System Lets Parents Spy on Kids' Lunches

[Lord_of_the_Dense]

MARIETTA, Ga. - As Garin Hughes picks through his school-lunch burrito and unidentifiable apple-pear dessert, he has a secret. Hidden underneath the eighth-grader's right leg is a chocolate cookie in shrink-wrapped plastic. That's for dessert. In the past, his parents had no clue when he bought a treat at school. Now, thanks to a new school-lunch monitoring system, they can check over the Internet and learn about that secret cookie.

Health officials hope it will increase parents' involvement in what their kids eat at school. It's a concern because federal health data shows that up to 30 percent of U.S. children are either overweight or obese.

"My parents do care about what I eat. They try, like, to keep up with it," said Hughes, a 14-year-old student at Marietta Middle School.

Three school districts in the Atlanta area last week became the first in the country to offer the parental-monitoring option of an electronic lunch payment system called Mealpay.com, created by Horizon Software International of Loganville, Ga.

For two years, the payment system, used by 1,000 school districts in 21 states, has allowed parents to electronically prepay for student lunches. Students type in their identification number before the cafeteria cashier rings up each day's lunch bill. The bill then is deducted from the student's account.

Read entire story here.

[Vivacious]

I like pre pay in this case,it makes the dash out the door less hectic. I also like the fact that I can tell what my money bought.

[Digital Bliss]

This is bullshit freedom does not exist in this country anymore shit children cant even eat lunch with out someone saying somthing about it leave them the fuck alone

[Krell]

When I gave speeches to elementary children encouraging them to study computing technologies and sciences, I realized that we have the first generation of children that will live their entire lives without any real privacy. Everything they will do, where they go and what they purchase, will be a matter of record.

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