New School Nutrition Rules From Michelle Obama
Twitter
Facebook
Delicious
Digg
Stumble
Reddit
Under First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign for better fitness and nutrition, new school lunch guidelines came into effect. Do they really improve things?
An Improvement?
A few days ago one of my readers posted a comment on my site, saying she was pretty infuriated by an article she had just read: “Michelle Obama School Lunch Catastrophe“. She dropped me the link so I could check it out and this piece is taken from the beginning of that article:
On January 25th of this year, Michelle Obama and Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack released the new federal nutrition standards for school meals.
The changes, as far as I know, have little to no real scientific validity. The changes all stem from outdated presumptions about the cause and cure of obesity. From what I can tell, the USDA and Michelle consulted with Jillian Michaels, Kate Moss, and Jenny Craig instead of the world’s leading obesity researchers to make this dramatic and assuredly harmful overhaul of public school lunches.
As I was reading that beginning I was thinking, wow, nice, finally they are going to do something about nutrition in public schools. That got me very excited. But then I read that these rules will now be enforced to control the obesity epidemic:
- School Lunches will be calorie – controlled
- Limit starchy begetable consumption
- Whole Milk has been banned, but the kids will be allowed to drink low-fat chocolate milk
- French fries and pizza will still be served, after heavy industry lobbying
Wow, genius! Bravo, Michelle! Now all children will learn to count calories and create an obsession with food (get them young while you can), they will stop eating starchy vegetables (so no yams for them) while getting a pizza, and drink low-fat milk with buckets of sugar added to it to gulp it down. But hey, it just might control the obesity epidemic.
It’s Time For Change
I am absolutely appalled by nutrition education and legislation in the US. Things like these are exactly why I don’t want to study nutrition here. These days you see all kinds of so-called experts who teach people the most absurd and misleading information not only about nutrition but fitness as well. From cutting out vegetables, or eating only bananas, to leg lengthening exercises where all you have to do is tie some weights to your feet and hang them off a table.
Why isn’t there a law against bogus information? Or at least if so-called experts are presenting others with such information why isn’t there an enforced rule to provide studies of proof? I believe that with these new rules in schools nutrition program, the obesity epidemic will continue to grow, but this time at a much faster rate.
Picture courtesy of the White House.
8 Comments
“Get them young while you can”… that is so true, what better way to sell your ideals and fake ‘health’ foods, than to those you’ve mislead and instilled fear into. That may sound conspiratorial to some, but I honestly find it hard to believe that such nonsense can be propagated with no agenda (read: whatever makes the most money) behind it.
And it’s just saddening, the warped mindsets that information like this has created (I’ve been a long-time ‘victim’ of it as well). Just the other day I was reading through some conversations, from people who admitted they’ve been “terrified” and obsessed with counting up the fat/starch/calorie contents of food for YEARS… so it makes me wonder how even well-intentioned adults will be able to teach healthy habits to children, when so many are stuck in unhealthy behaviors themselves.
At least there are a few like Tatianna, who provide a solid voice of reason amongst this craziness!! Cause it’s badly needed.
Evaleen,
Thank you so much for sharing that article with me, it is very crazy these days with all the wrong info.
I do understand that counting calories can be a very effective weight loss, but I don’t think it should be proposed to children, cause kids soak everything up like a sponge and it might create an obsession with food, I know so many people that it happened too.
I’d be also infuriated if my children were to eat at school! That menu plan is an atrocity and still is a public danger to health I think…
Hey J
I hope that by the time we have children they only serve organic food in schools, hey the law of attraction, that could totally happen
I completely agree with you, but sometimes real change starts with SOME kind of change, even if it isn’t good. Whole grains started to become much more mainstream after the fad diets that, while they advocated for whole grains, approached eating from a completely unhealthy point of view. So maybe this change will happen, and it will snowball eventually into a change that is ACTUALLY healthy.
The government’s idea of what is healthy is also very misleading. The FDA is very behind the times, so I am not surprised that government ordinances on school lunches follow suit. The best we can do is make sure we spread the word, like you do! And of course, educate our kids and feed them right (and probably to not listen to the FDA and the government concerning food).
Hey Kendra
I really love what you said ” real change starts with SOME kind of change, even if it isn’t good “, these are very wise words. Yes the FDA is still not someone I trust at all, I don’t trust the USDA either, I just can’t believe some people are still listening to them.
Incredibly stupid changes! I agree with you Evil, it’s sadly ironic that these putative ‘experts’ are actually amongst the most ill-informed of people.
The constant obfuscation of the obesity problem is not helped in the slightest by this patent commercial rent-seeking behaviour in these new changes. The current approach is asinine and will, without question, not work.
I agree with you Tatianna*
Haha, my mistake.