FLOTUS Begins to Limit Food Choices
Michelle Obama has been very busy deciding what is best for our children to eat. According to U.S.News,Michelle Obama’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act was designed to “encourage children to make healthier choices during the school day by updating the National School Lunch Program’s nutritional requirements to better meet dietary needs.” For many, it may have sounded like a good idea. Providing healthier food for our kids, who could object? The problem does not lie in the idea, however, but in the fact that this administration takes mile every time they demand an inch.
Not too many people could protest when Michelle Obama’s guidelines were first announced. After all, who could argue with feeding kids more veggies and fruit, fat free or low fat milk, whole grains and less sodium? Of course, the “appropriate caloric requirements” were to be met, (who decides what’s appropriate?) and there was to be ZERO grams of trans fat in any ingredient or product served. Many Americans could not see where this was going. The ones who could were made to look like extremists.
Taste of Power Creates Monsters
Since no one would truly be upset about our children being fed healthier foods, the Administration was given the power to regulate our kids’ food. The tiny taste of power that the First Lady and the Obama Administration received in 2010, when these regulations were introduced, soon grew to monstrous proportions. See, placing limits on sodium, sugar content, trans fats, etc opened the doors for other limits to be put into place; limits that many parents and school districts were not expecting, and were not prepared for.
Kids Suffer, School Districts Suffer
A school in Chapman, Nebraska suffered when the First Lady’s regulations removed their ability to raise money. According to The Daily Caller, “At Chapman School in Nebraska, resourceful students hawk pizza and cookie dough to raise money for school supplies, field trips and an eighth-grade excursion to Washington. They peddle chocolate bars to help fund the yearbook. But the sales won’t be so sweet starting this fall. Campus bake sales—a mainstay of school fundraisers—are going on a diet. A federal law that aims to curb childhood obesity means that, in dozens of states, bake sales must adhere to nutrition requirements that could replace cupcakes and brownies with fruit cups and granola bars.”
Pink Cookies Become Illegal
One of the latest stories to hit the net over these food regulations comes from Elyria,Ohio, where a town is “mourning the demise of a 40-year tradition – the loss of their beloved pink cookie.” FOX News reports that “The fabled cookie, long served in local school cafeterias, was done in by a pound of butter, six cups of powdered sugar and the Obama administration’s food police.”
“It no longer meets the national school lunch program guidelines for snacks,” said Amy Higgins, the spokesperson for Elyria City Schools. “It has too many calories.”
“We can’t have them in the cafeteria for sale, period,” food services director Scott Teaman told The Chronicle Telegram. “The guidelines for snacks are very strict, and there is no wiggle room.”
New War on Chic-fil-A
In a report from The PCMD Gazette, the parents and school faculty at Socastee High School in South Carolina are not at all happy with Mrs Obama’s rules. The latest disappointment to the kids came when Chic-fil-A was banned from America’s lunchrooms.
“Socastee High students who liked their Chick-fil-A chicken sandwiches will be out of luck in the fall, as a regular sandwich contains 440 calories and 1,390 milligrams of sodium, according to the company’s website. The sandwich loss also will affect the school’s special education students, whose field trips were funded by the sales. They don’t meet the standards — we’re struggling with it. The Chick-fil-A profits went directly to the field trips. We’ve got to raise some money, but we will figure something out,” said Socastee Principal Paul Browning. The faculty at the school shares that the kids there are throwing out more food than they are eating, and they aren’t the only school saying so.
Schools Rebel, Lose Federal Funding
As Business Week reports, The Fort Thomas Independent School District, located in Kentucky, has reported sharp declines in the purchase of school lunches since Obama’s “food police” took over. Superintendent Gene Kirchner reports that their school sold thirty-thousand less meals last year than they did the year before. Kirchner reports that the issue is especially bad in the high school, where, ““They’re just skipping lunch and stopping by the minimart on the way home instead. And when they do buy a lunch, they go by the trash can and throw half of it away.”
The report goes on to say that, “Nationwide, students are buying about 1 million fewer lunches a day than two years ago, according to the School Nutrition Association. The USDA says about 150 districts have dropped out of the program since the rules went into effect, mostly in affluent communities that don’t depend on federal funds and where few students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.”
Kirchner estimates that his school will lose about $200,000 in funding after choosing to opt out of Obama’s program. Douglas, Colorado’s County School District lost $150,000 in federal funding when they opted out of the program in order to keep Subway sandwiches on their menu. A school in Utah was fined over $15,000 when the school was caught selling sacks and carbonated drinks.
Ridiculousness
So how is taking money away from our schools of any benefit at all to our students? Is it not our tax money that is supposed to go to these schools? If a school’s funding is cut, where does our tax money go then? How can federal regulations demand that a 200 pound highly active kid have the same fat and caloric intake as a 90 pound bookworm?
Our kids can no longer share traditions such as the pink cookie, peanut butter cookies, bakes sales, candy bar sales, etc. In many schools, we cannot even send bag lunches to school that does not meet these regulations. What right does anyone have to decide what we feed our kids? And 32 states have ruled that schools are not allowed to opt out of the First Lady’ Program. At what point does government regulations become dictatorship…and when will we draw the line?