President Donald Trump’s administration took another key step in making school lunches tasty again by proposing new school lunch guidelines that undo several changes made by former First Lady Michelle Obama.
The Department of Agriculture, which oversees the Food and Nutrition Service, said it is proposing new rules ‘to simplify meal service and reduce food waste.’ That would include ‘increasing flexibility in the “vegetable subgroups” requirements for school lunches.’But the changes would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them the ability to offer more pizza, burgers and fries instead.It would also undo rules championed by Michelle Obama as part of her Let’s Move initiative and The Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act of 2010.
Legal Insurrection readers will recall this process began early in Trump’s presidency, when Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced his department restored more local control to school lunch programs. For example, regular chocolate milk returned to many lunch programs.
The best part of this move: The proposed measures were announced on Michelle Obama’s 56th birthday! The Trumpenfreude is positively delicious.
When making the announcement, Acting Dept. of Agriculture Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps argued that policies enacted under Obama had unintended consequences.
He used the example of grab-and-go food carts that require students to buy two bananas if they purchase a slice of pizza in order to be compliant with the standards.Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue also argued that forcing students to have certain ingredients on their plates leads to food waste because children are forced to take food they will not consume.If the new rules are implemented, schools can count potatoes as vegetables and cut back on the mandatory servings of fruits and vegetables for the 30 million students who eat school lunches each day. The new rules also allow for more sodium and fats to be present in the foods by giving more control to the cafeteria employees.
Of course, critics are predicting the usual doom and gloom.
“[It] would create a huge loophole in school nutrition guidelines, paving the way for children to choose pizza, burgers, french fries and other foods high in calories, saturated fat or sodium in place of balanced school meals every day,” Center for Science in the Public Interest’s deputy director of legislative affairs, Colin Schwartz, said in a statement Friday.
Some progressives attacked the potato industry and Trump in response to the announcement.
“The potato industry and junk food lobbyists should not be able to dictate what is and is not on school menus for 30 million students,” said Environmental Working Group President Ken Cook.“Just because President Trump consumes cheeseburgers and fries every day doesn’t mean children want or should be given the same choice. There are far too many kids struggling with obesity in this country, and we should be making it easier for them to choose fresh, local whole fruits and vegetables, not limiting them to highly processed foods that will only make this epidemic worse.”
I will simply point out that the obesity epidemic began when the government declared that fats where bad and carbohydrates were good. Food Science: The most fake science of all.
However, for most school kids, returning to traditional food offerings is a good news.
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