Free Republic

Local school districts in Wisconsin are opting out of the onerous school lunch guidelines that have been pushed largely by First Lady Michelle Obama as part of her campaign to fight obesity, choosing instead to make their own guidelines about proper food nutrition at the local level. As the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel reports, Rick Petfalski, school board president of the Muskego-Norway School District, said, “We believe that proper food nutrition and meal portion guidelines are best decided at a local level.” Petfalski’s school district’s decision to opt out of the National School Lunch Program means it will no longer receive...

NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I. – First Lady Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch menu is finally getting some love from a group of young eaters. Some 3,000 pigs at My Blue Heaven Farm in Rhode Island have been dining on students’ lunch leftovers from two nearby school systems, according to WoonsocketCall.com.The pigs are enjoying “half-eaten tuna sandwiches and other food scraps students discard during their lunch periods” as part of a new recycling program established by the town of Cumberland, the news site reports.The recycling program has been so successful that officials are planning to expand it in the fall.The school food...

First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign is claiming that salad bars have increased student participation in school lunch, despite a report that found one million children fled the lunch line in response to her new lunch standards.“Let’s Move!” released findings from their own survey for its “Salad Bars to Schools” program on Thursday, touting the addition of salad bars in some schools.“More than 1.7 million school-age children in the United States have better access to fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to new salad bars donated to schools through Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools,” Let’s Move said in a blog...

House Republicans are trying to end Michelle Obama’s school lunch initative and the First Lady’s not happy about it. She used a White House event on Tuesday to rally opposition to a bill passed by a House subcommittee that would allow districts to suspend the program. From Fox News: Seeing her nutritional standards under threat, the first lady hosted a discussion with school leaders on Tuesday afternoon at the White House where she ripped efforts to roll back those guidelines. “This is unacceptable,” Obama said. The first lady said families realize the country is facing a “health crisis,” and the...

It’s just so confusing. Do you feed your kids bologna sandwiches or pieces of wet cardboard? Can you give them PlayDoh on a dead mackerel?Modern grads of Ivy League colleges don’t have the time to figure all this stuff out. That’s why there are government bureaucrats who tell schools what to feed kids so they don’t die of cardboard overdose.And there’s Michelle Obama who spends more time obsessed with what your kids eat than most major food conglomerates. In an interview with MSN.com, First Lady Michelle Obama explained she used to struggle to feed her kids right—even though she received...

As the U.S. House of Representatives prepared to consider the fiscal year 2015 agricultural appropriations bill, the White House threatened to veto the legislation due to opposition related to funding provisions related to school nutrition programs, potatoes in the Women, Infants and Children program and other policy issues.This is the first veto threat from the White House for fiscal year 2015 spending bills.“The bill undermines key investments in financial oversight, injects political decision-making into science-based nutrition standards, and includes objectionable language riders,” said the official Statement of Administration Policy. “If the President were presented with H.R. 4800, his senior advisors...

First lady Michelle Obama and school lunch ladies used to be on the same team, but now they’re locked in a political war against each other. For the first three years of Obama’s Let’s Move! campaign, the School Nutrition Association, a powerful group that represents 55,000 cafeteria professionals, was a close ally in the White House push to get kids to eat healthier. The group helped lobby for the legislation at the center of the debate: the 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, a law championed by the first lady that mandates more fruits and vegetables, whole grains and less sodium...

WHEN we began our Let’s Move! initiative four years ago, we set one simple but ambitious goal: to end the epidemic of childhood obesity in a generation so that kids born today will grow up healthy. To achieve this goal, we have adhered to one clear standard: what works. The initiatives we undertake are evidence-based, and we rely on the most current science. Research indicated that kids needed less sugar, salt and fat in their diets, so we revamped school lunch menus accordingly. When data showed that the lack of nearby grocery stores negatively affected people’s eating habits, we worked...

- FrontPage Magazine - http://www.frontpagemag.com - Can Americans Be Trusted to Oversee School Lunches Themselves?Posted By Arnold Ahlert On May 29, 2014 @ 12:25 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | No Comments On Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama took on House Republicans, criticizing their attempt to roll back the current guidelines for school lunches. “It’s unacceptable to me, not just as first lady but also as a mother,” she declared during a White House meeting with school nutrition officials. “The last thing we can afford to do right now is play politics with our kids’ health. Now is not the time to roll back everything...

There’s a hashtag filled with colorful commentary and color pictures of the devastation Michelle Obama’s healthy school lunch initiative has wrought on the plastic platters of America’s school children. There’s a GAO report showing participation in the school lunch program down more than 1 million students— the first such decline in years— while costs are up and the actual nutritional value of these allegedly improved meals remains in question. But none of this requires reevaluation. The real problem with Michelle Obama’s crusade and a top-down, inflexible federal mandate for students of varying sizes and tastes is that Republicans are pointing...

Today’s reflection: “Obama Unleashes His Inner Geek (Again) at White House Science Fair.”"The last thing we can afford to do right now is play politics with our kids' health."The science is settled then: if you want to eat, you’ll eat what we tell you to eat. Posted from: Michelle Obama’s Mirror 

With public school students using #ThanksMichelle to tweet photos of their skimpy, stomach-turning school lunches, I decided to look at what Michelle Obama's daughters are served at Sidwell Friends school, and it turns out the girls dine on lunches from menus designed by chefs. While the Obama daughters have enjoyed dishes like chicken coconut soup, local butternut squash soup, crusted tilapia, they also get their fill of what Mrs. Obama might consider junk food. This week, for example, they'll enjoy meatball subs, BBQ wings, and ice cream, in addition to chicken curry, deviled egg salad and the intriguing "Chef's Choice."...

Michelle Obama’s new dietary restrictions is so bad that they can’t even GIVE the food away. A million kids have turned away from Obama’s school lunch and schools are feeling the huge hit. Via The Hill: More than a million kids confronted by healthier school lunches are turning up their noses, leaving the cafeteria and heading out to get a burger instead. The difficulty in getting students to eat lower-fat, lower-sodium meals is at the center of a food fight between House Republicans and first lady Michelle Obama that erupted this week.

Just a day after House Republicans introduced legislation to roll back some Department of Agriculture (USDA) regulations on school meal programs, the USDA announced some flexibility would be granted to some schools for the coming school year when implementing the new policies:

A school district in Chicago’s northwest suburbs is quitting the National School Lunch Program over new regulations championed by first lady Michelle Obama. The so-called Smart Snacks in School policy, set to take effect on July 1, is the latest attempt by our Regulator-in-Chief to dictate every aspect of Americans’ behavior. It dictates strict calorie, sodium, fat, and sugar guidelines for any food sold in schools during the day. That even includes the ubiquitous bake sales and other fundraisers. Instead of forcing the school district’s 500 low income kids and others to eat “healthier,” however, the administration is only creating...

ALEXANDRIA, Va. (AP) — Becky Domokos-Bays of Alexandria City Public Schools has served her students whole-grain pasta 20 times. Each time, she said, they rejected it. Starting next school year, pasta and other grain products in schools will have to be whole-grain rich, or more than half whole grain.

The USDA has managed to make school lunches stink even more. So why does the government continue?>School lunches still stink. But now unprecedented numbers of students are refusing to eat them.Last month I noted that a GAO report had found that last school year's disastrous rollout of the updated USDA National School Lunch Program helped drive 1.6 million paying students from the lunch rolls. The new rules led some schools to abandon the program, as I reported in 2012. What's more, the new rules, championed by First Lady Michelle Obama, have also resulted in unprecedented mountains of food waste.As I...

School leaders are getting ready for a big change in school food service. The USDA’s Smart Snacks in School rules go into effect July 1, 2014. In short, all “junk food” in vending machines, a la carte lunch, student stores and fundraisers such as bakes sales is banned July 1st. “I think that’s great!” said Betsy Hunsucker, a Brownsburg mother. “I think kids would love fruits and vegetables.” Fruits, vegetables, dairy, protein-rich foods and whole grain-rich foods are allowed. Water, milk and 100% fruit and vegetable juice is permitted. High school students can have caffeine and low-calorie carbonated drinks. There...

First, about one million public school students said “no way” to their cafeteria menus after Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign led to anger and frustration over food that apparently many American kids didn’t want to stomach. But for those without other options, all that’s left is the power of social media and cell phone cameras when they simply can’t take another bite:

Today is First World Problem (FWP) Day: In which we examine issues and problems that only occur because as a culture we have more than our fair share of everything, including time to be outraged:So here we go, in no particular order, this week’s First World Problems:1. Our culture of plenty has resulted in an epidemic of obesity.Overweight kids have forced Lady M to lower the boom on fattening school lunches, resulting in cut backs on portions and variety. This has caused some student blow-back. (caution: “colorful” language)2. Our culture of Plenty and resulting obesity epidemic has caused a preoccupation...