Posted on 06/21/2014 3:54:55 PM PDT by Tolerance Sucks Rocks
First Lady Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity campaign is claiming that salad bars have increased student participation in school lunch, despite a report that found one million children fled the lunch line in response to her new lunch standards.
“Let’s Move!” released findings from their own survey for its “Salad Bars to Schools” program on Thursday, touting the addition of salad bars in some schools.
“More than 1.7 million school-age children in the United States have better access to fresh fruits and vegetables thanks to new salad bars donated to schools through Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools,” Let’s Move said in a blog post. “Recently, the program partnership released results of a survey of recipient school districts. Among the benefits of school salad bars reported by school food service directors were increased student access to fresh fruits and vegetables and increased student participation in the school lunch program.”
The campaign is making the claim based on their survey of 357 school districts, with the report finding, among other things, that 78 percent of schools bought more fruits and vegetables because they now have salad bars.
They also claimed that 57 percent of the schools saw increased participation in school lunch, which they credited to salad bars.
“School administrators, teachers, staff, and parents are supportive of school salad bars,” another finding read.
Let’s Move failed to mention other reports that found school lunch participation has declined since the implementation of the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, which was championed by the first lady.
According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), one million kids stopped participating in the school lunch program during the 2012-2013 school year, the first year the law went into effect. Forty-eight out of 50 states faced challenges implementing the new healthier standards, which resulted in kids throwing out their fruits and vegetables, student boycotts, higher lunch costs, and odd food pairings such as “cheese stick with shrimp” in order for schools to comply with the complicated rules.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has touted the new standards as “popular,” despite complaints from children that the food “tastes like vomit.”
Salad Bars to Schools is Let’s Move’s partnership between the Food Family Farming Foundation, National Fruit and Vegetable Alliance, United Fresh Produce Association Foundation, and Whole Foods Market. The organizations have donated roughly 3,400 salad bars to schools across the country.
“School salad bars are gaining momentum from coast-to-coast,” said Ann Cooper, founder of the Food Family Farming Foundation. “It’s gratifying to see kids, teachers, and parents getting excited about fresh fruits and vegetables.”
More than 30 million children participate in the National School Lunch Program every day, including 19 million that receive free lunch. The program cost $11.6 billion in fiscal year 2012. The program also has a high rate of fraud, as 15.69 percent of its payments were improper last year, amounting to $1.8 billion.
Schools have asked Congress and the Obama administration to roll back the lunch rules due to the cost and difficulty of putting them in place.
Mrs. Obama responded on Thursday and defending the standards, saying it would be “unacceptable” to go back to the way lunches were.
“Of course it’s hard. That we expected,” she said. “We expected those challenges, particularly among our oldest kids who’ve grown up eating junk food.”
“But what we did not expect was for the grownups to go along with it and say, ‘Well, this is too hard and it costs too much money so let’s stop even though we have 90 percent compliance,’” Mrs. Obama said.
Nanny State PING!
Just blatant lies. Constant and incessant.
They obviously haven’t received the WH memo:IF A DEM SAYS IT, IT IS THE TRUTH! Never mind the statistics.......the LIVs will always believe Bammy and Moochelle!
I love a good salad bar. But it should be up to the local schools not somebody’s wife in washDC
Good. American children should learn that their government lies to them and can’t be trusted. Being hungry after on Obama lunch is a good time to contemplate how lousy government planning is.
Well, are the student “accessing” the salad bars or do they merely “have access to” the salad bars? And if the “sales” of fruits and vegetables have gone up due to the salad bars, has the “consumption” gone up proportionately?
The devil is in the details!
My daughter, and many of her friends, all bring their own lunch because on average the cafeteria food sucks. the rules are even worse - they can purchase nothing a la carte, it’s an all or nothing deal. So if a kid ants a piece of fruit, they have to buy the entire lunch or no fruit.
Mrs. Obama has been working the food circuit since 2005, when the wife of newly elected Sen. Barack Obama was named to the corporate board of directors of Wal-Mart processed foods supplier TreeHouse Foods Inc.—collecting $45,000 in 2005, $51,200 in 2006, and 7,500 TreeHouse stock options worth more than $72,000 for each year. The first lady has been the most insatiable crony at the center of the Fed Foods racket. Her nonprofit Partnership for a Healthier America has reported assets of $4.5 million from secret donors.
Via Michelle Malkin at vdare.com”
LOL! Lying can be funny sometimes.
The rest of the stuff they serve is crap, salad bars are probably the best thing they have there
I like salad bars, but do these kids know you shouldn’t cough or sneeze while going through the line?
Just my two cents.
Dept. of agriculture = Dept. of agriculture Rent seeking & Subsidies
Salad bars are filthy. All that food in the open, being pawed over by the diseased. Lettuce is notorious for harboring salmonella and norovirus.
First Lady Michelle Obama thinks salad bars are a good idea... I think she’s right... happens. (not often)
Still trying to figure out what the Mystery Meat was.
Nobody's giving it up.
I also went to Catholic grammar and high school - there was no lunch in the grammar school - you either went home for lunch or brown bagged it. In HS pizza came from the local Pizzeria, knishes came from the local Jewish deli and everything else was made on the premises. We loved the lunch ladies, and their meat loaf was FABULOUS! Of course we had a student body of less than 300, at least a third of which brought lunch most days - except when we knew pizza or knishes were on the menu!
Tell her it’s not always better at work. I got in the “brown-bagging it” habit when I was in school, and it’s come in handy ever since. I’m saving a fortune over the office cafeteria food. And mine tastes better, too.
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