December 14, 2010

Food for Abuse

Hatched by Dafydd

Aaron Worthing over at Patterico's has already written about this story, but I have more to say on it. This is Aaron's take-away and my jumping-off point:

Speaking at Monday's signing ceremony for the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act”-- a law that will subsidize and regulate what children eat before school, at lunch, after school, and during summer vacations in federally funded school-based feeding programs -- First Lady Michelle Obama said of deciding what American children should eat: “We can’t just leave it up to the parents."

The law for the first time gives the federal government the authority to regulate the food sold at local schools, including in vending machines.

Aaron rightly focuses on the eye-popping bit of nanny-statism in Mrs. Obama's statement, "We can't just leave it up to the parents." He also quotes the more complete version of her casual tyranny in context:

“But when our kids spend so much of their time each day in school, and when many children get up to half their daily calories from school meals, it’s clear that we as a nation have a responsibility to meet as well,” Mrs. Obama said. “We can’t just leave it up to the parents. I think that parents have a right to expect that their efforts at home won’t be undone each day in the school cafeteria or in the vending machine in the hallway. I think that our parents have a right to expect that their kids will be served fresh, healthy food that meets high nutritional standards.”

But I believe this school food-sales bill is much more insidious than it seems at first glance; in fact, I believe it's only the first salvo in a war on parental food choices at school.

The purpose of the bill is not just to fund school lunches and other meals for those children whose parents are too poor to give them lunch. (And are there really that many parents who are so staggingly poor, they can't even pack their kids a baloney sandwich?) In reality, right now, the National School Lunch Program alone serves free or subsidized meals to over 26 million schoolkids every day, according to the USDA. 64 million kids are enrolled in primary and secondary schools in the United States (according to the U.S. Department of Education); thus, fully 40% of all school children receive at least one federally subsidized meal every day in school under this one program alone; and there are many other such programs at all levels of government.

Are 40% of school pupils living in poverty? No, of course not: The NSLP is available for schoolkids from families earning up to 185% of the poverty level, or about $31,000 for a family of four. Is $31,000 really insufficient to afford lunchmeat, a loaf of bread, dinner leftovers, or even a jar of peanut butter?

Whoops, I forgot: Many schools now ban peanut butter on the curious claim that if child-A is allergic to peanuts, and if child-B has a PB&J, then somehow A will inevitably wind up ingesting B's lunch and dying. (Or perhaps A will ingest B in toto, thus inadvertently ingesting B's stomach contents as well).

This argument numbfounds me. I have been allergic to egg white all my life; yet never in all my school days did I ever feel the slightest compulsion to eat someone else's egg-salad sandwich, or hard-boiled egg, or even a turkey club with commercial mayonnaise (which contains egg white, though it shouldn't). I stuck to my own lunch -- generally leftovers, which I liked better than a lousy sandwich anyway.

But that brings us to the real danger of the federalization of nutrition in school: If la Casa Blanca has the authority, in the name of "children's health," to regulate what lunches can be sold at a local school, in a local school district, in a local county, in an individual state -- if nationalization has so shredded the very concept of federalism -- then surely the same folks who advocate increased federal subsidization and regulation of school lunches would also argue that the feds assume, at the very least, all powers currently held by those local schools, districts, and states.

Thus, the federales would assume the power to ban certain foods at school, even when brought to school by a student, prepared by that student's mother or father. That, I believe, is the real goal behind Michelle Obama's new school lunch program: The power to regulate, not merely everything students can buy at school, but everything they can eat at school, no matter where it came from; the federal power to overrule parents' dietary decisions, all in the name of protecting innocent children from their own parents' bad choices.

Shouldn't parents have the "right," the Left demands, to a benevolent government nanny who prevents Mom from mistakenly packing the wrong kind of lunch for her kids? The great unwashed conservatives in flyover country, who cling to their guns and their religion, might send their kids to school with food and drink that is too fat, too sweet, too carbonated, or Obamacle forbid, contains a toy!

Kids eat too much meat; we should require three vegetarian days per week. They eat too much cooked vegetables; all greenery should be raw. And everything must be certified organic, produced without the use of chemicals or at facilities that use energy sources that contribute to Anthropogenic Global Climate Change™. The Center for Science in the Public Interest -- the chaps who breathlessly inform us at regular intervals that Mexican food, Chinese food, German food, American food, fast food, and pizza can be fattening if eaten to excess -- should be given quasi-governmental status as the Committee of Nutritional Hectoring and Hand-Slapping.

After all, “we can’t just leave it up to the parents." Michelle knows best!

I would worry that I was just being paranoid; but the more I read about the "crisis" of child obesity, the more I wonder who is positioning himself not to let it go to waste. And the phrase, "Oh, they would never go that far!" has long since found its permanent home in the dustbin: Not only can the Obamunists go "that far," they routinely push the limits of "too far" to the boundaries of the universe... whence they expand indefinitely at the speed of light in all directions.

I really want to see all our roundheeled Republicans, confusticated conservatives, nattering neocons, talky Tea Partiers, insecure Independents, were-liberal libertarians, and all other angst-addled anti-liberals grow a spine, for heaven's sake, and stop rolling onto their backs for every leftist gigolo who promises that the Earth will begin to cool, the oceans to subside, and their kids won't be pumpkin-shaped couch potatoes, if only we'll acquiesce to the Obamic "five-year plan" for child nutrition.

It's time, folks, to stand up and just say no to our federally funded feeding frenzy.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, December 14, 2010, at the time of 9:03 PM

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Comments

The following hissed in response by: Rhymes With Right

Whoops, I forgot: Many schools now ban peanut butter on the curious claim that if child-A is allergic to peanuts, and if child-B has a PB&J, then somehow A will inevitably wind up ingesting B's lunch and dying. (Or perhaps A will ingest B in toto, thus inadvertently ingesting B's stomach contents as well).

I've always been of the opinion that the proper solution to this situation is the Darwinian one -- any kid who is so deathly allergic to peanut butter ought to be allowed to exit the gene pool before reaching breeding age rather than being coddled to the point that such a genetic maladaptation is allowed to be spread further throughout the human genome.

The above hissed in response by: Rhymes With Right [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 15, 2010 3:13 AM

The following hissed in response by: BlueNight

I was sent to elementary, middle, and two years of high school with a lunch packed by my mom. She made certain the food contained no artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. (This is called the Feingold Diet, and it is supposed to cut down on hyperactivity.) I stayed skinny. It was only in the last two years of high school, when I ate cafeteria food every lunchtime, that I ballooned to 210 lbs.

Weird.

The above hissed in response by: BlueNight [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 15, 2010 3:54 PM

The following hissed in response by: Dick E

Dafydd-

And don’t forget, all that gag-inducingly healthy food must be locally sourced.

The above hissed in response by: Dick E [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 15, 2010 7:26 PM

The following hissed in response by: Da Coyote

Would it not be logical to suspend food stamp payments intended for the child who gets fed by the school? Let's see how the Dung-Beetle-in -Chief's wifey boo responds to that.

The above hissed in response by: Da Coyote [TypeKey Profile Page] at December 16, 2010 2:13 PM

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