The spending bill also would allow tomato paste on pizzas to be counted as a vegetable, as it is now. The department's proposed guidelines would have attempted to prevent that.According to a bill summary released by Republicans on the House Appropriations Committee, these provisions are meant to "prevent overly burdensome and costly regulations." What they will actually do is ensure that a steady flow of dollars continues toward certain favored food manufacturers, at the expense of children's health.
The changes had been requested by food companies that produce frozen pizzas, the salt industry and potato growers. Some conservatives in Congress have called the push for healthier foods an overreach, saying the government shouldn't be telling children what to eat.
"We are outraged that Congress is seriously considering language that would effectively categorize pizza as a vegetable in the school lunch program," said Amy Dawson Taggart, the director of Mission: Readiness, a group advocating for healthier school lunches. "It doesn't take an advanced degree in nutrition to call this a national disgrace."
This is hardly the first time that the GOP has attacked attempts to boost the nutritional content of school lunches. Back in May, House Republicans derided the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which was signed into law late last year, as a "massive and costly" federal intrusion. They did this despite the fact that escalating obesity rates cost the nation $147 billion per year in direct medical costs.
As education policy analyst Theodora Chang has written, "student nutrition programs ensure that students are ready to learn and are not stymied by hunger. Schools are ideal locations for social services like healthy meals because they have unparalleled access to low-income students and their families." Instead, the GOP has decided to roll back what little progress has been made in terms of school lunch nutrition.
This is the National School Lunch Program.
Only lunches paid for by this program have to meet these guidelines.
According to their fact sheet, this program operates in over 100,000 schools in the US, and served over 30 million children per day in 2010. According to the National Center of Education Statistics there are about 55 million school children in the US.
When I was a kid I ate my lunch at school. But it was MY lunch. When I was younger, my mom made it for me. And when I was older, I made it myself. In Junior High there was a cafeteria. I don't remember how they did it in High School. I think I ate my own lunches during that whole period.
But that doesn't seem to be the case any more. According to these figures, this program feeds lunches to over half of all school kids in the United States!
I personally think this is weird. The alternative is simply to guarantee that every family can afford to feed its kids. It would not be that hard to do this.
I feel the same way about a bigger issue: income tax. This is SUCH an expensive, intrusive way to collect revenue from the citizens. A sales tax would be much simpler and accomplish about the same thing.
Are there ulterior motives behind these complex federal systems, supposedly in place to ensure "fairness?" I think there are. The GOP makes fun of the lunch program, but I don't see most of them laughing about income tax! So, though they at least have a sense that something is wrong with this picture, they are unwilling to be honest about the situation, same as the Democrats.
Is someone trying to edge us towards a new brand of fascism? I think someone is. I look twice at all these federal programs now. It's not as hard to run a decent country as they are making it seem.