Dept. of Lunch: Progressives Know Best What All Students Should Eat

Michelle Obama and her ilk think they know what's best for all American students' diets. The government's increased involvement in what kids eat hasn't made things better.

French Queen Marie Antoinette would be a failure as a modern-day school lunch lady.

“Let them eat cake, indeed,” first lady Michelle Obama would tell the French noblewoman. “Too much refined sugar! How much sodium is in that recipe? And the calorie count? Why, that’s over the total lunch allotment!”

In today's America, where some schools inspect brought-from-home lunches for food contraband, packing a Ho Ho isn't yet a crime punishable by beheading. But Ms. Antoinette's kids might have their lunches confiscated by school officials.

The illustration may be fictional, but the policy isn't.

Since passage of the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act—Mrs. Obama’s signature program to combat childhood obesity in American school lunchrooms—more than a million students are voting with their pocketbooks and stepping out of lunch lines. Social media is replete with students feigning faintness ostensibly related to having too little to eat at lunch. Pictures of school trashcans overflowing with uneaten food are turning up in news media nationwide.

Picket signs depicting Charlton Heston clutching a deep-dish pepperoni pie, proclaiming, “I’ll give you my pizza when you pry it from my cold, dead hands!” can’t be far behind.

The United States has a problem with obesity, both childhood and adult. But the nanny-state has responded with the federal government dictating how many calories, how much fiber, what types of protein and even the color of vegetables a student must put on his lunch tray in order for the federal government to subsidize up to $3 a meal.

Progressives’ “we know what’s best for you” mentality has prompted some schools to even invade student lunches brought from home. An errant Cheetos bag or the wrong type of yogurt is subject to confiscation. Bake sales are taboo and vending machines are collecting dust since federal government rules began regulating the offerings. And it’s not limited to just public schools.

The reaction to the federal school lunch edicts is a textbook illustration of free-market economics. When producers stop offering a product consumers want, they leave the market or find alternatives. About 1.3 million students have abandoned school lunch lines in the past two years, according to USDA data. And at one school, young entrepreneurs created a profitable niche after chocolate milk was eliminated as a lunch choice.

Some schools have countered by putting “try-it-you’ll-like-it” food “coaches” in lunchrooms to cajole kids to challenge their taste buds. Others have resorted to giving away iPads and bikes to bring students back.

The changes certainly have gotten the attention of Big Food, the major distributors that supply $9.5 billion of food annually to school lunch programs. While trying to tweak some products, they're also jawboning Congress to relax the rules.

Michelle Obama’s changes have created some new jobs. Two female-owned food services, one based in Detroit and the other in San Francisco, have grown exponentially since breaking into the new fresh-and-healthy school lunch market. But at least one of those businesses has close ties to alternative energy financiers.

That could be a coincidence. But consider that climate-change protectionists want Americans to eat less beef. They’re advising the folks responsible for setting federal nutrition standards, claiming less beef means less cow flatulence to attack the ozone.

The expanding federal school nutrition program is one of several government programs that feed kids. But entitlement rules are inconsistent. Food stamps—now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—pays for foods that are outlawed in schools. And the government’s own statistics show a direct correlation between obesity and food stamp users.

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Want more than excerpts?

Get the real history of school lunch programs — they've not always been tainted by the federal government — and what's actually going on today.

All of that and much more is exposed in the full cover story examining the progressive left's attempted takeover of our kids' lunches in the March 2015 issue of TheBlaze Magazine.

Kathy examines what has happened to the students who have abandoned lunch programs, the growing "free lunch" program, the impact of the regulations on both health and finances, the many social policy contradictions of the feds and much more.

It's all in the newest issue of TheBlaze Magazine.

Order today and get the digital version of this issue for FREE.

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