Infowars.com
It made national news earlier this year when a North Carolina preschool student’s homemade lunch was confiscated by school officials for not meeting USDA standards, and the four-year-old was forced to trade her turkey and cheese sandwich and banana for the school’s pink-slime-filled chicken nuggets. Now the fight for parents’ rights and healthy food in public schools has just been ratcheted up a notch.
The nanny state was thrown into overdrive last week when an elementary student in one California school district was interrogated by school officials and a police officer all day and subsequently suspended for five days for the dastardly crime of bringing a kombucha tea in his school lunch.
The school also reportedly told the child he may have to sign up for a youth alcoholics program. All of this was apparently done, at least initially, without a parent or guardian present.
The police officer who responded reportedly told the child that kombucha — a mushroom tea that has been around for thousands of years and has numerous documented health benefits — was illegal and could be dangerous if the boy ingested it while taking medications.
As it is fermented from bacteria and yeast, kombucha does contain a trace amount of alcohol, typically less than half a percent. In fact, back in 2010, the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau released a report stating that any kombucha containing over 0.5% alcohol must be officially classified as “kombucha wine.” According to numerous sites, if fermented in the traditional way, kombucha contains little, if any, alcohol.
Meanwhile, there are schools that still offer vending machines filled with Coca-Cola and Pepsi products. Should we call the cops on these school officials for distributing alcohol to minors? According to the insane logic mentioned above we should, considering that these sodas have also been found to contain trace amounts of alcohol according to a National Institute of Consumption in Paris released in 2010.
Or should we be concerned that many schools are adding antibacterial hand sanitizer to their student supply lists? The Centers for Disease Control has proclaimed such sanitizers must be at least 60% alcohol to be effective, a percentage equal to a shot of 120-proof liquor. Over the past few years, stories have surfaced where teens have been hospitalized with alcohol poisoning after drinking the substance, and one seven-year-old girl was even rushed to the ER after she was able to ingest enough at her Virginia elementary school to be knocked unconscious.