WASHINGTON, D.C. – A Trump administration focused on cutting unnecessary regulations is expected to ignite fresh debate about Michelle Obama’s healthy school food restrictions, and could give new momentum to Republican efforts to roll them back.

Students and schools across the country have struggled to comply with tightened restrictions on calories, fat, sugar, sodium, and other nutritional elements imposed by the federal government through the first lady’s Healthy and Hunger-Free Kids Act.

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

Hundreds of schools fled the National School Lunch Program after the regulations went into effect in 2012, largely because lost lunch room revenue exceeded federal subsidies for the program. Students rejected the changes and revolted, snapping pictures of their horrid lunches and posting them online with the hashtag #ThanksMichelleObama.

A requirement in the legislation that all students take at least one fruit or vegetable at lunch, whether they want it or not, also increased school food waste by more than $1 billion a year as most simply trashed their greens.

Republican lawmakers pushed to loosen the restrictions to allow schools to prepare healthy foods students will actually eat, and to reduce the increased costs associated with the Hunger-Free Kids Act, most recently with the Improving Child Nutrition and Education Act of 2016 proposed by U.S. Rep. Todd Rokita this spring.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

The bill would reduce “community eligibility” in the current Michelle Obama-inspired standards to schools with at least 60 percent of students in poverty, rather than the current 40 percent, which would target resources to those most in need. The bill would give states more flexibility and input on school food standards, and “allow the Secretary of Agriculture to conduct block grant pilot projects on the state level to test alternative certification and food delivery procedures under the bill and then evaluate these projects after three years,” Food Safety News reports.

[xyz-ihs snippet=”NEW-In-Article-Rev-Content-Widget”]

“Our proposal responsibly continues to offer a safety net for children in actual need and returns power to local leaders and parents,” Rokita wrote on his website. “Unfortunately, those attacking this bill don’t approve when we can do all of this without spending more of your money or making free people more dependent on government overseers.”

Rokita, who won re-election on Tuesday, “is unavailable at this time,” according to a recording at his D.C. and district offices Friday.

 

Donald Trump has vowed repeatedly to slash government red-tape and unnecessary restrictions as president, and return more power to state officials, particularly in regards to education.

Top Trump surrogates and likely cabinet members have also addressed Michelle Obama’s focus on imposing the tightened, expensive restrictions on America’s students and schools.

During the primaries, a Council Bluffs, Iowa students broached the subject with New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, one of Trump’s top supporters in the general election.

“What are you going to do about the lunches, because they were fine when Mrs. Bush was the first lady, but now that Mrs. Obama is the first lady, they’ve gone down,” the student told Christie, according to CNN.

“The first lady has no business being involved in this,” Christie said to roaring applause. “She wants to give her opinions? That’s fine. She can give her opinions about what people should have for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. She’s like any other American. She can give her opinions.

“But using the government to mandate her point of view on what people should be eating every day is none of her business,” Christie said.

Trump seems to share that same perspective, as evidenced by the third order of business in his 100-day action plan to Make America Great Again: “a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated.”

And when Trump takes office, he’ll be at the helm of the strongest Republican control over government in the United States since 1928, the last time the GOP controlled the Senate, House, presidency, and a majority of state governorships, People.com reports.