Site Lets Parents Monitor Kids' School Lunches

by Caleb Johnson on October 11, 2009 at 10:32 AM

Watch out, kids. It's about to become tougher to sneak that extra ice-cream bar during lunch. The diet of students at St John's Church of England School, in Stanmore, northwest London, is being remotely monitored by their parents. According to the Daily Mail, parents can access a Web site that tells them exactly what their children ate for lunch. When purchasing lunch, the 300 students simply swipe an identification card at a computer, which then sends information on the food they selected to a site. Parents log on to the site and can see if a child picked ice cream instead of yogurt.

School administrators say the system is a way for parents to make sure their young kids are making healthy choices while at school, not a case of Big Brother. Councilor Anjana Patel told the Daily Mail, "Parents can now have extra assurance that their children have already eaten a healthy meal during the day,"

We're just glad our elementary school didn't have this system in place. It's possible that we never would've made it through fifth-grade math without those extra chocolate milks or french fries. [From: Daily Mail]

Tags: diet, food, health, kids, lunch, monitoring, parents, school, top

Comments

darth_nazgulOct 11th 2009 3:00PM

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Urrrrmh... We've had this in Texas for years. >.>

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marcusOct 11th 2009 10:05PM

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yeah we've had this at our school for everrrrr. this is NOT big news. the only difference is that we use PIN numbers, not cards. cards would be easier, swiping is so much faster than punching in your number. I guess the cost of cards is too high.... whatever, doesn't matter

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JordanOct 11th 2009 11:06PM

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Dear god...pathetic. By all means use a card system, pin system, whatever system you want to pay for lunches, but do parents really need to monitor them? Some parents are way too psychotic

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kevin.weberOct 15th 2009 12:17PM

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Jordan, I was reading through the comments you've made on various Apple-related sites, and what I've come up with is that you're a supreme asshole, and very uninformed. For instance, you make a dozen or so references to Snow Leopard/Leopard/Tiger being even remotely related to the buggy garbage that was Cheetah and Puma. Every version of OS X prior to Tiger was utter garbage, but it was what Apple needed to do to get past OS 9, they needed a reinvention when they hit a wall. Now, specifically regarding this post, which you call "pathetic," how do you think I feel with a special needs child in a public school system? I have the choice of either sending him to school with a PB&J every day, or putting money in his account for lunch. Without fail, he goes through that account money in double time because he has no self control (read: autistic 8 year old) and the lack of regulation and monitoring keeps us from being able to limit the dollar amount he spends per day. I know that this system can be misused as the school I attended in high school had this system and yes, my parents were psychotic control freaks, but the system can be used for good as well. I know that, as a Windows promoter you have a hard time seeing things from different perspectives, but try to take different situations into account before running your mouth about things that don't concern you. Also, I'm a Mac technician and user, but don't respond about how Windows 7 is amazing. I've used it (the beta program). It's decent. But it's still Windows and can't do things the way I want it to. I also have 13 years of Windows tech support experience. Tool.

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