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.”
YOU MEAN CENTRALLY PLANNED, ONE SIZE FITS ALL...DOES. NOT. WORK!?!?
Color me surprised...but hey since this whole lunch thing is working so fine...why not let the same government workers manage our health care?
I’m going to wind up on the news some day. I have packed lunches for ALL FIVE of my kids (the ZipLoc folks send me a birthday card:). All have been student athletes; and my ‘baby’ is now a 6’1, 120 lb soccer & baseball player who can eat (and has) two McD Deluxe burger meals, quickly a d in one sitting. They have started “no food on the travel game bus” NOT because of litter, (or cost—our boosters/parents provide the food) NO its because of the “regulations” that ONLY school provided food can be served at school functions.
Oh really? Our soccer team travels well over an hour, there is a JV & Varsity game..and some nights I have pickedy kid up AFTER 10 pm—and he is not supposed to have eaten since noon! And played a soccer game. Coach “looks the other way” and everyone packs a second lunch & we send cash so if there is an open concession stand he also buy something—but here is the kicker (no pun intended)—even Concession stands at HS stadium are facing the draconian Madame O “standards.” It’s not just the kids complaining—this is spreading like a virus...infecting EVERY aspect of the school experience.
You are so right. That is such a cop out. I spend my Sunday afternoons cooking up good, quick stuff for the rest of the week. Do a whole package of bacon on the griddle and box it up (it'll be good cold or warmed up), wash and rip up some romaine and store it in a bag, slice up some tomatoes, hard boil some eggs and keep them in a bowl in the fridge, put a couple of chicken breasts on the Foreman grill and slice them up... then in 5 minutes in the morning, toast some bread or just grab a tortilla and you can pack up a BLT, or a Chef's salad. Salads can be packed up the night before, just pack crunchies and dressing separately or they get soggy. I cook up batches of turkey meatballs and keep them in the fridge or freeze them.
It is so easy to make good lunches, you just have to plan ahead. And there are so many healthy convenience foods now that there's really no excuse - bagged salad mixes, even individual dressings, mini envelopes of tuna or salmon... I could go on and on. That stuff gets expensive though, so I just make up my own dressings, etc. If you go to Smart & Final, they have all the little containers.
I also do homemade Belgian waffles that can be frozen. Pop them in the toaster oven for ten minutes, shmear 'em with some almond butter and grab a piece of fruit and you're out the door. A cup of Greek yogurt, throw in some blueberries and granola and you've got a great, portable breakfast.
I got really good at packing my own lunch when I worked for an airline because I did not want to eat that plane food all the time. It's even worse for those flying now... they don't get served anything at all.
I would eat an entire box of cereal with milk everyday when I got home from school. (in one sitting)
Frankenberry
Lucky Charms
POP’s
Just a few of my Favorites.
Now THAT’S funny!
Thanks, I needed a good laugh.
1 kid was overweight but he had been that way since elementary and so were all of his siblings and parents but he never did anything but eat.
I say this about the new government mandated lunches, "If they are so good and nutritious, serve them for the next state dinner and see the reactions of the foreign dignitaries."
Here’s a site that discusses in detail the caloric intake of victims of Nazi starvation. http://remember.org/courage/chapter6.html .
“For an ordinary-sized adult, performing only sedentary activities, the minimum caloric intake needed simply to sustain the status quo is between 2,000 and 2,400 calories daily. This figure is the same whether one is German or Polish, Christian or Jewish.”
I emailed the teacher behind it and actually got a response back. As a pediatric RN, the guidelines/ regulations are ridiculous. The teacher indicated no one in the medical community has thus far voiced disagreements with the statement they’re making. I’ve watched the video numerous times and think it’s incredibly creative and well done.
“[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.”
_____________________________
That last sentence is exactly what I wrote in my college philosophy class when we studied Marxism 25 years ago to make the liberal professor happy.
Imagine that- Mooochelle Obama's school lunch program is backfiring- parents and kids might actually learn to be independent again, and take care of themselves!
With a butt big enough for it’s own zip code, this wookie has no business telling anybody what they can and cannot eat.
Once the tainted finger of government touches something, the rot begins.
Resist, do what you have to do, and decide for yourself what you will feed your children. Do not let the commie wookie in OUR White House tell you what to do...tell her to stay home and take care of her own kids, and mind her own business.
To vote against it would’ve been racist since a black woman sponsored it. /s
First off, good for you taking charge of your children's meals. That is the job of parents, not the government.
Second, however, you may want to ask if there's refrigeration available for the sandwich, or if you can include something in the lunch box to keep the meal cold. Having meat sit in warm or hot temperatures from 4:45 a.m. until noon may not be a good idea.
But that's your decision as parents. Government needs to stay out of it.
“Second, however, you may want to ask if there’s refrigeration available for the sandwich, or if you can include something in the lunch box to keep the meal cold. Having meat sit in warm or hot temperatures from 4:45 a.m. until noon may not be a good idea.”
My daughter had a year of a school day being from 5:30 am- 4:00 pm thanks to being in a special program. I worried a bit about refrigeration as an RN, then had the revelation that a lot of what we’re told by the USDA is nanny state crap and the chance of her getting ill was extremely unlikely, especially since her meat sandwich was eaten at lunch. It wasn’t baking out in the sun and was pretty well insulated in her backpack or locker. I never packed her tuna fish salad though ;)
I swear that year I practically had to pack a grocery bag, and packed extra because her special program was in one of the worst schools so “No Child Left Behind” guidelines could be met. She might have been the most popular kid at lunch. She confessed she regularly traded half her sandwich to the highest bidder. Her daily pack included a meat sandwich with cheese, lettuce, tomato and mayo (grain, protein, dairy, vegetable and fat), a fruit (grapes were easiest), a mini candy bar (so she didn’t felt denied/deprived/forbidden), a prepackaged fruit cup treat, healthier chips/ crackers for snacking on the bus, some packaged cheese, and probably other things I’m not remembering. I think she traded a good portion away for Twinkies, but she’s still skinny as a rail. As a pediatric RN, these guidelines are just ridiculous.
Haven’t you heard? According to dear leader, there are no individuals, only collectives.
Wouldn't it be wild for school kids to start petitions and sit ins and marches --
Occupy Cafeteria.
ooops -- Godwin's Law -- go sit in the corner.
The GOP needs to start an ad campaign based around this lunch fiasco.
Remind the voter (ie soccer moms) that this loss of lunch freedom is a preview of what is coming with Obamacare.
There is a powerful issue with a key voter demographic just sitting here under the surface. Will we be smart enough to tap this?
I would love to see that!(He He He)
“Goodwin’s Law” doesn’t apply to me...I never voted for it, nor was it enacted by any of my elected representatives! LOLOLOL!
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