"Sun-Butter"
In some of my perusal of various "headlines" in the news, I came across a story talking about a young girl who was "food-shamed". The long and short of the story was that this little girl went through her hot lunch line at her school and did not have enough money in her prepaid account to pay for the meal (her parents did not realize it was at a low balance). As you might expect, she was told that she was unable to buy the lunch and was asked to return it.... and was given instead a "sun-butter & jelly" sandwich and a milk.
Apparently some of the other kids (probably the "cool kids") laughed at her having to return the lunch and this made the little girl feel bad. Her parents were not happy, and have said the school district "food-shamed" her.
I have mixed feelings about this.... my ideas are as follows (not in any particular order):
1. I think "food-shaming" is a rather heavy handed term to apply to this situation.
2. I can understand the little girl being upset at being teased about the situation.... but it is not really the fault of the school district, in my opinion.... but is really the fault of the idiotic "cool kids" who had little to no empathy or understanding or care about the situation and used it to belittle the little girl.
3. I think also though that it would perhaps have been better to just let the little girl have the original food and have her food balance go into the negative for that day.... and then contact the parents to get them to simply pony up more funds for her account. They had regularly added to the account through the year to that point and I would feel confident they would have made up the difference when they replenished the account.
4. I also find it odd but kind of nice but also kind of not nice that the school district substituted a sandwich and milk.... which too would have been of a price to cause a deficit in the account. It just seems odd.
So, as you can see, I have mixed feeling.
But, also, this story introduced me to "sun-butter" which is apparently a peanut butter substitute that many schools are now using made from sunflower seeds. Apparently this is done because of the widespread concern about potential peanut allergies.
PipeTobacco
4 Comments:
I use Sun Butter, the crunchy variety, as a substitute because peanuts are high in oxalates, and can lead more readily to kidney stone formation (the bane of my existence).
What I've been meaning to try is using it also as a base for a satay sauce (mixed with soy sauce), which I learned to enjoy on many visits in the past to Indonesian restaurants.
I've seen sun butter and never tried it. Kids are cruel and I can recall being picked on. But then I had also played the cards of picking on others. Not excusing one behavior.
But perhaps emotions, empathy and things like that need to covered in school.
Coffee is on
Sun-butter is new to me too, but I do see that you can now buy PB pre-mixed with other ingredients such as honey.
As for the incident, I don't think it's a huge deal, but I would think that the cafeteria could have been more lenient for one day if there was no history here.
Haven't come across 'sun butter' but peanut butter here comes in umpteen different flavours ( apart from the most logical peanut flavour, I mean). The strawberry one smells revolting.
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