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Comment by david38 | Hacker News Reader

Not allowed to bring your own? You think this is a good thing? God forbid I make some food at home. Sounds like a protection racket to me or a social equality experiment gone crazy.

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It's unclear why this is but a quick search will show that children are not required to eat at school at all, so they are free to eat at home or off campus somewhere too.

If the provided lunch is any good, then yes, a good thing.

Could some families afford the cost and time of providing a better 2-4 course lunch every day? Sure, but most won’t.

As a child, I had a wide array of food allergies, so doctors put me on a so-called rotation diet. I could only be exposed to certain food items once every 4 days. Day 1 of the cycle allowed wheat and rye, so on the other days, I could not eat any dish with sauce bound with wheat flour. (My family used carob seed flour instead.) Day 2 was potatoes, day 3 was corn, day 4 was rice. (Those were the most significant items. There was more on the diet plan.)

This is why, for the first 4 years of school, I went to a specialized school for physically and mentally disabled children. I was not really disabled (besides allergies and asthma), but that was the only school where the cafeteria personnel was able/willing to accommodate my needs. (My grandmother brought in precooked food for me for the next day when she picked me up from school.) When I changed to secondary school, my parents employed some legal tricks to get me into a school close to my grandmother's apartment, so I could go to her place for lunch.

I realize that I was an edge case. But I sure hope that the laws governing those French kids accommodate their edge cases.

It’s probably similar to the Nordics. Which is that it’s the schools responsibility to cater to your needs, no matter the costs. Just be sure to have a doctors note.

I don't think the children are making food at home, and it seems entirely reasonable to prevent rich parents from giving food to their preferred children. If you can't fight generational inequality in a small thing, how can you fight generational inequality in big things like inheritance?

I suspect the rich kids go to private boarding schools no? The policy hurts the upper end of the average kids.

> how can you fight generational inequality in big things like inheritance?

France gets a big fail on this one. It's incredibly difficult to completely dis-own your children in your will.

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