(A post for parents and teachers with midmorning crashers.)

Yahoo has article #234,908 on whether or not you should eat breakfast. Readers will no doubt be stunned to discover the answer is yes. But after doing cafeteria duty for a couple of days in the last week, I want to weigh in on the issue of breakfast. I have seen so much food thrown away, and much more in one district than another. The quality of school lunches directly affects how much food is eaten.

But this post is about breakfast. Should kids eat breakfast? I’ll run with the crowd and say yes, but breakfast does not strike me as a yes-or-no question. Individual children vary widely in how well they tolerate mornings without food. Certain kids crash in the middle of the morning when they have not eaten. Others power through.

Here’s the issue: Many kids are receiving breakfasts at school. Those breakfasts may be breakfast bars, cheese sticks, cereal boxes, French toast sticks or any number of options, often with fruit. Here’s the problem: Some kids don’t bother to go to the cafeteria or don’t bother to eat if they do. They toss most or even all their food in the trash. You would think that the daily 10:00 A.M. wipeout would lead to kids managing to stuff down their granola bars and apples, but kids live in the moment, and, in the moment, kids may dislike granola bars and figure the apple’s not worth the bother.

Eduhonesty: I recommend that parents of crashers feed their children at home before they leave for school. Parents can make sure that breakfast is eaten. Cafeteria personnel cannot be relied upon to do the same. They mostly become immune to overflowing garbage cans. They are also working and don’t have the time to sit down and coax the many kids who are chattering while their food languishes.

Yes, we are providing food, but that does not mean that the food is being consumed. We are also filling landfills. I think parents sometimes trust that their children’s nutritional needs are being met. But nobody stops Abdi or Kona from dumping their breakfast or lunch in the trash. Teachers and cafeteria workers may pause to say, “Don’t you like your sandwich?” but when Kona says, “No,” that usually cuts the conversation short. Three or four adults out on a floor in a cafeteria with a few hundred kids and only one-half hour for lunch or breakfast can only do so much.

I vote for feeding some kids before they leave home.