Consumer Reports urges USDA to remove Lunchables From National School Lunch Program

Stopthatgirl7@lemmy.world to News@lemmy.world – 418 points – Consumer Reports urges USDA to remove Lunchables From National School Lunch Program
advocacy.consumerreports.org

Consumer Reports called on the Department of Agriculture today to remove Lunchables food kits from the National School Lunch Program. CR recently compared the nutritional profiles of two Lunchable kits served in schools and found they have even higher levels of sodium than the kits consumers can buy in the store. CR also tested 12 store-bought versions of Lunchables and similar kits and found several contained relatively high levels of lead and cadmium. All but one also tested positive for phthalates, chemicals found in plastic that have been linked to reproductive problems, diabetes, and certain cancers.

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I know its done to death but I really do blame Michelle Obama for how shitty school lunches have gotten. I dont know how the administration at the time got away with the enshittification of school lunches under the guise of nutrition. Some places were literally passing napkins off as vegetables because they are made of plant fibers.

I believe you and would like to learn more. Do you have a link?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable

I remember reading an article on reddit a long time ago, but the closest thing I could find was the ketchup as a vegetable thing in my 5 minutes of google searching. If I find the original article I was referencing Ill put it in another reply.

So you blame Michelle Obama but then link to to an article that references Reagan Era policies. What a moronic and fallacious argument!

Did you read past the abstract and see the part about how in 2011 the government prevented the USDA from reclassifying pizza as a vegetable because it contains 30ml of tomato paste?

That's not what that said. The USDA tried to raise how much tomato paste was required to count as a vegetable which would make pizza not count. Congress said no, pizza still counts.

In 2011, Congress passed a bill that barred the USDA from changing its nutritional guidelines for school lunches. The proposed changes would have limited the amount of potatoes allowed in lunches, required more green vegetables, and declared a half-cup of tomato paste to count as a serving of vegetables, rather than the current standard of 2 tablespoons (30 mL). The blocking of these proposed higher standards meant that the smaller amount of tomato paste in pizza could continue to be counted as a vegetable in school lunches.

Would you have a source for this? Either the Obama influence or on the napkins?

https://www.politico.com/agenda/story/2016/03/michelle-obama-healthy-eating-school-lunch-food-policy-000066/

The napkin one is harder to find, still searching for it. This politico article explains it pretty well.

I don't know how you can read that article and come away thinking Michelle Obama's efforts made school lunches worse. Unless by worse you mean healthier but less popular. The only reason people were attempting to get ridiculous things categorized as a vegetable was because they actually now had to have half a cup of vegetables.