WASHINGTON D.C. – When are First Lady Michelle Obama and her friends at the U.S. Department of Agriculture going to admit that their school lunch reform program is a wasteful, expensive failure?

We’ve been hearing reports for several years about school children sticking their noses up at the “leaner” lunches being offered under new federal standards. There are stories galore about trash buckets being filled with fruits and vegetables that school are forced to put on each plate,

But now we have quantitative proof. A study of lunchrooms at 18 elementary schools, conducted by researchers from Brigham Young and Cornell universities, determined that up to 70 percent of the mandatory fruit and vegetables served to children end up in the garbage.

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“(Researchers) found that a few more kids did eat produce when it was given to them, but the new policy dramatically increased schools’ lunch costs and the waste in their cafeteria trashcans,” wrote Kathryn Roethel in an article for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The researchers did find a way to get the kids to eat fruits and vegetables – offer them a coin, raffle ticket or some other incentive to down that apple or celery stick. But the cost of such incentives could reach $1.1 million per day if they were instituted across the nation, according to the researchers.

Overall, the study found that the cost of serving fruit and vegetables to all 31.6 million children in the federal school lunch program about $5.4 million per day. The value of the produce that is thrown away is about $3.8 million per day.

For every one or two kids who eat the produce, five toss it in the can.

Interestingly, 73 percent of students ate at least half of an apple with their lunch if the fruit was sliced instead of whole.

“Researchers suggest that whole fruit is more inconvenient to eat, especially if kids have braces, and some kids even thought they looked unattractive eating whole apples in front of others,” the article said.

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The bottom line is that Mrs. Obama and federal bureaucrats thought they could force fresh produce on students and the students are rebelling in big numbers, resulting in big financial losses for schools. The way we understand it, government should not be in the business of making schools more expensive to operate, particularly for the sake of a program that is clearly not working.

Besides, as we’ve noted before, children take most of their meals at home, where the government does not control the menu. Serving low-calorie lunches will not make them skinnier unless their parents follow suit and serve the same type of food at home.

And let’s not forget, these are children. Their diet is not the problem. Their lack of exercise is. Young kids will easily burn the calories from any type of food if they would put away the video games and go outside and play.