School lunches are provided by the taxpayers to children whose parents say they can't afford to purchase meals
in school lunch rooms. The purpose, ostensibly, is to improve the nutrition of young bodies and minds,
but it results in thousands upon thousands of additional mouths being fed by Uncle Sam. This is not the
proper role of the government, and the idea wasn't given any consideration
until 1946,
which is relatively recently in the history of government schools.
When I was a little kid in the public schools, it seemed to me that about two-thirds of my classmates
ate the meals provided by the school cafeteria, and the rest brought a sandwich in a sack or perhaps a
more complete meal in a metal lunch box. The school cafeteria invariably served fish on Friday because
(as I quickly learned) the Catholics didn't eat meat on Friday.
(These days that would be called an establishment of religion, but that's another story.)
The idea of providing a nutritious lunch at a school cafeteria and selling it at or below cost is one
thing. Having the taxpayers pick up the tab to feed the neighborhood children is quite
another. Lyndon Johnson initiated the concept of
serving breakfast
at school in addition to lunch, and now there's also an after-school snack available at many schools. (Some
cities also provide meals to allegedly low-income children in the summer.) An evening meal is soon to follow,
because the school lunch program is being used as a means of expanding the welfare state, thus expanding
government control of everything in the process.
It's safe to say that the kids in your neighborhood school don't live in a homeless shelter. More than
likely, they have an Xbox or PlayStation at home along with an enormous flat-screen
television.*
If their parents say they can't afford to buy lunch for their own kids, it is probably because the parents have a history of
making bad choices throughout their lives, like dropping out of high school, giving birth to multiple illegitimate
children, and spending their money on beer, cigarettes, tattoos and scratch-off lottery tickets.
Can Children Be Manipulated
into Eating Their Veggies? American children do not any more go to school hungry: they go to
school fat. Can anything be done about it and, if so, whose responsibility is it to do it? The U.S.
government believes that children do not eat enough vegetables; it might very well be right, of course, but I suspect
that the founding fathers might have been surprised that it had any opinions on the subject.
The mad world of school lunches.
The Kanawha County school system has about 30,000 students. About half qualify for free or reduced-price
meals. Washington gives the system about $8.8 million a year to provide meals to those students.
And where federal money flows, federal guidelines apply. Taste doesn't necessarily follow.
More
public schools dish up 3 meals a day. Schools are increasingly dishing up dinner to students —
something advocates for the poor praise but conservatives question.
Observe carefully, for this is what tyranny looks like in its early stages:
Preschooler's Homemade Lunch
Replaced with Cafeteria "Nuggets". A preschooler at West Hoke Elementary School ate three chicken
nuggets for lunch Jan. 30 because a state employee told her the lunch her mother packed was not nutritious.
The girl's turkey and cheese sandwich, banana, potato chips, and apple juice did not meet U.S. Department of
Agriculture guidelines, according to the interpretation of the agent who was inspecting all lunch boxes
in her ["]More at Four["] classroom that day. The Division of Child Development and Early Education at the
Department of Health and Human Services requires all lunches served in pre-kindergarten programs — including
in-home day care centers — to meet USDA guidelines ... even if the lunches are brought from home.
[Emphasis added.]
The Editor says...
Well, that didn't take long. Apparently you no longer have the right to pack a lunch for your public-school
child, now that the government supplies competing lunches. You will partake of the program, and you will
like it. This search and confiscation is a clear violation of the Fourth Amendment, and now the negative reactions
are widespread.
Chicken Nugget Furor Prompts
Bipartisan Congressional Letter to Federal Cabinet Leader. The national uproar over a 4-year-old's
recent encounter with a preschool lunch monitor at a Hoke County elementary school has prompted two members of
the N.C. congressional delegation to fire off a letter expressing "strong concern" to U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Tom Vilsack. "This unfortunate and absolutely unnecessary event exemplifies the very definition of 'government
overreach' and further perpetuates a growing reason of why the American people continue to hold less and less
faith in our government," writes U.S. Rep. Larry Kissell, D-8th District, in the letter co-signed by Rep. Renee
Ellmers, R-2nd District. Kissell represents the district in which the incident took place.
Lunch replacement for Hoke County
girl called mix-up by school. School and state officials say a misunderstanding resulted in a West
Hoke Elementary School preschooler's homemade lunch being replaced with chicken nuggets. An agent from the
Department of Health and Human Services' Division of Child Development and Early Education was at the school Jan. 30
assessing the pre-kindergarten program, said Bob Barnes, assistant superintendent of curriculum and instruction
for Hoke County schools.
Nutrition Nazis — at a school
near you. It seems there are now Nutrition Nazis inspecting preschoolers' homemade lunches in North
Carolina. A hapless 4-year-old was required to eat chicken nuggets instead of the sandwich her mother had
packed. These Nutrition Nazis are just another manifestation of government tyranny in America.
Frankfort
school cafeteria gets visit from USDA official. Audrey Rowe is visiting schools all over the nation.
"Everything we can do... to make food taste good," Rowe told students at Elkhorn Middle School in Frankfort on
Wednesday. The USDA official from Washington, DC got a first-hand look... and taste of school lunches in
Kentucky. "I think we can make it to where one day you'll say 'that lady was here and I like this food
now.' That's what I'm working on," she said.
No
Freedom For You! When School Lunch Nazis Attack. We are all familiar with the Transportation
Security Administration going through our stuff at the airport on the assumption all of us are potential
terrorists. When a similar level of scrutiny is applied to our kids' school lunches on the assumption we
are too stupid to feed them properly, we wonder if there's any place the nanny state will not reach to curtail
our freedoms in the name of what's good for us.
Any Mother Knows Better Than Michelle.
Children are governed not by agents of the USDA but in the trusting knowledge of their mothers' abiding love in
words that show up unexpressed in a mother's lovingly packed school lunch. Until the debut of Mrs. Barack
Obama trying to make her mark in the world, the love of mothers for their children, school lunches packed with
things they know their children will eat, were things assumed not government legislated.
Food police bust 4 year-old
in NC. Is there anything the nanny state can't do?
Attack of the lunch police. The
Department of Health and Human Services, which thanks to ObamaCare will soon be the most powerful and unaccountable
government organization in the Western world, has really been feeling its oats lately. Fresh from its triumph
in forcing Catholics to pay for contraception, agents of the Division of Child Development and Early Education
moved to seize an improperly packed lunch from a little girl at a North Carolina elementary school, and assess
a modest fine against her mother.
2nd
N.C. Mother Says Daughter's School Lunch Replaced for Not Being Healthy Enough. North Carolina
officials have said there was a misunderstanding when a preschooler's homemade lunch was sent home for not
meeting certain nutritional requirements, but now a second mother from the same school has come forward
exclusively to The Blaze to say the same thing happened to her daughter.
"Put down
the iCarly lunchbox and back away slowly!" [This story is] not about whether chicken nuggets
from a school cafeteria are more or less healthy than whatever parents choose to feed their kids. It's
not about whether a homemade lunch meets a government agency's "necessary guidelines." It's about the fact
that there are "necessary guidelines" in the first place, and now they're even sending agents around to enforce
them. It's about yet another busybody government bureaucracy intruding into yet another aspect of our daily lives.
The Food Police. In Hoke County,
North Carolina, a four-year-old girl brought her homemade lunch to school. It contained a turkey and cheese
sandwich, apple juice, potato chips, and a banana. ... A state inspector pounced on the lunch as though he'd
found a loose land mine in the pre-school. He decided that the lunch didn't contain all the relevant
parts of the complete meal, and that the girl needed a full school lunch tray, including chicken nuggets, a
fruit and a vegetable, and milk. The girl, being a non-statist, peacefully resisted the vegetable, and
downed the chicken nuggets. The mother was outraged, as well she should be.
Don't
Blame School Food For Obesity. A newly published study by researchers at Penn State, using data
on 19,450 children from fifth to eighth grade, found no link between weight gain and the availability of
so-called "competitive foods." That label covers food such as soft drinks, candy bars and chips sold in
vending machines or snack bars and not required to meet federal nutrition guidelines for school meals — in
short, junk food. Most middle schools covered in the study sell it, often to raise money for athletics and
other student activities.
Why
the cafeteria crusade is a crock: There's nothing about rutabagas in the Constitution, but that isn't stopping
the Department of Agriculture from trying to shove them down your kids' throats. Under new school-lunch standards
unveiled by First Lady Michelle Obama yesterday, public schools are now required to offer fruits and vegetables daily,
along with more whole-grain foods, low-fat milk and lower sodium. Oh yes, and there will be calorie counting, too.
Michelle
Obama unveils tougher nutrition standards for school meals. The new regulations, according to the
Department of Agriculture, will:
• Ensure that students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week;
• Substantially increase offerings of whole grain-rich foods;
• Offer only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties;
• Limit calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and
• Increase the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.
The Editor offers this reminder:
Michelle Obama is neither an elected official nor an authority of any kind, and is in no position
to tell you to do anything. Nor can she enforce any "regulations" to change your pesonal dietary selections.
Any time you see Michelle Obama in the media spotlight (intentionally), what you see is merely a façade for
big intrusive government.
Why
Junk Food at School Isn't Making Kids Fat. Junk food in middle school does not lead to weight gain
in children. A study followed nearly 20,000 students from kindergarten through the eighth grade in 1,000 public
and private schools. The researchers examined the children's weight and found that in the eighth grade,
35.5 percent of kids in schools with junk food were overweight while 34.8 percent of those in schools
without it were overweight — a statistically insignificant increase. In other words, kids with
access to junk food at school were no heavier than those without.
You are still free to feed your own children -- for now.
Feds
Expect Growing Participation in 'National School Lunch Program'. New federal regulations on school
lunches do not preclude parents from sending food with their children from home, but a senior U.S. Department of
Agriculture official said Wednesday [1/25/2012] he expects participation in the national program to grow.
Study:
Junk food doesn't cause obesity in middle schools. A new study of nearly 20,000 middle schoolers has
found that kids who attend schools that sell junk food such as soda and doughnuts do not gain more weight than
students who attend schools where that type of food isn't available. The study, published in this month's
issue of Sociology of Education, contradicts earlier research with smaller sample sizes that showed the
availability of junk food correlated with rates of childhood obesity.
Michelle
Obama's Unsavory School Lunch Flop. [Scroll down] While the Obama administration has showered the
nation's second-largest school district with nutrition awards, thousands of students voted with their upset tummies
and abandoned the program. A forbidden-food black market — stoked not just by students, but also
by teachers — is now thriving. Moreover, "(p)rincipals report massive waste, with unopened milk
cartons and uneaten entrees being thrown away." This despite a massive increase in spending on nutritional
improvements — from $2 million to $20 million alone in the last five years on fresh produce.
L.A. schools' healthful
lunch menu panned by students. It's lunchtime at Van Nuys High School and students stream into
the cafeteria to check out the day's fare: black bean burgers, tostada salad, fresh pears and other items
on a new healthful menu introduced this year by the Los Angeles Unified School District. But Iraides
Renteria and Mayra Gutierrez don't even bother to line up. Iraides said the school food previously
made her throw up, and Mayra calls it "nasty, rotty stuff." So what do they eat? The juniors pull
three bags of Flamin' Hot Cheetos and soda from their backpacks. "This is our daily lunch," Iraides
says. "We're eating more junk food now than last year."
Sesame
Street Muppet Pitches Government Dependence: Free Food at School. A "food insecure" Muppet is helping to
promote a national "Food for Thought" campaign that teaches poor families to seek out nutritious food and to eat on the
taxpayers' tab. At the National Press Club on Thursday [12/8/2011], Lily the Muppet — who worries about
her family not having enough money to feed her properly — pitched free food at school.
Lines
Grow Long for Free School Meals, Thanks to Economy. The number of students receiving subsidized
lunches rose to 21 million last school year from 18 million in 2006-7, a 17 percent increase,
according to an analysis by The New York Times of data from the Department of Agriculture, which administers
the meals program. Eleven states, including Florida, Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee, had four-year
increases of 25 percent or more, huge shifts in a vast program long characterized by incremental growth.
Congress pushes
back on healthier school lunches. Who needs leafy greens and carrots when pizza and french fries
will do?
Going home full: Memphis City Schools
offers supper to students. As part of Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids legislation passed in 2010, the
federal government is now in the supper business, budgeting $641 million over 10 years to make sure
children in the nation's ever-growing poor pockets get one more balanced meal a day.
Senate
mashes school lunch potato rule. You can put the United States Senate on record as being pro-potato.
The Senate this afternoon unanimously approved an amendment to block efforts by the U.S. Department of Agriculture
to limit the number of starchy vegetables schoolchildren can be offered each week in the federally funded school
lunch program.
School Breakfast and
Lunch: The federal government funds school breakfast and lunch programs at 80,000 public schools across
the nation. The lunch program covers 30 million children, and the breakfast program covers about 8 million
children. Federal spending on the two food programs, which provide free and low-cost meals, was $16 billion
in fiscal 2009.... The modern school lunch program dates to the National School Lunch Act of 1946. The program
covered 7 million children in its first year and was expanded to 22 million children by 1970. Congress
has occasionally expanded benefits since then, for example, by adding an after-school snack program in 1998.
Congress began the school breakfast program as a pilot program in 1966 and made it permanent in 1975.
Breakfast is the Parent's
responsibility, not the government's. My mother raised all six children by herself for an extended
amount of time before she remarried, and she worked two and three jobs to keep food on the table for many of those
years, yet never once did she stoop to taking handouts from the government that were taken from other hard working
people in the form of taxes. That is not how we were raised. You want something, children included, and
you got off your rear ends and worked for it.
Expanding
Federal Food Programs: Means-Tested Aid for Families with Children. It is misleading to
examine a few nutrition programs in isolation as if no other aid were given to low-income children.
This is particularly important since financial resources are fungible within each household. ... The federal
government operates 71 different means-tested aid programs, providing cash, food, housing, medical care,
and social services to poor and low-income families. In FY 2011, government will spend around
$475 billion on means-tested aid for families with children. This amounts to over $30,000 for
each low-income family with children.
America's
Ever Expanding Welfare Empire. There are 184 additional federal, means-tested welfare programs, most
jointly financed and administered with the states. In addition to Medicaid is the Children's Health Insurance Program
(CHIP). Also included is Food Stamps, now officially called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP).
Nearly 42 million Americans were receiving food stamps in 2010, up by a third since November, 2008. That is why
President Obama's budget projects spending $75 billion on Food Stamps in 2011, double the $36 billion spent
in 2008. But that is not the only federal nutrition program for the needy. There is the Special Supplemental
Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), which targets assistance to pregnant women and mothers with
small children. There is the means tested School Breakfast Program and School Lunch Program. There is the
Summer Food Service Program for Children. There are the lower income components of the Child and Adult Care Food
Program, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP). Then there is
the Nutrition Program for the Elderly. All in all, literally cradle to grave service.
Why
the U.S. Economy is the Titanic Headed for the Iceberg: In 1929, there was no such thing as
welfare, food stamps, aid to dependent children, or English as a second language programs. American's
didn't consider it the responsibility of government to pay for breakfast and lunch for school students —
let alone illegal immigrants.
Children, Parents, and
Obesity: It seems that the true goal of Mrs. Obama's efforts is to expand government's influence over
the care and feeding of America's children. She has, for instance, linked the "epidemic" of childhood obesity
to the related hot-button political topics of government health-care and welfare programs. And the real motivation
behind her signature initiative — the "Let's Move" campaign, ostensibly designed to promote health and
fitness among American school children — seems to be to boost federal funding for the national school
lunch and breakfast programs, and to increase the number of children eating government-provided and -subsidized meals.
Save
the spuds! Senators Fight to Keep Potatoes in School Lunches. A group of senators from potatoe-producing [sic]
states are working to help reverse the "bad rap" that potatoes have received in recent years and to save the
school lunch program from banning or severely limiting spuds in the national school lunch program. Sens.
Susan Collins, R-Maine, and Mark Udall, D-Colo., have proposed an amendment to the Senate Agriculture
Appropriations bill that would protect schools' flexibility in serving healthy fruits and vegetables
in the school breakfast and lunch programs.
Tennessee
schools get $3 million for fresh fruit, veggies. Tennessee schools will share $3 million
in federal funding for more students to eat healthy fresh fruit and vegetables this school year. The
state was awarded a $3.15 million grant by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to prepare the healthy
snacks at no charge to students in 156 low-income elementary and middle schools.
Your Money for 'Green'
Schools? A large chunk of your state income taxes goes to education, and schools benefit from a
portion of your local property taxes, too. Now the federal government is considering a big increase in
its spending on school construction — with your money. Already, as federal taxpayers, we pay
$70 billion a year for K-12 education, much of it going to teacher salaries and school lunches.
What Suckers We Are.
Still paying full price for your kids' meals at school? The government currently provides free or reduced-price
lunch, breakfast or both for nearly 60% of all school-age children nationwide. Households with incomes of
up to 185% of poverty level are eligible. In Philadelphia public schools, 72% of students have access to
a universal feeding program — regardless of income. Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey wants to
nationalize that program.
Taj Mahal Schools.
The latest installment of this expensive misguided endeavor is a $100 million dollar school located in
New York City's largely black Harlem targeting under-performing students. ... The facilities include 52 classrooms
equipped with state-of-the art electronics, three science labs, a two-story library, a fitness room and dance
studio. Also included are in-school access to medical doctors, psychologists and a dentist while a
school chef will prepare low-fat meals for breakfast and lunch. Add a longer school day and extended
school year plus after-school programs to help with homework and for those who stay around until 9:00 pm,
sports, music and other activities. ... There is nothing in this catalogue of costly measures that
will fix academic insufficiency.
Free Lunch: Title I's formula for determining
aid -- and its recipe for fraud: Individual schools receive Title I funding based on the
percentage of students that are eligible for the federally subsidized free-lunch program. Though the
lunch program is designed to provide food to low-income students who might otherwise go hungry, its guidelines
do not require schools to verify the parental income of students who enroll. The process to qualify for a
free lunch comes down to parents self-reporting their income on a form that is turned in to their local
school. Federal free-lunch program administrators argue that the program has little potential for
abuse because "the worst that happens is a kid gets a free lunch."
School Days, Gruel
Days. At Little Village Academy in Chicago, children are prohibited from bringing their lunches
from home, and are required to eat the school offering. This is a progressive move to join Chicagoans
Barack and Michelle Obama in their crusade to combat childhood obesity, so try to imagine that horrible
lunch food you remember as a child made exponentially worse by trying to make it "healthy." It's
pretty obvious that the kids don't like it.
School Lunch
Madness. About one third of American kids are now overweight, and poorer children are the
most likely to be in that category. So, educators are correct to be concerned about the nutritional
welfare of their students. Every school should be encouraging good health, right? But
forcing parents to buy school food is going too far. This is nanny state stuff. I know
that under President Obama the nation is heading in that direction, but it is now time to pause and
smell the meatloaf.
Chicago public
school forbids kids from bringing their lunch from home. No doubt, children will bring all
sorts of stuff from home for lunch that fails to meet Michelle Obama's standards for "healthy" eating.
But what ... business is it of school authorities to play mommy and prevent kids from bringing a meal from
home?
Michelle's Healthy,
Hunger-Free Menus. The growing sixth grader who eats his 1.5 ounces of turkey and throws his
cup and a half of broccoli, cauliflower and green beans in the compost will probably not be hunger-free.
A Devil Dog at the convenience store on the way home will easily remedy that problem.
Michelle Obama's school lunch.
Looks like the meal you'd get in a vegetarian prison.
Southeast
students served raw onions as snack. No matter how you slice it, the days of milk and cookies
are long gone as schools aim to provide students with healthy fruits and vegetables as snacks. But raw
onions?
It takes a vittle: First lady
engineers government takeover of children's food. In the case of obesity, the so-called problem
is very much an illusion. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Protection, the average height
of Americans has increased by an inch since the 1960s. That's a sign of proper nourishment. While
average weight increased by 24 pounds over the same period, we're all living an average of eight years
longer. That's a sign of good health. The bottom line is that Americans can take care of
themselves just fine without help from Mrs. Obama. It doesn't take a village to solve a public
health crisis that doesn't exist.
Michelle's free lunch:
This free lunch bill, is not quite the free lunch it appears to be; it is paid for by reductions in funding for
food stamps where people can actually select what food to buy for their kids, say potatoes or potato chips, in
their food desserts. And why do so many kids get "half their daily calories from school meals"?
This is another area of responsibility removed from the parent(s) and handed over to the government; parents
don't even have to make their kids lunch to take to school.
Fighting
childhood obesity the family way. At the root of childhood obesity are two connected problems:
At the same time that children are consuming more "empty" calories, they also are getting less exercise.
Many factors have combined to foster a more sedentary lifestyle, even for children. In many communities,
children are not allowed to walk or ride bicycles to school. Many schools have eliminated recess and
physical education from the school day. At home, the children are watching more television and playing
video games for longer and longer amounts of time during the day.
Behind
the broccoli: Liberalism's war on liberty. What this country needs is a crop of healthy, hunger-free
kids — and now, thanks to the hectoring of Michelle Obama and the terrible swift presidential pen of
her husband, it has one: the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.
Most
Americans oppose Michelle Obama's Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act. A significant percentage
Americans oppose the Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act pushed by First Lady Michelle Obama and signed into law by
President Barack Obama signed on Monday. Among other things, the $4.6 billion law allows the USDA
to set nutritional standards for foods made and sold in schools; increases the number of children who qualify
for school meal programs, and "sets basic standards for school wellness policies including goals for nutrition
promotion and education and physical activity."
The Obamas Police Food and
Football. [Scroll down] On the food front, Michelle Obama likewise said something that,
given the context, conjures up a lot of history. Speaking at a public school to commemorate the signing
of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, the First Lady said flat out that the federal government must act
because we can't just leave [child nutrition] up to the parents." She means it: The law she was
on hand to praise gives the federal government the power to regulate the food sold in public school cafeterias
nationwide. We are a very long way from 1994, when Republicans were threatening to end the Department of
Education in order to turn more power over to local and state control. The federal food police are
acting in the name of fighting childhood obesity, a real problem for which there is scant evidence that
school lunches play any role whatsoever. School lunches, for the kids who eat them, constitute one meal
a day, five days a week, about nine months of the year. They are not the dominant food source for the
vast majority, if any, of America's kids.
Feed Me, Obama, Feed
Me: The Plan for Food Dependency. What does any would-be tyrant need in order to gain
control over the lives of citizens? Three things come to mind: martial law, socialized medicine,
and food dependency. In at least two of these categories, President Obama has already succeeded.
Feds Target School Bake Sales.
On December 3, the lame-duck House passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, previously approved by the Senate.
President Obama, doubtless preoccupied with such trivia as taxes, unemployment, Korea, and China, has yet to
sign it into law. A mere two hundred and twenty pages long, it has lots of provisions for allocation of
funds, demonstration projects, and the like. Many may be worthwhile. However, included in the
legislation is a provision authorizing the secretary of Agriculture to regulate school fundraising bake sales to
ensure that they are infrequent and that the goodies sold are nutritionally acceptable. Far from innocuous,
that is yet another distasteful and unnecessary intrusion of the federal government into our daily lives.
White
House to put up to 5,000 salad bars in schools. The White House is set to announce on Monday [11/15/2010]
a major new initiative that would place up to 5,000 salad bars in public schools nationwide, despite uncertainties
over how local health inspectors might treat those salad bars and USDA nutrition-tracking rules that could prove a
major impediment. Officials in the White House, led by chef Sam Kass, and at the U.S. Centers for Disease and
Prevention, have been working to build a coalition representing the produce industry and Ann Cooper, director of
nutrition services in Boulder, Colo. schools, who recently teamed with Whole Foods to raise $1.4 million from
customers to establish a grant program that would place salad bars in qualifying schools.
Make Way for the Milk
Monitors. [Scroll down] Now, in an effort to feel better about substituting moral
bankruptcy for academic excellence, educators and government bureaucrats have joined forces in a campaign to
expose the evils of Nesquik. That's right — chocolate milk is on the way to being off-limits
on school grounds because liberals who are unconcerned with morality are presently overly concerned with
obesity. The same Food Police who, as a benevolent contribution to society, are in the process of
emptying vending machines of pretzel sticks are now targeting cafeteria milk carts and discriminating against
cocoa-infused foodstuffs.
Obama wants school vending
machine changes. The Obama administration will ask Congress to improve childhood nutrition by
ridding school vending machines of sugary snacks and drinks and giving school lunch and breakfast to more kids.
Senators want to expel junk food
from US schools. U.S. schools with vending machines that sell candy and
soda to students could soon find the government requiring healthier options to combat childhood obesity under
a bill introduced on Thursday by two senators. While school meals must comply with U.S. dietary
guidelines, there are no such rules on snacks sold outside of school lunchrooms. Many are high
in fat, sugar and calories.
The Food
Police: Coming Soon to a Texas School Lunchroom. School nutrition guidelines were
recently announced by the Texas Department of Agriculture. The 15-page culinary blacklist amounts
to yet another attempt by big government bureaucrats to usurp the power of local governments, school
districts, teachers and parents charged with the primary education and care of our children.
Senator Wants
Limits On Schoolyard Junk Food: A Vermont senator believes too many public school students are
being sold what he considers "unhealthy drinks and snacks" during lunch in school and he wants the Agriculture
Department to tighten up its regulations on such sales. His legislation would "tighten" current federal
regulations under the National School Lunch Program.
Anti-Meat Activists Target School
Lunches: A health scare over school lunches is brewing. The driving forces behind the junk
science-fueled scare are the usual suspects — anti-meat and environmental activist groups, and
politicians who do the groups' bidding.
Activists' Attacks on Meat Harm Health, Environment.
Over the years, Americans and others around the world have been subjected to a barrage of absurd claims
about beef production and consumption that, in a rational world, should be dismissed on sight. We
have witnessed how, with enough money and sufficient coordinated effort, vast portions of the world's
population, along with their elected leaders, can be convinced the Earth faces destruction because we
eat meat. These scare tactics are without factual support.
School Nutrition Bill to Study How Government Can
Restrict Food Ads Directed at Kids. A recently introduced House bill, said to mirror First
Lady Michelle Obama's "Let's Move" initiative, would spend $1 million to study how the government
can restrict food advertisements aimed at children. The study proposed in the "Improving Nutrition
for America's Children Act" would "examine mechanisms regulating marketing in elementary and secondary
schools, including Federal, State, and local policies; contracts; and sales incentives.
New
York schools' ban on homemade goods at bake sales has parents steamed. Low-fat Doritos
and Pop Tarts are in; goodies baked at home are out. School officials say they're fighting
obesity. Angry parents say it sends the wrong message about food habits.
Well-Intentioned Food Police May
Create Havoc With Children's Diets. Earlier this year, our small Midwestern school district
joined the food wars, proposing a new policy that would discourage all food in classrooms, ban nuts and
sugary foods and do away with vending machines. So much for peanut butter sandwiches, snacks for
kindergartners and birthday cupcakes.
Suspension Over Sweets.
What does it take for a school to suspend an eighth-grader, bar his attendance from an honors dinner, and strip
him of his post as class Vice President? If you guessed drugs, alcohol, or a firearm, think again.
A bag of candy is reason enough. This week, a Connecticut school levied these very punishments on an
honor student with no history of misconduct, just for buying a bag of Skittles from his classmate.
Cupcake
Crackdown: Have the Food Police Gone Too Far? With childhood obesity rates skyrocketing,
the New York Times reports that "school districts across the country have been taking steps to make food in
schools healthier because of new federal guidelines and awareness that a growing number of children are
overweight." A few school districts have actually banned cupcakes at school birthday celebrations, which
has some parents up in arms, because, to many, "the cupcake holds strong as a symbol of childhood innocence
and parental love."
Sorry,
Cupcake, You're Not Welcome in Class. The days of the birthday cupcake — smothered in
a slurry of sticky frosting and with a dash of rainbow sprinkles — may be numbered in schoolhouses
across the nation. Fears of childhood obesity have led schools to discourage and sometimes even ban what
were once de rigueur grammar-school treats.
The
nanny party thinks parents are incompetent to raise children. I'm not knocking Dr. [Susan]
Lynch's advocacy in support of healthy lifestyles. No one is in favor of childhood obesity. It's
just not the government's job, or the job of government-run schools, to keep kids from drinking soda or
eating chips.
Animal Rights Group Attacks
Katrina-Torn Mississippi Schools. The nonprofit Center for Consumer Freedom has called on the
Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a Washington-based animal rights group, to withdraw a
callous school-nutrition "report card" it issued to public schools in Hancock County, Mississippi. PCRM
gave Hancock County a grade of "D," based largely on its complaint that the six-school district serves
children meat entrees including "the BBQ pulled-pork burger and the chicken patty sandwich."
Super-Sized Statistics. Using words
like "epidemic," policy makers [have] rushed to debate on everything from "fat taxes" on junk food to the regulation
of fast-food advertising, from Medicare covering obesity-related surgeries to banning sodas from schools.
Illinois Set to Ban Soda and Snacks in
Schools. The Illinois State Board of Education, following the urging of Gov. Rod Blagojevich
(D), on December 15 began the process of banning the sale of high-fat, high-calorie foods and drinks
to most of the state's elementary and middle school students. … While the proposed regulations have been
developed in consultation with the American Heart Association, experts note there is no consensus on
what junk food actually is.
Food Cop
Fines Schools For Selling Fries. Texas Agricultural Commissioner and
self-described "Food
Czarina" Susan
Combs is robbing Peter and pummeling Paul. … The
Carlisle School was fined more than $1,000 for selling Crystal Lite (which has only 5
calories per 8 oz. serving). The Calallen Middle School received a fine of $666 because
the bags of Chili Cheese Fritos were too big. The Bartlett Elementary school was fined
more than $2,400 for, among other things, selling fried potato products twice in a week.
Black-Market
Bubble Gum. Draconian food-cop policies almost always have unintended
consequences. Such is the case in Austin, Texas, where one high school's ban
on snack foods has created a thriving black market for candy bars and other sweets.
The food police say milk is unhealthy
for kids. CSPI has added whole and 2% milk to their list of "poor nutritional quality" beverages
and says they should be removed from schools. "Anyone who would suggest that milk is unhealthy for kids
is out to lunch," said Richard Berman, executive director of the Center for Consumer Freedom. "CSPI once
boasted that it was 'proud about finding something wrong with practically everything.' Now it's
proven it."
'Unhealthy'
corn dogs, chicken nuggets out, sushi in at L.A. schools. The L.A. school board's decision to
stop serving flavored milks on campuses is just the beginning. A menu overhaul is underway that will
mean fewer meals that resemble fast food and more vegetarian offerings. Spinach tortellini in butternut
squash sauce and California sushi rolls, along with many ethnic foods, are to be added. Corn dogs,
chicken nuggets and other breaded items are out, said Dennis Barrett, food services director.
Mouse
droppings, roaches, chemicals hiding in school cafeterias. School cafeterias typically don't
list mouse droppings, cockroach infestations or sneezed-on snacks among their lunch specials. But
health inspectors are finding these undesirable ingredients — as well as 60-degree yogurt and
other critical health code violations — in the kitchens of Washington-area schools. D.C.
Public Schools racked up 296 violations in its elementary schools alone, and 124 more in its
upper grades, for everything from blown light bulbs to dead rodents, as detailed in the most recent
routine inspection reports.
'Healthier'
school lunch at what cost? If the federal government gets its way, critics are warning, school
lunches will be more expensive and less appetizing and ultimately will leave school districts footing the
bill for costly food going down the garbage disposal.
School Days, Gruel
Days. At Little Village Academy in Chicago, children are prohibited from bringing their lunches
from home, and are required to eat the school offering. This is a progressive move to join Chicagoans
Barack and Michelle Obama in their crusade to combat childhood obesity, so try to imagine that horrible
lunch food you remember as a child made exponentially worse by trying to make it "healthy." It's
pretty obvious that the kids don't like it.
School Lunch
Madness. About one third of American kids are now overweight, and poorer children are the
most likely to be in that category. So, educators are correct to be concerned about the nutritional
welfare of their students. Every school should be encouraging good health, right? But
forcing parents to buy school food is going too far. This is nanny state stuff. I know
that under President Obama the nation is heading in that direction, but it is now time to pause and
smell the meatloaf.
Teacher
sells advertising space on tests. Good morning, class, and welcome to U.S. history, brought to
you by Molto Caldo Pizzeria. In a cash-strapped Idaho high school where signs taped near every light
switch remind the staff to save electricity, an enterprising teacher has struck a sponsorship deal with a
local pizza shop.
The Editor asks...
With the government spending around $10,000 per student for public education, is there really any need to
scrape together a few extra bucks by advertising in the classroom -- for a pizza parlor? And aren't the
public school teachers and administrators the same people who pretend to be outraged by the sale of junk food
and soft drinks in the school cafeterias?
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
Or cupcakes in the classroom?
[1]
[2]
Paved
With Good Intentions: Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) has introduced Federal
legislation that would prohibit schools from selling soft drinks or "foods of minimal
nutritional value" (read: snacks) during times when breakfast and lunch are served. It
would also give the US Department of Agriculture the power to ban sodas and snacks
outright on school grounds.
Obama Baits the
Dependency Trap. An [Obama] administration program will expand free school meal coverage to
millions of young people who are not even supposed to be eligible. ... Here's how the program works: if
40% of students at a school qualify for public assistance, then every student in the school will get free
food. That's free breakfast, lunch, and a snack. If that sounds like arbitrary welfare waste,
it is. Sixty percent of the student body could be above the poverty line, ineligible for welfare,
or even upper-class — it doesn't matter. Every student magically becomes entitled.
Department
of Redundancy Department. GAO found that there are 18 programs that provide food and nutrition
assistance administered by the Department of Agriculture, Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health
and Human Services. Those who get freebie groceries from the Commodity Supplemental Food Program can also
obtain goods from the Emergency Food Assistance Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (formerly
known as food stamps). Children get food from the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program,
the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Special Milk Program and the Child and
Adult Care Food Program.
A
Food Bill We Don't Need. Feeding a child is one of the most basic parental
responsibilities, yet first lady Michelle Obama wishes to liberate parents from this fundamental
role by urging them to rely on the public schools to feed their children. In [an] op-ed in the
Washington Post, the first lady pushes for congressional passage of the Child Nutrition Act, a bill that
would not only increase funding for the already-wasteful and badly managed school-lunch program but relax
eligibility requirements so that more children can be enrolled. It's clear that Michelle Obama, like
her husband, sees government as the great fixer.
The Cloward-Piven Strategy comes to the lunchroom:
Federal
government eying free lunches for all students in high-poverty areas. The federal government
could soon be paying for lunch for entire communities of children under a new plan in the U.S. House of
Representatives. Christina A. Samuels of Education Week reports that the Improving Nutrition for
America's Children Act of 2010 would allow schools in high-poverty areas to be covered under a "community
eligibility" option that allows free meals to all students without the traditional paperwork to determine
eligibility.
Free Lunch: Title I's formula for determining
aid — and its recipe for fraud: The process to qualify for a free lunch comes down
to parents self-reporting their income on a form that is turned in to their local school. Federal
free-lunch program administrators argue that the program has little potential for abuse because "the worst
that happens is a kid gets a free lunch." Federal free-lunch data, however, are used as one of the
main poverty indicators for school districts and are linked to many other local, state, and federal funding
streams. So any fraud in the free-lunch program is quickly multiplied.
School Nutrition Professionals Flunk
PCRM. The deceptive Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) deserves a dunce cap for
pushing its radical animal-rights agenda at the expense of children's health. So say Albuquerque, New
Mexico school nutrition professionals. After initially assisting PCRM with its annual "school lunch
report card," the nutrition coordinator (a registered dietician) for Albuquerque schools "said she probably
would not have cooperated with the group ... if she had known more about it." She told the Albuquerque
Tribune: "Real physicians would not recommend a vegan diet for growing children."
Swedish court to rule on school lunch fingerprinting.
Hungry students at a school in Västerbotten in northern Sweden must give a fingerprint in order to eat in the
school's cafeteria, a practice which bothers data privacy officials seeking to ban the measure. At the Lilja
school in Vännäs, students must give a fingerprint accompanied by a four-digit code in order to receive a
plate and enter the school's cafeteria.
The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to
the U.S. Taxpayer: Means-tested programs are typically termed welfare programs. … The largest
of these are Medicaid; the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC); food stamps; Supplemental Security Income (SSI);
Section 8 housing; public housing; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF); the school lunch and
breakfast programs; the WIC (Women, Infants, and Children) nutrition program; and the Social Services Block
Grant (SSBG). Many means-tested programs, such as SSI and the EITC, provide cash to recipients.
Others, such as public housing or SSBG, pay for services that are provided to recipients. … Overall,
the U.S. spent $564 billion on means-tested aid in FY 2004.
Do the Republicans have the courage to roll back federal
spending? Half of all Americans now receive some form of entitlement, whether Social Security,
Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, unemployment insurance, veterans benefits, federal
pensions, food stamps, school lunches, the earned-income tax credit, farm subsidies, or disability
payments. Entitlements consume more than half of the $1.5-trillion budget.
School Lunches to Go
Global: U.S. effort to start a global school lunch program. Guess who's
going to pay for it.
The Obamas Police Food and
Football. [Scroll down] On the food front, Michelle Obama likewise said something that,
given the context, conjures up a lot of history. Speaking at a public school to commemorate the signing
of the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, the First Lady said flat out that the federal government must act
because we can't just leave [child nutrition] up to the parents." She means it: The law she was
on hand to praise gives the federal government the power to regulate the food sold in public school cafeterias
nationwide. We are a very long way from 1994, when Republicans were threatening to end the Department of
Education in order to turn more power over to local and state control. The federal food police are
acting in the name of fighting childhood obesity, a real problem for which there is scant evidence that
school lunches play any role whatsoever. School lunches, for the kids who eat them, constitute one meal
a day, five days a week, about nine months of the year. They are not the dominant food source for the
vast majority, if any, of America's kids.
Fattening Government
to Fight Obesity. The child nutrition bill signed into law by President Obama on Dec. 13 has
been touted as essential to combating the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. It is also a welfare expansion,
adding $4.5 billion to the cost of school lunches. Despite the additional six cents per meal which
will be paid to the schools, critics say it amounts to an unfunded mandate which could bankrupt schools.
Mother
Jailed for Enrolling Kids in Another School District. An Akron, Ohio, woman was released from
jail on Wednesday after serving 9 days of a 10-day sentence for enrolling her children in a neighboring
school district. Kelley Williams-Bolar, 40, was convicted of two felony counts of tampering with records
by providing false information on sworn registration forms, applications for free or reduced-price school
lunches, and other forms she submitted to the Copley-Fairlawn School District, where she enrolled her two
daughters.
Valpo
sixth-grader handcuffed over spilled milk. A 12-year-old faces two counts of resisting law
enforcement for his alleged actions when he refused to clean up spilled milk in the Ben Franklin Middle
School cafeteria. A police officer was helping supervise the lunch period on Tuesday, because both
the principal and assistant principal were in a meeting, and the boy got into a confrontation with a school
staff member.
Girl, 10, Arrested for Using Knife to Cut
Food at School. A 10-year-old Florida girl faces felony weapons charges after bringing a small
steak knife to school to cut up her lunch, according to a report on MyFOXOrlando.com. School officials
say the Ocala 5th grader had brought a piece of steak for her lunch, and a four and a half inch steak knife
with which to cut it. According to the report, a couple of teachers took the utensil and called
authorities, who arrested the girl and took her to the county's juvenile assessment center.
Many more stories like this are on
the Zero Tolerance Page.
Police in Laramie, Wyo., Cite
Teen Girls Who Threw French Fries for 'Hurling Missiles'. Three 13-year-old
girls accused of throwing french fries during lunchtime at their school were cited for
"hurling missiles," an adult infraction covered by city ordinances.
Alar: The Great Apple Scare. Apple
juice and apple sauce were thrown away. Apples were taken out of school lunches, and parents on the border
of hysteria called the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) about risks of cancer to their children.
The publicity campaign was so effective that sales and prices of all apples declined sharply, and 20,000 apple
growers in the U.S. suffered substantial financial harm — even the large number who never used Alar.
The Obama administration is using (mostly black)
churches to expand the welfare state.
Michelle's Machine:
[Scroll down] Religious leaders are prodded to work with schools to "create a wellness club for teachers with
volunteer instructors from the congregation" and to "help your local school install a salad bar in its
cafeteria." Most worrisome, though, are the administration's efforts to have congregations place
themselves in the service of government as recruiters for the welfare state. Congregations are told
to "encourage eligible families to enroll their children in [government-subsidized] school meal programs"; if
organizations operate day-care or after-school programs, they are advised to pursue reimbursement for meals and
snacks through the Child and Adult Care Food Program (a federally funded, state-administered welfare program).
Places of worship are asked to serve as feeding sites for the Summer Food Service Program -- another
federally funded, state-run welfare project.
The Editor says...
Where are the "separation of church and state" people now?
Whatever you do, don't pray before eating your school lunch!
School prayer charges
stir protests. Students, teachers and local pastors are protesting over a court case involving a northern
Florida school principal and an athletic director who are facing criminal charges and up to six months in jail over their
offer of a mealtime prayer.
Against the Rulers of Darkness. We are
involved in a war. It is a war between differing political ideologies, mind-sets, and world-views. ... At its heart,
it is a war between spirituality and egoism, a war between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong. As I
write this, two Florida teachers may lose their retirement benefits, and spend six months in jail for their "flagrant"
violation of the First Amendment. Their crime? They said Grace before eating a meal, while on school grounds.
Update:
Officials
cleared in prayer injunction case. Two rural northern Florida school officials were found not
guilty of violating an injunction against praying in school, a Florida judge ruled late Thursday [9/17/2009]
in a contentious school prayer case that spurred a reaction from Congress earlier this week.
Lay, Freeman
found not guilty. A federal judge has ruled that a rural Panhandle principal and his athletic
director did not violate an order against praying in school. Judge M. Case Rodgers ruled Thursday
evening [9/17/2009] that Pace High School Principal Frank Lay and Athletic Director Robert Freeman didn't
violate a 2008 agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union that was approved by the court.
The Editor says...
That's good news, but the odious fact remains that there is such an agreement with the ACLU.
Florida Prayer Case Reveals ACLU Agenda to Criminalize
Christianity. Yesterday after an all-day hearing, Santa Rosa County, Florida, Principal Frank Lay and
Athletic Director Robert Freeman were cleared of criminal contempt charges that arose from the simple blessing of a
meal. When they heard the decision, tears of joy and cheers swept through the throngs of people who had waited
outside in the rain for over ten hours.
Peanut allergies
Is this a real problem, or just another environmental false
alarm? If it is a widespread problem, why did it materialize at about the time the internet
came into widespread use? Do we have this problem only because there are
too many lawyers who will sue anybody for any
reason? This whole issue sounds to me like an email hoax that has been wildly overblown.
Tyranny Update:
[We would have been skeptical] back in the '60s, when the anti-tobacco movement started, if someone predicted that
the day would come when some cities, such as Calabasas, Calif., would outlaw smoking on public streets.
Back in the '60s, had someone predicted that there'd be bans on restaurants serving foie gras; citations for
driving without a seatbelt, that the government said would be unnecessary if cars had airbags; and school bans
on kids having peanut butter sandwiches in their lunchbox, I'm sure people would have said that would never
happen.
Harvard prof slams US nut allergy
hysteria. A Harvard professor of medical sociology has agreeably warned that increasing hysteria
over nut allergies in kids bears the hallmarks of mass psychogenic illness (MPI) — described as "a
social network phenomenon involving otherwise healthy people in a cascade of anxiety". Writing in the
British Medical Journal, Nicholas A Christakis cites the extreme example of when a potentially fatal
peanut was "spotted on the floor of a school bus, whereupon the bus was evacuated and cleaned (I am tempted to
say decontaminated), even though it was full of 10-year-olds who, unlike two-year-olds, could actually be told
not to eat food off the floor".
The War On Peanuts: North
Carolina is the fifth-largest peanut grower in the U.S., yet peanut-allergy nazis have persuaded even officials in that
state to crack down on PB&Js.
Sound
Public Policy or Hysteria? As someone with a background in public policy making and enforcement, I find
it alarming that so much public policy today, particularly in schools, is motivated by fear-of-lawsuit hysteria rather
than sound research, cost-benefit analysis, least restrictive means to meet the policy objective and other rational
criteria. One extreme example of hysteria-based decision making is the banning of peanut products in schools.
Nut
allergies — a Yuppie invention. Your kid doesn't have an allergy to
nuts. Your kid has a parent who needs to feel special. ... Genes don't mutate fast enough to
have caused an 18% increase in childhood food allergies between 1997 and 2007. And genes
certainly don't cause 25% of parents to believe that their kids have food allergies, when 4% do.
Yuppiedom does.
Free lunch "safety":
Some people can die from eating ordinary wholesome foods like salmon or peanut butter. If the government banned
every food that was fatal to someone, we might all die of malnutrition.
The fear about peanut allergies
is nuts. What constitutes a peanut allergy for a parent is not what constitutes it for a doctor.
If a child has diarrhea or vomits after eating nuts, it may signal a food allergy, but it may also mean food
poisoning. The FAAN study did not confirm its subjects' claims that they were allergic to nuts.
That would have required medical records and testing, neither of which were included in the study.
Doubt Is Cast on Many
Reports of Food Allergies. Many who think they have food allergies actually do not. A
new report, commissioned by the federal government, finds the field is rife with poorly done studies,
misdiagnoses and tests that can give misleading results.
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