Trump Administration Rolls Back School Nutrition Standards
Ever since he took office, Donald Trump has made it a point to roll back as many of his predecessor’s policies as possible.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which is often attributed to both President Obama and Michelle Obama, instituted certain new reforms to the way the USDA administers school lunch programs. Rolling back those reforms has been a major thrust of the Trump administration and Trump’s USDA chief, Sonny Perdue. This week, the first of those rollbacks was announced.
The HHFK Act—we’re just abbreviating for the sake of ease, it isn’t usually referred to that way—was a multi-pronged effort to improve childhood nutrition. The best-known provisions included limiting milk to either one percent white or nonfat flavored milks; setting maximum limits for sodium, fat, and sugar; and minimum limits for fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. But it also instituted new funds and resources to help schools source more local produce, increased the number of eligible kids, increased access to water fountains, and cleaned up the way eligibility is run (by using census data rather than applications).
For years, Donald Trump has insisted that these rules are onerous and that more control should be given to the schools, which often operate under a strict and wildly inadequate budget. USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue has said that kids may simply be uninterested in healthy options, and that forcing schools to offer them is thus a waste of money and effort. (This is not, according to some studies, true; this study, for example, found that increasing access to healthy food does in fact increase the intake of healthy food.)
This week, the USDA released a press release outlining some of the new rules, saying the new rules are designed to “eliminate unnecessary regulatory burdens.” The first wave of these new rules include allowing flavored one-percent milk and freezing the sodium reduction requirements. Under the HHFK Act, schools were supposed to gradually reduce sodium content over the course of the decade. The new rules delay that by seven years, which could simply signal that those sodium goals may never actually be required.
The HHFK Act has, despite statements from the Trump administration, been a success; school lunch participation is up, long-term budgets don’t seem to be affected, and according to the USDA’s research, schools have reached near-universal compliance with the rules.
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by Dan Nosowitz, Modern Farmer
December 21, 2018
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USDA? how funny……that part of the swamp needs drained 😉 much better ideas for children’s lunch… that’s just my opinion tho’ 😉
It is wonderful that the Obama Administration implemented the guidelines mentioned. I am an advocate of good nutrition, and that is fresh fruit and vegetables (non GMO food), and nutritional supplements, however, it must start in the home, not in the school. If the children are taught one way in the home, they will follow that course in school, no matter how healthy. I do believe local control is better than big government.
Low sodium & low fat has been proven by repeatable independent science to not be healthy nutrition.
My mom and sister are both teachers and they hate the food served at the schools. They only improvement they saw was fresh fruit and vegetables that were offered more often but food quality overall went down and most students who’s parents could afford it started bringing thier own lunches. The students wouldn’t eat any of the bread products. As someone who is all about food and nutrition the fact the you try to restrict fat and salt but leave sugar in high amounts alone doesn’t make sense. Sugar and salt should be limited but fats in a diet are… Read more »
Have you ever seen a plate of what M.O. lunches were? I doubt a pig would have eaten them. Meanwhile her little darlings had a chef,so get off your soapbox about what they will be getting now. When they are children you feed them what they will eat ! Nuff said.
Nothing to add
No American would think that the federal government has any right to even opinion on school lunches. Schools are locally based & funded. Let us rural people, the REAL Americans back Trump (yes he is ass, so what!) to get the federal illegal over-reach out of our lives & back to Constitutional legality. the “success” of such perverse programs is not relevant. Nazi Concentration camps were “successful. Wrong is wrong.
Trump is narcissistic and needs to be removed .
Have you seen the pictures of these Obama era meals? Prisoners eat better. On top of that, the waste was through the roof, because students didn’t want the stuff offered.
The son of a bitch will do anything – anything – to restrict intellectual, medical, vocational and nutritive resources (and much more) available to the Common People, both to shovel more money to his bloated friends and to force the commoners into the military so that they can rape and pillage other countries for their resources – again, to satisfy the bloated Rich.