The Village of Hemingford, Nebraska (population 803, just up the road from here in Box Butte County in the Panhandle) has adopted the new, healthful lunch programme promulgated by the USDA and First Lady Michelle Obama. The results are not what you read or hear in certain "media" outlets.
More below the orange chicken nugget.
The Scottsbluff, Nebraska Star-Herald had an article on the front page of the newspaper yesterday on the results of Hemingford Public Schools adopting a new healthful school lunch programme. The article is available here, and is worth reading. (Hemingford is the county seat of Box Butte County.)
Several media outlets and blogs that have a political agenda have noted that students are "dumping their school lunches" because they dislike the new, healthful menus their schools have adopted. There is, for example, this video report from FOX News Channel, posted back in 2012. Curiously, FOX posted another article dated June 6 of this year on why we need to make school lunches more healthful here. (The flip-flop is strong with this one.)
The Panhandle of Nebraska is ofttimes cited as the most conservative portion of this conservative state, yet this supposed issue with the promotion of healthful meals does not appear to be the case in Hemingford. From that article by Mary Wenke for the Star-Herald:
Perfectly formed, cereal-filled chicken nuggets are a thing of the past at Hemingford Public Schools. Fried-then-frozen Mexican food has hit the compost heap as well, and eating healthy is catching on big time at a local school cafeteria.
From the first-graders noshing heavily on rosy red watermelon and strawberries at the unlimited salad bar to the high school seniors looking at proper nutrition as part of their sports program, the new healthy lunch program has been a hit school wide, it appears.
The article quotes a third-grader who stated the
old school lunch programme was the one that was "just nasty" (his words).
Since I still here the talking point that the healthful push for better school lunches is somehow bad, I thought I would post this success story of healthful school lunches from deep red Nebraska.
(Note, since the tag dictionary won't load this morning and I am relatively new here, if you know of better tags to add, please do.)