SAN NARCISO, Calif. (Bennington Vale Evening Transcript) -- Agriculture Secretary Sonny Purdue pushed forward on Monday with aggressive plans to reverse the draconian dietary standards the Obama administration had imposed on school cafeterias as part of its eight-year socialist agenda. The Trump White House campaigned on a platform of restoring free market capitalism, vowing to stave off the creeping threat of communism that caused the country, its economy and its business communities to flounder for nearly a decade-- practically to the point of national insolvency. With many executive orders penned, Trump has fought to alleviate burdensome regulations on industry, such as crippling standards for health, safety, fair compensation and labor protections. In his first official act, Purdue has proposed a “repeal and replace” nutrition program that “accurately reflects the true diets and values of American families, and the businesses they depend on.”

Michelle Obama’s Obscenely Naked Lunch

“This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals,” Perdue said in a statement, reported by The Hill.

“If kids aren't eating the food,” he added, “and it’s ending up in the trash, they aren’t getting any nutrition – thus undermining the intent of the program.”

Purdue’s comments, though thinly veiled, took aim at Michelle Obama’s signature healthy lunch programs. The former first lady intended to force a series of restrictions that would curb the growth of childhood obesity. However, such actions also jeopardized the economic fabric of the United States.

“By limiting the choices of parents, school administrators and food services professionals, Mrs. Obama was really just eroding the underpinnings of America’s prosperity,” Purdue explained. “If businesses fail, so do we as a world power. Just imagine if a drug company developed a cure for cancer, then gave away that pharmaceutical for free. Hospitals lose patients. Drug makers lose customers. Funeral homes and cemeteries struggle under diminishing volumes. You put the country into a fiery death spiral it’s not going to escape from.”

At a school cafeteria in Leesburg, Va., Purdue told a gathering of kids, parents and education officials that the Trump White House has heard their concerns, and that this administration would liberate the obstructions that eliminated flexibility in implementing nutrition standards that represent America’s greatness.

But the decision drew the ire of activists and fringe child welfare advocates, as NPR revealed in its coverage:

“Just because children would rather eat heavily salted, processed foods at school doesn’t mean they should,” Ken Cook, president of the Environmental Working Group, said in a statement. “The president’s fondness for Big Macs and KFC is well known, but we shouldn’t let Colonel Sanders and McDonald’s run the school cafeteria.”
Howell Wechsler, CEO of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, which has worked with more than 35,000 schools to implement healthier meal standards, said in a statement, “We would not lower standards for reading, writing and arithmetic just because students found them challenging subjects, and we should not do it for school nutrition either.”

Both Cook and Wechsler are wrong. Under Betsy DeVos, Trump has unapologetic designs to lower -- if not eliminate -- academic standards. Nutrition is no different. Purdue denounced Cook’s statements, remarking that Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders offered school cafeterias more practical wisdom and expertise than a radical food activist like Jamie Oliver.

“Of course celebrities like Oliver are opposed to this,” Purdue said. “He’s a shill for the top one percent of food producers. We’re talking boutique organic farms, specialized hormone-free beef producers and wealthy local growers. Oliver has an agenda, and that’s to profit off of scare tactics. He’s a talking head who’s getting rich in the pockets of these powerful farms. He’s also British, which makes him practically a communist. We’re trying to save school lunch programs, give kids the best nutritional value at the lowest cost, and keep businesses thriving -- the ones real Americans turn to time and again. McDonald’s and KFC provide for more patriots than elitist rackets like Whole Foods and Gelson’s.”

Purdue also noted that Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders have earned their places as icons of valor, corporate social responsibility and defense. Ronald McDonald runs a series of charitable organizations that assist children in need. Colonel Sanders is obviously a military veteran, a warrior who served his country and later served his countrymen thickly seasoned chicken parts, fried in the juices of their own gristle. Whole Foods and Gelson's, Purdue quipped, have such disdain for consumers that they never bothered to create colorful mascots.

Launching a New Strike in the Lunch Wars

On the 2011 campaign trail, weaker Republicans like Herman Cain attempted to tackle the Obama food initiative with no success. Cain, former CEO of a pizza franchise, embodied the ideals of Trump but failed to execute. In a series of gaffes, he tried to classify pizza as a vegetable, which made the otherwise wholesome staple completely unappealing. As President Trump noted last month to Steve Bannon, his chief adviser, “this is what happens when let Hutch try to copy Dutch, or when a n****r thinks he’s The Gipper.” The allusion harkened back to Reagan’s school lunch overhauls.

During the financial crisis of the 1980s, then President Ronald Reagan tried to reduce school lunch funding by classifying ketchup as one of the required servings of vegetables. It was cheaper than broccoli, peas or greens, and children would eat it willingly. But as the Reagan Era of Reason gave way to the left-leaning lunacy of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, spending returned to dangerous levels.

Trump pointed to Clinton’s enactment of NAFTA, which allowed cheap foreign farms to drive up the price of U.S. agriculture. That catastrophe was followed by Michelle Obama’s anti-obesity movement, which mandated that children eat expensive produce. Both administrations exhibited a dangerous tendency for the kind of pricey socialism that left Trump with a country in virtual ruin.

By 2014, the damage inflicted by the Democrats and their food czars had caused almost irreparable damage. As the Evening Transcript wrote at the time, GOP officials worried that the alarming drop in childhood obesity would imperil the healthcare industry and, subsequently, the economy.

With the 43-percent drop in obesity rates for children, a new generation of adults would no longer struggle with heart disease, cancer, diabetes and stroke -- a devastating development, according to conservative legislators and the lobbies they support for the welfare of the American people.

“This news is a death knell to medical professionals. We’ve basically told them that within 30 years time, they’ll be of no use,” noted Len Waybill, head economist for the conservative Peter Pinguid Society. “But that’s just the tip of this iceberg. The production of expensive drugs used to treat and manage at-risk people will dwindle, along with profits. What if the only drug we needed was aspirin? There go thousands of jobs and billions of dollars from circulation. Other critical players will also be led to slaughter. Fast food companies, snack food manufacturers, soda pop bottlers, food additive developers, the chemists who design preservatives, corporate bakeries, every mom and pop doughnut shop, where does it end? Trying to count all the businesses that will fold would be like trying to calculate pi to its final digit.”

But then, Waybill lamented, there would no more pie.

Repealing and Replacing ObamaCatering

Michelle Obama’s first shot across the bow of tradition came with the introduction of the Obama Food Plate, itself a repeal and replacement for the time-honored dietary pyramid. The plate-shaped chart, which GOP leaders derided as unnecessary and even dangerous. The Obama Food Plate, an “affront to American entrepreneurialism and consumerism,” jeopardized the fast food industry, which had already fallen under attack by states that were dictating what restaurants could and could not sell.

“The Obama chart certainly isn’t what I expected to see,” Rick Santorum allegedly told an aide on his 2012 Republican presidential exploratory committee. “I just assumed it would be a plate full of fried chicken, watermelon and grits.”

Fast food remains a major part of the U.S. diet, with Gallup revealing that eight out of 10 Americans dine on fast food at least once a month. Half admit consuming fast food weekly. Because food assistance programs and nutritional guidelines fall under the purview of Agriculture, Republicans had expressed renewed hope that a more honest and conservative iteration of the food chart would replace the Obama perversion. Trump assured them that this effort, as all Obama policies, would crumble under his doctrine of blanket repeal and replace. This Monday, through Purdue’s persistence and dedication, the president delivered on that vow -- for the children.

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