68 MOTHER JONES |^ SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
PARTY^ OF^ ONESTUDIOFOOD FOR THOUGHTFAILURE TO
LUNCH
maga comes to the school cafeteria.
by tom philpottback in 2010, then–first lady Michelle Obama
launched a nefarious scheme to turn school cafe-
terias into liberal indoctrination zones. Or at least
that’s how Obama’s right-wing opponents por-
trayed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a law
she spearheaded that gave the National School
Lunch Program its first nutritional update in more
than 15 years. Her treachery included requirements
for more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains,
and limits on calories in meals. “Here’s Michelle
Obama trying to take over the school lunch pro-
gram,” Rush Limbaugh warned his radio audience.
Media outlets passed around photos of kids dump-
ing their lunches into the trash, supposedly taken
after the reforms went into effect. Rep. Steve King
(R-Iowa) sponsored a bill to nullify the nutrition
rules in 2012, decrying what he called a “misguided
nanny state” that “would put every child on a diet.”
The nanny-state rhetoric got attention. Less
attention-getting was the fact that Obama’s crit-
ics were attacking improvements to a crucial anti-
poverty program. Of the nearly 30 million kids who
eat school lunches every day, 20 million qualify for
free lunch—and another 1.8 million receive it at a
reduced price. Altogether, these kids rely on school
meals for nearly half their daily calories and 40 per-
cent of their vegetable intake, making the program
a “safety net for low-income children,” a 2016 study
from Baylor University researchers found.
For decades, companies like Tyson Foods and
Domino’s have found a prominent market in school
cafeterias, wooing administrators with entrees like
chicken nuggets and pizza, which please kids, re-
quire minimal preparation, and don’t strain tight
budgets. The Obama rules didn’t overhaul this
paradigm, says Bettina Elias Siegel, author of the
forthcoming book Kid Food, but “overall there’s no
question that school meals got healthier.”
King’s school lunch bill stalled in Congress, but
the right-wing zeal for reversing Obama’s agenda
stayed on a slow boil. Then, in 2016, a man ob-
sessed with taco bowls and Big Macs claimed the
presidency. Just before Donald Trump took office,
the far-right House Freedom Caucus released a hit
list of more than 300 rules and regulations thaturgently needed to be revoked or examined in his first 100 days. First
on the list: the Obama lunch reforms.
In May 2017, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue appeared at an ele-
mentary school in Virginia, vowing to “Make School Meals Great Again.”
Echoing Freedom Caucus talking points, Perdue announced that “if kids
aren’t eating the food, and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting
any nutrition,” and that procuring whole grain foods like pasta was im-
posing “problematic” costs on cafeterias. Perdue’s new rules, put into
law in February 2019, represented a fairly modest rollback. The Obama
guidelines stipulated that starches like pasta and buns must contain at
least 50 percent whole grains and that chocolate milk could contain
no fat. Perdue cut the grain requirement in half and allowed flavored
1 percent milk. He weakened a mandate to cut salt levels, but he left
calorie limits and requirements for more fruit and vegetables intact.
Meanwhile, researchers contracted by his own department were
studying the impact of the Obama-era reforms. The results, quietly re-
leased in April, demonstrate that the conservative backlash was based on
nonsense. The usda study compared school years before and after the
Obama reforms. It turns out that serving healthier food did not result in
significantly higher costs for cafeterias or mean more food going into the
garbage. The reforms did, however, result in healthier lunches—more
whole grains, greens, and beans, as well as fewer “empty calories” (added
sugar and solid fats) and less sodium. And maybe most importantly, the
cafeterias that delivered higher healthy-food scores also had significantly
higher rates of students choosing to eat the lunches. That same month,
attorneys general from six states and the District of Columbia sued the
usda, charging that the rollbacks were made without public input and
were “not based on tested nutritional research.”Cafeteria administrators haven’t had much appetite for Perdue’s
alterations, either. Anneliese Tanner is the food services director for
the Austin, Texas, school district, where more than half of all students
qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Obama-era reforms, she says,
prompted her cafeterias to move to whole grains, and “the kids have
gotten used to them, more or less.” For Tanner, school lunches are not a
front in a culture war, but an effective way to nourish kids who might not
otherwise have access to nutritious food. “Would they eat more white
flour tortillas and white pasta? Probably,” she says. “Is that our focus?
No. We’re going to stay the course and focus on our kids’ health.” Q