Tornado Alley (PROG)

[fuagf]

JimLur .. In your conservative eyes Obamacare is a big failure, and the same for Michelle's attack on obesity effort. In reality neither will
ever be a failure. That's fixed. The sensible way forward would be to tweak where tweaks could improve the program itself and delivery of it.

Why Students Hate School Lunches
By KATE MURPHYSEPT. 26, 2015
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/sunday-review/why-students-hate-school-lunches.html

So the program has problems, what would anyone expect in such a big effort. Possibly some tweaks are warranted in the guidelines, as suggested in the above NYT article. One thing for sure is that one the opposition forces is parental dislike just because it is a Federal government push, which should not be a factor in consideration of a program designed to improve children's health. The most important consideration should be the program's effect on children's health. Period. Cost would be the next most important factor, i guess.

Yeah, i've seen, all your conservative sites hailing it as a failure as some 1.5 million kids have pulled out of it. Something like that. How many are in the program? i read 30 million. Anyway, as usual they, - and you - have picked on negatives only to justify canning the whole program. For mine, i'll go with

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"“You might say to me 'Well people are never going to allow health to enter the public conversation,’”
he said. “The first lady’s mission proved that it can. And to me, that is a huge step forward.”"
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which is an excerpt from .. The great FLOTUS food fight



For the first time, the inside story of how Michelle Obama changed American nutrition.

By Helena Bottemiller Evich and Darren Samuelsohn

03/17/16 04:56 AM EDT

[...]

To date, it’s impossible to know how much the effort has helped: Public health is a slow-moving target and frustratingly hard to measure. But there’s no question that big changes have been set in motion that will prove difficult to reverse, if they’re reversible at all. What emerges here for the first time is a full portrait of just how Obama and her bulldog personal chef engineered and enacted the most aggressive food policy agenda in living memory—a modern example of how a White House spouse can use her unelected platform to wage a genuine Washington policy fight.

[...]

In some cases, the East Wing was able to get companies to make changes that many say could never have happened without the first lady’s star power. One early volunteer was the American Beverage Association, a group representing Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. When it heard that the first lady was interested in obesity prevention, months before her campaign would formally launch, the association reached out to the White House saying they wanted to be a part of the action. The group met with Michelle Obama’s team, pledging to put calorie counts on the front of drink bottles. “I think they immediately understood the value of having not just one company but having a whole sector do something together,” recalled Susan Neely, president and CEO of the powerful trade group. “They made it clear to us, too, that they weren’t anti-industry at all. … They wanted to involve industry. You just had to do something serious.” After weeks of negotiations that involved Kass and White House aide Stephanie Cutter, they came to a deal: By the end of 2012, the industry agreed that all beverage containers, including larger serving sizes they were reluctant to label, would prominently display calories on the front of the bottle.

[...]

Many schools found the new foods more costly and less popular, and some now faced financial losses in their cafeteria programs. The School Nutrition Association, which had supported the law as it had made its way through Congress in 2010, turned against many of the reforms as they were actually being implemented and began lobbying Capitol Hill to dial back mandates on whole grains and sodium and do away with a new requirement that all meals include a half-cup of fruits or vegetables. The House Republican majority that had swooped in after the 2010 midterms saw an opening, and took on Michelle Obama’s lunch program directly, arguing that it represented yet another federal overreach.

[...]

The first lady has been criticized from the right for overstepping her bounds to act as a nutritional “nanny” and has even taken flak from her left, for not going far enough.

[...]

“My take is that it’s too early,” said Seema Kumar, a pediatric endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic who treats children with obesity. Kumar, a Let’s Move! supporter who called MyPlate a particularly great improvement, felt the White House overhyped the study, which was too small to be indicative of a national trend. Kumar said there are other data emerging that indicate a broader movement in the right direction, but it’s still too soon to tell for sure.

For James Levine, a Mayo Clinic researcher and top United Nations obesity adviser, asking whether Michelle Obama helped reduce obesity rates among children is the wrong question, at least this early in the process. No other industrialized country has succeeded in turning around its epidemic. Before the United States can really make progress, he says, policymakers have to see it as a serious, mainstream issue worthy of a serious solution. And on that front, “Let’s Move!” has moved the dial.

“You might say to me 'Well people are never going to allow health to enter the public conversation,’” he said. “The first lady’s mission proved that it can. And to me, that is a huge step forward.”
.. much more .. http://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/michelle-obama-healthy-eating-school-lunch-food-policy-000066

Bottom line, Michelle's program has not been a big failure, and whatever happens will never be. Like Obamacare it's a positive effort in change. And will always be.