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.

Comments

Re:About time.

[TechyImmigrant]

What about less salt, whole grains, and more veggies is junk?

I'm not saying the menus couldnt be better but they were a lot worse.

Too little salt kills you. Enough to not kill you, but still too little is very painful. Too much has no measurable health enpoint effect unless a 5 ton block of salt lands on your head. The correlations are to proxies, not actual health outcomes.

Whole grains make you fat. Wheat agglutin is toxic to many and just slowly kills the others. The first recorded cases of cancer appear about the time and place that wheat agriculture began.

Veggies are probably ok, but they aren't necessary. Put liver, kidneys, eggs and fatty meat on the menu with salt and pepper at the tables and no one would be harmed.

Re:Low fat whole grain?

[AK Marc]

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 (so long as the 6000 calories are carb-free, and the 2000 calories is heavy in fiber)?

The food pyramid isn't perfect, but it's better than most diets I've seen people pushing (even here).

WTF are the feds doing?

[bradley13]

WTF is the federal government doing, micromanaging cafeterias in local schools?

Even more bizarre: it isn't even the (entirely counterproductive) Department of Education doing this, but the Department of Agriculture. Aren't they supposed to manage farm subsidies and the like?

Dear Mr. Trump: Please drain the swamp like you promised. Regulations like this have no reason to exist in the first place.