The Wall Street Journal-20080117-Making Sure Children Get A Nutritious Lunch at School
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Making Sure Children Get A Nutritious Lunch at School
Problem: Your children keep forgetting or losing their lunch money, and when they do have money, you aren't sure they're eating right at school.
Solution: Ask whether your child's school offers a Web-based lunch- monitoring system, such as MealpayPlus (www.mealpayplus.com), or LunchTimeSoftware (www.lunchtimesoftware.com). These services allow parents to pay for their children's lunches online and monitor their kids' menu choices. Parents can create an account, prepay for lunches via a credit card, and then log in to review children's lunchtime purchases, such as fruit or potato chips. Some lunch-payment systems also email alerts when a child's balance is low and automatically replenish the funds using a credit card that parents have registered with the program. Parents also can block the purchase of certain foods, such as items that contain peanuts, or limit weekly spending. Students use a personal identification number, an ID card from the program, or in some cases, a finger measurement, to pay for purchases.
Caveat: Parents can use the service only if the school subscribes. Contact your school administration about adopting the service, which is funded, in many cases, by a nominal fee paid by parents.
