Officials in one Indiana school district claim they lost $300,000 last school year after they voluntarily implemented Michelle Obama’s lunch regulations. Students rejected menu changes and stopped buying school meals.
According to JConline.com, many school districts – and their students – are struggling with the new rules, which force schools to serve meals with more whole grains, mandatory fruit and vegetables, and impose weekly limits on meat and grains.
Officials in Indiana’s Carmel Clay school district, which says it lost the $300,000, are beside themselves with frustration. Amy Anderson, food service director for the district, told JConline:
“I’m a registered dietitian. I used to feel that I was an educator and part of the education system. I currently feel like I’m a food cop. I don’t get credit for the 98% of our kids who are within normal weight range. I only get slammed for the 2 to 3 percent who aren’t.”
Carmel Clay isn’t alone; students in another central Indiana district have rejected their new lunch menu as well. Jennifer Rice, food service director of Lebanon Community Schools, where the popular Salisbury steak has shrunk under Michelle Obama’s rules, told JConline:
“Kids eat with their eyes. When they saw the smaller portion, that freaked them out. I’ve been in the school district forever, and they all know me, and they’ll go, ‘Mrs. Rice, we are hungry.’”
In Indiana’s North White School Corporation, the story is the same. Linda Wiseman, food service director told JConline:
“I’ve had a lot of complaints, especially with the little guys. They get a three-quarters cup of vegetables, but if it’s something they don’t like, it goes down the garbage disposal. There are a lot of complaints they’re going home hungry.”
The pattern isn’t unique to Indiana. As reported by The Washington Times, students nationwide are boycotting new federal school lunch rules and reverting to brown-bagging it in a mini-revival of individual freedom.
“Now [lunch] is worse-tasting, smaller-sized and higher-priced,” a Wisconsin high school senior told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.
Hungry Minnesota students are “scavenging the lunchrooms after lunch,” and Kansas students are bringing lunch to school in droves and angrily writing state representatives.
Michelle Obama’s program, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, includes rules that completely ban some foods, such as whole and 2 percent milk, and rations others, such as potatoes and peas.
From Wisconsin to Kansas, student athletes, in particular, are complaining the 850-calorie lunch limit embodied in nacho plates containing eight tortilla chips just doesn’t provide enough food for their growing, hard-working bodies.
As a result, multiple school districts across the country – including New York’s Burnt Hills-Boston Lake school district – are tossing Michelle’s program in the dumpster, as reported by The Washington Times:
New York’s Burnt Hills-Ballston Lake school district has become the latest casualty in first lady Michelle Obama’s preferred lunch plan, dropping the menu after too many students complained of hunger.“[Food service manager Nicky] Boehm and her staff worked hard to implement the new regulations, but there were just too many problems and too many foods that students did not like and would not purchase,” said Assistant Superintendent Chris Abdoo about the National School Lunch Program. “Students complained of being hungry with these lunches and the district lost money.”
So, there you have it. Mishy wants to force “suggest” what – and how much – our children should eat, and school districts, their budgets and their students are suffering as a result. Who’s right? Don’t know. But, I do know this: Just as was the case when Nanny Bloomberg’s attempt to ban sugary sodas larger than 16 ounces failed, we as Americans aren’t all that fond of being told by the government how to live our personal lives – much less, what to eat or drink.
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