The School Lunch Epidemic

Recently I went to school to have lunch with my son.  As I watched him open his healthy home packed lunch of grapes, cheese, rolls of all natural (no nitrate) ham, and 100% juice I began to notice how different his lunch looked from the other kids at his table.  Not to pass any judgment, my younger son prefers to buy his lunch of cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets and pizza.  But what really got to me was what they kids were actually eating.

One of the meals consisted of what looked like small fried corn dogs.  Now our ISD does has a no fried food rule which is great, but I am not sure of how this "food" was actually produced.  In fact, I only knew the name of what this boy was eating because I had read the lunch menu the night before when my boys were deciding if they were going to bring or buy.  Along with the mini-corn dogs the student had chocolate pudding, chocolate milk and thankfully a small tray of melon(about 5 bites worth).

The other meals at the table consisted of 1: cheeseburger, chocolate milk and doritos, 2: cheeseburger, chocolate milk, ice cream and 3: baloney on white bread, various other packaged goods and a juice box that actually contained little to no juice.  

So it leads me to wonder, "What are we feeding our children?" I know that the schools have limited funds and have to follow regulations that are in compliance with the National School Lunch policy but I wonder now...who is making these regulations?  We wonder why we have a growing epidemic of childhood obesity and diabetes.  It's no wonder when our kids are eating ice cream, chocolate milk, corn dogs and cheeseburgers for lunch on a regular basis.  

At this point I don't have the answers.  I plan to look into how the menu is planned, who is making the regulations and more but now all I can do as a parent is pack a healthy , well balanced lunch for my kids and hope they don't trade it for the corn dogs.