Posted on 09/26/2012 5:56:45 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Unprecedented school-lunch regulations have just gone into effect, and they suggest a new answer to the question “Where’s the beef?”: not on students’ plates— or on their bones. The regulations are a result of Michelle Obama’s “Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act,” which was passed by the lame-duck, Democrat-controlled Congress in December 2010. And the result has been wasted food, endangered health, and hungrier kids.
The problem is that, in typical nanny-state style, the regulations not only prescribe foods many children find unpalatable, they also apply unrealistic calorie restrictions on students: “650 calories for elementary-schoolers, 700 for middle-schoolers and 850 for high-schoolers,” writes Suzanne Tobias of the Wichita Eagle.
Yet more perspective is gained when you consider that the government’s dietary limitations wouldn’t be out of place in a wartime prison camp. For example, writes PJ Media, “Current regulations limit servings of protein, which could be anything from a hamburger to a side of beans, to 1.5 ounces two days a week and 2 ounces the other three days.”
This has prompted protests, including a video parodying the situation. And while this may seem a tempest in a teapot in a world coming apart at the seams, it’s a prime example of the folly of government control.
Let’s start like this: What kind of calorie-dense stupidity is required to prescribe the same diet for a lanky, high-metabolism 16-year-old boy athlete as you would for a female agemate with weight issues? As PJ Media pointed out, an active-student athlete may require 5000 calories a day, and I can relate to this because I once was that lanky teenage boy.
As a junior and senior in high school, I was already more than six feet tall but never weighed above 155 pounds despite regularly clearing dinner tables like a hurdler. Being a serious tennis player, however, I was always looking for an edge. So one day I decided to adopt the diet in Robert Haas’ book Eat to Win; Haas had become quite well-renowned at the time because of his status as Martina Navratilova’s nutritionist.
Well, I started to feel like the gypsy-cursed attorney in the movie Thinner. No matter how much of Haas’ low-calorie offerings I ate, I simply could not keep weight on. After a month and a half I’d melted down to about 148 pounds, and that was when I said to myself (literally), “This diet may be okay for Navratilova, who has the metabolism of a primeval sloth, but it’s not going to work for a guy my age.” I went back to my old eating habits — which included a large nightly bowl of ice cream.
Clearly, putting a lean, active teenage boy on an 850-calorie per meal diet is unhealthful. And 1.5 to 2 ounces of protein a day? Is this Bangladeshi exceptionalism? One of the triumphs of modern civilization is that we have made protein — something highly valued historically but often in short supply — readily available to the common man. But now the oddly uncommon men (otherwise known as progressives) who complain of atavistic impulses in their opponents want to turn back the clock to times of privation. Why, the regulations will even eliminate school salad bars — because the government cannot control the type and amount of food students choose from them.
This, however, is what happens when statist officials a thousand miles away make special-interest-spawned policy for everyone else. In this case, the special interest is Michelle Obama, who has long had weight issues and now is imposing her priorities and requirements on the rest of us. To paraphrase GOP Congressman Steve King, “Because some kids are overweight, the government is putting every child on a diet.”
Then there’s the waste. While the state now prohibits students from refusing items they dislike, the kids cannot be forced (yet) to actually eat them; the result is edible food discarded on a massive scale. Principal Jim Bolden of the Caldwell Unified School District in Kansas says that one day at the semester’s start “four boxes of peaches” were just thrown away, and Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-Kan.) complains of how the regulations are “filling the trash cans with uneaten food.”
And the school food regulations have other unintended consequences. For example, while school classes, teams, and organizations will no longer be allowed to sell any food to raise money starting next year, a junk-food black market has formed on many campuses. But the statists aren’t content with merely pushing junk food underground, as some schools have actually prohibited students from bringing their own lunches with them. You see, it would reduce statists’ control — and the amount of money they get for their lunch programs.
So when we learned that the Obamas believed in redistribution, no one knew they were referring to calories as well as cash. But this is what happens when we empower people who agree with the statement, “The number one greatest national security threat that we have is obesity.”
In a way, though, Michelle Obama’s above sentiment was correct: Our own obese government can do more to tyrannize us than any foreign enemy.
I think we all know who and what need to be put on a diet.
Historical comparison
Now the 1.5-2 oz. shouldn't be a whole day's allowance, but that amount's still not more than a snack.
Ha...let’s see how the teenagers in North Dakota survive on 850 calories when the temp goes down to -50.
I must have missed your sarcasm tag.
If you don’t eat your meat you can’t have any pudding!
Seriously, how can you have any pudding, if you don't eat your meat?
Prosciutto! PROSCIUTTO! hahahahahahah!
This is so far-reaching that it is terrifying. Think about it, The Obamas have taken over our local school districts. If they control what our children eat in our districts, where does their power over our kids stop? This is USSR tactics.
The Obamacare ruling says the government may mandate ANYTHING
This would include your shopping list, joining a gym or whatever.
Nope
I would love to see the menu the Obama girls eat at their private $34,000 (?) a year school. I wonder if the White House chef has to pack them a nutritious lunch every day?
I just had a interesting thought when I read this article. It might just come to pass that this school lunch initiative and the reducing across the board of calories may do more to cause people to vote against Obama than anything else.
Especially Dem voters who have started to rely on the schools for feeding their broods of welfare kids. Oh heavens no! Now they might have to use those EBT cards to buy real food to feed their hungry MASSIVE boys who are craving tons of food in their teens.
Nailed it!
SIDWELL FRIENDS LUNCH MENU 11/24/08 (a gotta see, even if old)
http://www.sidwell.edu/students/index.aspx?lunchstartdate=11/24/2008
Snack: Herb de Provence Pita
Lentil Soup
Chili Mac Casserole
Vegetarian Pasta Bake
Roasted Brussels Sprouts
Fresh Bartlett Pears
MS/US
Carrot Celeriac Soup
Cucumber, Mango & Red Onion Salad
Fattoush
Field Salad
Fusilli Pasta with
Carbonara Sauce
Fusilli Pesto Pasta
Garlic Green Beans
Fresh Bartlett Pears
Thanks.
Obviously some FReepers are better web detectives than me...
Looks impressive, although I did see one item was
“chili mac”
I surely hope Baraq’s kids will be starting in a new school next semester.....
"We meant well" is wearing thin.
"We meant well" is wearing thin.
heh, a nod to childhood favorite. Lunchroom tyranny — whodda thunk?
You’ll be dissapointed if you suspect they’re dining on high-carb, high-fat, high-calorie food. Here’s the Oct 1st menu:
Italian Bean & Kale Soup
Mediterranean Vegetable Salad
World Vegetarian Day
Strawberries, Goat Cheese and Spinach Salad
Cheese Ravioli
Garden Fresh Marinara and Fresh Pesto Cream Sauce
Steamed Asparagus
Garlic Breadsticks
Kiwi
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