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Nation’s children push back against Michelle Obama-backed school lunch regs
The Daily Caller ^ | September 22, 2012 | Caroline May

Posted on 09/23/2012 7:12:18 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks

Children and parents across the country are fed up with the restrictive new school meal regulations implemented by the Department of Agriculture under the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which has long been touted by first lady Michelle Obama.

The standards — which cap meal calories at 650 for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, at 700 calories for middle school students and 850 for high school students — also dictate the number of breads, proteins, vegetables and fruits children are allowed per meal.

A spokeswoman for Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who earlier this month introduced legislation to roll back the new standards, told The Daily Caller that King’s office has heard more complaints about the issue during the past few weeks than any other.

“This year, we’ll be hungry by 2:00,” one student, Zach Eck, told KAKETV in Kansas. “We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value.”

Iowa mom Robin Wissink told TheDC that she now provides her autistic daughter Molly, a junior in high school, with a bag lunch because her school’s new menu is so unappealing. Students at St. Mark’s in Colwich, Kan. have also been “brown bagging” their meals.

And some student-athletes in Wisconsin are arguing that the calorie caps hit them especially hard, given their intense workouts and scrimmages.

“A lot of us are starting to get hungry even before the practice begins,” Mukwonago High senior Nick Blohm told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Our metabolisms are all sped up.”

The new lunch standards have led to the removal of some old food favorites, including a particularly popular item at one school in upstate New York: chicken nuggets.

“Now they’re kind of forcing all the students to get the vegetables and fruit with their lunch, and they took out chicken nuggets this year, which I’m not too happy about,” Chris Cimino, a senior at Mohonasen High School in upstate New York, told the Associated Press, which gave the rules a “mixed grade.”

Students in the Plum Borough School District in Pennsylvania are protesting the new federal restrictions on Twitter.

“everyone.. if you agree school lunches are expensive and small, RT this. we can fight the school! tweet #BrownBagginIt,” @TornadoBoyTubbs tweeted, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Administrators have scrambled to find creative ways to make the new menus appealing. A school district in Lake County, Fla., for example, is planning to conduct a survey to determine how to make vegetables more appealing to children, who often throw them out.

“[The regulations do] limit the food that you can put on the plate,” Alden Caldwell, the director of food services at a Brookline, Mass. school, told Wicked Local. “In theory, it’s a good idea, but in practice we’re finding that there are issues with it.”

Despite the outrage, some parents believe the ongoing obesity epidemic justifies the tight calorie standards.

“I think it’s smart to be pre-emptive and proactive at getting more nutrition fed into the kids,” Amos Johnson, a parent with students in the Lee Summit, Missouri school system, told the Lee’s Summit Journal. “I see that more as a multi-beneficial supporter for health and academic performance. I think that’s the thing I would look at. You should be healthier, and if you’re nourishing the brain and getting the fuel right, academic outcomes should maintain or improve.”

When the legislation was signed into law in 2010, it received bipartisan support, including a big endorsement from Michelle Obama.

“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat, and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet,” the first lady said in a statement at the unveiling of the new standards in January. “And when we’re putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria. When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won’t be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home. We want the food they get at school to be the same kind of food we would serve at our own kitchen tables.”

Obama welcomed students back to school this year with a YouTube video explaining the importance of the new meal plans.

King and Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp introduced the “No Hungry Kids Act,” which would repeal the USDA rule that resulted in the new standards, last week.

“The goal of the school lunch program is supposed to be feeding children, not filling the trash cans with uneaten food,” Huelskamp said in a statement. “The USDA’s new school lunch guidelines are a perfect example of what is wrong with government: misguided inputs, tremendous waste, and unaccomplished goals. Thanks to the Nutrition Nannies at the USDA, America’s children are going hungry at school.”


TOPICS: Breaking News; Culture/Society; Government; News/Current Events; US: Iowa; US: Kansas; US: Massachusetts; US: Michigan; US: Missouri; US: New York; US: Pennsylvania; US: Wisconsin
KEYWORDS: athletes; brownbagginit; caloriecaps; calories; children; flotusmichelle; food; foodpolice; health; hunger; kids; menu4kiddies; michelle0bummer; michelleobama; moochelle; nannystate; nohungrykidsact; nutrition; obesity; schoollunch; standards; usda; wideload
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks
The standards — which cap meal calories at 650 for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, at 700 calories for middle school students and 850 for high school students...

I don't think I ever could have lived on that after about age eight or nine. What the hell, do they want all the bigger kids to die??

101 posted on 09/24/2012 3:43:43 PM PDT by varmintman
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To: Ouderkirk
The wookie should be holding instruction classes for slacker baby mommas and sperm donor daddies, of all races, who may have custody on now to get the hell out of bed and prepare breakfast, lunch and dinner for their “families.” I'll never forget a case I heard on Chicao Police Dispatcher radio about a black three year old who was hungry at 3AM in the morning, and slacker baby momma who had been sleeping off a drunk/drug binge, was too incapacitated to feed her kid that night, and so the kid put a box of half-eaten pizza on top of the range and turned on the gas and started the house on fire, and the kid was killed.

Tell the wookie to preach to her own...and to all other parents, feed your children as you see fit. The hell with the wookie, and be sure to let her know it.

102 posted on 09/24/2012 3:48:44 PM PDT by itssme
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

I saw the obama with a dish of French Fries the other day.Maybe they need to address the issue with the great one!


103 posted on 09/24/2012 3:50:22 PM PDT by pollywog ("O Thou who changest not, abide with me.".......)
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To: caveat emptor

Is this a real picture?
Even if it is not Mickey is classless, I do not think I have ever seen people with as little class as the obama’s, they are the definition of “white trash”.


104 posted on 09/24/2012 3:57:55 PM PDT by svcw (If one living cell on another planet is life, why isn't it life in the womb?)
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To: mamelukesabre
What kind of an idiot dreamed this up??

Can you say ..... centralized communist planning / PHATass mabelle michelle / commie pic 0dumb0shit (and yes, he is a POS) and any other names I can call those two commie pigs or the commie pig demoRATs who never learned the lesson from Soviet Russia. Centralized gubmint planning NEVER works in 100% of the cases. It always results in mismatches, waste of some products and shortages of other products, and is never what the consumer actually wanted. We need a complete overhaul & throwing out of the entire Washington DC bureaucracy & establishment. Most of them should go from their plush offices straight into the federal penitentiaries.

105 posted on 09/24/2012 4:27:12 PM PDT by rcrngroup
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To: mamelukesabre

Indeed. I could eat 8 pieces of fried chicken, 2 rolls, a handful of fries, and a piece of cheesecake in one sitting. After that, I would get up turn around and sit right back down and ask my Mom what was for dinner (drove her nuts). My brother and I would polish off a gallon of milk each supper - that drove her nuts too!

I never got over 160# (being 6’1” my ribs were always visible). My ideal max weight is supposed to be 180# now with the new BMI charts - totally ludicrous!


106 posted on 09/24/2012 5:30:11 PM PDT by jurroppi1
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks; wintertime

You know, Tol, nothing ANNOYS ME MORE than parents that send their kids to public schools, and then complain about those same schools.

If you want the bigger house, nicer car, or big plasma, that’s fine - screw the kids and send them in that nice Big Yellow Bus (taking advantage of the ‘free’ schools), but, dammit, QUIT COMPLAINING and acting surprised, when the government behaves as if they don’t have to answer to you, BECAUSE THEY DON’T.

They will do as they please on your kids, so GET OVER IT!!!. Please.


107 posted on 09/24/2012 6:23:18 PM PDT by BobL (You can live each day only once. You can waste a few, but don't waste too many.)
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To: pollywog

Maybe the big fat pig could share some of that $100/pound monkey meat provided by us taxpayers to fill her ungrateful gut.


108 posted on 09/24/2012 6:27:39 PM PDT by jivin gene (Breakin' up is hard to do)
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To: originalbuckeye

All it takes with a Democrat-championed bill is one Republican vote for the media to call it “bi-partisan.”


109 posted on 09/24/2012 6:31:31 PM PDT by WeatherGuy
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To: Uncle Chip

“Now Michelle is going to cost her husband the high school cafateria vote.”

They work for a living. Little barry quit going after them a long time ago.


110 posted on 09/24/2012 6:33:45 PM PDT by jivin gene (Breakin' up is hard to do)
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To: Tolerance Sucks Rocks

A Children’s Rebellion!

mmm mmm mmm


111 posted on 09/24/2012 6:36:02 PM PDT by left that other site (Worry is the Darkroom that Develops Negatives.)
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To: AdmSmith; AnonymousConservative; Berosus; bigheadfred; Bockscar; ColdOne; Convert from ECUSA; ...

Thanks Tolerance Sucks Rocks.
The standards -- which cap meal calories at 650 for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, at 700 calories for middle school students and 850 for high school students -- also dictate the number of breads, proteins, vegetables and fruits children are allowed per meal.
Except for the triple digit numbers, looks like she got the idea from North Korea.


112 posted on 09/24/2012 6:39:13 PM PDT by SunkenCiv (https://secure.freerepublic.com/donate/)
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To: crz

Probably getting the kids ready to toll in the fields for dear reader.


113 posted on 09/24/2012 6:40:02 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Arms really ARE for hugging!)
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To: itssme

This is one of those issues that drives me absolutely crazy.

When I was in elementary school in the late 60’s and early 70’s there was school lunches available while I was in K-2 grades. After that 3-8 the school cafeterias were shut down in all elementary and middle schools. You had to bring your own lunch and the school sold milk (whole milk or chocolate) and potato chips. That was it. There were no breakfast or lunches.

The high school had a full cafeteria that only took cash and the food sucked because it was all fat and starch.

There is simply no reason that these POS’s in the ‘hood aren’t feeding their children. I see them with their EBT cards checking out with steaks and crab legs. It isn’t just inner city blacks...the worst offenders are the trailer trash rural whites. All 350 lbs of her and her litter of six kids by 5 different various ethnic fathers.


114 posted on 09/24/2012 6:40:12 PM PDT by Ouderkirk (Democrats...the party of Slavery, Segregation, Sodomy, and Sedition)
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To: svcw

“which allows for:
*control production of food
*control distribution of food
*controls everything”

Read “the black book of communism” is you want to see how this has worked in practice. Starvation as a weapon.


115 posted on 09/24/2012 6:52:17 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Arms really ARE for hugging!)
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To: Chickensoup

“If you expect the government to educate your children, you accept the government pont of view.”

If you hand your children’s education over to caesar, don’t be surprised if they come back as romans.


116 posted on 09/24/2012 6:55:01 PM PDT by RKBA Democrat (Arms really ARE for hugging!)
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To: manc
I always reply with”why not you feed your child with what you want them to eat”

I always get this reply, “I have no time in the morning”


Starting around 5th grade, I got so sick of school lunches that I started packing my own. I didn't have time in the morning either, so I packed it the night before and kept it in the fridge. It only takes a few minutes, especially if there's good leftovers from dinner.
117 posted on 09/24/2012 6:55:01 PM PDT by Ellendra (http://www.ustrendy.com/ellendra-nauriel/portfolio/18423/concealed-couture/)
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To: svcw

It’s real as far as I know. Right click on the image and select properties. It’s a Reuters photo. You can get it with these search parameters: michelle obama carla bruni pittsburgh summit 2009. Don’t remember what I used originally.


118 posted on 09/24/2012 6:55:28 PM PDT by caveat emptor (Zippity Do Dah)
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To: SunkenCiv

I seem to remember (correct me if I am wrong) that the evil planners of Auschwitz had calculated their prisoners to 900 calories a day.


119 posted on 09/24/2012 6:56:50 PM PDT by left that other site (Worry is the Darkroom that Develops Negatives.)
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To: pops88

Very well made video.


120 posted on 09/24/2012 7:07:11 PM PDT by farmer matt
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