The US Department of Agriculture would trudge the "food waste" excuse to bring hambuerger and potato chips back to schools.
Don't store avocado like this: it's dangerousMore fries, burgers and pizza, and less fruit and vegetables. What Michelle Obama did in the days of Barack's presidency literally ends up dead. To the advantage of the food industry lobbies, in fact, the Trump administration has decided to say goodbye to the rules on proper nutrition in schools and restore the old menus.
This was announced last Friday (Michelle Obama's birthday) by the Ministry of Agriculture led by Sonny Perdue, 73, a former veterinarian and former governor of Georgia, who would have trudged the excuse of "food waste".
Indeed, the Department of Agriculture argues that Obama-era rules are leading to high costs and rampant food waste.
“Schools and school districts keep telling us that there is still too much food wasted and that more common sense flexibility is needed to provide students with nutritious and mouth-watering meals - good Perdue from the pages of The New York Times. We have listened and now we are going to work ”.
Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetizing meals. We listened and now we’re getting to work. https://t.co/9cqYHlInuU
— Sonny Perdue (@SonnyPerdue) January 17, 2020
Michelle's work
The current meal regulation was established under the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act del 2010 promoted by Michelle Obama. That law set new standards for school meals for students to ensure children have more vegetables, more fruit, foods rich in whole grains and fat-free milk. For example, the law required students to consume fruit at every school breakfast, and schools were instructed to serve a certain amount of vegetables that included both green leafy vegetables and starchy plants.
The former First Lady has insisted on updating federal standards on nutrition and on bringing healthier foods to schools. She planted the White House vegetable garden - the first real garden since Eleanor Roosevelt's World War II "Garden of Victory" - and invited students to sow and reap every year. And she created the first childhood obesity task force and the “Let's Move!” Campaign, which aimed to get children to engage in 60 minutes of physical activity every day.
The Trump administration's proposal
Now, and for the second time (as early as December 2018, the Trump administration tried to do away with the rules that sought to make school meals healthier. The Center for Science in the Public Interest and the six state attorneys general and the District of Columbia then sued, arguing that millions of children were put at risk), the rules proposed by the new administration aim to give schools greater flexibility in setting nutritional standards "Because they know their pupils better," the Department of Agriculture said in a statement, arguing that the proposed changes have to do with schools stating that "there is still too much food wasted and that more food is needed. common sense flexibility to provide students with nutritious and appetizing meals ”.
Critics quickly pointed out that the Trump administration is indeed making it easier for schools to serve less healthy meals under the pretext of simplifying the system. If implemented, the proposed new rules "would create a huge gap in school feeding guidelines, paving the way for children to choose pizza, burgers, fries and other foods high in calories, saturated fat or sodium instead. of balanced school meals every day, ”warns Colin Schwartz, deputy director of legislative affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest.
According to experts, children from low-income families would be most affected by the new rules. For many low-income children, in fact, school is the only opportunity to access a nutritious meal.
"For the 30 million students who depend on free, low-cost, federally subsidized school lunches, relaxed nutritional standards could be extremely harmful," they write.
The rules imposed by Michelle Obama were effectively a revolutionary way of providing low-income students with healthy meals, now, by loosening these rules, the Trump administration is exacerbating a system where only those who can afford to eat healthy will be able to. Like this.
And, we know, poor nutrition in childhood can have lasting effects, particularly if habits are formed and if children continue on a low-nutrition diet over the course of several years. Long-term impacts range from a increased risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes and a whole host of physical imbalances.
The 2010 Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was created to combat these health problems and there is evidence that it has worked. According to the 2019 Department of Agriculture program review, in fact, scores for the Healthy Eating Index (which measures diet quality) increased dramatically from 49,6 in 2009-2010 to 71,3 in 2014- 2015.
These scores, however, could drop after the Trump Administration's new targets, to the detriment of the 14 million American minors (19% of the total) considered obese.
We will see how it turns out.
Read also:
- Childhood obesity in sharp decline in the US. Satisfaction for Michelle Obama
- Michelle Obama's "food plate" with more fruit and vegetables
