The USDA recently approved new standards for public school lunches – the cause célèbre of First Lady Michelle Obama – but the improvements still leave a lot to be desired.

Let’s start with the good stuff. The new regulations call for double the amount of servings of fruit and vegetables, the use of non-fat and low-fat milk, an emphasis on whole grain and an attempt to curb the amount of sodium our kids are consuming. Until now there had been zero regulations where sodium was concerned. The average high school lunch contains almost 1,600 milligrams of sodium, she said, more than half the recommended daily sodium intake for a high school-age student.

Unfortunately there are still some parts of the proposal the USDA failed to get authorized….

For starters both pizza and French fries are still considered ‘vegetables.’ Something the socialist commie America haters in the USDA wanted done away with but lost thanks to some heavy lobbying from the food industries.

On the bright side, while pizza remains a ‘vegetable’ (don’t ask) it has to always be accompanied by a side of real vegetables as well. So there’s a bit of a silver lining.

Margo Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington called these the “best ever” rules for school lunch America has seen. Which says a lot and yet so little for the state of our kids diets, doesn’t it?

(Source: LA Times)