With Trump rollback, school lunch could get more white bread

Associated Press ^ | May 2, 2019 | Candice Choi

[Olog-hai]

Is white bread about to make a comeback on school lunch menus?

After complaints about taste and costs, the Trump administration rolled back a rule that required foods like pasta and bread be made with whole grains. The cafeteria directors who lobbied for the change say they just want greater flexibility to serve foods like white bread — which are more processed and have less fiber — when whole grains don’t work.

In Vermont, the relaxed rule means white rice will be served with beans again. In Oregon, macaroni and cheese may return. And in South Dakota, students may notice a change with their soup.

“The staff asked right away, ‘Oh my God, can we go back to the other saltines?’” said Gay Anderson, a school lunch director and president of the School Nutrition Association, which represents cafeteria operators and suppliers like Domino’s and Kellogg.

The rollback addresses rules on grains, milk and salt championed by former first lady Michelle Obama. …

[susannah59]

I think the obesity problem in children has far more to do with the lack of activity than with what’s in their school lunch.

A few years ago I was talking with a mom who was concerned because her 7-year-old had put on quite a bit of weight over the previous six months. Then she told me that he had been given a video game system for Christmas. When I told her that, well, there’s your problem, she looked at me as if I’d grown another head. I had to spell out the dramatic decrease in physical activity her son had had since getting the game system before she understood what I was telling her.

I talked with another lady recently who expressed concern about her grandson’s weight. She didn’t have to be told what was causing his problem. She has a daughter-in-law who is a bit of a nut case. DIL won’t let the grandson play outside. Period. He’s about 10 but she lives in great fear that if he spends any time outside he’ll be kidnapped. According to grandma, they have a fenced back yard, with a dog, but the kid isn’t even allowed to go out there. Mom, of course, is too busy to go outside with the kid or to take him to the park or anywhere else to play, so he’s cooped up indoors all the time.

Add the lack of physical activity to the lack of eating actual food- at home, not at school- and of course kids are bigger.

[miss marmelstein]

That DIL is indeed a nut! I grew up during the baby boom and mothers hoped their kids would be kidnapped. (I’m joking.) But seriously, parents didn’t worry so much about kids, maybe because they had so many of them.

I will say down here in Alabama I’m shocked at what people put in their supermarket wagons - especially in the black community but also sometimes among whites. Add in the hot climate that discourages outdoor activity and you’ve got obesity on steroids.