As many of you already know, our lovely first lady, Michelle Obama, has been very active in the fight to formulate and implement new standards for school lunches. This whole thing first started when she began lobbying, largely behind the scenes, for the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. This bill, now law, requires more fruit, vegetables, and whole grains, plus less sodium, sugar, and fat in school lunches.
Although the idea behind these new standards, which was the first update to school lunch rules in many years, was well-intentioned, the results have not been nearly as good as Obama had hoped. It certainly has made the new school lunches more nutritious, but many students have complained about how they taste.
Even groups originally in favor of these standards have now turned against them. One of these groups is the School Nutrition Association, which represents school cafeteria workers. Of course, they are in favor of getting kids to eat healthier,
but the real problem here is that they have seen many districts losing money as a direct result of these new Michelle Obama initiated standards. The basic fact is that students simply aren’t buying these lunches. I suppose that is a side effect when you make their lunches, “taste like vomit,” according to some actual students.
Since the first round of these new standards first went into effect in 2012, more than 1 million fewer students are eating lunch at school each day. This is stark contrast to decades of steadily increasing participation among students, according to an association spokeswoman. A second round of new rules has just taken effect as of July 1, which even includes new standards for breakfast in schools.
The bottom line is that these new standards promoted by Michelle have not been very well thought-out. Certainly no one can call such changes an improvement or effective if they only serve to drive students away from the program. Perhaps Barack should consider allowing his wife to reform the welfare and other entitlement programs?
Now, Michelle has vowed to fight in defense of her new standards and program, “to the bitter end.” She says that 90 percent of schools are meeting these standards and that they are based on sound science. Once again, she might even be correct, but the bottom line is that her program is still driving children out of the program and financially damaging schools and school districts who are selling much less and rapidly losing interest in keeping up with the program, much less additional stringent requirements.
To this end, there is a new Republican House bill that would give school districts a chance to apply to skip these requirements for a year. This is actually connected to the yearly funding bill for the Agriculture Department, under whose domain school lunch (and breakfast) programs fall. As you might imagine, the White House is opposed to this and has vowed to veto the bill.
What do YOU think? Were these standards forced upon schools and kids too fast? Should we expect kids to eat food that “tastes like vomit” simply to indulge the whims of our first lady? Have we gone a bit too far, too fast in an effort to try and make kids do what’s best for them, without taking into consideration their wishes? Should we consider new standards that have driven more than 1 million participants away to be a success…and worthy of additional restrictive standards?
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