The Trump administration on Friday proposed rolling back the nutrition guidelines for school meals that had been promoted by Michelle Obama as part of her campaign to combat child obesity. Her proposal namely, “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010” aims at funding child nutrition programs and free lunch programs in schools for setting up the nutrition standards and it was initiated by her to fight against childhood obesity and is part of her Let’s Move initiative.
The impact, child nutrition advocates said, will be less fruit and vegetables and more foods like pizza and fries in the school meals program, which serves 30 million children in the United States of America, most from low-income families.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, who announced the rule changes on Obama’s birthday, said they were needed to give schools more flexibility and reduce waste while still providing nutritious and appetizing meals. Under the proposal, schools would be allowed to cut the amount of certain types of vegetables served at lunch, and legumes offered as a meat alternative also could be counted as part of the vegetable requirement. Potatoes could be served as a vegetable.
The proposal also would allow schools to reduce the amount of fruit at on-the-go breakfast served outside the cafeteria. Gay Anderson, president of the School Nutrition Association, said that while the nutrition standards had been a success overall, some requirements led to reduced participation in the program, higher costs and wastes.
“USDA’s school meal flexibilities are helping us manage these challenges and prepare nutritious meals that appeal to diverse student tastes,” Anderson said in a statement.
“The Trump administration’s assault on children’s health continues today under the guise of ‘simplifying’ school meals,” Colin Schwartz, the Centre for Science in the Public Interest’s deputy director for legislative affairs, said in a statement.
The proposal would give schools greater flexibility in offering entrees for a la carte purchases, which Schwartz said would “create a huge loophole in school nutrition guidelines, paving the way for children to choose pizza, burgers, French fries, and other foods high in calories, saturated fat or sodium in place of balanced school meals every day.”
The official website of Obama’s initiative mentions a preface statement which goes as, “With over seventeen million children living in food insecure households and one out of every three children in America now considered overweight or obese, schools often are on the front lines of our national challenge to combat childhood obesity and improve children’s overall health. This legislation includes significant improvements that will help provide children with healthier and more nutritious food options, educate children about making healthy food choices, and teach children healthy habits that can last a lifetime.”
The whole idea behind Michelle Obama’s initiative was to provide the balanced and nutritious diet for school children but through Trump’s move it has now become a political agenda. Trump’s administration is now willingly risking children’s health and is promoting obesity and a unhealthy lifestyle.
Geraldine Henchy, director of nutrition policy at the Food Research & Action Centre, said the bottom line should be nutrition, but the revisions to the a la carte rule would result in students getting “a lot more fats, a lot more sodium, a lot more calories.” Specifically, the proposal would reduce the amount of red and orange vegetables that would have to be offered every day at lunch. For breakfasts taken to go, fruit servings could be reduced from a cup to half a cup.
The proposed rule is the second move by the Trump administration to scale back the school lunch program’s nutrition standards. Under a 2018 rule, the administration reduced the whole grains that had to be served and allowed low-fat chocolate milk. Before the rule change, only fat-free flavoured milk was permitted.
