Bill Clinton Announces Plan For Healthier School Lunches

MIAMI — Former President Bill Clinton has announced an agreement with leading food manufacturers to provide healthier school lunch options.

Clinton told Miami school students on Friday that seven companies have agreed to increase the sale of foods that meet science-based nutrition standards by 50 percent within five years. The manufacturers also agreed to set prices that are no higher than less-healthy choices.

Clinton's foundation is a member of the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, an organization that aims to reduce childhood obesity.

The pact is expected to provide healthier options for more than 30 million students nationwide, including 14 million in the free and reduced-price lunch program.

The agreement comes a day after Wal-Mart announced it would make thousands of products healthier by reformulating them and pushing suppliers to do the same.

Comments

[hulagirrrl]

01:17 PM on 01/25/2011

The new governor of Hawaii announced yesterday in his state of the state address that there will be a soda tax. I think that is a great start to curb obesity. I do not believe that it is truly the intention of government to curb bad habits when they attach a tax to "bad" stuff like soda or cigarettes, they know there is a stream of money coming in with the least resistance. Hopefully it will help fund the high cost of diabetes and other lifestyle caused diseases like obesity.

[lrobb]

12:22 PM on 01/24/2011

The easiest way to get an inexpensive healthy meal in school is to bring it from home.

While some families qualify for the free/reduced lunch program and deserve the best tasting healthy meals we can give them, why are other parents not providing their kids with decent lunches absent government intervention?

Answer that and you may have solved the whole problem.

[hulagirrrl]

01:21 PM on 01/25/2011

Absolutely. I pack lunch for our kids every day. We lived abroad, and the local schools in that country did not even have a lunch program, children would go home around that time, some would return to school for afternoon classes and some would just be home for the day. No school buses to finance, no lunch program to subsidize that freed up a lot of money for teachers and education as well as clean campuses with functioning plumbing.

[SangZe]

11:30 AM on 01/23/2011

Healthy meals in school? Here we go again with the government trying to control our lives.

[KisaCat]

11:54 PM on 01/23/2011

Why would you have a problem with healthier meals in school? We have a national epidemic of childhood obesity and somehow you have to twist it around as some sort of government control?! That's pathetic.

[gogogadget]

03:45 PM on 01/22/2011

Are Scented Cigars on the dessert menu?

[Belle Starr]

03:32 PM on 01/22/2011

uh oh . . . after this the only thing Sarah will be feeding her kids is dessert to protest against those libs

[Mark Santeramo]

03:14 PM on 01/22/2011

If the government is paying for your child's meal, then they have every right in deciding what goes into that school lunch. Further, I don't mind the government creating nutritional standards that school lunches must fall within; if the government is going to be paying for a majority of these people's healthcare in the future for their triple bypasses or diabetes treatments, then they have every right in telling you what to eat.

That's when I laugh, when conservatives out there bitch and moan about government intrusion YET their children are the ones receiving government subsidized lunches! Dumb people/parents just cannot be trusted to teach their children anymore, lol.

[Mark Santeramo]

03:11 PM on 01/22/2011

As a teacher myself, I applaud Michelle Obama and now Bill Clinton for addressing an area of education that has fallen a bit short in terms of providing beneficial and healthy lunches to the millions of students that receive government subsidized meals and even to those that don't. If the government is paying for a child's meal, then the government has complete say in what goes into that lunch. And for those kids that do not fall into the government lunch programs, they now have better selections to choose from instead of candy, cookies, chips, and donuts which they grab by the handful and second and third helpings.

My main problem, though, is that even with all this rational talk about being concerned with the health of our children, some of the "healthier" choices are no better than the old ones. For example, sure, let's eliminate soda from schools, HOWEVER, if you compare nutritional facts of the Snapple Iced Tea that replaced it, it has just as much sugar if not more than a soda! That's my point...just because something sounds better does not necessarily mean that it is.

[librainstars]

06:25 PM on 01/22/2011

Now im going to sound really old lol remember when you got a choice of milk,orange drink, or choc milk?
School lunches have grown like Technology has. Except it forgot the smart part. lol

[Mark Santeramo]

04:23 PM on 01/23/2011

"Except it forgot the smart part. lol"

Really? How so? Do you work in a school?

[hulagirrrl]

01:28 PM on 01/25/2011

Snapple is alright, they use real sugar and it comes in a glass bottle, I won't buy plastics, so yes you are right. The soda removal was cosmetic in my opinion, because these chocolate "skim" milks or artificial strawberry flavored milk is so loaded with sugar that the calorie count is probably higher than a soda or at least as you said the same. I would propose to remove the lunch program, let some private public or call it non profit entrepreneur cater or bring some lunch wagon out to school and offer let kids bring food from home. What is wrong with making parents responsible again?

[eddie10]

03:02 PM on 01/22/2011

hey, Bill, how are you doing with the gold and coltan of the Congo? All these electronic corporations own a lot to Bill. Without the staged war of congo, to loot its rich mineral resources, we could not have any IPAD or Iphone to say the least.

[Jackie Snyder]

03:03 PM on 01/22/2011

I wanna know what you are smoking and where I can buy it.

[eddie10]

03:11 PM on 01/22/2011

Read this below and take a blue pill.

MADSEN. "Hilary Clinton showing off a diamond ring of American Mineral is just the tip of the iceberg. Companies active in Africa also hung about Clinton’s electoral campaign. Business interests do not only control Congress, but the White House as well. As for that, there is no difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. There was a strategic plan for Africa. In a CIA report of January 1994 the number of possible deaths involved in taking down Habyarimana’s airplane was estimated at minimally 500, maximally 500,000. The latter figure became reality. They were prepared to take the risk. Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, was officially in Rwanda to clear away land mines. In fact, they trained Kagame’s men, as Brown & Root is linked to Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a private mercenary supplier from Virginia, which guarded diamond concessions of American Mineral Fields in Angola. The American military intelligence service DIA recruits amongst MPRI people. You can keep going on like this; read my book."

http://cryptome.org/us-africa-wm.htm

[eddie10]

03:21 PM on 01/22/2011

While you are at it, read also the links below. The Congo war was a USA proxy war aided by Rwanda and Uganda, USA client states.
It was A very sophiscated imperialist plan to control Africa's natural
ressources, AND IT'S ALL STARTED IN RWANDA IN 1994!


The US was behind the Rwandan G.enocide: Rwanda: Installing a US
Protectorate in Central Africa
by Michel Chossudovsky
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO305A.html


IMF-World Bank policies and the Rwandan holocaust
By Michel Chossudovsky, 26 January, 1995
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/35/033.html

[JHCorcoran]

04:26 PM on 01/22/2011

If you are talking about rare earth minerals, China owns and controls over 90% of it. A higher percentage than I feel comfortable with.

[eddie10]

04:41 PM on 01/22/2011

But China may have mineral deals or contracts in Africa, but they at least try to work as Partners and don't launch g.enocidal wars against countries, to take it all.

[kylesgrandma]

02:30 PM on 01/22/2011

Bill has been focusing on childrens nutrition and working towards making school lunches
healthier for years. I love Michelle. Please don't insinuate a controversy where there is none.
It is not an us against them argument. Both are trying to help. That is why us liberals lose
focus. We eat our own.

[MichelleB]

02:31 PM on 01/22/2011

Agree! F&F

[eddie10]

03:03 PM on 01/22/2011

Bill is a republican

[theseusofaustralia]

02:30 PM on 01/22/2011

Clinton is so good at deals, remember that deal that helped arkansas farmers, while forcing the people of haiti to live in a violent homicidal hell hole.

[blindhog]

02:28 PM on 01/22/2011

Why don't you give credit where it is due?

Where were you when you were in office when the nation's children were the victims of an unhealthy diet?

It would be SO nice if you called this "initiative" of yours, the Michelle Obama Plan.

[God is water]

01:35 PM on 01/22/2011

It's a no-brainer---FRUITS, VEGETABLES, NUTS and SEEDS!

[naschkatze]

01:27 PM on 01/22/2011

You can bet there's a Buck for Bill in it.

[leftcoastindy]

01:54 PM on 01/22/2011

Whats your evidence that he is trying to get richer? Hes worth more than he can spend already and has never done anything to show hes all about money. He was a teacher and in spite of being very highly educated and obviously smart, he was worth less than a million when he was 45. If money was his motivator he would be worth over a billion easily by now.

[lolawants1117]

01:27 PM on 01/22/2011

Michelle Obama has been doing this since Barack has been in office. I think somebody needs to remind Bill that he's not the first lady.

[Adrian31]

01:18 PM on 01/22/2011

I can't wait to hear Palin kick and scream, saying that Bill is now trying to tell Americans what they can and cannot eat.

[Elizabeth Hinton]

01:46 PM on 01/22/2011

Exactly my thoughts wonder what she will say he sayng we cannot eat. What a FOOL Sarah Plain is IMO

[gogogadget]

03:54 PM on 01/22/2011

yeah,as Bill sucks down his Cigars and Obama his cigarettes. Kids at the middle schools and Hs just take their money across the street after school to the 7 eleven and get what they want. In the mean time,the vending machines full of stuff students don't want, sit idle along with the funds the schools use to gather to support after school activities.

[sidnee]

03:28 PM on 01/22/2011

Didn't she already do that with Michelle Obama?