Imagine this: it’s 2007. It’s the last day of May, and you’re a student standing in line to get lunch, a familiar image. Everything looks and smells edible. You have choices, you can get real hot dogs or beef nachos for a main, for a side you can get oil-fried french fries, non-mushy green beans, or even delectable baked beans for a side. On your way out of the queue, you can grab a cookie and milk. Those days are just a dream. Now, you step into the lunch line and everything is grey. Everything is whole wheat, low fat, no fat, low sodium, and low sugar plastered around. Even if you enjoy the lunch, it won’t sit well. What’s worse is by the time it’s 3rd period, your stomach is growling again. All to go home and raid the fridge. The glory days of school lunch are over. We have recessed into late-stage inedible school lunch, and who is at fault for this?
The Obamas: the 44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama, and his wife, Michelle Obama. Other than being known for war crimes and Obamacare, there is a forgotten campaign still in effect today. The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, enacted by the 111th United States Congress in December 2010, is a federal statute signed into law by Barack Obama and supported by Michelle. I should say it wasn’t created by her, but she did create the MyPlate food pyramid and pushed the agenda to a national level. The Hunger Free Kid Act was planned to avoid child obesity and help children grow into healthy adults with healthy whole-grain school food, but got out of hand. High schoolers could only have 850 calories for school lunch. Pretzel Wednesday is gone, no more cookies or treats. All very low calorie, low sugar, low carb, low sodium. It brought smaller portions, leaving kids, you guessed it, hungry. Unlike the name of the act advertises, many students protested about being hungry, especially athletes. Students began throwing away two times the amount they used to. The little “Please grab a fruit and a vegetable” sign became a mandatory reality, but nobody eats it. The people who were eating the fruits and vegetables originally would have done it either way. Why are we forcing kids to take a fruit and vegetable, sit with it at lunch, and then throw it away with the rest of their crap lunch? It’s a big disaster and a money waste. I would rather my students eat kind of crap food and be full than pour money into expensive healthy but also nearly inedible school lunches that nobody eats. School lunch lost its charm. December 2010 was the day the music died, the day the world stopped spinning. You can no longer have French fries and a cookie for lunch anymore. Can a girl even get diabetes by choice anymore? Whatever happened to the land of the free? If you want to talk about making the kids healthy, let’s talk red 40 and seed oils.
But alas, all empires crumble. Mao dies and Rome falls. Barack serves two full terms and backs off the stage. Michelle falls from power but her campaign lives on. It’s been like that since 2011 and the only change has been that the FDA gave us back our flavored milk, and took away some whole grain. Next time you get school lunch, remember what your older siblings and parents got and remember what you could have had if it wasn’t for her.