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More pizza, fewer vegetables: Trump administration further undercuts Obama school-lunch rules
It's hard to believe the Trump administration is even going after the Obama nutritious school lunches, but there you have it. More junk food will be allowed.
It seems Trump wants school students to be as obese as he is. It's also a bonus for the potato industry that has donated to Trumps campaigns.
1/17/20
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has taken another whack at former first lady Michelle Obama’s signature achievement: Establishing stricter nutritional standards for school breakfasts and lunches. And on her birthday. On Friday, USDA Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps proposed new rules for the Food and Nutrition Service that would allow schools to cut the amount of vegetables and fruits required at lunch and breakfasts while giving them license to sell more pizza, burgers and fries to students. The agency is responsible for administering nutritional programs that feed nearly 30 million students at 99,000 schools. Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs for Center for Science in the Public Interest, says that the proposed rules, if finalized, “would create a huge loophole in school nutrition guidelines, paving the way for children to choose pizza, burgers, french fries and other foods high in calories, saturated fat or sodium in place of balanced school meals every day.” He says that limiting the variety of vegetables could make french fries even more central to students’ diets. He says the potato lobby has been pushing for this change, and that the potato industry was behind a change that happened quietly last March making it easier to substitute potatoes for some fruit in weekly breakfast menus. Under the Obama administration, the nutrition guidelines for schools that participated in the National School Lunch Program shifted, requiring cafeterias to increase their offerings of fruits and vegetables, serve only skim or low-fat milk and cut trans-fat from the menu altogether. They also required dramatic cuts in sodium in school cafeteria food.
It's hard to believe the Trump administration is even going after the Obama nutritious school lunches, but there you have it. More junk food will be allowed.
It seems Trump wants school students to be as obese as he is. It's also a bonus for the potato industry that has donated to Trumps campaigns.