A House Committee voted yesterday to allow schools to opt out of new nutritional guidelines for student lunches after students nationwide complained that they weren’t getting enough calories to focus in afternoon classes and perform well at sporting events, since the school meals are capped at 850 calories.
But Michelle Obama, the force behind the new guidelines as part of her overall war on Americans who consider themselves to be the final authority over what they put into their mouths, doesn’t want to see her pet project dismantled, as millions of children are once again pumped full of fat and salt and again able to think and function at a basic human level. And she’s not taking the Republicans’ war on healthy foods sitting down (or, rather, standing up, since sitting down is frowned upon), as she makes clear in this morning’s New York Times.
Yet some members of the House of Representatives are now threatening to roll back these new standards and lower the quality of food our kids get in school. They want to make it optional, not mandatory, for schools to serve fruits and vegetables to our kids. They also want to allow more sodium and fewer whole grains than recommended into school lunches. These issues will be considered when the House Appropriations Committee takes up the annual spending bill for the Agriculture Department on Thursday…
Our children deserve so much better than this. Even with the progress we have made, one in three children in this country is still overweight or obese. One in three is expected to develop diabetes in his or her lifetime. And this isn’t just about our children’s health; it’s about the health of our economy as well. We already spend an estimated $190 billion a year treating obesity-related conditions. Just think about what those numbers will look like in a decade or two if we don’t start solving this problem now.
The bottom line is very simple: As parents, we always put our children’s interests first. We wake up every morning and go to bed every night worrying about their well-being and their futures. And when we make decisions about our kids’ health, we rely on doctors and experts who can give us accurate information based on sound science. Our leaders in Washington should do the same.
This is a first for Michelle Obama, who had avoided entering into political warfare during her husband’s first term, but she’s also the first First Lady to pick a pet project that isn’t universally and glowingly welcomed. You can’t argue with say, literacy, but you can argue with whether the government should police what you shove into your pie hole.
But the stakes are high: the number of students receiving school lunches has declined by 1 million, even though the number of students eligible for the lunch program increased by 1.2 million. And school lunch participation is down in 48 of 50 states. So she’s fighting an uphill battle. And it’s one she (and the kids whose lunches have changed dramatically) is fighting on an empty stomach.