In 2010, a lame-duck Democratic Congress passed Michelle Obama’s brainchild, the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.” Anyone acquainted with government-program “results” won’t be surprised to hear the outcome was the precise opposite of what the law’s name indicated: Starved of calories, many kids actually went hungry in schools.
The garbage pails didn’t, though, with one legislator complaining that the regulations were “filling the trash cans with uneaten food.”
And now, reflecting philosopher Georg Hegel’s observation that the only thing “we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history,” the federal diet Nazis are back — with new school-lunch rules to torment the next generation.
Nutrition experts Mikes Borges and Betty Crocker reported on the story Monday at USA Today. Pointing out that kids “won’t eat what they don’t like,” they write:
The U.S. Department of Agriculture [USDA] has proposed changes to current nutrition standards for school meals served to K-12 students, but the approach ignores important facts about nutrition education.
Instead of healthier, well-nourished students, our school nutrition programs would suffer from a lack of participation and increased food waste.
…The most nutritious meals are the ones students actually eat. The proposed changes would reduce key ingredients that make food palatable….
The proposed regulations would require reductions in sodium and added sugars, possibly change the use of whole grains and eliminate flavored milk as an option for students. That would have a significant and unfavorable effect on students’ tastes compared to what they eat outside of school. More students — many of whom rely on school meals as their main or only source of nutrition and calories — are likely to toss their lunch trays.
USDA research shows that school meals are often already the healthiest meals students eat in a day. Sodas, fried foods, candy and trans-fat have been banned for almost two decades.
The USDA’s goal is to make the School Nutrition Program instrumental in combating the prosperity-related health issues plaguing America, such as diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. But here’s a better idea:
Eliminate the federal School Nutrition Program altogether.
Not only is it unconstitutional, but what are its fruits (aside from the horrible produce it tries to foist on kids)? Borges and Crocker point out that (as with mask mandates and Covid) food restrictions have been shown to not yield positive long-term outcomes and are actually counterproductive. Correlation isn’t on the regulations’ side, either. Just as how teen pregnancy’s explosive growth has mirrored the increase in “sex education programs,” waxing food restrictions have corresponded to waning health (at least in certain dimensions). Heart disease and diabetes, for example, are bigger problems than ever.
Of course, this is mainly because what’s associated with these diseases and many others is also more common than ever — obesity — which Borges and Crocker also call a “disease.” Well, yeah, “It’s just like polio,” perhaps, noted comedian James Gregory years ago — “Maybe someday they’ll find a cure.”
Incredulous at the claim, Gregory then asked, “Where do you folks think I caught this?” patting his friendly front. “Got too close to a fat person — they sneezed and I got it” (bacillus corpulentis? Hilarious video below).
Joking aside, two reasons leap to mind as to why children are fatter than ever. The first is inactivity; where earlier generations’ kids spent much time running and playing outdoors, today’s youth are wiling away hours with electronic devices and video games.
The second is that it’s another function of declining virtue: Many parents now not only set bad health-habit examples but, having failed to establish discipline and obedience, cannot well control their kids’ eating.
Returning to Borges and Crocker, they also mention:
- An estimated 530,000 tons of U.S. cafeteria food is wasted yearly (partially thanks to Michelle Obama), and the new USDA regulations would only worsen the problem. In reality, serving food kids don’t like, healthful or not, is a fool’s errand unless you have the disciplinary capacity to compel them to eat it. In today’s permissive schools this is, of course, a non-starter.
- The USDA’s proposals are opposed by many in the school-food business, as rising costs, supply-chain problems, and kids’ tastes make the new regulations unfeasible and, the authors explain, an impediment to the goal of serving healthful meals. School systems would have to devote literally millions of dollars and hundreds of staff hours to reinvent school menus — all during a time of budget crunches and staff shortages. Rejiggering the products would also cost food manufacturers many millions.
At the end of the day, however, none of this is any of the feds’ business. In keeping with the important principle “subsidiarity” — which states that the smallest unit of society that can perform a given task should be the one to do so (e.g., family before a charitable organization, state before feds) — formulating school lunches should be parents’/localities’ role.
Moreover, this focus is another example of askew priorities. Schools are worried about a kid eating too much salt, but often have no problem with him taking Ritalin or puberty blockers. It’s supposedly horrible if children have junk food, but commendable if they’re fed the spiritual, moral, and cultural junk food that is CRT and other propaganda, and “gender” other sexual devolutionary ideologies.
Lastly, spiritually healthy, truly grateful people would not tolerate the obscene waste of food, of God’s bounty, witnessed at schools today.
Speaking of waste, the most dangerous weight problem — one requiring some serious starvation — is that of our morbidly obese federal government.
