This week, the president signed Michelle Obama’s Child Nutrition Bill. Ostensibly aimed at providing children with more nutritious school meals, the bill will instead lead to a greater reliance on the badly managed school food programs while simultaneously weakening the very institution that might be the key to solving the problems of childhood obesity — good parenting.
The 200-plus page bill is standard Washington meddling with that familiar feel of government overreach. It’s full of new regulations and nutrition standards, expands USDA authority over local school districts, levies fines for noncompliance, and funds training, technical support, and a “food service management institute.” It also requires a slew of sure-to-be-ignored reports, studies, and research. The bill also expands participation in these programs by automatically enrolling children using state Medicaid records and federal census data.
To laud her achievement, the first lady took to the podium at the bill signing. The president, surrounded by teachers and students, stood proudly next to her and made jokes about having to sleep on the couch if the bill failed to pass. Hardy har har.
The first lady used boilerplate language to congratulate all those who worked on the bill and employed a number of familiar bromides to praise its passage. Terms like “we can all agree,” and “nothing is more important,” and “the values this bill embodies” were scattered throughout her speech before she melodramatically stated that it will “save lives.”
That’s a bit of a stretch. The U.S. actually has very low levels of hunger. According to the USDA, only 14 percent of U.S. households have experienced “food insecurity” — which only means intermittent problems putting food on the table, not chronic starvation. And let’s put this in perspective: According to the U.N. World Food Program, 98 percent of the world’s hungry live in developing nations, a majority in only seven countries: India, China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Ethiopia.
Despite the exaggerated rhetoric surrounding the bill’s passage, everyone can agree that ensuring children have access to healthy food is a good thing. But the real impact of this bill is much larger than nutrition. It represents an enormous growth in government. Not in the way we’ve seen it lately — into the financial and business sectors — but into our personal lives and the lives of our children. It tells parents to cease their most basic role — to feed your child. Because why would they bother to do it when schools now feed children three squares a day?
In her speech, the first lady made one small mention of the role of parents, saying that ultimately this was their responsibility. However, she barely drew breath before quickly adding “when our kids spend so much time in school, it’s clear that we can’t just leave it up to the parents.”
Really? Why not? Why can’t we expect a parent to serve their kids a bowl of cereal in the morning? Why can’t we expect a parent to put a sandwich and an apple in a paper bag and to tuck a small snack into a child’s backpack to give them a boost after school? Why can’t we expect a parent to stock a pantry with healthy snacks and to prepare a simple dinner for their child? Most importantly, why can’t we simply expect a parent to teach their children the values of proper nutrition, portion control, the importance of exercise, and self-regulation?
Undoubtedly, there are parents who fail at these simple tasks, and concern should be directed at that small subset of children whose parents really aren’t capable of parenting. This of course was the original intent of the school food program. Started in 1946, the program was directed toward children who really needed this food. Today, over 30 million children eat a school provided meal, yet according to the U.S. Census, half that number — roughly 15 million children — currently live in poverty. As these numbers illustrate, these programs go far beyond simply providing food for poor children. They now also provide meals to working- and middle-class children whose parents, for whatever reason, don’t pack their kids a lunch.
Relieving the program of these children — nearly 15 million — would allow schools to focus their efforts on those who actually need it. Instead, Michelle Obama sees the problem only being solved through government expansion. In her speech, the first lady said the problems of both obesity and malnutrition in this country “can be solved when we come together and provide our children with the nutritious food they need and deserve.” These terms “we” and “our” are simply code for government being the better solver of your problems. You cannot be trusted to provide your child a nutritious meal because ultimately the government is smarter than you.
The issues of malnutrition and obesity are complicated. Michelle Obama has missed a golden opportunity to remind parents of their most basic responsibility. Instead, her child-nutrition bill will only harm children and families by further securing the trend of parents ceding this responsibility to the government.
— Julie Gunlock is a senior fellow at the Independent Women’s Forum.
"Really? Why not? Why can’t we expect a parent to serve their kids a bowl of cereal in the morning? Why can’t we expect a parent to put a sandwich and an apple in a paper bag and to tuck a small snack into a child’s backpack to give them a boost after school? Why can’t we expect a parent to stock a pantry with healthy snacks and to prepare a simple dinner for their child? Most importantly, why can’t we simply expect a parent to teach their children the values of proper nutrition, portion control, the importance of exercise, and self-regulation?"
These are all valid questions, but the answer is that we can expect it all we want, but it doesn't mean people will actually do these things. How would you actually go about ensuring that these things happened and that children weren't being the ones punished for the laziness of their parents?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe sad fact is that much of our food health problems were caused by gov't intervention in the agriculture sector (law of unintended consequences). The goal of government was ending hunger but the result is a bunch of market-distorting subsidies and regulations leading to nutritionally bankrupt industrial food products made from things like high fructose corn syrup.
The documentary "King Corn" does a nice job of showing how well-intended government regulation has had terrible effects on the very people it was meant to help (the poor). Michelle of course cares about this not at all, her program is just more well-intentioned do-gooder-ism designed to grow the role of government disguised under "help the kids" rhetoric.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhen the government replaces parents and supplies all three meals to kids the US officially ceases to be a free country.
Really people we can't feed our own kids. Anyone answers yes to that is a disgrace as a human being. I won't change my opinion until such time I see newspaper headlines that read, "Adults Die of Starvation in Order to Feed Their Children."
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIn my former life as an economic researcher, we were charged by the State of California legislature to do report after important report.
None of them, zero, as far as I could tell ever accomplished anything, probably never even saw the light of day.
The latest was 'green jobs'. That was going to be the latest 'big thing'. Before that, it was reports on logistics, robotics, biotechnology, and hazmat industries.
Californians are pretty much delusional, and I say that as a California who finally wised up.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHave to echo TheLiberalReader:
"... concern should be directed at that small subset of children whose parents really aren’t capable of parenting."
I'm sad to say I don't think it's a small subset... it's more likely to be something close to a majority. Facing this fact is just as important as anything else in the quest to fix childhood obesity and the disastrous school food program.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"""The sad fact is that much of our food health problems were caused by gov't intervention in the agriculture sector (law of unintended consequences). The goal of government was ending hunger but the result is a bunch of market-distorting subsidies and regulations leading to nutritionally bankrupt industrial food products made from things like high fructose corn syrup.
The documentary "King Corn" does a nice job of showing how well-intended government regulation has had terrible effects on the very people it was meant to help (the poor). Michelle of course cares about this not at all, her program is just more well-intentioned do-gooder-ism designed to grow the role of government disguised under "help the kids" rhetoric."""
Very true. I'd love to see anyone -- liberal or conservative, tea partier or Obama supporter -- actually work on tackling farm subsidies.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI concur with the comments about how much effort is made to feed and otherwise care for children- until folks are starving in order that their children can eat, there is NO NEED for our government to take such actions as this bill provides for. Yes, as a society we need to take greater rolls and embrace our responsibility to raise our children in every sense (feed, nurture, clothe, shelter, support, discipline). I DO NOT want anyone else except close friends and family to advise me or help me in that endeavor.
Wake up America, take the reigns for your lives and for those of your children. We cannot become another nation that sacrificed their children and any alter of a false god... all such societies have come to ruin.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhere does it end?
This is another item that will end up being an entitlement and it will be politically impossible to withdraw it as it will be simple as pie for supporters to trot out a few, truly sad, cases.
The message this sends to the marginal parent is; don't bother with feeding your kid or paying ANY attention to what they eat. Easy prediction; the outcome will be more obesity and malnutrition.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@mbas: "greater rolls"??? I thought starch was bad for you?.........
@theliberalreader: If *you* want to make sure those children don't suffer because they have bad parents (and, yes, I know that isn't the only reason a kid may go hungry), then *you* help them. I want my money back - especially from the national government. I can much more efficiently spend my money to help those children here at the local level, than by having it yanked from my paycheck, passed through at least 3 layers of government bureaucracy (each of whom will take a cut, and each of whom will waste some of it), then handed to an institution that really shouldn't be doing it in the first place (the school).
@moderating software: a-word-that-rhymes-with-snappy-and-starts-with-'cr' is a bad enough word to not let the post go through? wow. (I subsituted "bad" for that word, above.)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo see what a travesty this act is look at the suggested menus the White House recently put out. It has before and after menus.
Anyone who thinks kids will eat broccoli, green pepper strips and cauliflower doesn't know bubkus about kids. School should be investing in larger trash bins and the act should be called simply the hungry kids act because that's what they're going to be. Here are the menus. Click to enlarge:
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusehttp://js-kit.com/blob/TnBi4a7L0OPGwt_xgbbXdp.jpg
It's been my experience that if you don't teach your kids to eat healthy, and they're served exclusively healthy food at school, they often won't eat it!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSeems to me at least half the problem is "video screens" -- kids these days play more videogames, watch more TV, surf the web, and generally do not run around outside and ride bikes and such.
Somehow I suspect this focus on "controlling what you eat" has about as much to do with Childhood Obesity as "controlling how you use energy" has to do with Global Warming!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI don't see that Michelle's derriere is exactly ready for the catwalk. And on top of that her husband smokes.
For god's sake...shut up and leave us alone!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePerhaps Mrs. Obama is foisting her own parental failings on all other parents. Isn't this the woman who came to the White House with her personal chef who cooked for the family in Chicago? Maybe SHE doesn't know how to make healthy, nutritious food for her kids and assumes the rest of us are as stupid as well.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseShe has a caboose the size of Texas and dares to lecture anyone about overwieght? No wonder she's such an "expert" at obesity. Don't worry Michelle, I am sure "the Biggest Loser" will make room for you to have a special "guest" appearance. Until then, shut up and drop 100 lbs yourself First lady fattie
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusetheliberalreader asks, “How would you actually go about ensuring that these things happened and that children weren't being the ones punished for the laziness of their parents?”
Well, I guess you could say that children are “punished” for each and every one of their parents’ shortcomings; mine are “punished” for mine, and yours are “punished” for yours. That hardly justifies the state (meaning a committee of strangers) in taking over the job. Normally, the state steps in as a consequence of serious abuse or neglect, reported by neighbors or schools, no? That is as it should be. No person or entity can or should try to“ensure” that children are fed in accordance with some supposed expert approved by Michelle Obama.
A satirical article used to circulate among home-schoolers some years ago – “Homefeeding Children: Threat or Menace?” The article demonstrated that all the arguments against home-schooling could just as easily apply to feeding children at home. A couple of snippets:
“[I]n this state, homefeeding is relatively unregulated, giving carte blanche to parents to feed their children virtually any food under the sun; meat, milk, cookies, butter, pie - anything goes. . . . Some states require parents to have a certified degree in nutrition or at least be monitored by an accredited nutritionist. But here, parents do not even have to fill out periodic reports detailing what they are feeding their children. . . . There is nothing more valuable than the life and safety of a child, and for that reason, strictures on homefeeding must be tightened in this state.”
The piece was intended as a sort of “Modest Proposal.” Who would have dreamed that these very kinds of arguments would be raised within the decade? True, Michelle’s law would apply only to school-provided meals to begin with. Does anyone believe it would end there? Already there are schools that require children to report what they eat at home so that the authorities can see whether the parents are discharging their responsibilities to their satisfaction.
Michelle needs to get off our backs.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseJust to clarify, it appears our kids are either too skinny or too fat because we are feeding them incorrectly. The solution is we must submit to another level of torment from elitist busybodies whose qualification for the task revolves around an unhealthy dose of liberal education.
Welcome to a soft tyranny.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe school lunch program doesn't just serve poor children -- we're talking about the cafeteria where all kids get lunch and most pay for it. You could do away with the cafeteria -- but until that happens it seems like a no-brainer to make sure that school lunch menus are designed to provide healthy lunches. Instead, menu selection has been skewed because of programs to benefit particular agricultural producers. Why shouldn't the focus of school lunches be the physical health of school kids rather than the financial health of agriculture?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWell written article. I totally agree that parents need to take care of their children's food needs, as well as taking care of their housing and other responsibilities of being an actual adult. Will the bleed never end with this administration? Where are they printing this Monopoly Money? Thank you Julie Gunlock for pointing out the obvious to those who still don't get it.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"As these numbers illustrate, these programs go far beyond simply providing food for poor children. They now also provide meals to working- and middle-class children whose parents, for whatever reason, don’t pack their kids a lunch."
I teach at a HS in Chicago and our students are NOT ALLOWED to bring their own lunch.
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