Free Republic

Not so long ago in this republic, most parents of school-age children would frequently visit grocery stores where they would use their own money to buy things like peanut butter and jelly, and bologna and cheese to make lunches for their kids to haul to school in brown paper bags. It was an American tradition. Now, like other great things about America, brown-bag lunches are being driven to extinction by politicians seeking inordinate government control over our lives. In fiscal year 1969 (which started in 1968), there were approximately 47,906,000 American children enrolled in elementary and high schools,

It is an old saying that there is no such thing as a free lunch, but a record 18.7 million American schoolchildren would not have learned that lesson when they attended school in fiscal year 2012. That is because U.S. taxpayers—via the U.S. Department of Agriculture—were picking up the tab for their lunch. According to new data from the USDA, during the average school month in fiscal year 2012, 18.7 million students in U.S. high schools and grammar schools were given completely free lunches, courtesy of the department’s National School Lunch Program. That was up from the record of 18.4...

WASHINGTON — A bipartisan group of senators is backing a bill that makes permanent a more relaxed set of U.S. Department of Agriculture nutrition guidelines for students’ breakfasts and lunches in the nation’s schools. The Sensible School Lunch Act was recently introduced by Sens. John Hoeven, R-N.D., and Mark Pryor, D-Ark. The act fixes the latest rulings on meat and grain servings made in December by the Department of Agriculture. It will “make sure that schools are able to provide healthy, nutritious school lunches” and breakfasts, Hoeven said Tuesday. “But at the same time, that we have the common sense...

Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas. The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus. Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead. Lunchrooms that now sell fatty “à la carte” items like mozzarella sticks and nachos would have to switch to healthier pizzas, low-fat...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Most candy, high-calorie drinks and greasy meals could soon be on a food blacklist in the nation's schools. For the first time, the government is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful. Under the new rules the Agriculture Department proposed Friday, foods like fatty chips, snack cakes, nachos and mozzarella sticks would be taken out of lunch lines and vending machines. In their place would be foods like baked chips, trail mix, diet sodas, lower-calorie sports drinks and low-fat hamburgers.

I’m pretty critical of Senator John Hoeven at times, but he deserves credit for going to bat against federal overreach on school lunches. New federal guidelines that, among others things, limited calories in school lunches rankled parents and school administrators across the nation. It was a one-size-fits-all policy for a nation full of students who have very different nutritional needs.Now, thanks to the work of Senator Hoeven (who teamed up with Arkansas Democrat Mark Pryor), the calorie restriction is no more, though just for the 2012-2013 school year. So it’s a temporary reprieve, for now. From a press release sent...

I see that Ag Secretary Tommy and his Vilsacks were forced to walk back their recent schoolyard food police “guidelines.” I’m referring of course to the USDA’s dictates restricting the amount of fat, salt, sugar, meat and grains in public school lunch programs. Under the new program some of the kids were so hungry that the schools evidently had to add breakfast and after school mini-dinner programs as well. So clearly this was not a cost cutting measure, butt simply a well intentioned “we know better than you what to feed your kids” edict (sponsored by the SEIU, now representing...

In a taste test of new lunch items last year in the Long Beach Unified School District, the fiesta salad received a nearly 73 percent approval rating. One student even declared that the dish of pinto beans, cilantro, corn, tomatoes and cayenne pepper was "better than McDonald's." Yet the salad was a flop when the district put it on the menu this year. A recent statewide survey shows that although students overwhelmingly support the new nutrition standards, most are tossing the foods they don't like. About 40 percent of students say they eat school lunches in their entirety. But what...

Annika Eriksson, a long-time Swedish chef revered for her school lunches, has been squelched. Has she made errors? Are her meals contaminated? Has the quality of her ingredients slipped? No, none of the above. The trouble stems purely from the fact that her meals are too good. Yes, you read that right. She’s exceeding expectations. She bakes fresh bread every day. She offers 15 different vegetables at lunchtime. She knows it pleases the students to have choices. This is her crime because, you see, other schools don’t have the same benefits in the Falun district in Sweden. (This is called...

School lunches are now the hot topic as lunch trays are a bit lighter and calories are being limited. The so-called “nanny-state” has spread across America and into our schools as First Lady Michelle Obama, despite not being a nutritionist, has decided she knows what's best for our children’s diets. This is part of her “Let’s Move” campaign, and it resulted in the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act” which was passed into law by the lame duck, Democrat-controlled Congress in December 2010.[1] Now the frustrations that played out in the Occupy movement have moved into the hallways of our schools as...

WEST HARTFORD —— The beef is there, but where's the pickle? That's the question students at Hall High School have been asking on hamburger day in the cafeteria since the food services department made menu changes to meet new school lunch rules from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Students are "outraged over the removal of pickles and salt from the cafeteria at Hall to meet nutrition guidelines," student representative Kendall Teare told the school board last week.

House Republicans say new U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) guidelines aimed at forcing students to eat fruits and vegetables are a failure because students across the country are simply tossing the healthy fare into the trash. "[T]here remains great concern with the amount of food waste generated at school cafeterias, much of it brought on by requiring students to take fruits and vegetables rather than simply offer them," Reps. John Kline (R-Minn.), Kristi Noem (R-S.D.) and Phil Roe (R-Tenn.) told USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack in a letter sent Thursday. "This is a waste of federal, state and local funds and...

They may be good for you, but some students are having a tough time swallowing the new, healthier school lunches. Across the United States, students are protesting new federal guidelines that have school lunches packing more fruits and vegetables, fewer carbohydrates and less meat. About 120 students at Jordan Middle School boycotted the lunch program to show their distaste, as did students in Wisconsin, New Jersey and Michigan. "The federal government is trying to solve a problem that every kid doesn't have," said Jacob Taxdahl, an eighth-grade football player at Jordan Middle School who started the three-day boycott via a...

Students boycotting school lunchesPublished: Oct. 6, 2012 at 4:46 PM NEW YORK, Oct. 6 (UPI) -- Many U.S. high school students are protesting new, healthier school lunches, and a professor says it may take a while for students to accept healthier food. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year, providing fruits and vegetables and limiting fat, sodium, and calories, The New York Times reported Friday. "Before, there was no taste and no flavor," said Malik Barrows, a senior at Automotive High School in Brooklyn. "Now there's no taste, no...

Instead of paying for their lunches with crumpled dollar bills and loose change, students in Carroll County schools are having their palms scanned in a new check-out system — raising concerns from some parents that their children's privacy is being violated. The county is one of the first localities in Maryland to use the PalmSecure system, in which children from kindergarten to 12th grade place their hands above an infrared scanner. It identifies unique palm and vein patterns, and converts the image into an encrypted numeric algorithm that records a sale.

Lake County School Board officials are considering attaching cameras to school cafeteria trash cans to study what students are tossing after officials found that most of the vegetables on the school menu end up in the trash can. New federal laws require students to take a healthy produce at lunchtime, but last year in Lake County, students tossed $75,000 worth of produce in the garbage. "It's a big issue, and it's very hard to get our hands around it," said School Board member Todd Howard, who suggested "trash-cams." "They have to take (the vegetable), and then it ends up in...

Government-approved school meals as a model for the family dinner table? Responding to concerns that students are throwing away the healthy food on their cafeteria trays, the U.S. Department of Agriculture acknowledged that adapting to the changes "may be challenging at first, as students are introduced to new flavors and foods in the cafeteria." But the government also says parents can help school make the taste-transition easier: "We know that many parents are already making changes at home to help the whole family eat healthier," the USDA blogged on Monday. "We recommend reviewing school menus with kids at home and...

<p>At Triangle Elementary School in Mount Dora, students shuffle through the lunch lines loading their plates with pears, plums, pizza slices and fruit slushies.</p> <p>At the lunch tables, many devour the cheese-and-mushroom pizza, guzzle their milk but leave whole pears, ripened plums and the slushies destined for the garbage.</p>

Unprecedented school-lunch regulations have just gone into effect, and they suggest a new answer to the question “Where’s the beef?”: not on students’ plates— or on their bones. The regulations are a result of Michelle Obama’s “Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act,” which was passed by the lame-duck, Democrat-controlled Congress in December 2010. And the result has been wasted food, endangered health, and hungrier kids. The problem is that, in typical nanny-state style, the regulations not only prescribe foods many children find unpalatable, they also apply unrealistic calorie restrictions on students: “650 calories for elementary-schoolers, 700 for middle-schoolers and 850...

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...