Slashdot Mirror
Trump Administration Rolls Back Obama-Era Nutrition Standards For School Lunches (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Just a week into his position, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced Monday a rollback of nutrition standards for school meals, previously championed by former First Lady Michelle Obama as part of a larger initiative to improve the health of America's children. Under Perdue's new rollback, schools across the country can now delay a requirement to reduce sodium levels, can serve kids fewer whole grains, and can provide one percent flavored milk in addition to flavored skim, unflavored skim, and unflavored one percent. In a news release that declared the move would "make school meals great again," Perdue said: "This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals. If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition -- thus undermining the intent of the program." Specifically, under Obama-era nutrition rules, schools were supposed to decrease sodium from meals in three phases. For instance, 2012 school lunches had average sodium levels between roughly 1,400mg to 1,600mg, with elementary school lunches on the lower end. Federal dietary guidelines, which schools must follow, recommend kids get 1,900mg to 2,300mg or less of sodium per day (depending on age). Currently, schools have dropped down to "Target 1," which is a range of about 1,200mg to 1,400mg or less. Schools were supposed to get that down to about 900mg to 1,000mg this year ("Target 2") and then to between 600mg and 700mg by 2022 ("Final Target"). The USDA will now waive the requirement to reach Target 2 until 2020. The USDA will also grant exemptions from the current requirement for schools to serve only whole-grain-rich foods.
That actually reminds me... One thing I remember from when I was growing up, is that my parents had whole milk in the refrigerator for the kids, and skim milk for the adults.
I'm Aussie and I think the culture is different compared to the states, but when I went to school virtually everyone brought their own packed lunch from home.
Me and a number of my friends were given money by our parents to buy our lunches from the school canteen once a week, usually on shopping day when we had not much food left in the house.
Does anyone in the US send their children to school with packed lunches, or is it something of a social stigma to do so?
Kansas actually has a better public education system than most other states, including California. People from Kansas would love it if Californians didn't try to tell them how to run their schools or what to feed their kids. Nutrition is almost certainly an emerging science and a laboratory of ideas, and it's a perfect example of why public schools need to remain local, community institutions and not as yet another expansion of the federal government.
Let me address you point by point.
The American diet is NOT AT ALL in danger of being salt deficient. Salt is in fact the cheapest of additives to our food. Your concern is nonsense and there is plenty of evidence that the massively unnatural salt abundance in our modern diet isnt doing us any favors.
It is widely excepted that whole grains are better for you than bleached and heavily processed grains as they are far less likely to spike your blood sugar levels.
Veggies are intrinsic to every diet dietitians consider healthy.
In summary, your concerns are right up there with anti-vaccine types.
I ignore Anonymous Coward posts. If you want to discuss something, that's awesome. Log in.
Bullshit. My kids reported that the meals at school turned completely awful after these regulations were put in place. Tiny helping of whole grain crappy, super bland food. Lots ended up in the garbage.
You've never seen a Japanese school lunch. It is not a coincidence that, despite the higher rates of smoking (which, along with obesity comorbidities, is the most significant lifestyle choice that affects lifespan), Japanese life expectancy is higher in both sexes compared to Americans? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Teaching kids about food is not simply about telling them what they can or can't eat. It's about leading by example and modeling good dietary choices.
As opposed to the Paleo nuts who claim 6000 calories a day will cause weight loss, while 2000 calories a day will cause weigh gain
As if that's the only alternative to the food pyramid.
My diet: eat real foods, including fresh meat, dairy, nuts, fish and vegetables. Avoid processed foods, including sugar, and grains. Not too much sweet fruit. Eat when hungry.
Nothing crazy, but much higher in fat/lower in carbs than recommended by the food pyramid, and similar to what people ate before the obesity epidemic, except that I probably have more variety (such as year round fresh vegetables).
The end result was that is was possible for a student to learn more than their family's farming trade, and eventually afford to actually leave the town.
That's great for the students, but from the town's perspective, they just lost all of their best and brightest to the global economy. Most of those kids won't be coming back as working adults. It's happened all across the US: these towns get smaller and smaller until they're left with a ghost town.
They might be wrong, but I don't think you can really fault them for protecting their own best interests.
Not all milk. Here in NYS, we have a loophole allowing farms to sell raw milk directly from the farm. It's worth the drive out once a week to pick it up. I was raised on fresh raw milk from a Jersey cow milked by the family. Milk just ain't the same if you don't have to shake it a bit before opening...
Wow, you should try unhomogenized milk, it beats homogenized milk by a mile. Lumps of butter in their milk? Is that the best you can do, run down real milk with a straw man? Real milk where the cream rises to the top is the best!