WASHINGTON, D.C. – The American Heart Association wants to save Michelle Obama’s school food restrictions.

The Association is launching a Change.org petition today in hopes of pressuring lawmakers into keeping the Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act of 2010 intact, despite pleas from school nutrition directors to ease federal regulations on whole grain products, sodium and a fruit or vegetable mandate, The Hill reports.

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The School Nutrition Association, which is comprised of over 50,000 school food workers, wants the House Education and the Workforce Committee to amend the Healthy Hunger-free Kids Act to give them more flexibility in preparing school meals, citing an increased trend of students skipping lunch or binge eating junk food after school.

“We’re asking for just some sensible flexibility around a few things that were included in the act,” Lynn Harvey, North Carolina’s chief of nutrition services, said at a congressional staff briefing last week, according to the site.

But in the Change.org petition, the AHA alleges “95 percent of schools and diverse communities across the country are meeting the requirements and ensuring their students are getting a head start on a healthy lifestyle.

“A recent study showed that students are eating 16 percent more vegetables and 23 percent more fruit, all while eating less salt, fats, and sugar,” the petition states.

In a letter to lawmakers, the AHA went as far as to claim that Michelle Obama’s “healthy” lunches will alleviate a million heart attacks per year, and it seems to be trying to appeal to Republicans’ penchant for fiscal responsibility.

“Healthier children also mean healthier adults, which represents savings for government at all levels,” the letter read. “For example, a 9.5 percent drop in sodium intake would likely result in one million fewer cardiac events each year and a savings of more than $32 billion.”

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But the information provided by the AHA in the Change.org petition is quite misleading.

While there is no cited source for the data about increases in student consumption of vegetables and fruit in the petition, it’s presumably based on the same study supporters of the federal regulations have cited for months.

A study conducted by the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity alleges students are eating more of their entrees, including more fruits and vegetables. The same study suggests students are throwing away less food than before the federal restrictions.

But that “research” is based on a mere 12 middle schools in New Haven, Connecticut – hardly a representative sample of the country’s diverse school systems. The AHA propaganda also carelessly omits the financial implications of the school food laws.

Schools across the country experienced a significant decline in lunchroom sales since the restrictions were imposed through the National School Lunch Program in 2012, and things haven’t gotten better. Many lunchrooms have lost so much money officials concluded they’re better off foregoing federal subsidies for free and reduced-price lunches tied to the restrictions, and dropping out of the National School Lunch Program, to serve students food they’ll actually eat.

A Government Accountability Office report shows total school lunch participation declined by 1.2 million students from school years 2010-11 through 2012-13, with the vast majority leaving after the restrictions went into effect. Schools in a total of 48 states reported significant increases in plate waste in 2012-13, according to the GAO report.

In total, there’s been more than a $1 billion increase in school food waste generated by the federal mandate that all students take a fruit or vegetable, whether they want it or not, according to a Government Accountability Institute report cited by Fox 57.

The AHA’s support of the Obama lunch overhaul, however, isn’t unexpected.

The Association was among groups that lined up in support of the Affordable Care Act, and it filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in favor of that law, ThinkProgress.org reported at the time.

So while the AHA’s Change.org petition contends that “special interests are working to chip away” at the school food restrictions, its own special interest lobbying work clearly illustrates a liberal, pro-Obama slant.

And its use of dubious research in an attempt to convince the public that the government knows best what their children should eat only illustrates the organization may not have the best interests of schools and students at heart.