States Fight Back Against USDA Rules That Cause School Food Waste
7th October 2017
Food waste and the school lunch program are intimately linked. While former First Lady Michelle Obama—and her campaign to make school food healthier—is not responsible for creating the problem of food waste in our nation’s schools, the law she championed, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, has made an already bad problem far worse.
Proglodytes just assume that people will queue up like sheep and do what they’re told. Maybe Europeans do that, but not Americans.
“That directive is costing schools an added $5.4 million a day, of which $3.8 million worth of produce goes directly into the trash, according to national estimates,” reads one recent editorial in a Connecticut paper chastising the USDA for all of the food waste its program creates. “A Harvard Public Health study found that 60 percent of the vegetables and 40 percent of the fruits are being tossed. Researchers at the University of Vermont found an overall increase of 56 percent in wasted food as a direct result of the mandate.”
Of course, in the old days, Mom made your lunch, which you carried in a paper bag, if you were me, or a colorful decorative metal box, if you were an Obama.
“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,” said USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue in May.
Hey, why let facts get in the way of virtue-signaling?