The three-fifths compromise, over how and whether to count southern slaves for census purposes, was not the only hard fought battle between America’s founders. Another great issue was how these giants, these authors of a new republic, where laws instead of men would reign, would regulate the midday meals of its juveniles. The Civil War and its legacy settled the issue of slavery, but the school lunch wars and federal food regulation rage on.
OK, they didn’t really fight over school lunches. Wasn’t sure if you knew that.
The good news, though, is that this oversight by our founders has certainly been addressed by our more enlightened leaders of today – and their spouses. Those currently at the helm of the ship of fools into which the federal government has devolved are in the trenches with our intrepid First Lady leading the brigades. Michelle Obama declared in her op-ed in last week’s New York Times that the Republicans are actually trying to – this is going to hurt – make her nutritional school lunch prescriptions optional instead of mandatory. This is very troubling – see, Michelle knows what’s best for your children, because she reads the recommendations of scientists, and because she’s, well, Mrs. Obama. So you better listen when she says Republicans are “threatening to … lower the quality of food our kids get in school.” Right.
She didn’t actually say so, but one suspects that she believes the Koch brothers must somehow be involved in a scheme so nefarious.
George Orwell said “every joke is a tiny revolution”, and one of best uses of Twitter/Instagram/Facebook has been to deliver a healthy dose of ridicule to those in power. Following this year’s implementation of Michelle’s Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, with its promise of increased federal funds for those bowing to the usual federal once-size-fits-all mandates, some examples of sad-looking lunches were circulated on social media by disgusted teenagers. Per the New York Times, “they are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch – healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.” The act led to a wave of school lunch boycotts, followed by the USDA being forced to modify the new regulations on a temporary basis to allow schools to get out of many of the new decrees. Here’s the Wall St. Journal on why those rules needed modification:
The rules impose very specific quotas for the type and amount of food served. Cafeterias, for example, must feature five “vegetable subgroups” across “dark green, red/orange, beans/peas (legumes), starchy and ‘other’ vegetables.” Schools have had to eliminate popular menu items such as sandwiches. Two slices of bread over five days exceed the weekly grain limits.
Let’s see if Michelle and her food police can understand this rather elementary thought: if kids hate the food put in front of them, they are not going to eat it. Now, let’s ramp up the complexity of thought a bit: if they don’t eat what they are offered, they are either going to eat nothing, or eat something else. Finally, and now we’re dealing with complicated concepts so pay close attention: if kids eat nothing, that is not good. And if they eat something other than what they are offered and their parents are not looking, they are probably not going to choose anything very healthy. And either way, their nutrition is probably going to be worse than before the first lady’s mandates.
But at least now you parents will have a better idea of where your kids are likely to spend the lunch money they’ll be begging you for more than ever: McDonalds.
While we should never underestimate the potential for elected officials to be beholden to campaign donors who would like to sell junk food to children any more than we would one who is beholden to those selling “green tech” or some new weapons system, there is plenty of reason to be, uh, skeptical, of a federal government that has consistently demonstrated its incompetence and tin ear, and yet continues it relentless efforts to seize control of every nook and cranny of people’s lives and businesses. This, in a nation in which health care and energy are about the most vital commodities, true private sector healthcare is now a faded memory, and just this week the most onerous carbon-limiting, cost-increasing, industry-crushing regulations in history were mandated by the EPA.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and it looks like the roads to childhood obesity, heart disease, and diabetes are as well. In this case, it is the good intentions of our self-appointed federal food police who know better…who know for sure that low fat diets are much more healthy than high fat ones (a disputed concept within the medical field)…who know for sure that eggs are bad for us (again disputed)…who know for sure that skim milk is better than whole milk (when we know skim milk contains substantial sugar and carbs).
Mark Twain said it wasn’t what you know that gets you into trouble, but “what you know that just ain’t so.” What they know, but just ain’t so, seems to be a whole lot when it comes to food and diet regulation, and it is hard to understand just what qualifies the wife of the president as a nutritional expert (though we do know she qualifies as an awfully good scold). I’m confident the Obama family friend and favorite chef Sam Kass makes great organic Tuscan kale, but it is hard to figure what qualifies him to be Senior Policy Advisor for Nutrition Policy. And strangely enough, I don’t recall who held that post for Reagan, Clinton or Bush. But here’s the question: does being a professional chef who is close to the Obamas mean he should have the power or authority to prescribe dining options for anyone?
Nations do not usually descend from liberty to tyranny with a single roundhouse knockout punch. Such descent to the nanny state is usually the result of endless jabs, hooks and rabbit punches. And while mandating often inedible and ridiculously expensive meals for teenagers at government schools is hardly as threatening as taking control of the health care system and killing the coal industry, it is yet another wound resulting from the left’s dream of vanquishing our hard-won liberty with their death by a thousand cuts.
