The United States Department of Agriculture proposed ditching requirements for fruits and vegetables in school lunches to allow for more grab-and-go lunch options.
Former first lady Michelle Obama, who is celebrating her 56th birthday on Friday, used her platform in the White House to promote healthy living, including advocating for exercise and more nutritious school lunches. While her husband was in office, Obama helped the USDA usher in requirements demanding that schools offer more fruits and vegetables, abolish trans fats, serve only low-fat milk, and cut back on sodium.
But a new proposal could scrap some of those requirements. Acting Deputy Under Secretary Brandon Lipps announced that the department would be cutting the amount of fruits and vegetables that must be served with food outside the cafeteria by half and scaling back restrictions on cafeteria staples like pizza and hamburgers.
Lipps argued that policies enacted under Obama had unintended consequences. He used the example of grab-and-go food carts that require students to buy two bananas if they purchase a slice of pizza in order to be compliant with the standards. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue also argued that forcing students to have certain ingredients on their plates leads to food waste because children are forced to take food they will not consume.
If the new rules are implemented, schools can count potatoes as vegetables and cut back on the mandatory servings of fruits and vegetables for the 30 million students who eat school lunches each day. The new rules also allow for more sodium and fats to be present in the foods by giving more control to the cafeteria employees.
In a statement, the School Nutrition Association announced that it would be supportive of such requirements but noted that the association could not fully support the changes until the policies are released in full. It added, “We support efforts to streamline overly complex child nutrition programs.”
Colin Schwartz, an official from the Center for Science in the Public Interest, told the Washington Post that the changes could lead to health problems for children. He said the department’s changes 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.”
Schwartz also argued that these changes had little to do with food waste and more to do with appeasing lobbyists from the potato industry.
Duke University professor Mary Story agreed, saying, “This makes absolutely no sense. Politics and industry pressure should not interfere with what is best for children’s health.”
The Agriculture Department’s effort to cut back on nutrition demands in public school cafeterias is part of President Trump’s promise to cut back on regulations throughout the federal government.
