Tasty Lunches For Me, But Not For Thee

The federal government through the Department of Agriculture established school lunch nutrition standards that have ignited protests across the nation.  Now Representative Tim Huelskamp (R-KS) has a challenge to the USDA.

Take your own medicine.

The cafeteria at the USDA features BLTs, french fries, Philly cheesesteaks, and cheeseburgers.  School lunch calorie counts are capped at 850 for high school students and only 700 for middle school. They also require heavy portions of fresh fruits and vegetables.  School systems must abide by federal guidelines or risk losing government subsidies

Students have two major complaints.  First, that the new lunches just don't taste good.  A year ago, Kanawha County, W. Va students told the school board that most of the food simply went in the trash.  Not only are the vegetables rejected, but the amount of sodium allowed in lunches has been slashed.  No longer does Salisbury steak come with gravy.

Fed up with the waste of food and taxpayer money, Lake County, Florida has decided to film the disposal of food.  Some parents fear that this could lead to reprisals against the students, but board members have a different idea.  Board member Tod Howard wants to show the federal government how wrong headed the policy is. “It will also give us documentation so that we can go back to the federal government and say here’s what we are finding,” he said. “We do know there’s an issue.”

Others complain that the lunches cannot support the physical needs of more active children.  A protest video created by Kansas high school students mocks authorities while dramatizing the fact that student-athletes could be starving.  It cites health websites that claim teen athletes need between 2,000 and 5,000 calories per day. 

Kansas Video: "We Are Hungry"

"We hear them complaining around 1:30 or 2:00 that they are already hungry," said Linda O'Connor, a high school English teacher at Wallace County High School in Sharon Springs, Kansas who encouraged the students to create the video. "It's all the students, literally all the students... you can set your watch to it." 

Huelskamp has introduced legislation that would roll back the "one size fits all" mandates.  In the meantime, he challenges USDA bureaucrats to live on the same nutrition standards imposed upon school children.

In the meantime, the Obama Administration has started to encourage students to bring snacks from home to supplement the smaller lunches.