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October 22, 2012

In order to lend credibility to a make-work project for the Queen Consort,

America is now a land in which a government bureaucrat at the Department of Agriculture sets the maximum permitted calories for school lunches across the fruited plain and all the way to Guam. ...
The first lady was on hand for the launch of the new federally mandated lunch limits. The stench of failure and risibility has not yet attached to this initiative as it has to so many other Obama-era bureaucratic excesses. But, through September, returning schoolchildren complained about their new, insufficient lunches. Teachers and parents who took up their cause did so in statist terms, beseeching the commissars to raise the mandated calorie limits. Very few did so on first-principle grounds — which is to say the argument that a system in which a centralized bureaucracy attempts to impose a uniform menu on a nation of 300 million people is nuts, and cannot survive. -- Let Them Go Hungry :: SteynOnline

Posted by gerardvanderleun at October 22, 2012 2:58 PM. This is an entry on the sideblog of American Digest: Check it out.

Your Say

These are kids. Calorie restriction will stunt their growth if they don't make up the difference both before and after school. With kids, the usual strategy is AFTER school (not big on breakfast).

Now: in a second Obama term (SHUDDER!), the calorie restrictions will be extended to all households with school-age children attending public schools. That'll fix things!

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at October 23, 2012 9:42 AM

What they want is caloric restriction, With caloric restriction brain development will be curtailed, leading to lesser intellectual capacity, leading to a less insightful voting community. Dumber voters are more manipulatible voters and so the better the chance statists and control freaks win election.

Posted by: Alan Kellogg at October 23, 2012 12:41 PM

With caloric restriction brain development will be curtailed, leading to lesser intellectual capacity

The Oliver Twist analogy Steyn uses is spot-on. The pre-Victorian orphanage industry was a child-labor mill for British industry of the time. Dietary restriction was thought to help produce docile workers. If I recall correctly, Mr. Bumble does go on a rant at some point about the "folly" of giving his charges meat.

Posted by: Don Rodrigo at October 23, 2012 1:46 PM

Give the kids MRE's. 15,000 calories per day ÷ by three meals means nobody goes hungry.

Posted by: Peccable at October 23, 2012 3:36 PM

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