Posts
A while back there was a big
pushback from some folks when Michelle Obama attempted to promote healthier
food alternatives in school lunch programs. Why would anyone complain about
replacing deep-fried French fries with carrot sticks, and ketchup with real
tomatoes?
(You remember ketchup was formerly
categorized as a vegetable in the federal school lunch nutritional guidelines.)
The folks against this fairly
common sense approach made loud complaints about America turning into a
"nanny state." Apparently healthy food choices are one of those nanny
things.
Always a funny sort of insult to
me. I’m one of those lower class folks who never had a nanny, admonishing them
to eat well or otherwise. The closest I ever came to a nanny was watching Mary
Poppins. As I recall, my mom had that duty and, working as she did, could use
all the help she could get from educators to reinforce her nutritional choices,
which my peers were working hard to undermine.
I guess the nanny-callers only care
about rich kids not having to accept government food choices. Because Phil Roe,
Republican Representative from Tennessee, has recently introduced a bill
limiting food stamp choices to "nutritious" food.
He proposes prohibiting the use of
food stamps to buy soda, sugary cereals, frozen French fries, tater tots, or
canned fruit with added sugar. In short, all the stuff on sale at Walmart and
Big Lots.
In all fairness, maybe Phil wasn't
one of those nanny-callers and isn't being a hypocrite. I hope so, because I
actually agree with him. We shouldn't subsidize poor nutrition, either in the
food stamp area...or the cafeteria.
But we ought to figure out a way to
make nutritional food as cheap as generic Froot Loops.
That would be
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.
America, ya gotta love it.
No comments:
Post a Comment