Drinking Applesauce

I ask you, is there really anything wrong with drinking applesauce? I mean, if you grind it up a little finer, it's apple juice anyway. Would you expect someone to eat apple juice with a spoon because once upon a time it was a solid apple?
I never would have considered the etiquette of drinking applesauce if I hadn't been substituting at the elementary school and working lunch duty. The other lunch lady is the one who called it to my attention, watching a third grader tip her plastic applesauce cup to her mouth and take a swig. "If any child did that at my dinner table, I would have left the room and been sick to my stomach for two weeks," she said.
What?
Why?
The child, as far as I could see, was not sucking applesauce up her nose and snorting it out in fake snot trails. She wasn't smearing it in her hair or spooning it into her ears. It went directly from small cup to mouth, simply bypassing the optional use of a spoon.
I wonder if the lunch lady eats french fries with a fork? I'll bet she cuts them up with a knife and dribbles ketchup from a separate disposable packet onto each fry!
That's okay for her. Just keep the applesauce police away from my table!