Missouri parents fight for their kids’ right to eat McDonald’s Happy Meals in school

If served in a school cafeteria, a tuna sandwich is never just a tuna sandwich.

School lunches have been politicized at least as far back as the Reagan-era designation of ketchup as a vegetable. And since Michelle Obama’s push for healthier fare, some parents on the right have been demanding just the opposite.

So the outrage of Richmond, Missouri, parents over a new school district rule banning fast food in lunchrooms is just one more skirmish over junk food as a proxy in the wider culture war over whether government should get to tell us anything.

On Dear Elementary’s Facebook page, school officials defended the new policy, which is supposed to end the trend of parents “surprising” their children with Happy Meals from McDonald’s on birthdays and special occasions.

The growing number of bags of fast food dropped off in the school office was disruptive, unhealthy and hurtful to kids whose parents couldn’t afford these treats, the notice said: “In an era when so many students are overweight and not physically fit … allowing fast food to be delivered to the school is antithetical to the messages of wellness and nutrition that schools are teaching.”

In a series of messages that have since disappeared from the page, parents complained that they saw this as a government incursion and an assault on their rights as parents.

“What she eats, how much she eats, what she wears, how she does her hair, if I keep her home because she is sick, those are MY decisions,’’ one parent wrote. “The school’s sole responsibility is to provide a safe, positive learning environment for my children to get an education.”

Wouldn’t a safe, positive learning environment discourage the regular consumption of food that isn’t good for anyone?

Though nutrition should never have been a partisan issue, it has of course become one. Even the School Nutrition Association, which receives significant funding from the manufacturers of processed foods, has since switched sides in the battle over salt and fat in school lunches.

Trump administration officials and GOP lawmakers have worked hard to relax the Obama-era standards. “Try eating a biscuit made with whole grains,” Senate Agriculture Chairman Pat Roberts, of Kansas, said last year. “It just doesn’t work!”

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue told reporters, “I wouldn’t be as big as I am today without chocolate milk,” which the Trump administration restored to school lunch trays.

If the Obamas had instead called for a daily diet of Hostess Ho Hos and Mountain Dew for children across the land, maybe Republicans would be demanding more carrots and greens in the country’s cafeterias.

But it’s not exactly government gone wild for school districts to regulate what’s served there.

From what Richmond parents said on Facebook, it sounds like their children get plenty of Quarter Pounders and fries after class.

And a notice on Dear Elementary’s website suggests that some parents aren’t doing all they might to help teachers and school administrators provide that longed-for “positive learning environment.”

“Please schedule appointments and family trips outside of school hours,” the notice says. “If your student asks to stay home ‘just because,’ remind your child of what they will miss, such as his/her math group, reading group, art, music, PE classes and the fun that happens in school. Explain that they can only be absent if he/she is really sick or if there’s a family emergency. Students also need to be at school on time. When a child is late it interferes with their day, interrupts the teacher, and the learning of other students.”

This story was originally published August 20, 2018 at 3:24 PM.