WASHINGTON • The Trump administration has moved to roll back school nutrition standards championed by Mrs Michelle Obama, an effort long sought by food manufacturers and some school districts that have chafed at the cost of the former first lady’s prescriptions for fresh fruit and vegetables.
The proposed rule by the Agriculture Department on Friday, coming on Mrs Obama’s birthday, would give schools more latitude to decide how much fruit to offer students during breakfast and what types of vegetable to include in meals. It would also broaden what counts as a snack.
A spokesman for the department said it had not intended to roll out the proposed rule on Mrs Obama’s birthday, although some Democratic aides on Capitol Hill had their doubts.
Food companies applauded the proposal, while nutritionists condemned it, predicting that starchy foods like potatoes would replace green vegetables and fattening foods like hamburgers would be served daily as “snacks”.
“Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students nutritious and appetising meals,” Mr Sonny Perdue, the Agriculture Secretary, said in a statement.
“We listened and now we’re getting to work,” he added.
Combating childhood obesity was Mrs Obama’s signature issue, a rallying cry for her supporters and a lightning rod for conservative critics who saw it as epitomising the liberal “nanny state” of the Obama era.
Mrs Obama’s work “improved the diets of millions of children, especially vulnerable children in food-insecure households”, said Professor Juliana Cohen, a nutrition expert at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. More students are eating vegetables and wholegrains because of her.
“Food waste was a problem before the healthier standards were enacted, so rolling them back won’t solve that problem,” Prof Cohen said, adding: “It’s just that more people are paying attention to the issue now.”
“The school breakfast and lunch programmes have been riddled with waste for a long time, plate waste being one, and that turns into financial waste,” said Mr Jonathan Butcher, a senior policy analyst at the conservative Heritage Foundation.
The Agriculture Department said the changes reflect requests made over the past two years by those who serve meals to children and teenagers at school. The department plans to release a regulatory analysis and open the public comment period on Jan 21.
The proposal is the department’s second attempt to roll back nutrition standards promoted by Mrs Obama through the 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which required schools to serve children fruit and vegetables every day and to offer more wholegrain foods and fat-free or low-fat milk.
NYTIMES