Free Republic

(CNSNews.com)-- The School Nutrition Association (SNA), which represents 55,000 school nutritionists nationwide, is pointing to data published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to draw awareness to the fact that “after 30 years of steady growth in the National School Lunch Program, student participation is abruptly down in 49 states."The nutritionists attribute the drop to new nutrition standards that were instituted by USDA in 2012.Total national participation in the School Lunch Program peaked in 2010 and 2011 at 31.8 million, according to USDA. In 2012, it was 31.7 million. But in 2013, it dropped by 1 million participants, to 30.7...

Congressional Republicans are pushing back against proposed dietary guidelines that urge Americans to consider the environment when deciding what foods to eat. House and Senate spending bills say the guidelines must focus only on nutrition and diet. That’s a clear effort to thwart a recommendation by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee that eating a diet higher in vegetables and other plant-based foods is better for the environment than eating a diet based more on foods from animals. The advice from a government advisory panel of independent doctors and nutrition experts has raised the ire of the meat industry. The dietary...

The EPA is concerned that the average shower, which lasts just eight minutes, uses 18 gallons of water, and has asked Americans to reduce their shower length by at lest one minute The EPA wants hotels to monitor how much time its guests spend in the shower. The goal of the project is to change the behavior of Americans when they stay at hotels. (1) The agency is spending $15,000 to create a wireless system that will track how much water a hotel guest uses to get them to ‘modify their behavior.’ The EPA is concerned that the average shower,...

With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods. Teach your children to be independent this summer. We didn’t get trophies just for showing up. We were forced, yes, forced – to do actual work and no one called protective services. And we gained something from all of this. Our independence. Do you really think that children who are terrified by someone pointing his finger and saying “bang” are going to lead the revolution against tyranny? No, they will...

With all of the ridiculous new regulations, coddling, and societal mores that seem to be the norm these days, it’s a miracle those of us over 30 survived our childhoods. Here’s the problem with all of this babying: it creates a society of weenies. There won’t be more more rebels because this generation has been frightened into submission and apathy through a deliberately orchestrated culture of fear. No one will have faced adventure and lived to greatly embroider the story. Kids are brainwashed – yes, brainwashed – into believing that the mere thought of a gun means you’re a psychotic...

It wasn’t too much of a surprise when New York City moved to ban the use of e-cigarettes (or “vaping”) right before Christmas last year because it looked too much like smoking. After all, Gotham bans everything they can lay their little regulatory hands on if it looks like somebody might be enjoying themselves. (Foie gras ban, anyone?) But the state government tends to be at least somewhat slower on the trigger. Not in this case, though. Albany has already taken the next step towards banning vaping indoors all across the state. The fate of a bill banning electronic cigarettes...

If you had to name a theme for Obama’s second term, it would be regulatory overreach. Despite the repeated rejection of the President’s most controversial proposals by lawmakers, Mr. Obama has turned to his “pen and his phone” (and the vast government bureaucracy he controls) to enact his extreme and often unpopular agenda. Examples of the kind of executive overreach that have come to define his presidency include unilateral changes to Obamacare, sweeping new rules issued by the FCC designed to impose centuries railroad-style regulations on the internet, and the far-reaching and expensive red tape he is seeking to impose...

Hawaii’s governor has signed a bill to make his state the first to raise the legal smoking age to 21. The measure aims to prevent adolescents from smoking, buying or possessing both traditional and electronic cigarettes. Gov. David Ige signed it into law Friday. Dozens of local governments have similar bans, including Hawaii County and New York City. “Raising the minimum age as part of our comprehensive tobacco control efforts will help reduce tobacco use among our youth and increase the likelihood that our keiki will grow up tobacco-free,” said Ige, using the Hawaiian word for children. In Hawaii, 86...

It’s about freedom, not the fries. So says new Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller, who announced Thursday that the state is repealing a decade-old ban on deep fryers in public schools—an unappetizing reversal to national health advocates, school nutritionists and even his predecessor in the post. Miller, a self-described “pot-bellied” calf-roper and former teacher, says his focus is firmly on combating childhood obesity. But he says government mandates have failed to make kids healthier in Texas, where roughly two-thirds of residents are considered overweight or obese. He is also relaxing restrictions on certain soft drinks in campus vending machines, saying...

A program designed to promote ethanol and biodiesel fuels will be expanded to companies using plant-based plastic, rubber and fiber in manufacturing products such as bottles and packaging, the U.S. Agriculture Department said on Wednesday. The USDA is proposing in a new agency rule to add manufacturers of these plant-based products to a loan guarantee program that has provided more than $844 million for 10 biofuel projects since 2008. Loan guarantees allow companies building new plants to borrow money at lower interest rates. Under the proposed new rules, loans of up to $250 million will be offered to projects involving...

In an effort to protect the environment, Austin,Texas passed an ordinance banning single-use plastic bags in 2013. However, a recent review concludes that AustinÂ’s bag ban has backfired, creating more negative effects on the environment than the plastic bags it outlawed. [Â…] Two years after the bag ban was implemented, the city asked the Austin Resource Recovery group to investigate its effectiveness. Their June 10 report, written by Aaron Waters, states that while the ban was successful in lowering the amount of single-use plastic bags made from high-density polyethylene in city landfills, it was actually worse for the environment overall....

A £30,000 scheme to teach schoolchildren how to use Wikipedia has been condemned as a waste of taxpayers’ money. An IT expert is being paid the sum by a council to visit schools and show pupils aged 13 and 14 how to “critically engage” with the online encyclopedia. The children will be taught how to search for entries and look for mistakes and bias in articles. The scheme is set to begin at secondary schools in Leicester later this year. Council leaders say searching for information online and evaluating its reliability is “an essential skill for all citizens”. But Chris...

(CNSNews.com) – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), part of the Interior Department, will decide by September 30 whether to list the greater sage-grouse as an endangered or threatened species under the 1973 Endangered Species Act (ESA).The stakes are huge: Greater sage-grouse (or prairie chicken) habitat covers 165 million acres across 11 western states, but that is only half of what it used to be, the federal government says. At one time, the greater sage-grouse population likely numbered in the millions, but it is now estimated to be in the 200,000 to 500,000 range.The enormous sage grouse habitat also is home to...

The rash of tough pro-vaccine bills that infected state legislatures after the Disneyland measles outbreak has largely faded, and based on the uproar in California, it’s not hard to see why. The state capitol has been flooded off and on for months with parental-choice advocates drawing thousands for protests against Senate Bill 277, which would eliminate personal belief or religious exemptions and require all children without a medical exemption to be vaccinated before entering public school. And the outcry has only grown louder as the bill nears passage, spreading beyond the issue of vaccination safety and morphing into a full-blown...

Health groups are petitioning the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to ban eight synthetic flavors in food that are known carcinogens. The petition, led by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), said the flavors, which have been used for over 40 years, are found in ice cream, candy, baked goods and beverages. The petition asks FDA to revoke its 1964 approval that allowed seven of the eight flavorings to be used in food and overturn the industry’s 1974 self-approval of the eighth synthetic flavor, which they assert can be used under a loophole in the law for chemicals that are...

They were created almost 300 years ago by Fortnum & Mason as a pocket-sized snack for aristocrats travelling by horse-drawn carriage. But now the scotch egg has been labelled a junk food and is being removed from children's lunch boxes by schoolteachers. The traditional dish – a hard-boiled egg wrapped in sausage meat and coated in breadcrumbs – is seen as too unhealthy to be part of a balanced diet at Cherry Tree Primary School in Colchester. The school has taken the unusual step of asking teachers to look through pupils' lunch boxes and remove items that are deemed inappropriate....

President Obama, who claimed when he first entered the White House to have mostly kicked his nicotine habit, might have been caught on camera holding a pack of cigarettes.The commander in chief is seen clutching a white object in a snapshot with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi posted Sunday on Instagram by Renzi's spokesman.Obama and Renzi were both in Germany attending the G-7 summit. Several social media users questioned whether Obama was holding cigarettes in the pic, with one writing, “Smoking?”The White House did not immediately respond to ITK's request for comment on the photo and the last time President Obama had...

One in four Baltimore residents lives in a "food desert," according to a new study released Wednesday by Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who pledged to improve access to affordable and healthy food. In the 2015 Food Environment Map Report, researchers defined food deserts as areas where distance to a supermarket exceeds a quarter-mile; the median household income is at or below 185 percent of the federal poverty level; more than 30 percent of households lack a vehicle; and there's a low score on the so-called healthy food availability index. "We've never analyzed the food environment at this level before," Rawlings-Blake said,...

Terrified residents of a small upstate New York town grabbed their shotguns Tuesday after the two killers who staged a dramatic escape from a nearby state prison were tracked to their burg. They armed themselves even as legions of cops and corrections officers descended on tiny Willsboro, N.Y. in hot pursuit of escaped convicts Richard Matt and David Sweat. “My husband I both have conceal carry (licenses) and we have our guns loaded and they’re here in the house,” said Teresa Sayward, a former Republican Assemblywoman whose farm is located near where the wanted men were spotted. “Hopefully we won’t...

Congressional Democrats are pushing legislation that would ban the production of guns made entirely of plastic, The Hill reported. The Undetectable Firearms Modernization Act, proposed in response to recent airport security lapses, would require firearms to contain enough metal to be detected.