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The White House on Thursday announced first lady Michelle Obama’s pick to lead her campaign for kids to eat healthier, saying Debra Eschmeyer would take over a post that has increasingly come under fire in Republican circles. “For more than a decade, Deb has been leading the way in teaching kids about the importance of healthy eating,” the first lady said. “From classrooms and gardens to kitchens and farms, Deb has made learning about nutrition fun and accessible for kids across the country.” Eschmeyer will take over the position of executive director of the Let’s Move campaign, as well as...

ROGERS, Ark. – The garbage cans are becoming morbidly obese at Rogers High School.“We’re feeding trash cans a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables,” Robin Kinder, president of the Arkansas School Nutrition Association and assistant child nutrition director for Springdale Public Schools, tells NWAonline.com.In addition to changing the lunch menu to make it “healthier,” the school sends students back into the line if they fail to take the required fruits and vegetables mandated by the overhaul of the National School Lunch Program.“It would just go straight to the trash sometimes,” Estefany Corleto, a junior at Rogers High School, says of...

More than half of the nation’s school cafeteria workers expect to lose money selling low-salt, low-fat meals pushed by first lady Michelle Obama, a “serious” problem that threatens the programs, according to a survey of food providers.The School Nutrition Association, which is planning to demand changes to the meal requirements to make the food more attractive to students, found that 50.35 percent of cafeteria officials surveyed expect that serving the food will “exceed revenue” next year.“Of the 92 percent of respondents reporting that rising costs pose a ‘serious’ or ‘moderate’ challenge to their programs, 70 percent indicated ‘serious,’” said the...

Health advocates are blasting provisions in federal funding legislation that are seen as dialing back school nutrition standards, even as the White House seeks to downplay the riders as “minor adjustments” to the first lady’s signature policy. The bill known as “cromnibus,” contains language that would allow states to exempt struggling districts from having to offer all whole grain products and eases requirements for schools to reduce sodium levels. Critics who lobbied against more restrictive nutrition rules hailed the language as a win. The American Heart Association, meanwhile, worries the changes will open the door for more legislation that will...

While many public school students complain about lunchtime mush that meets White House calorie guidelines, President Barack Obama's daughters are dining on gourmet meals at a posh private school in Washington. School kids have been moaning about tasteless fare local governments adopt to comply with first lady Michelle Obama’s war on the waistline and posting photos of the mystery meals online. The Sidwell Friends School, the $36,000-a-year private academy attended by Malia and Sasha Obama, also posts its menus on the Internet. The Daily Caller discovered that Sidwell students eat well. Thursday’s lunch included: potato sausage soup, firecracker slaw, California...

Michelle Obama has been a champion of increased health standards for school lunches in her time as First Lady. As part of her Let's Move! program and the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, there have been new nutrition standards for public schools. Republicans say that the standards are unnecessary, intrusive, trample on local school perogatives, and is too expensive. Congress is making moves to relax these new guidelines:

The Food and Drug Administration is going to try its hand at shaming consumers into making healthier choices when they go out to eat. Just before the Thanksgiving holiday, the FDA announced a controversial and expansive rule that will require certain establishments with 20 or more locations -- including chain restaurants, grocery and convenience stores, and movie theaters -- to post calorie information on their menus and menu boards. A separate rule was also issued requiring operators of 20 or more vending machines to post calorie information. Section 4205 of the Affordable Care Act, a provision included in the law...

The federal government formally completed regulations that will force vending machines and restaurants to display calorie information, which can lead to businesses being fined thousands of dollars for not including the number of calories in a mayonnaise packet. The regulations, which originated in Obamacare, total 319 pages and will cost industry $1.7 billion to comply. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the final rules last week just before the Thanksgiving holiday, arguing the rules are “an important step for public health.” The final rules increased costs by $542 million from the proposed rules, totaling $531.1 million for vending machines,...

Let’s face it: school lunches are not exactly culinary masterpieces. But some fed-up students have been sharing some down-right disgusting-looking meals using the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama on social media. It’s not a new thing. These posts have been around when school started up in August. But as students get ready for the year’s biggest food holiday, the trend is picking up steam. …

The Philadelphia Veterans Affairs office announced Wednesday that it would hold a Halloween parade on Friday for children of VA employees, but warned employees not to hand out any candy or sweets to the kids. Instead, the VA said the day care center in the office has “joined First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move Program,” which means the kids should be given things other than candy. “Please help us teach our children to make healthy food choices!!” the VA said in an email to employees. “If you would like to hand out treats during the parade, please give healthy snacks...

Sen. Rand Paul took a playful jab at Michelle Obama and her healthy eating initiatives that condemn all types of junk food, tweeting to her handle to let her know the location of his first New Hampshire stop — Dunkin’ Donuts. He wrote, to his nearly half a million followers: “Just arrived in Manchester, New Hampshire. First stop: @DunkinDonuts cc: @MichelleObama,” The Hill reported. He didn’t specify his menu choices — but the jab was obviously at Mrs. Obama’s “Let’s Move!” anti-obesity campaign. The first lady has fielded considerable fire from schools, parents and hungry students who say her cafeteria...

(CNSNews.com) – In the first two years since First Lady Michelle Obama launched her ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to fight childhood obesity in 2010, teenage obesity rates increased, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). From 2009-2010, 18.4 percent of children ages 12-19 were classified as obese, according to the CDC. Since then, from 2011-2012, one in five children ages 12-19 or 20.5 percent, were classified as obese, an increase of 11.4 percent. The CDC has been tracking these data since 1966-1970, and at that time only 4.6 percent of teens were classified as obese. “The...

Get ready to see Michelle Obama on "The Chew"! The first lady joined co-hosts Mario Batali, Michael Symon, Carla Hall, Clinton Kelly and Daphne Oz earlier this week to discuss improving school nutrition and the importance of cooking at home, ABC announced Friday. Obama was also joined by Sam Kass, assistant White House chef and executive director of her Let’s Move! Initiative to fight childhood obesity.

MARIETTA — Federal food regulations going into effect this school year are affecting certain teachers’ lesson plans as well as the lunchroom menu. Limits on the calorie counts of foods that may be sold to students have interfered with the special education and culinary arts programs at Marietta High School, said Principal Leigh Colburn. The special education students sold coffee and food such as muffins to teachers and students every morning last year, but Colburn said the calorie counts of those items fall outside the new regulations because they’re more than 200 calories, which is the limit for a snack...

CHICAGO (CBS) – The state’s second largest school district has started the school year with a new look for its lunch menu, after opting out of the National School Lunch Program and forfeiting nearly $1 million in federal funding, to gain more freedom in the food it serves students. In May, the board for Township High School District 214 voted to drop out of the federal program, after deciding its guidelines were too restrictive. For instance, kids would not have been able to buy hard-boiled eggs or certain types of yogurt. School officials also have noted new guidelines consider hummus...

The U.S. Forest Service celebrated National Roasted Marshmallow Day the only way a government agency knows how — by telling people how not to roast smores.“Never start a campfire when there are fire restrictions in place,” the jovial blog post says. “Be sure you are at least 15 feet from tent walls, trees or other flammable objects.” It also recommends keeping children at least 10 feet from the campfire, ensuring that they take no part in dangerous marshmallow melting.Once minors have been safely sequestered out of sight, “let’s get to the marshmallow basics. Use a roasting stick of at least...

<p>President Barack Obama has spent Monday night at a nearly 5-hour dinner at the home of Sam Kass, a senior policy adviser for nutrition policy at the White House.</p> <p>The dinner, about a mile away from the White House in the Logan Circle neighborhood, also included Anita Decker Breckenridge, Obama's deputy chief of staff. The president had returned to Washington just after midnight Monday in a break from his summer vacation on Martha's Vineyard.</p>

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Some 500 former military leaders are deploying to Capitol Hill in an attempt to save Michelle Obama’s changes to the National School Lunch Program. Politico reports:

First lady Michelle Obama said something Wednesday that seems preposterously ironic to many American school kids: "No one really cares what you had for lunch." "I tease my kids," Michelle Obama said at a White House event on women's empowerment with Laura Bush. "I tell them I want them to use Instagram to take a picture of something really important rather than their food... I mean, no one really cares what you had for lunch." The audience laughed. The irony here is that public school children subjected to Michelle's vaunted "Let's Move" lunches have been tweeting photos of their lunches...

I mentioned two days ago the decision of schools to ban birthday cupcakes. Michelle Obama is essentially fighting with students to get them to change what they eat. But what is missing from this story is the proper context. The fact is that our bad eating habits are getting encouraged by taxpayer money. In fact, the government arguably changed our dietary habits to their present behavior. The Foundation for Economic Education came out with an article yesterday about dealing with “food deserts.”