OK, seriously. I've actually TRIED to avoid this topic, but I just have to make this post after seeing what I saw this morning. It cannot be unseen so I am going to share it with you guys here. Honestly, it ticks me off because I wasn't raised to be that way, nor am I trying to raise mine to be that way.
Yesterday evening my son came home a little upset from school and told me he was having some problems in the lunch room.
We get a menu of what they're serving and give him the option of whether to pack a lunch that day or not if he doesn't like what they're having.
But he said that even on the days he packs his lunch, they're making him go through the line anyway, which didn't make sense to me, but I listened to what he had to say. He said they only get about 15 minutes to eat their lunch to begin with, so most of the time he packs his lunch just so he doesn't waste half of that going through line.
This morning I walk in with him and he said he wanted to go get him a bowl of cereal so he could eat it later at snack time (teachers' idea and has a little fridge in the class and has been doing it all year) for whoever wants to do that.
So I decide to walk down to the lunch room and just hang back a little to see what's going on as he goes through the line.
The lunch ladies didn't notice me or know I was there with him and were still nice and polite to him, but reminded him that he HAD to get the mandantory THREE items. Milk and pack of cereal was only two. And my son showed him he also had a spoon but they said that didn't count
And my son told them he really didn't want anything else and they told him sorry, but you HAVE to get 3 things to eat, and they said he didn't even have to eat it and can throw it away, just that he HAD to get three things.
I notice a big 55 gallon garbage can sitting right beside the checkout line and I saw my son just throw away the piece of toast on the styrofoam plate that he explained that he didn't want to begin with straight into the trash can. No bites or nothing.
So I walk over to the trash can and look inside of it, and it was 3/4 full of unopened milk, uneaten toast, apple sauce with the lids still on them, juice boxes that even still had the straws taped on the outside that hadn't been opened, etc.
I really wish I had thought to take a picture of all of that wasted food, but it upset me so bad it didn't cross my mind when it was happened.
When I was raised, I didn't have much, but I never went hungry. But I was never raised to be wasteful of what you had either. And you never put on your plate more than you could eat.
let alone hear a lunch lady tell a child to just throw it away if you don't want it, but you HAVE to take it.
I know that Michelle Obama isn't the first, first lady to be allowed to have a "pet project", but this is just as wasteful as President Obama's presidency.
"You don't have to eat it, but you have to take it, even if you throw it away".