Ritz Crackers: Regular Evil or Super Evil?

(A lunch I served Ethel.... healthy enough?)

Totally stole that title from a friend of mine, not gonna lie. I posted on Facebook for some blog post ideas, and this one seemed like a fun one. Jeni from http://joyandwoe.ca/ actually gave me that idea and title.

I feel like she should be the one writing this though. She's from Canada, where this wonderful Ritz cracker incident happened. I know we live in the states, but you heard of it. Right?

In case you haven't, here is a Reader's Digest version: A Canadian mother got fined $10 for failing to include a grain in her children's otherwise healthier-than-most-of-our-dinners-here lunch and the school had to supplement with Ritz crackers. Go ahead and read about it here.

(Picture taken from here.)

Don't get me wrong. Grains are great. All the food groups are. Especially the food groups that include cake and bacon. But what if they had an incredibly enormous amount of grains for breakfast, so the mom wanted to balance it out? Or for the family that can't have any dairy? Or those that are vegan? Is the school going to give those kids cheeseburgers to "balance the meal"?

I'm sorry. If this was a reoccurring issue and the school was genuinely concern for the malnutrition of the kids, I get that. Probably should have spoken to the parent first, though. And are Ritz crackers even considered healthy? By the looks of the ingredients list, it doesn't seem like it. "Enriched flour" is a great grain, eh?  And what about the crackers costing $10?

What do you think? School's right or the mom? Should have this been handled a different way? I dunno. This just all baffles me. There's just no choices left to make for yourself or your family without the whole world knowing about it.