Monday, unpopular catastrophe Donald Trump’s new Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue rolled back nutrition standards on school meals. Perdue made the announcement by saying this was about giving students and schools more “choice,” and would make “school meals great again.” Get it? How is he making it great? By rolling back sodium and whole grain requirements, and also allowing “flavored milk” back into the diet.
Perdue, who was obviously named after the chicken brand.
“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,” Perdue said. “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.”
Perdue and Republicans have pointed to decreasing school lunch participation by students as the result of healthier lunch standards—you know, healthy food tastes bad! Just ask our president who just loves the fast food industry’s money. Of course, this assertion by Trump’s Republican-driven agenda, is just not true:
Schools have been facing increasing fiscal burdens as they attempt to adhere to existing, stringent nutrition requirements. According to USDA figures, school food requirements cost school districts and states an additional $1.22 billion in Fiscal Year 2015. At the same time costs are going up, most states are reporting that they’ve seen a decrease in student participation in school lunches, as nation-wide about one million students choose not to have a school lunch each day. This impacts schools in two ways: The decline in school lunch participation means reduced revenue to schools while they simultaneously are encountering increased costs.
“I was talking to some folks in Washington about this, and they said that the current program is working. ‘How do you know?’ I asked. They said it’s because 99 percent of schools are at least partially compliant. Well, only in Washington can that be considered proof that the system is working as it was intended,” Perdue said. “A perfect example is in the south, where the schools want to serve grits. But the whole grain variety has little black flakes in it, and the kids won’t eat it. The school is compliant with the whole grain requirements, but no one is eating the grits. That doesn’t make any sense.”
What is true is that after the stock market crashed in 2007-2008, and millions of people became that much more economically desperate, the need for reduced or free school meals increased. That’s because people have been having a super hard time being able to afford food and housing for their families. This is from analysis done two years ago by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:
Since the recession kicked off during the 2007-2008 school year, the number of children who eat free or reduced-priced meals has increased, in part due to more children who meet the criteria and in part due to more schools adopting community eligibility, which allows them to provide free meals to all students, the analysis says.
"Over the same time period, there has been a decline in participation among children not eligible for free or reduced price meals but required to pay most of the cost themselves—referred to as 'paid meals,' " the analysis says. "This trend also began long before the 2012-2013 school year, which is when the nutrition improvements included in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 were introduced in schools. Instead, a variety of other factors contributed to the decrease, including rising charges for lunches served to children not receiving free or reduced-price meals. The timing of these trends, and the rise in participation among the largest group of children in the program, strongly suggest that the new nutrition standards are not causing significant participation trends."
People like Republicans are either being obtuse in their analysis, or they just don’t give a damn (they just don’t give a damn for the most part), when they pontificate that even though more and more people are being classified as needing reduced or fully subsidized school meals under the Obama administration, this isn't the real reason less students are buying lunches. It’s all about taste. Or something just as dumb, as Democratic Reps Rosa DeLauro (CT) and Jim McGovern (MA) told The Los Angeles Times:
“The USDA and President Trump have now decided to roll back much of the progress we have made in the fight against rates of childhood obesity and malnutrition,” DeLauro said. “This interim final rule by the USDA is a slippery slope that will completely undermine school breakfast and lunch programs and the USDA should immediately reverse course.”
McGovern said the country should build on the progress made rather than “turn our backs” on youths who rely on the meals.
“This isn’t about flexibility; it’s about making kids less healthy,” McGovern said. “Just because President Trump thinks fast food is a balanced meal doesn’t mean we should lower our standards for our kids.”
The Republican assertion that kids don’t like the healthy food and that’s enough to scrap healthier standards is so moronic it’s hard not to throw everything on my desk out of the window. By this logic, the fact that kids may not like reading or writing or sitting in a classroom, is grounds for scraping public education all together … oh, that is the actual logic of the Republican Party. The harsh reality is that we have profound economic inequality issues in our country and the numbers of children getting food stamps to survive has grown, and doesn’t even cover the actual need out there.
So fuck you, Sonny Perdue and Donald Trump and Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, fuck you very much.