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“As a society we need to get away from lunch politics,” said Sylvain Charlebois, a professor of food distribution and policy at the University of Guelph. “Lunches are an extension of a culinary culture which exists in everybody’s home and it is different one home to another.

“Perhaps we are trying to nurture some sort of nanny-state around lunches or food waste, and I don’t think that is the proper way to go. We should empower parents with the information they require to properly feed their children in the way they see fit. And if we get away from that and get too involved in lunch politics, we are approaching a danger zone in society,” he said.

He pointed to a case of an immigrant family being appalled at a school art project of decorating a jar by gluing dry pasta to it.

“The cultural aspects of food needs to be considered.”

Lenore Skenazy, author of the book Free-Range Kids, urged calm in the lunch skirmishes.

“There’s a belief that’s not only wrong, it’s also new, that if we don’t make every second, every experience and every bite absolutely perfect for our kids, we have hurt them, maybe permanently,” she said.

“Our kids were built to roll with the punches [and] to act as if one somehow sub-par lunch is going to hurt them or have any effect on them is ridiculous.”

Annie Kidder, executive director of People for Education, an education lobby group, said complaints are important to individual families but do not signal systemic failing.

“There are always going to be issues about lunch — whether it’s policies, food, whether they sit on the floor. There is a kind of chaos about lunch,” she said.

The growing complaints may be a result of more children eating lunch at school, she said, as fewer homes have a parent at home during the day.

National Post

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