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Natural News
New pictures of
school lunches illustrate America's decline toward third world status
Wednesday, November 26, 2014
by Daniel Barker
It can be assumed that First Lady Michelle Obama had good intentions
when she used her influence to foist her Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act
on an unsuspecting population of school-aged American children.
After all, obesity, nutrition and hunger are real issues, but the
dismal failure of the initiative -- which resulted in the steepest
decline in participation in school lunch programs our nation has ever
witnessed -- proves that the federal government has no business trying
to apply yet another one-size-fits-all solution to a complex set of
issues.
More than a million schoolchildren have refused to eat their lunches in
protest of what appears to be a half-baked (pun intended) scheme to
reduce the amount of calories in school lunches while simultaneously
trying to make sure that everyone gets enough to eat.
And from what many of the photos submitted to the #ThanksMichelleObama
Twitter campaign seem to indicate, school lunches don't appear to be
getting much better -- they're just becoming smaller.
The hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama was created by kids in protest of the
program, which has proved to be highly unpopular among kids and parents.
The silver lining is that the Twitter campaign has not only led to some
very humorous posts but also stirred real debate about what can be done
at the local level to ensure that kids get enough of the right kind of
food, while making it appetizing enough for them to actually want to
eat it.
That's a pretty tall order, not only since kids' culinary tastes vary
widely, but because there should also be taken into account the
time-honored tradition of complaining about school lunches, which is
unlikely to disappear anytime soon -- no matter what is on the menu.
Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids act aspires to impossible universal standard
for all children
In other words, one meal plan will never please everyone, and perhaps
it's also impossible to set universal standards for caloric intake and
nutrition that apply to everyone. There are significant differences
among individual children, such as height, metabolism and the amount of
physical activity they engage in. For instance, should a large boy who
plays sports eat the same amount and type of food as a small girl who
prefers to spend her free time studying?
Obviously, there needs to be some flexibility, and it should be parents
and school administrators interacting at the local level to decide what
is right for the kids in their communities.
It's also important to make sure that underprivileged kids can get at
least one decent meal a day, but many of the photos submitted with the
hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama appear to show meals that look to be unfit
for a pet, much less a human.
It's impossible to verify the authenticity of the photos that have
continued to be posted since the initiative began, but if even half of
them are real, it's easy to understand what these kids are so upset
about. A number of them show meals that are not only skimpy, but
downright disgusting-looking.
On the other hand, there's nothing stopping most parents from packing
their own children's school lunches -- in fact, that may be the best
solution for those who feel that they aren't getting enough to eat or
who don't like the choices available in the school cafeterias.
We don't really need the FLOTUS to dictate what our kids should or
should not eat, no matter how honorable her intentions may be.
See the photos and sources at Natural News
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