NJ Students Plan Strike to Protest Obama Food Rules

[WestVirginiaRebel]

Fox News:

As many as 1,000 students at a New Jersey high school are expected to boycott their cafeteria today to protest the Obama administration’s new lunch guidelines that many teenagers say are leaving them hungry.

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Instead of purchasing their lunch in the cafeteria, many students at Parsippany Hills High School are brown-bagging it – upset over smaller portions and higher prices.

“We’re asking everybody not to buy lunch or anything from the cafeteria,” student Brandon Faris told the Parsippany Patch.

Faris, a 17-year-old senior and junior Nicholas Caccavale, organized the strike and more than 1,000 of their classmates have joined a Facebook page to protest the federal guidelines.

“Nothing from the snack line, no water, no cookie – not a dime will be spent in the cafeteria.

The smaller portions are a part of the Obama administration’s Health Hunger-Free Kids Act – and local school districts across the nation are required to follow the federal mandates.

“We have to follow the law,” Board of Education member Anthony Mancuso told the Parsippany Patch.

Caccavale told Fox News that there is less food and it’s costing kids more money.

“The spicy chicken is a chicken cutlet that they actually cut in half,” he said. The mean could be healthy but it’s not filling at all.”

Even the company that provides food to the school understands their frustration.

The portions are meager admitted Mark Vidovich, president of Pomptonian Food Service. “I’m afraid I would probably be hungry myself.”

But he said there’s not a thing his company can do about the matter.

“We have a maximum amount of grains and protein we’re allowed to serve and a maximum amount of calories,” he said.

Students across the nation are protesting the Obama administration’s guidelines – and the complaint has been the same – there’s just not enough food.

Teenagers at a tiny Kansas school decided to send their own message the President Obama by creating a video parody that showed hungry children collapsing in classrooms while others burn copies of the government regulations.

Click here to watch their video.

Hungry kids have an ally in Rep. Tim Huelskamp (R-KS).

“The whole purpose was to enhance their nutrition and actually the opposite is happening,” said Huelskamp. “The lunches may be a little bit healthier but if the kids aren’t going to eat it and there aren’t enough calories for the kids, you’re making the problem worse.”

Under the new guidelines, school districts must serve more whole grains, daily portions of fruits and vegetables, less sugar and salt and only low-fat or non-fat milk. But the lunches must also meet caloric restrictions. And under the government guidelines, a high school student is not allowed to have more than 850 calories.

“Any parent would look at some of these lunch trays and say that’s not enough food for my kid for a seven-hour school day,” Huelskamp told Fox News.

That’s why he joined Iowa Rep. Steve King to introduce the “No Hungry Kids Act.” The legislation would repeal the USDA’s rule that created the new, controversial standards.

“Let the school cooks, let the parents, let the school district decide this – not some bureaucrat in the Obama White House,” Huelskamp said.

Huelskamp said the most “damning evidence” that Obama’s regulations are not working is coming from school cooks.

“They tell me ‘We can’t meet these mandates and it will mean less kids will participate in the school lunch program,’” he said.

For example, Huelskamp said students are only allowed one and a half ounces of meat. In a beef state like Kansas, he said that just doesn’t work.

“The idea that one and a half ounces of meat is only what they’re going to be given for two or three days a week is simply not enough for a growing kid,” he said.

“Go look in the trash can,” he said. “There is your failed policy.”

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Michelle's menu is a recipe for starvation.

[Valin]

@WestVirginiaRebel

 

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