As if President Joe Biden and his administration haven't already done enough to make life more difficult and usher in more hardship for the American people, his band of merry muck-ups are now setting their sights on school lunches and toying around with a ban on chocolate milk — as well as strawberry milk and other flavor alternatives — over concerns about added sugars.
Yes, the same administration that called it "outrageous" and "immoral" to prevent children from taking life-altering hormones to prevent puberty for the purpose of "transitioning" is worried that milk provided at school might have ill effects on their health.
This potentially devastating news for America's students came courtesy of a scoop in The Wall Street Journal this week on what the United States Department of Agriculture is weighing as it works on revamping federal standards for school-provided meals.
Via WSJ:
The issue has divided parents, child-nutrition specialists, school-meal officials and others. Supporters of restricting flavored milk say it has added sugars that contribute to childhood obesity and establish preferences for overly sweet drinks. But opponents, including the dairy industry and many school districts, say removing it will lead to children drinking less milk.
“We want to take a product that most kids like and that has nine essential nutrients in it and say, ‘You can’t drink this, you have to drink plain’?” asked Katie Wilson, executive director of the Urban School Food Alliance, which represents 18 of the largest school districts in the country. “What are we trying to prove?”
[...]
The USDA proposed guidelines for school meals earlier this year, but held off making a recommendation on flavored milk, most of which is chocolate.
The agency said it is considering excluding flavored milk from elementary and possibly middle schools, or continuing to serve it to all grade levels. Under either scenario, flavored milk would have to comply with a new limit on the amount of added sugars.
“Flavored milk is a challenging issue to figure out exactly the best path forward,” Cindy Long, administrator of USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service, said, explaining why the agency is weighing two options. “We really do want to encourage children to consume milk and we also recognize the need to reduce added-sugar consumption.”
Oh, so the USDA chickened out on making a decision on chocolate milk already, and now they're still hemming and hawing trying to decide whether students should have the choice of chocolate milk with their lunch. And even if they do have chocolate milk available, they're going to restrict how much sugar is in it?
The federal government is clumsy and ineffective at handling pretty much every aspect of Americans' lives into which it intrudes, and once again Biden is ready to put the USDA in a position of dietary lunch monitor. Where was this concern from the Biden USDA — or any federal agency over the past three years — for the health of America's children who were more or less locked inside their homes due to COVID? Playgrounds were dismantled, Jen Psaki bragged about how her kids weren't allowed to play with their friends, and the federal government did lasting damage to the rising generation's mental health without any similar level of concern nor any apology.
What about the Biden administration's embrace of radical transgender ideology that states it's a human right for young people — with or without their parents' consent — to begin taking often irreversible hormone treatments or moving toward mutilative surgeries? If your kid wants to begin taking hormones that will prevent them from going through puberty, the Biden administration isn't worried about long term effects. But if your kid wants to decide to have chocolate milk at lunch, well that's a huge problem with lasting negative health consequences that must be stopped. It's beyond absurd.
And when it comes to schools, the Biden administration should have reopened them rather than letting Randi Weingarten and her AFT union bosses keep schools locked down. The years of learning loss created by big government "help" will likely prove more damaging to a young student's longterm health and success in life than that same child having eight ounces of chocolate milk a few times a week.