USDA agrees to allow more meat, grains in school lunches
School administrators also complained, saying set maximums on grains and meats are too limiting as they try to plan daily meals.
“This flexibility is being provided to allow more time for the development of products that fit within the new standards while granting schools additional weekly menu planning options to help ensure that children receive a wholesome, nutritious meal every day of the week,” Vilsack said in a letter to Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D.
The new guidelines were intended to address increasing childhood obesity levels. They set limits on calories and salt and phase in whole grains. Schools must offer at least one vegetable or fruit per meal. The department also dictated how much of certain food groups could be served.









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Queen Mooch will not be pleased.
JPeterman on December 8, 2012 at 3:36 PM
Aren’t they wonderful, dictating that the kids can have more than one broccoli spear and tap water for lunch? I hope Mrs. President Choom doesn’t hear about this.
RoadRunner on December 8, 2012 at 3:36 PM
The ‘kids’ pitched a fit and THEY won! How come they aren’t out doing the same for us with bho’s krap?
BTW, mo didn’t get what she wanted and I love it! mo, as is bho, thinks they can dictate everything, guess it didn’t work out well this time?
L
letget on December 8, 2012 at 3:37 PM
What’s truly sad is how casually we accept the new normal: a policy ruling from bureaucrats miles away decide what millions of school children, in thousands of districts across this nation, will eat for lunch.
Your tax dollars at work.
bleat. bleat.
locomotivebreath1901 on December 8, 2012 at 3:40 PM
“USDA agrees to allow more [insert anything] in school lunches.”
Everything that’s gone wrong in the last eighty years exemplified in one, short sentence.
wte9 on December 8, 2012 at 3:40 PM
Wonder how many kids will pass them up, and the fruits and veggies get tossed out.
Wethal on December 8, 2012 at 3:41 PM
For you photog freaks: http://themetapicture.com/fairytale-wedding/
davidk on December 8, 2012 at 3:42 PM
All praise to our wise and benevolent overlords!
/sarc
rbj on December 8, 2012 at 3:57 PM
The rule of the collective–starve everyone in the hopes one obese kid loses weight.
PattyJ on December 8, 2012 at 3:59 PM
Which will immediately wind up in the garbage.
ctmom on December 8, 2012 at 4:02 PM
No duh so long as everything else is fried McGarbage. Offer them nothing but healthy food and the ungrateful rugrats WILL eat it after their growling stomach is louder than their whining. And that means you don’t have candybar/soda vending machines around every God-blessed corner like my highschool.
Lord have mercy, modern American schoolchildren are such pampered pu$$ies. I grew up going to a private Christian school where there was one soda machine in the entire building, and the lunch ladies wouldn’t let you throw away good food that the school administration had to work tooth & nail to procure. Somehow I survived…
MelonCollie on December 8, 2012 at 4:08 PM
Why does the USDA have any authority to allow anything? Schools are the responsibility of states and localities.
Charlemagne on December 8, 2012 at 4:23 PM
It is absolutely wonderful that His Majesty has allowed the Royal Food Constables to permit us to eat more meat and grain. Thank you so much from the bottoms of our stomachs.
crosspatch on December 8, 2012 at 4:29 PM
It is called extortion. Sure, you can serve whatever you want but if you don’t go according to the federal guidelines, the funding for your lunch program is cut off. “Nice school lunch program you have there, be a shame if anything happened to it”.
How about we use prison farms to grow food for the prisons and the schools and tell form large purchasing coops for food among like-minded states and tell the feds to shove their lunch money where the sun doesn’t shine?
crosspatch on December 8, 2012 at 4:31 PM
Do YOU want Nasty Nard and Eddy McSlasher to be growing the food that feeds your kids?
I don’t like the feds’ interference either but seriously, WTF?
MelonCollie on December 8, 2012 at 4:35 PM
I’m so glad the Federal Government is allowing something that was none of their business in the first place.
RadClown on December 8, 2012 at 4:35 PM
How about forming an alliance with a local food service company to provide actual lunches? In my area the elementary schools don’t even have a real cafeteria anymore. Lunches arrive on a truck and are basically like TV dinners or airplane food. They are slipped into the microwave, heated up and handed to the child. We actually had a real cafeteria with real homemade food when I was a kid. Baked chicken with macaroni and cheese and string beans and a salad was a typical lunch, or spaghetti with garlic bread and salad. Today they get what amounts to “chicken nuggets” or a quesadilla. Chocolate milk is gone, too.
crosspatch on December 8, 2012 at 4:40 PM
Oh, but when he gets out of prison and goes to the meat packing plant to work, it’s just fine eating the chicken he has touched? Look, some states have rather large prison farm operations and they are generally not worked by high security inmates. You don’t give those inmates farm tools. They are generally non-violent inmates, mostly on drug charges.
crosspatch on December 8, 2012 at 4:42 PM
Ok, touche, especially with the laughably short sentences we give crooks. I suppose at least in prison you can promise the workers that anyone caught contaminating the food will die in a ‘prison riot/fight’ in short order.
MelonCollie on December 8, 2012 at 4:45 PM
We had subsidized lunches & they were pretty good. You took & paid for what you wanted. There was no soda or candy. You could also eat nothing or bring your own food — no one was forced to do anything. It worked.
Blake on December 8, 2012 at 5:31 PM
Us, too. I guess real food is unhealthy.
Blake on December 8, 2012 at 5:34 PM
With the progs in charge, I’d be brown-bagging it.
Hell, I’d be bringing food to trade. I could get rich.
trigon on December 8, 2012 at 5:44 PM
Some of the schools search the kids lunch. If there is unapproved foods they confiscate it & make them pay for a lunch.
Blake on December 8, 2012 at 6:38 PM
Yes, sadly.
That’s what you thought. But, it hasn’t really been true since someone decided that No Child should be Left Behind.
GWB on December 8, 2012 at 6:57 PM