As the nation's number one and most influential advocate of children's nutrition, first lady Michelle Obama won't settle for less when it comes to ensuring that children get healthy lunch in school even it this means getting into scuffle with lawmakers.
The first lady is known to have staunchly lobbied for the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids program that her husband President Barack Obama signed into law in 2010. The program, which requires school lunches to have more fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and lesser amount of sodium, sugar, fat and processed foods, is aimed at improving the health and reduce the obesity risks of children.
The program, however, is being threatened by a bill that House Republicans introduced following reports of children throwing away the healthy foods served in school and of many districts losing money because children do not want to buy fruits and vegetables.
Rep. Robert Aderholt of Alabama, who authored the bill that would allow districts to skip the healthy lunch requirement under the current school food program for one year, said that school districts are having difficulty with the program because the lunch rules have gone too far and too fast.
The School Nutrition Association, the group that represents school-cafeteria workers and which was originally supportive of the new nutritional standard, expressed the same sentiment saying that the healthier foods offered in school lunches are difficult to sell resulting in local districts to lose money.
Despite criticisms to the program, the first lady said that she will fight to bitter end to ensure that children get the best nutrition from school lunches.
"I'm going to fight until the bitter end to make sure that every kid in this country continues to have the best nutrition that they can have in our schools," Obama told the Associated Press.
Efforts to soften the rules for healthy school lunch have clearly displeased the first lady and this apparently led to her criticizing the Republican Party's efforts in an opinion piece she wrote in the New York Times.
"Our children deserve so much better than this," Obama wrote. "Even with the progress we have made, one in three children in this country is still overweight or obese. One in three is expected to develop diabetes in his or her lifetime. And this isn't just about our children's health; it's about the health of our economy as well.
