Trump official freezes Michelle Obama’s plan to fight childhood obesity

[Kujako]

The whole thing was doomed, soon as Congress declared pizza a vegetable.

[The Penguin]

Only one thing really can suffice for this this scenario.

[Slicer299]

Many of these children in inner cities rely on school food for their whole day. Obama's diet just isn't nutritional enough to sustain them.

Kids were tossing most or some of it in the garbage because what they were getting was disgusting. Serving school kids uncooked radishes might sound healthy compared to french fries, but the kids aren't going to eat the radishes. Michelle Obama's "Healthy" Lunch Program achieved nothing beyond giving kids food they weren't willing to eat, leaving them to go hungry.

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As for the people saying the federal government can dictate this sort of stuff, they can't. Even if they're public schools. They have to specifically accept federal funds for school lunches, and her school lunch program was hated by students, staff and parents so much that some schools stopped accepting federal money so they could drop the program. Because the kids who did pay for their own lunch stopped paying, and the federal funding alone wasn't enough.

All the way back in 2014, a million kids had already stopped getting lunch at school because the food was so disgusting. With 321 school districts leaving the program within the first year it was implemented. So Trump ditching the program isn't hurting anyone, because the students weren't eating her shitty food anyways. And you think the President is supposed to improve the country? That's exactly what Trump is doing after 8 years of Obama destroying it. You're welcome.

[DarkTZeratul]

http://assets.thepoliticalinsider.co.../5201614_G.jpg
This is child abuse.

And dodges my question spectacularly. Again, if the problem is that the nutritional standards are poor, why is the solution getting rid of them entirely rather than making them better?

[Kujako]

And dodges my question spectacularly. Again, if the problem is that the nutritional standards are poor, why is the solution getting rid of them entirely rather than making them better?

Because as I mentioned, when we made them better, Congress responded to lobbying pressure to categorize frozen pizza as a vegetable. In other words, there is no political interest in making them better, so may as well cut our losses.

[Tennis]

Apparently not well when both parents work 50-60 hour work weeks and still cannot afford any housekeeping.

How can people be working 50-60 hours a week? Isn't a workweek 36-40 hours.

[Adam Jensen]

I would hope his plan is that it's not the government's, certainly not the federal government's, job to micromanage what children are fed. Parents, how do they work?

It's a government school. Kids are there for eight hours and should be fed if they're going to be there that long. And if the government's feeding them, it should be healthy food.

Ideally should parents pack them lunches? Yes. Realistically, enough of them can't. Or won't because they're shit parents.

[Zandalarian Paladin]

While the change was somewhat welcome, the issue will not be fixed by removing the culprits altogether. At my college's cafeteria, we had a "healthy" day on Friday - Most people just skipped that day and went to the subway 5 minutes away.

Now, I'm not dumb enough to compare this to elementary school. But if their child throws a tantrum, parents will buy crap for their child to eat at school anyway. They'll go and buy candy bars at distributing machines.

The thing is, it's not fixing the issue. I don't know what would work. I honestly have no idea what the government should do to prevent obesity. But this, here, won't change anything.

[Zan15]

get them fat
take away healthcare
death to poor kids!!!

[Kujako]

What a horrible view. " Sorry kids we couldn't get you the lunch you should have so now you get nothing." Brilliant.

Until people start electing different people to Congress, there is nothing we can do. Frozen pizza is a vegetable, thus school lunch nutrition is a non-starter.

[Orlong]

And the government isn't micromanaging what children are being fed, and certainly isn't telling parents what to feed their kids. They're dictating what federally-funded public schools are feeding children, which strikes me as being well within their purview.

Thats not true at all. Schools are also taking lunches away from students that their parent sent with them from home and throwing them away because they were "unhealthy"

http://www.newslinq.com/seized-school-lunch/

It happened in the school district of Durham, Ontario, where kids were told they could’t eat parts of their packed lunches because they were called “unhealthy” by school officials.

It’s a new healthy eating initiative and parents are extremely upset.

A mom named Elaina Daoust said she was “infuriated” when her son was told that he was not allowed to eat his morning snack. It was a small piece of banana bread, but since it contained chocolate chips, it was considered unhealthy by the school. The grapes from his lunch would have to be eaten instead.

Here are some of the common food grabs that school officials have not allowed the kids to eat: Goldfish, granola bars, string cheese, Jello, juice boxes, pudding, fruit snacks, raisins, Animal Crackers, chocolate milk, and Sun Chips.

Another mom talks about how her second grade daughter got her lunch sent home several times last year, due to it containing pizza on a non-pizza day. She adds that one time her daughter was given an orange to replace her packed lunch. Sometimes her daughter ended up simply not eating because teachers sent her “unacceptable” food back home.

[Deleted]

Who you think will survive the next big war? The fat people or the soldiers? haha

[Orlong]

Many of these children in inner cities rely on school food for their whole day. Obama's diet just isn't nutritional enough to sustain them.

The parents should be using their food stamps to pay for lunches to send with t he kids. I already pay for their foodstamps. I shouldnt have to pay for their school lunches too

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Also getting rid of the Energy Star program... seems like he's cutting every nickel and dime thing he can to pay for the tax cuts, no mater who it hurts or what it costs (energy star costs a few million and saves consumers billions).

Energy Star sucks because it sacrifices quality for energy efficiency. Energy Star AC units wont cool my rooms to 60 degrees

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Yes, that lunch is a joke.

Again, the goals of the program are fantastic - make sure that kids can get nutritious meals rather than just stuffing them with calories and no actual nutrition. It's extremely important for young/teenage kids to get adequate nutrition because failure to do so can cause a host of problems with their ability to learn and focus in school, as well as other health issues.

The solution should be to re-evaluate the program and identify the reasons for why it's not achieving these goals consistently (because it is achieving them in plenty of places, just as it's failing in plenty of places) and address them.

Not to cut it and leave children to go hungry or simply stuff them full of calories that don't also deliver any real nutrition.

The schools could easily make satisfying and healthy lunches for students if they would actually hire people who can cook, and buy fresh food that actually requires preparation and effort to make instead of buying a freezer full of Sysco premade frozen foods that non culinary staff can just throw in the oven and bake.

They could prepare whole roasted turkeys and carve them into slices, and serve with oven roasted balsamic carrots, and real mashed potatoes and a side salad, but for the same cost and no effort, they give 3 slices of low quality deli turkey slices or 3 chicken nuggets, a slice of cheese, and some saltines and call it a lunch.

Rarely if ever were we served anything at school (back in the late 70s to late 80s for lunch that was a premade frozen food product. Our lunch ladies cooked EVERYTHING, including desert. We also had no soda machines, snack machines, or fast food popup restaurants, and werent allowed to leave the school. You ate what was on the menu for the day, brought your own, or starved

[Misuteri]

I've known too many track, soccer, football, swimming, basketball, field hockey, hockey and gymnasts that would starve if they were reliant on this program to ever support it.

You have kids in the middle of puberty and still growing buring in excess of 5,000 calories a day and require more than that to maintain body weight and continue to grow into healthy adults.

Meanwhile these lunches are clocking in at 300-500 calories.

Yep, student athletes may represent big cash cows to schools but we're going to feed them as we would political prisoners in a third world country because it's what's good for them.

YAY LIBERALISM!

[TITAN308]

They (statistlicly) dont. Which is why the goverment had to step in, in the first place.

I admit, I laughed.

Bravo sir.

[GreenGoldSharpie]

The problem is that food service in many schools has become a business on its own, and when you contract with a school it can pay extremely well. This, of course, doesn't serve kids well at all. At the very least I have been seeing plenty of high schoolers pass on the fries and hit the veggie and salad bar, and many even hold the dressing.

A good start, though, would be banning junk food sold in the cafeteria from the "snack bar" and then banning it from the classrooms. Kinda gross how many of my first hour kids think flaming hot cheetos and a soda are a proper breakfast. But, particularly in special ed, we're discouraged from barring food in our first hour since so many of them don't actually get to eat at home and actively trade for food when they get there in the morning. I have one kid who trades his phone to a friend who has first hour off for a bag of those damned cheetos every morning.

I have zero problems with federal investment and mandates here, though, particularly if we swing quality into the mix. No shit show lunches, please.

[omeomorfismo]

It never has been. But ensuring that lunches provided at public schools are nutritious should be, rather than just reclassifying "pizza" as a vegetable.

And before anyone makes the comment (unless they already have), yes, I'm perfectly happy to have some of my taxes going to make sure that poor kids get nutritious meals at schools and don't go hungry.

is this real? rotfl

[cuafpr]

What good is nutritional changes if the students aren't eating the food?

so much this... when its being thrown away who cares.

[Kaleredar]

I would hope his plan is that it's not the government's, certainly not the federal government's, job to micromanage what children are fed. Parents, how do they work?

...it's not the government's job to manage what government schools serve for lunch?

[GreenGoldSharpie]

...it's not the government's job to manage what government schools serve for lunch?

Just like it's not the government's job to mandate a unified set of standards so when little Josh moves from Arkansas to Maryland he isn't held back a year because Arkansas doesn't even come close to the rigor of Maryland.

Little Josh is my cousin, btw.