Is food this confusing?

I came across an article today where a Manitoba mother was fined by her child's daycare for providing an 'incomplete' lunch. Casting aside the obvious absurdity of fining families over lunches, as unhealthy lunches are often a outcome of food insecurity to which additional financial penalty would make worse, the unbelievable element to this story is what was determined to be an 'unhealthy lunch' and the 'solution' to the problem.

The two children, who attended the daycare centre responsible for the fines, were sent to school with lunches consisting of roast-beef, potatoes, carrots, an orange, and milk. Despite the fact this this lunch is full of lean protein, vegetables, fruit, and dairy products (all in a low processed form) the daycare decided it was an incomplete lunch because it did not contain a grain, as outlined in the Canadian Food Guide as a necessity for a healthy meal. There solution to this 'incomplete' lunch? A $5 per lunch fine and supplementing the lunch with Ritz crackers, a highly processed food high in fat, refined grains, and salt.

While I understand why the daycare centre is concerned about lunches, and why the Canada Food guide is an appropriate tool to use in guiding children and families eating practices, the complete lack of common sense or logic in evaluating food as 'healthy' speaks to the widespread misinformation and disconnect citizens in developed nation have with food.

While the Canada Food guide is helpful, health promotion tools need to be used as guidelines, not laws, and particular family needs, preferences, skills, and access need to be taken into account when tackling the very difficult job of increasing health literacy within the population.

Policing individuals food choices and fining 'offenders' is simply another symptom of our societies promulgation of 'responsibilisation', an inevitable byproduct of Neoliberalism. Responsibilization, as the abdication of responsibility of the government for putting controls or limits on the way food is marketed to families and children,  the cost of healthy food, or the availability of processed food, becomes a vehicle for fining offenders instead of addressing social determinants of health and making change possible.

If parents, educators, children, and people in general struggle to even identify healthy food, how can we move as a whole to a place of health literacy? While there are no simple answers, clearly a punitive paradigm based on health guidelines is inappropriate, nor does it support the health of children and families. Educators need to work with families, and have the health literacy necessary to accurately educate. Educators also need to be supported with policies and practices put in place that require stricter labelling controls of food which greatly contribute to ubiquitous food confusion contributing to health misinformation. There are no quick fixes to health literacy, and it's a long road ahead.