(Newswire.net — June 26, 2015) — Reporting on results of the First lady Michelle Obama’s school lunch rules, a school told Congress that children had been caught smuggling salt and sugar into the school, The Washington Free Beacon reported. According to the administrator, John S. Payne, the president of Blackford County School Board of Trustees in Hartford City Indiana, children have created a black market in schools selling salt and sugar.
“Perhaps the most colorful example in my district is that students have been caught bringing–and even selling–salt, pepper, and sugar in school to add taste to perceived bland and tasteless cafeteria food,” said Payne.
In his addressing before the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary, and Secondary Education, Payne said that the “one-size-fits-all” approach to providing healthier meals to students resulted in higher food waste. Explaining his findings, he said that children simply refuse to eat tasteless food.
“Students are avoiding cafeteria food,” Payne said. “More students bring their lunch, and a few parents even ‘check out’ their child from campus, taking them to a local fast-food restaurant or home for lunch,” he said, adding that in his district “whole-grain items and most of the broccoli end up in the trash.”
“When it comes to whole grain-rich variations of biscuits, grits, crackers and cornbread, all too often, students simply toss them into the trash cans,” said Dr. Lynn Harvey, who serves as chief of school nutrition services at the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, which oversees lunch programs for schools that enroll 1.5 million students.
“This product dissatisfaction has contributed to a decline in breakfast participation in 60 percent of North Carolina’s school districts,” she added.
House Republicans have introduced legislation to give schools more flexibility in meeting the new guidelines and rules. “The clear solution to these problems is local leadership and flexibility,” Payne said.
“When local school districts have the authority and flexibility to make adjustments honoring the spirit and intent of the law they can provide students with healthy, nutritious, and appetizing meals,” he concluded.
Earlier, Britain’s chief star Jamie Oliver came forward with a solution for a healthy and affordable food program in US schools, which would replace tasteless meals such as the one students called the ‘pink slime’. He was rejected.