Brown Bag Rebels

"Exciting changes" have come to school cafeterias. Just ask the First Lady. In a back-to-school video message, Mrs. Obama tells students, “Starting this year, the talented people who cook the food at your school will be offering all kinds of healthy, delicious new choices.  Foods that are good for you and that taste good, too.”

“These healthy foods are good for your body, they’ll give you energy and make you stronger and they’re also good for your mind,” she says.

But in spite of all the First Lady has done for them, some high school students in Pittsburgh have unleashed a Twitter protest (I know, that doesn't sound like a very fierce protest) to complain about paying more money for less food which doesn't taste good and doesn't give them the energy they need. "If you're working with 650 calories for a meal, and 140 comes from a milk and 70 comes from fruit because fruit is now mandated ... you've only got a small amount left for the protein, the bread and the vegetable," the district's food service director Maryann Lazzaro is quoted as saying.

Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) has jumped on the issue by introducing legislation to repeal the new cafeteria calorie cap. "For the first time in history, the USDA has set a calorie limit on school lunches," King said last week. "The goal of the school lunch program was — and is — to insure students receive enough nutrition to be healthy and to learn.

"The misguided nanny state, as advanced by Michelle Obama's 'Healthy and Hunger Free Kids Act,' was interpreted by Secretary [Tom] Vilsack to be a directive that, because some kids are overweight, he would put every child on a diet." Rep. King explains the mentality of the First Lady and the food police very well. In her all-encompassing fat-fighting zeal, Mrs. Obama either fails or refuses to recognize that athletes, soldiers, and active teens can healthily handle more calories than the rest of us.