VeganBob brings us this story appearing on Yahoo! about a new use of technology to monitor what your kids are eating for lunch at school.

As parents see more reports of increasing childhood obesity in the news, many may become tempted to find ways to monitor their child’s diet.  Three school districts in Atlanta have implemented a system to let parents do just that.

The system is an electronic lunch payment system that is in use by school districts in twenty-one states.  Recently its capabilities have been expanded to include monitoring and reporting of all puchases - including cash items bought with allowance money. 

Like many other child monitoring technologies, this one begs the question of whether the technology is trust-eroding.  Generally I believe parents should only use this type of technology very carefully for things that really matter. 

Whether junior is sneaking an extra cookie at lunch in my mind is not the real issue.  Junior’s body will tell you whether he’s eating healthy or not - the real issue is whether junior is leading an overall healthy lifestyle.  I suspect that, for the average child, if his parents are spending time with him while living a similarly healthy lifestyle the elaborate online cookie reporting system isn’t needed.

System Lets Parents Spy on Kids’ Lunches brought to us by VeganBob