As if parenting with calm and sanity weren’t hard enough these days, there is a new internet trend aimed at congratulating each other for packing junk food in kids’ lunches.
Viral social media posts have garnered widespread attention and started a debate about so-called food shaming and “safe foods.” The social support for poor nutrition is a sad reflection of the lack of agency parents feel. It is possible to make changes in meaningful areas of your child’s development, such as nutrition. Understanding how and why kids eat is important. But believing we can choose to take action is the first and most important step.
Lauding Mediocrity: It’s ‘Perfectly Normal’
One post from a mom displays a “normal” lunch for an American schoolchild who brings food from home. The photo includes Oreos, marshmallows, Doritos, Kool-Aid, and a yogurt tube alongside a sandwich that appears to have lunch meat and cheese.
Aside from the inside of the sandwich, protein is scarce in this lunch while high fructose corn syrup and food dye abound, but the mother defended her choices, writing in the caption, “Not all kids eat cucumbers or carrots. I don’t pack new things for school lunches, new foods can be introduced at home and taught how to enjoy not wasting my money to go in trash at school.”
One father attracted attention on TikTok by writing notes in his daughter’s lunchbox explaining that he wants her to eat the junk food he packs for her and accusing the daycare of
