Free Republic

Politics: As children across America tweet photos of their meager school lunches, Gitmo detainees are fattening up and illegal aliens are getting second helpings. How our government sets priorities is just amazing. 'Our greatest assets are our children," President Obama said last month as he signed something called "America's Promise Summit Declaration" that pledged in part to keep children "healthy." But healthy's hardly the word that comes to mind when you read all the "#thanksObama" commentary on Twitter and other social media by disgusted kids posting photos of their government-issued victuals. In a bid to meet the rigid regulations of...

CHICKASHA, Okla. – Lunch meat, a couple of crackers, a slice of cheese and two pieces of cauliflower qualified as lunch in Chickasha Public Schools Monday. Chickasha lunchStudent Kaytlin Shelton took a photo of the skimpy lunch and showed it to her parents. “It makes me want to take that and take it to the Superintendent and tell him to eat it for lunch,” the girl tells Fox 25. “I can go pay a dollar for a Lunchable and get more food in it,” her father, Vince Holton, says. [Snip] The new lunch complies with lunch regulations championed by...

A student has provoked complaints by parents after taking a photo of her paltry school meal of lunch meat, a couple crackers, a slice of cheese and two pieces of cauliflower. Kaytlin Shelton, 17, who is eight months pregnant, took a photo of the $3 meal at a Chickasha school on Monday and showed it to her father who said it was not satisfactory. Her father Vince Holton said: 'I can go pay a dollar for a lunchabe and get more food in it. Schools are responsible for children while they're at school.'

As school children continue to protest Michelle Obama’s push for healthier lunches by dumping their full trays into garbage bins, the nation’s school boards are joining in to demand that the Obama administration let them off the hook of serving the costly and tasteless meals. Armed with a national poll for National School Lunch Week, the National School Boards Association on Monday demanded that Washington address the “onerous requirements for federal school meal programs

For many young professionals far from their schools days and a ways away from having children of their own, the battle over healthier school lunches seems of little relevance. But in Washington, D.C., the policy debate has become an all encompassing issue highlighting the intricate network of lobbyists, corporations and associations all with a financial stake in a policy that was otherwise born of good intentions. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2010, offering $4.5 billion in new funding over 10 years. However, the details of the new program have yet to be implemented due to a growing...

The lunch ladies loved Marshall Matz. For more than 30 years, he worked the halls and back rooms of Washington for the 55,000 dues-paying members of the School Nutrition Association, the men and still mostly women who run America’s school-lunch programs. So when Michelle Obama started Let’s Move!, her campaign against child obesity, in 2010, the members of the School Nutrition Association were her natural allies. Today the School Nutrition Association is Washington’s loudest and most public critic of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Even as they claim to support the act, the lunch ladies have become the shock troops...

First lady Michelle Obama believes that Democrats running for Congress eagerly desire her presence on the campaign trail during the run-up to the 2014 midterm elections. However, she has avoided helping some Senate Democrats because she’s mad at them for failing to show adequate support for her deeply unpopular attempt to change people’s diets. The Daily Caller is not making this up. The New York Times has reported it. The first lady has expressed frustration with Senate Democrats because they didn’t do enough to fight Republican attempts to weaken the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act,” explains the Times. The 2010 law...

Local school districts around the country are going to take a huge financial hit in fiscal year 2015 because the cost of the school lunches they offer is expected to triple. The combination of escalating costs because of harsher restrictions and the dwindling number of students enrolled in the program, which limits reimbursements from the federal government, are going to rigger the enormous rise in costs, according to the School Nutrition Association (SNA). SNA is comprised of 55,000 school nutrition professionals around the country. SNA CEO Patricia Montague said, "School nutrition professionals have led the way in promoting improved diets...

I guess you all saw the guest posting notice yesterday, so you know that MOTUS is away on a “girlie weekend” and I will be guest posting in her absence. I’m not sure what a “girlie weekend” is, butt I do know it involves an afternoon at a spa with Lady M for manicure,pedicureand Glass Wax-ing.She called me yesterday, during her pedicure, to tell me she was having fun and reminded me not to post turnip porn.I won’t.Carrot PornButt it is harvest time, and with so many schools dumping Lady M’s taste-free, school lunch programs, root vegetable prices are dropping...

The topics discussed by California R-I School Board at the Wednesday, Sept. 17, meeting included school lunch menus, the recent power surge/failure, sports participation and possible half-time entertainment The lunch menus were high on the list because of some recent social media comments and a few phone calls to school board members. Superintendent Dwight Sanders commented that the school cooks are doing their best to prepare meals which fall within the guidelines. An example given was if a cheese sauce is served with spaghetti, the guidelines will not allow a serving of bread, since that would be a second grain...

It looks like the days of trading half of your peanut butter and jelly sandwich for half of your best friend’s ham sandwich may soon be over if the federal government has anything to do with it. A Richmond, Virginia mother received the following note, telling her not to pack a lunch for her pre-school age child. Dear Parents, I have received word from Federal Programs Preschool pertaining to lunches from home. Parents are to be informed that students can only bring lunches from home if there is a medical condition requiring a specific diet, along with a physicians note...

An overwhelming majority of parents — including most Republicans — back federal school nutrition standards, a new poll found. The findings released Monday by The Pew Charitable Trusts, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Heart Association stand in stark contrast to a partisan spat in Congress over the Agriculture Department’s regulations. More than seven in ten parents back national standards for both snacks and meals in schools. The poll found that 75 percent of parents believe salt should be limited in meals and 91 percent support requirements that schools include a serving of fruits. When broken down along...

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...

Who imagined that the Obama administration’s effort to make school lunches more nutritious (but less delicious) would encourage children to become little community organizers? The U.S. Agriculture Department has found an upside to all those “healthy” school lunches that students refuse to eat: It says schools can use the plate waste as a “learning opportunity” to turn young students into “civic-minded, community-conscious adults.” …

An eruption of aggravation about what American schoolchildren can no longer eat in school cafeterias is never far away in the Obama era.Now, thanks to federal intervention that first lady Michelle has made her signature issue, students in all 11 taxpayer-funded public schools in Elyria, Ohio cannot enjoy the famous Elyria pink cookie anymore.This cookie is no ordinary cookie, according to The Chronicle-Telegram, the Cleveland suburb’s local newspaper.It’s a velvety, cake-like, scrumptious delicacy glazed with a huge dollop of sugary pink icing. Cleveland magazine dubbed the Elyria pink cookie the “Best Cafeteria Cookie” in 2009. Locals will even call up...

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:

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: Mission: Readiness, a group of nearly 500 former military leaders, is planning to “storm the Hill” when Congress comes back to town next month and urge lawmakers to keep new school nutrition standards intact. “We’re not going to retreat our way out of the problem,” said Lt. Gen. Norman Seip, who served in the Air Force for 35 years and is now a vocal advocate for the group. (snip) While that...

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...

Michelle Obama’s food policy czar, celebrity chef Sam Kass, was once so in with the lunch lady crowd, he landed a guest judge spot on a tearful school lunch episode of Food Network’s “Chopped” and handed out awards at the School Nutrition Association’s convention in Denver. Two years later, when he asked to speak at the group’s annual convention this week in Boston, the answer: “No.” The rebuke shows how ugly the fight has become between the first lady and her supporters, who want kids to eat more fruits, vegetables and whole grains in their school lunches, and the organization...

New York's $75 billion spending plan for the fiscal year that began last week includes the first step toward offering free lunch for all 1.1 million students, expanding a program now reserved only for the city's poorest children. Starting in September, the city will spend an additional $6.25 million a year so that all 177,000 students in the sixth through eighth grades will qualify for free breakfast and lunch. By expanding the program, advocates seek to eliminate the shame and embarrassment that keep many children who qualify for the free lunches from receiving them.