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A Los Angeles food services director who was invited to the White House by former First Lady Michelle Obama to share his tips for getting kids to eat healthy has been indicted for stealing $65,000 in public funds. David Binkle, a chef who served as the director of food services for Los Angeles Unified School District until he was fired in 2015, was charged last week with multiple counts of embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, forgery, and perjury. In 2014, Binkle traveled to the White House for a nutrition roundtable with Mrs. Obama. Binkle bragged that he...

A Los Angeles food services director who was invited to the White House by former First Lady Michelle Obama to share his tips for getting kids to eat healthy has been indicted for stealing $65,000 in public funds.David Binkle, a chef who served as the director of food services for Los Angeles Unified School District until he was fired in 2015, was charged last week with multiple counts of embezzlement, misappropriation of public funds, conflict of interest, forgery, and perjury, the L.A. Times reported.In 2014, Binkle traveled to the White House for a nutrition roundtable with Mrs. Obama.

President Trump is making school lunches great again, or at least a lot better than they were during the Obama administration. Food service directors are applauding recent changes to federal school food regulations imposed on schools as part of Michelle Obama’s campaign against childhood obesity. […] Regulations imposed through the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act put strict limitations on calories, fat, sugar, salt, and other elements of foods served in public schools that participate in the national school lunch or breakfast programs. …

After sustained lobbying from the packaged food and beverage industry, the Food and Drug Administration announced Tuesday an indefinite delay in the launch of Nutrition Fact labels that were intended to help Americans eat more healthfully. The labels, championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama, were supposed to add a special line for “added sugars” and emphasize calorie content in large, bold text. They had been scheduled for rollout in July 2018, with a one-year extension for smaller manufacturers. The delay is the latest reversal of the Obama administration’s nutrition reforms under Trump. On April 27, the FDA also delayed...

Operation Food Search is launching an expanded summer program this week, providing free meals to children under the age of 18 who would normally eat breakfast and lunch at school. Some of the meals will come from food truck-like vans. Starting Monday and continuing through Aug. 11, program leaders plan to distribute more than 100,000 meals to hungry children in St. Louis and St. Louis County, exceeding last year’s record. The summer program, now in its sixth year, has grown from providing 5,000 meals in 2012, Executive Director Sunny Schaefer said....

Michelle Obama on Friday criticized a Trump administration decision to delay federal rules aimed at making school lunch healthier, saying kids will end up "eating crap" instead.

A fiery Michelle Obama vigorously defended the healthy eating initiative that was her biggest legacy as First Lady on Friday, telling a public health summit in Washington D.C. that something was “wrong” with an administration that did not want to give consumers nutrition information or teach children to eat healthily. “We gotta make sure we don’t let anybody take us back,” Obama said. “This is where you really have to look at motives, you know. You have to stop and think, why don’t you want our kids to have good food at school? What is wrong with you?

Michelle Obama has made her strongest political intervention since leaving the White House, stating bluntly at a health conference: “Think about why someone is OK with your kids eating crap.” One of the former first lady’s signature legacies was an effort to reduce childhood obesity. Earlier this month, Donald Trump’s administration froze regulations that would cut sodium and increase whole grains served in school meals. -- snip -- The 53-year-old demanded: “And why is that a partisan issue? Why would that be political? What is going on? You know, now that’s up to moms. Moms, think about this. I don’t...

Former first lady Michelle Obama on Friday bashed critics who complain that kids don't like the healthier food served under the school meal changes implemented during the Obama administration. "How about we not let kids completely guide everything?" she said, speaking at the annual summit on childhood obesity for the Partnership for a Healthier America. "How about we stop asking kids how they feel about their food? Kids, my kids included, if they could eat pizza and french fries every day with ice cream on top and a soda, they would think they were happy, until they got sick. "That...

LEESBURG, Va. (AP) — Schools won't have to cut more salt from meals just yet and some will be able to serve kids fewer whole grains, under changes to federal nutrition standards announced Monday. The move by the Trump administration partially rolls back rules championed by former first lady Michelle Obama as part of her healthy eating initiative. As his first major action in office, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue said the department will delay an upcoming requirement to lower the amount of sodium in meals while continuing to allow waivers for regulations that all grains on the lunch line must...

The Trump administration is discontinuing a signature girls education initiative championed by former first lady Michelle Obama, according to officials. The "Let Girls Learn" program, which she and President Barack Obama started in 2015 to facilitate educational opportunities for adolescent girls in developing countries, will cease operation immediately, according to an internal document obtained by CNN. News of the program's end came the same day President Donald Trump's agriculture secretary, Sonny Perdue, was visiting an elementary school in suburban Virginia to announce changes to another initiative spotlighted by the former first lady, healthy school lunches. Perdue was set to unveil...

Chocolate milk is coming back on the school lunch menu. So is white bread and saltier food. Several paragraphs tucked into in a massive 1,665-page government spending bill released on Monday would relax Obama-era nutrition standards for school lunches. On page 101 of the spending bill due for congressional votes later this week, the Secretary of Agriculture is directed to allow states to grant schools exemptions so they can serve flavored, low-fat milk and bread products that are not whole grain rich. “If kids aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition...

Good news! Michelle Obama’s inedible school lunches are about to be a thing of the past. Michelle Obama admittedly loves enchiladas and french fries (and her figure showed it), but she loved to lecture everyone else’s children about eating vegetables. This is what you get with an elite, overreaching government, folks; they tell your children what to eat. Via The Daily Caller: Perdue and Kansas Republican Sen. Pat Roberts will release a new interim rule “designed to provide flexibility for school meals” at an elementary school in Leesburg, Va. Monday, a USDA press release stated. The exact nature of the...

Lunch menus at schools across Orange County will soon be revamped, and those changes will be based on choices by the district’s toughest critics—students. Students at Dream Elementary School in Apopka casts their votes via iPads during a tasting Thursday. The process showed the important need to continue free or reduced meal programs. The goal of the taste test was to get all of the students on the same page when it comes to what they eat for breakfast and lunch at school. “We don’t want the food to end up in the trash can, so we do our homework...

An anonymous donor has paid off lunch debts for 148 Johnston elementary school students whose accounts were in the red by $10 or more. The donation, totaling $13,250, was made Jan. 9. It benefited students in kindergarten through fifth grade in all five Johnston elementary schools, said Laura Sprague, director of communications. The Johnston Partnership also runs a program called Friday Friends that provides a packet of food for students to eat over the weekend. Each backpack costs around $8.15 per week and the program relies on donations.

The healthy school lunch program championed by former first lady Michelle Obama has had its fair share of criticism -- but with a new administration in place, the program could be rolled back. A document released by the office of Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., called for repealing certain aspects of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 – the legislation that helped put Michelle Obama’s hallmark program into law. The initiative is part of a broader plan released by Meadows titled, “First 100 Days: Rules, Regulations, and Executive Orders to Examine, Revoke and Issue.” The document calls for the Trump...

Michelle Obama will be ceding the title of first lady to Melania Trump next month, but she may hold for some time the other distinction she earned during her time in the White House: America's best known advocate for healthy food. The non-profit organization she helped create as first lady, Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), where she is honorary chair, will continue its work convincing food companies to improve nutrition content and labeling of products, the group said. "Michelle Obama has been a tremendous leader in this space," said Larry Soler, president and chief executive of the group. "That...

The threat Donald Trump poses to President Obama’s legacy was well established from his earliest days on the campaign trail, when the businessman promised that he would abolish several of Obama's core policies. But the president is not the only Obama whose achievements President-elect Trump could roll back. The incoming president also could undo the substantial public health and nutrition changes accomplished with the urging of Michelle Obama. The first lady has spent the past eight years championing anti-obesity initiatives, pushing an aggressive policy and public-outreach agenda that has played a part in changing how millions of Americans, particularly schoolchildren,...

Government-funded school meals are driving the obesity epidemic, a new study warns. Millions of low-income families rely on subsidized breakfast and lunches at public school to feed their children. But a landmark paper has concluded these fat- and meat-heavy dishes are putting children at risk of being overweight. It is a damning indictment of Michelle Obama's years-long meal program.