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.”
And so the party that once accused republicans of “wanting” to starve children by messing with the school lunches is actually implementing a child-starvation plan by messing with the school lunches. They’re even doing this just 2 months before a presidential election.
And, again the commie MSM is letting them get away with it.
Even if she were thin as a rail....she is not an elected official.
Republican First Ladies always find a good cause to represent - but you don’t see them trying to seize power that normally belongs to elected representatives.
Hillary tried to seize the health care industry - and here we see Michelle acting like an empress....usurping the authority of parents, school boards, and school staffs.
If the people don’t want to play by her rules, their school suffers a crippling reduction in aid.
She doesn’t have the authority to do this! My head is exploding.
I swear I thought this was an onion article. I think my daughter will be taking her lunch from now on. I’m not going to subject her to this communist crap. If it’s a further issue, I’ll pull her out of school and home school her.
A recent study showed that overweight teens actually eat LESS than their normal weight peers. There is more to weight than just calories. Activity levels and genetics are very important contributors to weight. These so-called experts are depriving kids of what they need, and ironically, setting them up for later weight gain by putting them on restricted feeding.
What I really don’t understand is why parents put up with all this nonsense. Why do people still send their kids to government schools?
and people have forgotten about the whole BMI garbage going on too.
They are collecting data on the BMI’s of the kids and the school nurses are supposed to be gathering the info.
Evil is, as evil does. And this is evil.
It looks like they are trying to convert the children to vegetarianism. Hitler would be happy if he were around today since he practiced it.
My friend’s sister is a lunch lady at the local high school, and she was ready to tar and feather Moochelle.
The first thing they did was take out the salad bar.
The second thing they did was take out the potato bar.
They are no longer allowed to use salt and pepper.... only approved by the government spices..... which hadn’t arrived by the start of school. So they were serving naked ugly veggies.
The kids can get a prepackaged salad if they want..... with 1 (count them.... 1) extra veggie. So, they can have lettuce and carrots, or lettuce and cucumber, or lettuce with tomato.... not lettuce with all three. And the cooks are absolutely forbidden to add cheese to the salad. The kids beg them, and they cannot. So the kids are taking their prepackaged salads and dumping them in the trash at the end of the service line. They aren’t even pretending they will eat them.
Tell me how this is an improvement.
If true, it figures...
Just wait until your refrigerator tells them what is in it and what you just fixed for dinner.
“Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010”
The kids go hungry because the food sucks sounds unhealthy to me.
What better place to post this gem that I’ve watched at least a half dozen times:
We Are Hungry (parody)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IB7NDUSBOo
You might want to research what those are actually made off - and they are not meant for long term use. Ask a soldier that's been on a long deployment.
850 calories for him is a snack.
I dare some food Nazi to come between him and his home-made lunch. Fighting the "establishment" is a sharply honed talent of mine.
“This ‘brown bag it’ resistance is really taking off...”
The “brown bag” being Moochelle?
Succinctly put.
The pendulum will swing back. You will know this is happening when the reports start filtering in about the significantly increased waste in school cafeterias. One of my hopes for a Romney Administration is that he will bring peanut butter back to the schools; I suppose that's ultimately a tort reform issue, but it's goal worthy of a great presidency.
I remember my teenage years, when I could eat all I wanted and stay at 140 pounds.
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