotchkiss