The Food Scout

Was it Pepsi and Coke’s fault a decade ago that schools said “yes” to their offer to pay various school districts for exclusive vending machine contracts on campuses, netting $100 - 200K per year in additional school funds? Was it the schools’ fault that they made a deal with these companies in order to help shore up declining budgets needed to fund extracurricular activities? If schools had the money they needed to operate, they would simply decline these offers, right?

But nonetheless, the same administrators who said “yes” to the additional funding and vending machines, joined the angry mob several years later to pressure beverage companies to remove the vending machines or modify their product selection.

And now, suddenly someone has decided that giving away free meals to students who get good grades is a bad thing!? It appears that McDonald’s not only offers a free Happy Meal at McDonald’s to qualifying students in a certain Florida school district (along with other sponsors like Steak & Shake and Publix), but also covers printing and envelope costs for the school. And though McDonald’s and other companies have been offering these kinds of rewards “for decades,” it took the politically correct times we live in today to prompt not only a mom to blow the whistle, but for various administrators to over-react in accommodating the complaining mom.

So now one mom who says she doesn’t like being the “bad guy” to deny her A-student child a free meal at McDonald’s (what’s she gonna do when her 13 year-old daughter wants to date a high schooler?) is going to spoil it for normal parents who occasionally (or frequently) take their kids to McDonald’s with or without said coupon. Interestingly, a poll conducted online by the Orlando Sentinel shows that, out of more than 400 respondents, only a third of readers “have a problem” with the McDonald’s sponsored report card envelope and meal offer.

If parents and activists are going to tie school districts’ hands in grasping for revenue-offsetting options, then they’d better be ready for a big property tax increase to compensate. Or, they just need to take more responsibility for raising their children, instead of blaming corporations and institutions for “the obesity issue.”