WASHINGTON, D.C. – The recent overhaul of the National School Lunch Program has been a disaster, and U.S. Rep. Kristi Noem wants to do something about it.

The South Dakota Republican introduced legislation this month to help ease the problems created by changes to the National School Lunch Program first implemented in schools last year.

The “healthy” changes, pushed by First Lady Michelle Obama, require schools participating in the federal free and reduced lunch program to impose limits on calories, salt and fat, and to use more whole grains, fruits and vegetables.

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The result has been bad for students and schools.

The loudest complaints came from hungry students, many of whom are not getting enough quality food to last them through after-school sports practices. Other students reported binge eating when they got home from school because they’d skip their unappetizing lunch.

Starving students even directed a YouTube video titled “We are hungry” that went viral last year.

School district officials also complained about several other problems including substantially more lunch waste, increased costs for more expensive foods, loss of revenue from students refusing to buy the new lunches, and difficulties complying with the strict calorie and portion limits.

“Ever since the new regulations were implemented, I’ve been hearing about how difficult it is to deal with not only the added costs, but also with making sure kids are full,” Noem told Politico.

The criticism of the new federal lunch requirements prompted the Department of Agriculture last year to eliminate daily meat and grain caps, while still requiring schools to stay within weekly ranges, according to schoolnutrition.org.

Noem’s legislation, HR 3663, would make maximum limits for calories, grains, meats, and meat alternatives simply guidelines, rather than mandated requirements.

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“I just want to make those guidelines instead of regulations. If we can let our local administrators determine how best to feed our kids with the guidelines from the federal government, I think that that’s the best approach.”

Absurd conflicts and inconsistencies

Letting local school leaders decide how best to feed their students is probably a good idea, especially considering some of the absurd efforts they’ve made to comply with the new federal lunch requirements.

EAGnews reported on a Government Accountability Office report this summer that detailed some of the problems schools have faced under the First Lady’s lunch program overhaul.

Federal officials visited eight school districts to see how the new “healthier” requirements were working out, and their resulting report to the House Education and Workforce Committee was seriously depressing.

“To comply with both the meat and grain maximums and the required calorie minimums for lunches, some districts added foods that generally did not improve the nutritional value of the lunches.

“In three of the districts we visited, the (School Food Authorities) reported adding pudding to certain high school menus to bring the menus into compliance with the calorie minimum,” GAO officials wrote in their report.

“Some SFAs also added gelatin, ice cream, or condiments such as butter, jelly, ranch dressing or cheese sauce to become compliant. … While these additional menu items provided needed calories to lunches, they also likely increased the amount of sugar, sodium, or fat in the meal, potentially undercutting the federal law’s goal of improving the nutritional quality of lunches.”

School lunch officials were doing all sorts of silly things in attempt to comply with the standards while still making something students will eat, and their district can afford.

One district’s elementary and middle schools, for example, removed cheeseburgers from their menu because the cheese “would have made it difficult to stay within the weekly meat maximums,” the GAO report noted.

In another district, they got around the cheese problem by using cheese sauce because liquid cheese “does not count as a meat alternative.”

Another district created a 1.5 ounce burger patty in order to comply with the regulations, “which is less than half the size of a quarter-pound burger,” according to the GAO report.

A growing number of school districts have raised lunch prices, or dropped out of the federal lunch program altogether, because of lost revenue since implementing the new regulations.

The Portsmouth, New Hampshire school district increased meals by 25 cents, citing “dwindling participation” in the lunch program. A New York district reportedly lost $100,000 last school year in its lunch program, while an Indiana district lost $300,000.

The Department of Agriculture reported in September that at least 524 schools have dropped out.

Proposed changes

Noem’s legislation would essentially make the DOA’s elimination of daily meat and grain caps permanent for the next five years. The legislation would also prohibit government officials from enforcing the maximum limits for calories, grains, meats and meat alternatives.

The bill states “ … (T)he Secretary of Agriculture shall not … promulgate or enforce any new rule or regulation that establishes a maximum calorie limit or maximum quantity of grains, meat, or meat alternatives for the school lunch program …”

The National School Boards Association backs Noem’s legislation because it would help schools “struggling to meet the overly prescriptive and unnecessary federal mandates and balance the prohibitive cost against other essential student needs,” according to a NSBA statement.

“The forward-thinking legislation Rep. Noem proposes would allow local school officials to design flexible school meal programs that meet the needs of local students and local communities to ensure that all of America’s students gain access to tasty, healthy meals at school,” the NSBA statement read.

Noem said the school lunch guidelines have hit home with her personally, both as a mother and as South Dakota’s at-large representative in Congress.

“As a mother of three, I know every kid has a different activity level and different nutrition needs, so forcing schools into a one-size-fits-all school lunch program doesn’t work for our schools or our students,” she said.

“Current school lunch standards place an unnecessary burden on school administrators, especially in some of our smaller school districts, our poorest counties and our reservations, and send many of our kids home feeling hungry,” Noem said.

Noem introduced HR 3663 Dec. 5, and it has been referred to the House Education and the Workforce Committee, according to GovTrack.us, a government transparency and analysis website. It currently has six Republican co-sponsors and no support from Democrats.

GovTrack.us gives the bill a 3 percent chance of getting out of committee, and a 1 percent chance of becoming law. While those may not be great odds, at least someone is trying to do something to address this government-made problem.