"Children and parents across the country are fed up ... 
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.”
This is how it works when we all become a “collective”
The kindergartener and the high school senior are given the same treatment - same portions -same calories.
You have a problem with that?
I guess you don’t want that nice federal aid do ya?
I support the wookie in this whole thing.
Make those school lunches so lousy that the parents (many of whom we give food stamps, WIC, and a litany of other stipends for food) start getting their a&&es out of bed to make breakfast and pack a lunch for their kids.
I don’t know about other places but my kids can take to school whatever I give them, my son loves MREs and the pouches I vacuum seal of dehydrated bananas, peaches and pears I make in my food dehydrator, plus is the 30 gram protein bars.
I read an article the other day that talked about schools serving hummus and black bean salad. What? I wouldn’t eat that crap and personally don’t know one kid that would touch it.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2010/roll603.xml
"Children and parents across the country are fed up ...
The athletic young men I coach can easily put away several “quad” cheeseburgers at one sitting - plus fires.
Not one of them is obese.
I had one fellow who could not make it through practice without eating a burrito during water break. He is now a starting linebacker for a Division 1 college football team.
These new meal rules seem to be designed to starve athletes into submission.
Well tht turned out nicely ‘)
My daughter’s 17, and weighs 100# after a good eating weekend. Her pant size is 00.
Thankfully, she has never gotten all weird about diet and exercise. She eats when she wants, and quits when she’s full. Years of gymnastics and dancing have given her joy, but she doesn’t go out of her way to shape her body.
My concern is that in forcing young kids to focus on calories, portion size and exercise to stay slim, a lot of girls are going to go on extreme diets. Those who are prone to anorexia don’t need any encouragement.
This ‘brown bag it’ resistance is really taking off in the red counties in Minnesota.
I told my son he’s on the leading edge. In eleven years, I’ve made him about 2,000 lunches. I know what goes into it, he likes it and doesn’t mind, as a sophomore, that he brings his lunch. Nobody razzes him about it and they’re jealous of his homemade chocolate chip brownies.
We could hardly wait to get home when we were kids because we could eat a horse. Back then we usually took a lunch or at least I did b/c I didn’t like the cafeteria food.
You can’t do what we did on 2000 calories a day. Nobody could.
When we did football and weights we ate just about anything and everything that was in the house. I was 6’ 2” and weighted 180# back then. Nobody but Mom got in our way when we wanted something to eat. And she seldom refused us.
2nd grade mobs, that’s funny.
I have a grandson in the 2nd grade, he buys two lunches, because he said they are so small, he is starving by the time school gets out.
My 4th grade granddaughter, wont eat the lunches, she says they are are horrible. The kids buy snacks so she just get stuff like apples and yogurt.
Oh, at their school they are not allowed to bring lunches from home (eye roll) because heaven forbid someone might bring something that someone is allergic to.
As reported in Wa Po, this is what Michelle likes to pound down her throat when she goes out with her gal pals to the Shake Shack ...
Oh - I forgot, she DOES order a diet soda with this ...
Oh my gosh!
The original picture with the prairie dog was taken with my neighbors across the street in 2009. They were on a camping trip.
So weird to see it again in that fashion. LOL! The wife is quite liberal, the guy very laid back.
I don’t think I’ll mention this one to them, though I had a good chuckle.
From http://thomas.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:SN03307:@@@R|/home/LegislativeData.php|.
It passed in the Senate by unanimous consent, so every Republican Senator can be blamed. The House vote was:
FINAL VOTE RESULTS FOR ROLL CALL 603
| Ayes | Noes | PRES | NV | |
| Democratic | 247 | 4 | 4 | |
| Republican | 17 | 153 | 9 | |
| Independent | ||||
| TOTALS | 264 | 157 | 13 |
The 17 House Republicans were: Bachus, Cao, Capito, Castle, Dent, Djou, Ehlers, Emerson, Fortenberry, Gerlach, Jones, Latham, LaTourette, Tim Murphy, Platts, Reichert and Young (AK)
Just getting them ready for when the Food Stamp President crashes the economy!
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
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
HAHAHAHA!!!!
what a bunch of morons!
When I was a teenager I ate 2000 calories per meal and ate 4 meals per day. AND I WAS SKINNY! You can’t force a teen to eat ONLY 2500 calories per day! What kind of an idiot dreamed this up??
“The athletic young men I coach can easily put away several “quad” cheeseburgers at one sitting - plus fires.”
“plus fires”? Dont know what you coach, but I’m AFRAID of them.
The same kind of idiots that just took over our entire health care system
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