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This past January, a little girl from North Carolina’s West Hoke Elementary School arrived home with her packed lunch still intact. When her mother asked how come she didn’t eat, her 4-year-old said she did, she just ate the school lunch instead. When pressed further, this mama found out that her child had eaten three chicken nuggets and nothing else, because she didn’t like the hot lunch. Unhappy with the situation, the mother complained to state Rep. G.L. Pridgen, who plans to investigate the incident further. The above is true, but how this little girl ended up with just three nuggets for lunch is much hazier. According to Carolina Journal Online, an agent from the Department of Health and Human Services’ Division of Child Development and Early Education was at West Hoke in January to assess the pre-kindergarten program. The agent supposedly examined the lunches of six students and determined that one lunch, containing a turkey and cheese sandwich, a banana, potato chips and apple juice, didn’t meet the proper nutritional criteria.

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According to the Journal report, the child’s mother got a note from the school stating that students who fail to bring a “healthy lunch” would be offered missing healthy portions, which may result in a fee from the cafeteria. According to another source, the school claims that if a teacher sees a child with an unhealthy lunch, the child will be offered missing “healthy components” free of charge. The school went on to say that the child simply misunderstood her teacher and thought she had to get a whole new lunch rather than get extra “healthy elements” added to her packed lunch. The same source notes that the Department of Health and Human Services denies that any employee inspected the lunch, denies to say what, if anything was unhealthy about the meal and denies instructing the child to replace or discard any packed lunch items. Bob Barnes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction for Hoke County schools said, “We are not the lunch bag police. We would never put a child in any type of embarrassing situation. But we are responsible to see that every child gets a nutritious meal.”

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