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“We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value.”
Children and parents across the country are fed up with the restrictive new school meal regulations implemented by the Department of Agriculture under the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,” which has long been touted by first lady Michelle Obama.
The standards — which cap meal calories at 650 for students in kindergarten through fifth grade, at 700 calories for middle school students and 850 for high school students — also dictate the number of breads, proteins, vegetables and fruits children are allowed per meal.
A spokeswoman for Iowa Republican Rep. Steve King, who earlier this month introduced legislation to roll back the new standards, told The Daily Caller that King’s office has heard more complaints about the issue during the past few weeks than any other.
“This year, we’ll be hungry by 2:00,” one student, Zach Eck, told KAKETV in Kansas. “We would eat our pencils at school if they had nutritional value.”
Iowa mom Robin Wissink told TheDC that she now provides her autistic daughter Molly, a junior in high school, with a bag lunch because her school’s new menu is so unappealing. Students at St. Mark’s in Colwich, Kan. have also been “brown bagging” their meals.
StrangernFiction
September 24th, 2012
The Land of the Decree and the Home of the Slave
Tim
September 24th, 2012
Marlin Perkins: “The Sasquatch crouches for the attack …”
dude
September 24th, 2012
The black Euell Gibbons
Stirrin the B.S.
September 24th, 2012
Pencils, huh? That’s a great idea – lot of fiber there. Add that to my mandible, er umm, mandate.
dude
September 24th, 2012
Wookie taking a poopy in the classroom, not yet house trained
IronyCurtain
September 24th, 2012
LUNCH LADY: Here’s your Government Approved Obama UnHappyMeal. Be sure to eat it all if you want to grow up to be just like the First Lady.
STUDENTS: AaaagggghhhhhHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!
Mountain Dog
September 24th, 2012
I wonder what the penalty would be for selling unauthorized food to starving school kids. Might be some money in that.
Ray
September 24th, 2012
Get your filthy hands off my kid’s lunch you damn dirty ape.
AbigailAdams
September 24th, 2012
This is one of the easiest examples of why there should not be a program for school lunches or any kind of program for state schools run at the federal level. This is just one of those so-called “jobs” that barry complained his wife doesn’t get paid to do.
People are so busy thinking and talking about the results of the federally-mandated lunch program, they forget how stupid it is to have such a program in the first place.
hanoverfist
September 24th, 2012
“The Big Bad Wolf!
The Big Bad Wolf!
The Big Bad Wolf!
The Big Bad Wolf!”
dba_vagabond_trader
September 24th, 2012
Get rid of the soda and junk food machines, 99% of the problem solved.
hanoverfist
September 24th, 2012
Could someone show me where in the Constitution
the Fed. has the power to mandate lunches.
Maudie N Mandeville
September 24th, 2012
Abortion, free rubbers and fecal sex override hungry children and autistic daughters. This issue won’t change any votes.
Maudie N Mandeville
September 24th, 2012
BTW, for the school “planning to conduct a survey to determine how to make vegetables more appealing to children”; try mixing them with chocolate pudding and potato chips. Yummers!
m00pa
September 24th, 2012
Imagine what this does for the members of sport teams…
Oh, that’s right it’s about fixing the fat kids.
So that road to hell gets re-paved … again?
Mohammed's pink swastika
September 24th, 2012
Those poor brownbaggers, having to use foodstamps instead of ubernment school lunches.
As an aside issue, I wonder how much saltpeter is in school lunches?
How do you cut down on the cost of contriseptives?
Servey says… Sterilization.
Doug Wakeman
September 24th, 2012
What is it about the Left? As soon as they get the power they attack the food supply. Make it bland and unappetizing, reduce portions and eventually reduce the people to making soup from rocks and bark. This is rhetorical. I know the answer.
RosalindJ
September 24th, 2012
Simple. Bring your own lunch. Put the union contracts down.
AbigailAdams
September 24th, 2012
michelle reminds me of:
Noelegy
September 24th, 2012
How many fat kids do you remember seeing when you were growing up? I’m 42, and I remember exactly two boys that were considered “fat” when I was in elementary school. Nowadays, they’d pass for average. The rest of us were skinny but healthy. That’s because we had recess, PE, and we played outdoors.
redgrandma
September 24th, 2012
I used to eat pencil erasers when I was a kid. They weren’t bad! It must be some kind of hereditary disorder because one of my grand daughters also does this. I wonder which of Moose’s food groups they fall into.
norman einstein
September 24th, 2012
@Noelegy, excellent point.
And our mothers COOKED our meals. Nowadays, a lot of kids eat “take-out” more often than not.
Christy944
September 24th, 2012
We are brown-bagging it in our house now. They used to like about half the school meals. Unless you have kids in school you can’t even imagine how ridiculous the rules are. We are in a small private school and unfortunately the administration can’t resist the money available in the Federal lunch program.
My kids are super skinny, due to a genetically high metabolism and were starving by mid afternoon since they could no longer order doubles. They are healthy eaters, not afraid of veggies and whole grains but when you have to put black beans in the tacos and serve tomato juice with the whole grain french toast instead of syrup. You are going to lose all of the kids. Also the are limited to a single ketchup and 1 oz of ranch to dip anything in. pretty hard even for me to get down raw broccoli without ranch or cheese.
The home lunch thing is expensive and variety is hard but I figure it is only a matter of time before they ban what I include in there home lunch as well. Evil gooey, dark chocolate homemade brownies today
Christy944
September 24th, 2012
Should also mention the eighth grade initially boycotted lunch as a whole unit until the principal called them into her office saying they were being unfair and it would make the lunch ladies sad as they were trying sooooo hard to come up with tasty meals under the new plan.
My daughter is still boycotting, but some of the other kids are eating lunches again and going hungry so the lunch ladies don’t feel bad.
Carlos The Jackal
September 24th, 2012
Schools are test cases for doing this to EVERYONE.
Glad to see Some aren’t too thrilled.
Keep protesting, don’t give up.
AbigailAdams
September 24th, 2012
When our kid told me about her very first school lunch in kindergarten, she packed a lunch every day thereafter. Easy: 1 soup-sized thermos, 2 flat, plastic, lidded containers. Cook enough dinner the night before, put the leftovers in the containers and microwave at school. My atheletic girl has the appetite of a horse. I can’t imagine her surviving on school lunch. And I don’t think green, unripe pears and that fake cheese sauce they pour over stale torilla chips count as food.
AbigailAdams
September 24th, 2012
@Christy944 — That’s so wrong of the principal to use emotional blackmail. Tell your daughter she has an admirer for refusing to fall for it.
DebZeppelin
September 24th, 2012
Aside from poor diets, do you know why kids are fat? I looked around this summer–the neighborhood was dead quiet. Where are the kids? At home, on their phones & computers, at the mall, at the arcade, driven there by parents. When I was growing up, my mom “kicked” the five of us out of the house ’til lunch and and then again ’til dinner. We went to the playground, played kickball in the street, whiffle ball in vacant lots & rode our bikes or walked EVERYWHERE. Even then there were bullies & pervs out there, but we or our parents dealt with them. We didn’t curl up and die. The schools are making a valiant effort, but it can’t override the inactivity and poor diets after 3 PM.
billy c
September 24th, 2012
PENCILS: Tastier than asparagus AND you can write with them
Barf O'BiteMe
September 24th, 2012
Wookie: mid bowel movement!
It’s a floater, it’s a floater!
pissedpatriot30
September 24th, 2012
hey, it takes a COMMUNITY to mess up a lunch program. You go Mich-orilla!!! How can we possibly know what is best for our kids without your help…
Barf O'BiteMe
September 24th, 2012
“Watch closely, chillun: heahs how ya pinch a loaf!
unhnhnhnhnhnhnhnhnhnnhhnhnnhnhnhnhn!!!!!
jwm
September 24th, 2012
I work in an elementary school. I have hauled tons of uneaten flavor-free government mandated lunches to the dumpster. The roaches love all the uneaten food. The school is squirming with them.
*no exaggeration employed for dramatic effect*
JWM
AbigailAdams
September 24th, 2012
I grew up on a farm as did most of my schoolmates. I can tell you that if our school lunches were anything like the slop they serve up today, the entire school board would have had their heads on pikes, our parents would have burned the school cafeteria down and the populace would have crossed the street so as to not walk on the same stretch of sidewalk as the administration. Whispers of “pinko” and “dirty commie” would have been uttered.
My favorite item of school lunch were these incredibly wonderful stewed tomatoes (I know, right?). What was yours?