Sign our letter now speaking out against rollbacks to school meal nutrition standards by the Trump Administration! Take Action

Dear Friend,

For years mom, dads, and educators around the country fought to improve the nutrition standards of the meals served in schools to help our kids grow up healthy and happy. And now the Trump Administration is trying to take it all away with their newest federal rule change. [1]

***SIGN OUR LETTER calling on the Trump Administration to strengthen, not weaken, nutrition standards in school meals.

Here’s what’s going on: In late January, the Trump Administration announced their latest federal rule that will have a huge impact on the health and well-being of our children—30 million students in 99,000 schools around the country. [2] This time they want to greatly weaken the nutrition standards of meals served in schools across the country.

Here are a few ways they are trying to chip away at the progress we have made to make school lunch, breakfast, and snacks healthier and more delicious: 

• Allows kids to eat pizza, burgers, chicken nuggets, cookies, and French fries for lunch every day.
• Decreases vegetables like carrots and cucumbers and increases the amount of french fries at lunch.
• Halves the amount of fruit offered and reduces the amount of grains in breakfasts. [3]

We want our kids to eat healthier foods and have schools reinforce the healthy options we provide our children at home. It’s especially important that children who are facing hunger, are able to access fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and continue to learn healthy eating habits at school.

We want the Trump Administration to help us raise healthy children, not chip away at the hard fought for nutrition standards for school meals that parents around the country appreciate!  

***SIGN OUR LETTER calling on the Trump Administration to support nutrition standards in school meals, not weaken them.

This isn’t the Trump Administration’s first attack on school meals. In 2018, the USDA rolled back school meal nutrition standards by implementing a regulation that allows unsafe sodium levels in school meals, requires fewer whole grains, and allows flavored 1 percent milk. [4] This came after 99 percent of public comments submitted, by USDA’s own estimate, were in opposition to the proposed rollbacks. Parents didn’t want these changes. Educators and nutrition experts spoke out against them. Yet the Trump Administration implemented them anyway.

These rollbacks threaten the progress we have made on school foods. USDA’s own study, found that thanks to the updated standards implemented by the Obama administration, the nutritional quality of school meals has significantly increased. This study also shows that school meals have improved children’s diet and health, especially among students coming from food insecure and low-income households. [5] And kids like the new foods they are eating—more students are choosing fruit in the lunch line and students are eating more of their school meal entrees. That’s the type of news moms like to hear! [6]

Researchers from the Harvard University T.H. Chan School of Public Health estimated that the updated nutrition standards that were implemented during the Obama Administration could prevent up to two million cases of childhood obesity and save nearly $800 million in healthcare costs over ten years, concluding these changes to be “one of the most important national obesity prevention policy achievements in recent decades.” [7]

But if the Trump Administration gets their way, all that progress could be rolled back.

We can’t let that happen! Sign our letter now speaking out against rollbacks to school meal nutrition standards.  

We have until March 23^rd to make our voices heard—that is the deadline for comments. When you sign our letter  we will include your signature in our official comment to the USDA and Trump Administration speaking out against their proposed school meal nutrition standards change. So make sure to sign our letter and then forward this email to your friends and family and post the action link to Facebook encouraging everyone you know to sign on as well.

Thank you for helping us raise healthy and happy children!!

-Elyssa, Donna, Kristin, and the entire MomsRising / MamásConPoder team

P.S. Join us on Friday, March 6^th at 1pmET/10am PT for our #FoodFri tweetchat, where we will be diving into this issue more with our guests the Center for Science in the Public Interest (@CSPI), the American Heart Association (@AmHeartAdvocacy), the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (@HealthierGen), the Food Research and Action Center (@fractweets) and Sweetgreen (@sweetgreen).

[1,2] Washington Post. “More pizza, fewer vegetables: Trump administration further undercuts Obama school-lunch rules.”

[3] Federal Register. “Simplifying Meal Service and Monitoring Requirements in the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.”

[4] New York Times. “Trump Administration Rolls Back Obama-Era Rules for School Lunches.”

[5] USDA Food and Nutrition Service. “School Nutrition and Meal Cost Study.”

[6] Robert Woods Johnson Foundation. “School Meals Help Millions of Kids Grow Up Healthy.”

[7] Health Affairs. “Three Interventions That Reduce Childhood Obesity Are Projected to Save More Than They Cost to Implement.”

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