What’s messed up is having the First Lady of the United States placed in a position where she has to defend her efforts to make kids eat healthier. What is this world coming to, when eating healthy is now the wrong thing to do?
That is the new fight the Republicans are on. They have figured out a way to attack and undercut Michelle Obama’s efforts in her “Let’s Move” program. Their goal is to allow schools to opt out of the healthy lunch program the First Lady is pushing.
First lady Michelle Obama is answering Republicans in Congress who want to roll back healthier school meal standards.
At a roundtable at the White House this afternoon with nutrition experts and school administrators, Obama praised the new guidelines and disparaged Republican efforts to undercut them.
‘This is unacceptable,’ Obama said.
The event is an unusual move for the first lady, who has largely stayed away from policy fights since she lobbied for congressional passage of the child nutrition law that gave the U.S. Department of Agriculture the authority to make reforms to the school lunch program in 2010.
Sam Kass, director of Mrs. Obama’s Let’s Move initiative to combat childhood obesity, said a Republican bill that would allow schools to opt out of the standards is ‘a real assault’ on administration efforts to make foods healthier for kids.
Kass, who is a White House chef, said the event is an attempt to point out the successes of some schools that have implemented the standards, which were set by the Obama administration and Congress over the past several years.
School nutrition officials from across the country will speak about how well the standards are working in their schools.
‘She wants to have a conversation about what is really happening out in the country,’ as opposed to Washington, Kass said. ‘These standards are working.’
