With Donald Trump now as our official President-elect, people are worried that everything that was accomplished under the Obama administration will be reversed. Trump has claimed he wants to repeal Obama Care, among other plans associated with the Obamas.
One bill up for reauthorization is the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, championed by Michelle Obama, and people are nervous that it won’t be readdressed. School lunches should definitely be a topic Trump includes in his 100-day plan, although the chances of that are looking slim.
Why School Lunches Are Important
The topic of school lunches is more important now than ever before because, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, more than one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. The CDC also reports that “childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” so we need a president who will make healthy food in schools a priority.
Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act
Congress missed the September 30, 2015 deadline to reauthorize the HHFKA. The funding for the program continues without a reauthorization, but lawmakers didn’t consider whether they should adjust the law or not.
The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act improved the nutritional quality of food in schools by providing the USDA with the authority to set nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools, made nutritional information about the school food available to parents and students, and increased the number of students eligible for schools’ meal programs.
What Will Trump’s Approach Be?
We’re not quite sure what we can expect under the Trump administration yet because Trump hasn’t discussed regulating school meals. However, we do know that Trump is a lover of all things fast food and that he refered to the Food & Drug Administration as the “FDA Food Police” in one of his tax plans. This plan made it clear that he wanted to cut back on food-safety regulations.
According to the Associated Press, Republican Robert Aderholt of Alabama, the Republican chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees Agriculture Department spending, said the school lunch program under the Obama administration was “activist driven” and people who voted for Trump are looking for a more common sense approach. It seems that we can unfortunately expect a more hands-off approach to school lunches under the Trump administration.
All we can do now is hope the health of students is as important to Trump as it was to the Obamas.