Chicago School Bans Home Lunches!

At Little Village Academy on Chicago's West Side, students were not allowed to pack lunches from home. Unless they had a medical excuse, they had to eat what the cafeteria served — a policy that turned one Chicago elementary school into a national flashpoint in the debate over who controls children's diets.

Principal Elsa Carmona said she created the rule six years earlier after watching students bring "bottles of soda and flaming hot chips" on field trips. "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," she said. "It's milk versus a Coke." Allergies and medical issues, she added, were exceptions.

A Chicago Public Schools spokeswoman, Monique Bond, said there was no district-wide formal policy — principals exercised "common sense judgment based on their individual school environments."

Critics saw a different motive: any school that bans homemade lunches puts more money in the pockets of the district's food provider, Chartwells-Thompson, since the federal government pays the district for each free or reduced-price lunch taken. And at Little Village, a visiting reporter found dozens of students taking the lunch and throwing most of it in the garbage uneaten — the food, students said, tasted bad.

Parents were split. Some, like parent Erica Martinez, wanted their children to at least eat something they liked. Others, like Miguel Medina, backed the policy: "The school food is very healthy, and when they bring the food from home, there is no control over the food."

At Claremont Academy on the South Side, the compromise was confiscation: packed lunches were allowed, but sugar- and salt-loaded snacks were taken away (and returned after school).

The larger debate was unavoidable. "This is such a fundamental infringement on parental responsibility," said J. Justin Wilson of the Center for Consumer Freedom. And for families who did not qualify for free meals, mandatory cafeteria lunch meant paying $2.25 a day — more, one education professor noted, than she spent on her son's lovingly packed sandwich, Goldfish crackers, and milk.

Reporting: The Chicago Tribune.