Homemade Lunch for Preschooler Replaced with Cafeteria Nuggets

A preschooler in North Carolina was forced to give up her homemade lunch and eat chicken nuggets provided by the school cafeteria.

The young girl's homemade lunch, packed by her mother, consisted of a turkey and cheese sandwich on whole wheat bread, banana, potato chips and apple juice. Yet that was deemed unhealthy by a state monitor, and the little girl was given the cafeteria's chicken nuggets.

"What got me so mad is, number one, don't tell my kid I'm not packing her lunch box properly. I pack her lunchbox according to what she eats. It always consists of a fruit; it never consists of a vegetable. She always eats vegetables at home because I have to watch her because she doesn't really care for vegetables," her mother told the Carolina Journal.

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The woman, who has chosen to remain anonymous, also told the paper her daughter "came home with the whole sandwich I had packed, because she chose to eat the nuggets on the lunch tray, because they put it in front of her. You're telling a 4-year-old: 'Oh you're lunch isn't right' and she's thinking there's something wrong with her food."

State officials require that all lunches for youth in preschool programs meet national, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) standards. Lunches, even those from home, must have one serving of meat, milk and grain, as well as two servings of fruit and vegetables.

Jan Kozlowski, spokeswoman for the Division of Child Development, told the Carolina Journal that she did not agree with the school's actions. "With a turkey sandwich, that covers your protein, your grain, and if it had cheese on it, that's the dairy. It sounds like the lunch itself would've met all of the standards."

"The school may have interpreted [the rule] to mean they felt like the lunch wasn't meeting the nutritional requirements and so they wanted the child to have the school lunch and then charged the parent. It sounds like maybe a technical assistance need for that school," Kozlowski added.