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I’m a little confused because you say the school doesn’t see it as their responsibility to feed the kids but it IS their responsibility to police what they bring from home.

That's exactly what I am saying, yes. That is what is accepted here and it's been that way here, right or wrong, since about the 1880s.

It's part of Australian culture - just like having virtually universal school uniforms is.

And because it's been that way so long, it's actually more part of the conservative culture than part of any other. It's the progressives that tend to think schools should stay out of these issues as part of their general tendency to want schools to have as little discipline as possible, so children can be free to do whatever they like without consequences.

Americans are dealing with specific issues with regards food in American schools - I can see that. But those issues largely arise from your culture and your history - because across a lot of the US, it is the cultural norm for schools to provide lunches, specific issues arise because of that cultural norm.

I just think it's important, if people are trying to relate what is happening in some other country (such as Australia) to what is happening in the US - as this thread seems to want to do with it's comment in brackets in the headline, it's important to understand that cultural differences make that more complicated than they may realise at first.

I teach in an Australian secondary school - and over the years I've found myself in quite a few discussions about education with Americans (more over school uniform than anything else) where issues have arisen because of people not understanding the cultural differences that sometimes lead to different decisions.

Thanks for the info! The cultural differences are interesting!

Here, it seems the ONLY discipline liberals are willing to enforce in schools is at the lunch table.

I have no problem with schools offering healthy choices. I just don’t believe dictating what they eat ONE meal a day makes any difference in any kid’s eating habits, whether they bring it from home or purchase it in the cafeteria.

It’s also absurd for TPTB to surmise that the same meal plan works for everyone. The fat kid who does nothing but sit and play video games would get the same lunch as my 6’3”, 160 lb. son burning through 8000+ calories a day during swim season. Because someone sitting at a desk wearing a suit said so. Never mind what his mother knows.

The farm kids around here whose day starts at 5am and ends at midnight would have to follow the same guidelines as the suburban princess whose primary daily exercise is going to consist of doing her hair and chewing gum?

Are the guidelines in Australia as one-size-fits-all as they’ve become here? Can you give some examples of what might be included in the guidelines there?

(I’ll go ahead and contradict my own conservative views and say I have no problem with school uniforms. LOL)