It’s been about nineteen years since I was in high school, but things appear to have changed a little bit since then. When I was in school we just had regular women as our lunch ladies. Now, apparently, the First Lady of the United States prepares school lunches.That must be what the recent #ThanksMichelleObama hashtag trend on Twitter is about, right?Actually, no.In case you’ve missed it, the #ThanksMichelleObama hashtag involves high school students taking pictures of their puny, pitiful and disgusting school lunches and then adding the #ThanksMichelleObama.The implication, or maybe the assumption, is that the unsatisfactory lunches that these students are being served are a direct result of Michelle Obama’s support for stricter school lunch guidelines.I’ve never understood the criticism that Michelle Obama has received over the past few years in regard to her Let’s Move! intiative. The program has the stated goals of encouraging healthier foods in schools, better food labeling, and more physical activity for children.Who’s against those things, and what alternatives do they propose? Foods that have more sugar, salt and fat? Kids who move even less than they do now? Or are they saying that nothing should be done?The following anecdote provides just one example of the problem.At a Congressional hearing during the debate over whether to implement a school lunch program in 1945, a general in charge of the Selective Service (the military draft) said that forty percent of all draftees were turned away because they lacked proper nutrition. In other words, they were hungry.Today, according to the Department of Defense, the number one medical reason for which recruits are turned away from the armed forces is obesity. Dozens of retired generals and admirals recently submitted a letter that called American kids “too fat to fight.”So obviously malnutrition is still a problem for American children, only the “mal,” or bad, part of the word refers to the overabundance of crappy food children eat, instead of not getting enough food, as was the case in 1945.Something obviously needs to be done.And since one-third of a child’s meals are eaten at school, it makes sense to try and make school lunches healthier. As part of Let’s Move!, Michelle Obama endorsed new guidelines for healthier school lunches that were proposed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.I know that some high school students might not have taken a government class yet, so let me explain that the First Lady of the United States does not pass laws. The United States Congress passes laws, and then the President signs them. So the First Lady can want something until she’s blue in the face, but nothing’s going to happen until the actual decision makers make it happen.The decision makers passed new guidelines that called for a reduction in the amount of salt in foods, and required more fruits and vegetables to be served, and eliminated sugary drinks.Of course these ideas ran into opposition, mostly from the big agribusiness companies who’ve made billions of dollars over the decades serving salty, fatty, processed foods that are slowly killing our children. These are the same folks who managed to get pizza to count as a full serving of vegetables because two tablespoons of tomato paste weren’t counted as two tablespoons of tomato paste, but rather as eight tablespoons of tomatoes, because they’d once been tomatoes.And how do these businesses make so much money? Because the U.S. government subsidizes their operations—through things like corn subsidies, which allow them to make all sorts of “food” from corn, while also providing cheap, unnatural feed to cows so they can get fatter quicker, and we can have cheap meat.So if we’re paying these companies to make food that is being sold in our schools and killing our children, then why don’t we just stop doing that? Good question, and I don’t have the answer.But improving the school lunch program is one step in the right direction. Requiring school lunches to contain actual healthy, whole, fresh food may be a tough sell to kids, but we can’t just say, “Forget it, let’s keep feeding them crap.”I’m off topic here though. Back to Michelle Obama and the kids tweeting pictures of their gross school lunches.I have a message for you, my dear young lads and lasses, Michelle Obama didn’t make your gross lunch. Your lunch was made by some nice ladies (very few men work in school cafeterias), who are doing their best, but don’t have the training, the resources or the money to implement the healthy lunch guidelines.And by the way, let’s get away from calling it hot lunch also. Better to call it fresh lunch. There’s a much better chance of getting a healthy, tasty, satisfying lunch if we focused more on fresh ingredients, rather than hot ingredients. And those schools that don’t have gourmet kitchens would have no problem concocting fresh lunches.So before you add to the #ThanksMichelleObama craze, think about two things.One, people have been complaining about school lunches almost since school lunches began. It’s not like school lunches were culinary delights until Michelle Obama came in and ruined everything. When I was in high school people had all sorts of wild speculation about school lunches.Two, you immediately lose the right to call any food “disgusting” or “gross” or “mystery mush” when you go through the Taco Bell drive-thru on Friday night, gorge yourself, and like it.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++For something that's sure to leave you satisfied, and likely won't kill you, Like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes right now! Please.
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