HOW SCHOOL LUNCH BECAME POLITICAL BATTLEGROUND

When Michelle Obama started Let’s Move!, her campaign against child obesity, in 2010, the members of the School Nutrition Association were her natural allies. The average weight of the American child had been climbing at an alarming rate since the 1980s, and now one in three American kids was obese or overweight. In a war to fight against childhood obesity, school cafeterias would be a perfect place to wage it. But to pass a bill, the White House needed to enlist not only Democrats and Republicans in Congress but also the manufacturers who supplied food to schools, the nutrition experts who wanted it to be more healthful, and the cafeteria workers who would have to get children to eat it.  Few people understood how to accomplish those trade-offs better than Marshall Matz, lobbyist for the School Nutrition Association, who advised his “lunch ladies” to support the legislation. But, when the government began turning the broad guidelines into specific rules with specific consequences for specific players, life became more difficult. What began as a war on obesity turned into war among onetime allies. 

Source: New York Times, 10/7/14, School Lunch Battles