Posted on 09/23/2012 7:12:18 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
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 roll back the new standards, told The Daily Caller that King’s office has heard more complaints about the issue during the past few weeks than any other.
“This year, we’ll be hungry by 2:00,” one student, Zach Eck, told KAKETV in Kansas. “We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value.”
Iowa mom Robin Wissink told TheDC that she now provides her autistic daughter Molly, a junior in high school, with a bag lunch because her school’s new menu is so unappealing. Students at St. Mark’s in Colwich, Kan. have also been “brown bagging” their meals.
And some student-athletes in Wisconsin are arguing that the calorie caps hit them especially hard, given their intense workouts and scrimmages.
“A lot of us are starting to get hungry even before the practice begins,” Mukwonago High senior Nick Blohm told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. “Our metabolisms are all sped up.”
The new lunch standards have led to the removal of some old food favorites, including a particularly popular item at one school in upstate New York: chicken nuggets.
“Now they’re kind of forcing all the students to get the vegetables and fruit with their lunch, and they took out chicken nuggets this year, which I’m not too happy about,” Chris Cimino, a senior at Mohonasen High School in upstate New York, told the Associated Press, which gave the rules a “mixed grade.”
Students in the Plum Borough School District in Pennsylvania are protesting the new federal restrictions on Twitter.
“everyone.. if you agree school lunches are expensive and small, RT this. we can fight the school! tweet #BrownBagginIt,” @TornadoBoyTubbs tweeted, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Administrators have scrambled to find creative ways to make the new menus appealing. A school district in Lake County, Fla., for example, is planning to conduct a survey to determine how to make vegetables more appealing to children, who often throw them out.
“[The regulations do] limit the food that you can put on the plate,” Alden Caldwell, the director of food services at a Brookline, Mass. school, told Wicked Local. “In theory, it’s a good idea, but in practice we’re finding that there are issues with it.”
Despite the outrage, some parents believe the ongoing obesity epidemic justifies the tight calorie standards.
“I think it’s smart to be pre-emptive and proactive at getting more nutrition fed into the kids,” Amos Johnson, a parent with students in the Lee Summit, Missouri school system, told the Lee’s Summit Journal. “I see that more as a multi-beneficial supporter for health and academic performance. I think that’s the thing I would look at. You should be healthier, and if you’re nourishing the brain and getting the fuel right, academic outcomes should maintain or improve.”
When the legislation was signed into law in 2010, it received bipartisan support, including a big endorsement from Michelle Obama.
“As parents, we try to prepare decent meals, limit how much junk food our kids eat, and ensure they have a reasonably balanced diet,” the first lady said in a statement at the unveiling of the new standards in January. “And when we’re putting in all that effort the last thing we want is for our hard work to be undone each day in the school cafeteria. When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won’t be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home. We want the food they get at school to be the same kind of food we would serve at our own kitchen tables.”
Obama welcomed students back to school this year with a YouTube video explaining the importance of the new meal plans.
King and Kansas Republican Rep. Tim Huelskamp introduced the “No Hungry Kids Act,” which would repeal the USDA rule that resulted in the new standards, last week.
“The goal of the school lunch program is supposed to be feeding children, not filling the trash cans with uneaten food,” Huelskamp said in a statement. “The USDA’s new school lunch guidelines are a perfect example of what is wrong with government: misguided inputs, tremendous waste, and unaccomplished goals. Thanks to the Nutrition Nannies at the USDA, America’s children are going hungry at school.”
I am a single mother who works full-time. I make my child's lunch every evening (often two days' worth at a time) and put it in her backpack every morning. I would have to do this anyway, because my daughter's private Christian school (I make sacrifices for what's important) doesn't provide lunch service, but I would do it anyway. It takes very little time at all, but even if it did, I would MAKE time because it's important.
That having been said, other families who make different choices should not have to go through this.
No time? Really?
I leave for work at 4:45am. I pack a lunch that includes a meat and cheese sandwich, salad or raw veggies and dip, dessert, salty snack and water for the kiddos before they ever wake up.
Their father feeds them a good warm breakfast before taking them to school, before he goes to work.
If we can do it, so can others.
They aren’t allowed to play dodge ball anymore...
It is amazing that the one size fits all to food consumption is even considered.
Even at home my eight year old grandson eats twice what my ten year old granddaughter eats.
To say the must have the same calorie count at school, is well just stupid.
Here’s what I a thinking.
*make food and its consumptions a national security issue (whether by healthcare laws, or the never ending harping on it)
which allows for:
*control production of food
*control distribution of food
*controls everything
Here’s a novel idea: Instead of blaming First Communist Moochelle, the FDA, the Nanny State, etc., how about people taking responsibilty for their own dietary needs. If you don’t like the goverment food program, then don’t particiapte in the goverment food program. Instead, bring your own lunch to school and eat whatever and as much as you want. Problem solved.
-
Nutmeg State (& Eggnog) UPDATE:
RE: Monday, September 24, 2012
CT Congressman Jim Himes:
His current running TV ad:
“I always read every page of every bill!”
(Obamacare was over 2700 pages Jimbo!
So you read all 2700 pages of Obamacare....
then you still voted for Obamacare?)
(D-CT) Jim Himes Connecticut Congressman
- Jim Himes cocky, condescending, pompous, liar!
...CT doesn’t have to worry about a job, and voted for Obamacare Tax, TARP, stimulus...
-
The school my grand-kids go to, home lunches are not permitted, someone somewhere may have an allergy to something you bring.
That no home lunch started this year, last year there was a list of about 100 things who could not bring. I forgot once and my grandson had to sit outside while he eat his lunch because some kid in his class with allergies to something I put the lunch.
To many words really to explain, its just not always possible to pack a lunch.
Funny post.
I actually read every page over days and days......it was badly written and contradictory to the point I thought I’d start cutting myself.
Your question is a really good one, how could you read and still vote for it.
I had no idea and if this is the case, then I stand corrected. (My kids have been out of school for many years and in any event, they went to private schools.)
BTW, many children are way too fat, primarily because they have parents who set bad examples by eating way too much of the wrong foods. Nevertheless, the federal goverment has no business trying to solve the problem by micro-managing the caloric intake of our school children with a one size fits all diet.
The government has NO business butting in to what children eat. It is not a surrogate parent.
Fortunately, we don’t have such nonsense in Quebec schools; my kids take lunches every day because they like to eat outside with their friends. The cafeteria serves several options, including a dessert (which is not necessarily fruit! Oh No!), and if they wanted that, we’d be happy to buy them a lunch card.
However, they often get to talking or goofing around at lunchtime, and don’t eat everything. They are famished at the end of the day. I’m able to make them a snack; I had whole wheat French toast with high-protein yogurt today; they both loved it. I have a son who will be 17 tomorrow and my daughter turned 13 last May.
Just keep the junk food out of the house, give them a good breakfast, make healthy sandwiches, etc, that they will eat (hopefully!), and they will be fine.
And there is no way they would eat black bean salad and hummus, regarding your post, sheana. I might as well give them a tray of sushi (dating myself—but referring to “The Breakfast Club”). LOL.
If you expect the government to feed you then you eat what they serve.
If you expect the government to educate your children, you accept the government pont of view/
Oh, its ok. I was shocked when my daughter told me that was the new rule.
Even her youngest in preschool has to buy lunch, at the preschool.
Yes, I think you re correct, many parents have poor eating themselves and school do not let kids play.
They (difference by schools) can not play tag, or any chasing games, dodge ball - nope, even organized PE is out of the window, no after school sports (mostly elementary), school days are longer and a lot more homework.....they don’t even have time after school to play.
My grandkids go to a very good public school academically, that’s all.
The day is 8:15 to 3:30, then an hour to an hour half of home work.......when can kids just be kids.
I can see if parents do not also eat well. They get up get the kids ready for school find something easy for breakfast, drop the kids at school then most likely pick them up from extended day care, no one gets home til six so easy to fix or buy dinner.
Sorry, just going on a rant.
Heck kids can’t be kids and families can’t even be families.
Not surprising to me, that these Democrats can’t get so much as a child’s nutrition correct. And the guy that supported it in the article, probably has round children and can’t bother to make sure they keep a healthy diet. I never ate vegetables when I was a kid and I think only my grandfather made a fuss about it.
I saw the obama with a dish of French Fries the other day.Maybe they need to address the issue with the great one!
I remember eating an entire loaf of bread as a snack.
Always skinny.
Great pic, LMAO
Hummus is delicious!
My son, a homeschooler, took an afternoon course at the grammar schoool a few years ago. He always brownbagged it at lunch, and as a treat occasionally was given money for a school lunch.
He would pore over the upcoming menus inthe local paper and choose the day he would buy lunch. It was a big deal to him.
One day he came home after having had a school lunch and I asked him how it was.
Nasty, he said.
There was something wrong with the mashed potatos.
That is when I realized that my kids had never had a processed meal in their lives, and he did not know the taste of boxed potatos.
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