Our local small town arts council threw a "back to school bash" this past Saturday. Personally, I think it's pretty cool that this tiny little backwards eastern North Carolina town actually HAS an arts council. Well...I guess I would think it's pretty cool if they actually did cool stuff.
This particular event was horribly unorganized, but at least in theory it should have been pretty cool. There were some cheesy little art stations for the kids to "be creative", a drawing for some nifty keen school supplies, and then free lunch.
FREE LUNCH!
Awesome right? Yeah. Not so much.
Pizza and canned soda.
Now I'm not against either of those "food" items on rare occassion. It just hit me funny. That was the same menu featured at the library's awards party for the summer reading program.
Perhaps it's not fair of me, but I'd like to see an organization that should have progressive and educated leanings, have the health of it's community in mind. This tiny speck of a town has 15.3% of it's residents living in poverty. This could be an opportunity to provide a healthy and nutritios meal to children that may not otherwise have access to one.
And..I couldn't help but notice the number of overweight (and even obese) children that were running (well, sometimes waddling) around this event. And we've made pizza and soda the norm for social events.
Don't get me wrong, I don't have a solution. I'm totally just sitting here complaining. I imagine the pizza was probably donated by the local pizzaria. And it sure is easy to just pass out pizza and than it is to plan and prepare something more complex. Pizza is the no brainer solution.
I just can't help thinking that maybe it would have been better to just not serve lunch at all. Then again, maybe I'm just overly cynical.
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