I hear you but, IMO, the vast majority of children eat when they are hungry... They do seem lose that ability when adults force them to eat and not eat at arbitrary times...
In a group setting, which would include school, family and often work, those arbitrary times are unavoidable.
As to the very American habit of grazing throughout the day...
Do not get this Frenchwoman started on American eating habits. Ze soapbox, it is huge. Ze rant, it is long and very, very shrill
But, most children should be left alone and be the judge of whether their bodies need more or less food... My friends who are from Europe are shocked at the amount of 'force feeding' of children Americans do... and they are right, imo. All of them shake their heads and say "no wonder America has an obesity problem."
We seem to completely agree on the principles, and completely disagree on the details?
Close to mk13's experience, in elementary school we had a 2 hours lunch break meaning one hour sitting and eating (and talking
while eating), one hour on the playground. In France lunch is the main meal of the day and it is taken very seriously.
In the US my kids have basically 15 minutes to eat their lunch and
any talking means that some food will go uneaten. Which would be fine if it went uneaten because the child is not hungry, but that hurried shuffle is an encouragement
not to pay attention to what your body is telling you.
That, to me, is force feeding, of the kids who do start eating. Meanwhile the talkers and the daydreamers won't have time to realize they are indeed hungry until after they are out of the lunch room.
And to me the "let them ignore their hunger and catch up with snacks" approach is unacceptable. Also, snacks all the time, and food used as a reward mechanism in the classroom!
I will spare you several pages on school lunches quality (or lack thereof), the "healthy-ization" of crappy processed food through the use of sawdust (wait, did I mean whole grain?) and "it is baked, not fried", and the general lack of respect for food in the American culture
Where I come from, culturally: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1969729,00.html
Of course it would take a lot of work to re-train American kids (mine included, alas) to that standard...
+1 everything Dude wrote, I have another long rant on restaurants and quantity vs. quality
. Clean your plate is also something taught where I come from, but restaurants serve reasonable portions there.
