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 would like to know the last time Moochelle ate an 850 calorie meal of grain and veggies, or fed one to her offsprings.
My kid is brownbagging lunch this year. Hopefully the TSA or Agriculture Dept police armed with hollowpoint bullets won’t start inspecting and seizing brown bag lunches...this year
As I look back in life I am simply amazed that I lived as a child eating everything that was tasty. My God! How did we survive without the nanny state dictating what was good for us?
Somehow, millions and millions of us did. However, we were not fat back in my day (born in 1946) simply because we did not sit on our asses watching TV, playing video games or fiddling with our cell phones. We actually went outside and played in “dangerous” swings, see-saws, monkey bars, and other “dangerous” apparatus not approved by the safety police.
Hell! We even played football, baseball and other “dangerous” games without approved protective gear!
I find it just amazing that we lived through our childhood without ANY involvement of our government.
I ordered and ate 15 of them and came back 3 hours later to do it again.
From the time they were in first grade, our three sons always packed their lunches for school. We let them pick the ‘hot’ lunch from the cafeteria calendar once a week or so.
Too bad more parents don’t choose this option for their coddled, helpless, entitled little dependents.
Now Michelle is going to cost her husband the high school cafateria vote.
Exactly. Big nanny state always does a one size fits all policy. Not every kid is over weight or sits on their ass all day. If there is ever a time in your life where eating bad is okay it’s as a teen. After that you need to watch.
How Orwellian
Advocating for something, healthier eating, is not that bad a thing. It’s the dictatorial way Leftist going about things that make them evil.
How do you take something like trying to get our kids more healthy, and turn everyone against you?
Take a good look at Michelle and what she’s up to. That’s how.
That pinhead mayor of New York is one major dumb ass.
Just a few weeks ago I had a conversation with a couple of middle schoolers about this. They go to different schools in different towns here in NH. They were both complaining about how much they hate the new food they are served. They cut the size of the paninis by 75%, but they left the price the same. And there were other things they were upset about. They were blaming Michele Obama, too. I was shocked that this was really going on because I homeschool my kids and don’t know what’s going on in the schools.
We did the same for our son all the way thru school-—he couldn’t stand the school lunches. Funniest part all his buds were continouusly trying to trade him out of his lunch stuff. Incredibly to us, not one of the other kids put any serious pressure on their folks to make them something worth eating. They all seemed to be happy just getting by. But reflecting on that it seems to this day, 20 years later, that is still the difference ——the others are happy to “get by”.
The problem is not the amount of food “allowed”. The problem is the Federal Gubment reaching into your neighborhood, bypassing the school board, and regulating what goes in the mouth of free men and free women. A lot of the precedence for this was set by “W”, who by the way was a big gubment idiot who bailed out GM and did Tarp I.
I am reading the Constitution. Lets see. Dammit. We gotta use the Commerce Clause “Again”, because nothing else will do. But that’s ok, seeing as how it is not a “contract” exactly. The Constitution is more of a suggestion, or guiding principles as it where.
This was on the Clear Channel station, SW Pennsylvania market.
good for them but I;ve lost county on the amount of times I;ve heard others state that they wished their child was given a halth lunch at the school.
I always reply with”why not you feed your child with what you want them to eat”
I always get this reply, “I have no time in the morning”
Really no time, then don;t have kids if you want the govt to feed and raise your child.
I wonder what her caloric intake is on any given meal?
never given my kids any school crap, it;s al processed crap and even the women who work there have said they would never give their kids this food.
How anyone could give their children that crap they serve is down right sad.
My kids have a sandwich, fruit, drink etc though the middle and high schools do serve Chicken Filet A food which is a must
Calories don’t count when you are the Queen.
it’s not the amount of food these kids eat, Hell I used to eat thousands of calories a day but I was always playing sport.
Maybe if the schools let the kdis play ddge ball, sports at lunch time again then the kids might lose the weight instead of eating salad and then sitting there starving..
Also big ass wants other kids to eat crap but she and her family like jug ears was eating pork this weekend.
AND what about those white house dinners they have, hardly healthy
Brown bag it. Boycott, divest, sanctions against the federal government.
My suggestion: Bring whole wheat crackers with Sabra and Tribe Humus, hamburger(or bacon), lettuce, tomato. Bring Gatorade.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.