Snap! Crackle! Pop!: Rice Krispies May be Banished From Schools
15th March 2013
Grade-schoolers may want to stock up on Rice Krispies, Fruit Roll-Ups, Doritos, Welch’s Fruit Snacks and Smartfood white-cheddar popcorn. Those products are among scores of popular food items that may no longer be sold at schools under newly proposed federal regulations.
You may ask: What business is it of the Federal government what food items are sold at schools? That’s a very good question.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture last month released draft rules, spelling out what kinds of foods may or may not be purchased on school grounds under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.
Of course! The way to Hunger-Free Kids is to ban them from eating certain types of food. Hmm … not sure I follow that one….
Signed by President Barack Obama, the law aims to reduce childhood obesity. It imposes healthier food standards on schools participating in the federally subsidized breakfast and lunch programs administered by the USDA, covering most of the public education system.
Ah. They take government money for ‘subsidized breakfast and lunch programs’, so they dance to the government’s tune.
The agency laid out a complex set of criteria for determining what foods can be sold. (It also estimated the number of extra man-hours a year that local and state administrators nationwide would have to spend on compliance: 926,935 hours or more than 100 years.)
Well, of course. It’s the government: Paperwork-R-Us. Sounds like yet another reason to keep your kids away from government schools.
A person claiming to be a teacher from North Carolina took a dimmer view, likening the regulations to “Soviet Russia.”
Ya think?