The list of reasons to vote President Donald Trump out of office just grew by 30 million.
That’s the approximate number of American children who eat school lunches and breakfasts, and therefore would be afflicted by the Trump administration’s proposed rollback of Obama-era nutritional guidelines for those meals.
Trump’s move, announced last week, would allow schools to cut back on fruits and vegetables and instead serve up more fatty, high-sodium items like pizza, burgers and fries.
It’s a vicious thing to do to kids, creating a wide-open doorway to obesity and the murderer’s row of problems that come with it — diabetes, heart disease and stroke, high blood pressure, gallbladder disease and more.
It’s also undercutting parents who are trying to get their kids to eat more healthy foods.
But it’s especially cruel to the 11 million American kids who deal with food insecurity and for whom school may be the only place where they get an adequate amount of food that’s good for them.
These kids are already living on the edge of getting enough food that will allow them to grow healthy and strong. Now, the Trump administration has put them at risk of losing what little nutritious food they get.
This is an attack on poor kids, pure and simple, and it’s not the first one by Trump. Last year, he announced plans for a scaleback of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program — food stamps — that put at least a half-million American kids at risk of losing access to school lunches.
That’s quintessential Trump, a man who delights in beating up people who can least defend themselves.
Beyond that, it was an up-yours to the Obama administration and other nonsupporters of the Trump administration. That was made clear by the timing of the announcement, which occurred on Michelle Obama’s birthday. The former first lady was the driving force behind the school lunch guidelines and was justifiably proud of them.
Trump’s Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program, claims it was acting to reduce food waste and give schools more flexibility in choosing menus to suit children’s tastes, but that’s nonsense.
Food waste could be addressed by adjusting portion control, and a more responsible path to flexibility would be to increase spending on the program to allow staffs to come up with better foods containing healthy ingredients.
Let’s be clear: There is room for improvement in the current lunch program. There are stories of kids being served softball-sized bags of baby carrots and other vegetables — more than even most adults would eat at one sitting — and of districts struggling with ways to affordably provide meals that are both healthy and appealing to kids.
But waiving the nutrition requirements is no way to go, and not just because of its effects on our children’s health. According to a recent study by the Milken Institute, the impact of issues related to obesity and excess weight includes $480.7 billion in direct health care costs and $1.24 trillion in lost productivity due to chronic diseases.
Trump can eat garbage if he wants — and it appears he has been doing a great job along those lines — but forcing our young people to do the same is just plain cruel and counterproductive.
We trust that local school officials and state lawmakers won’t allow this president’s destructive actions to hurt our children — that we’ll find a way to keep providing healthy food at school.
Meanwhile, here’s a note of encouragement to Three Square and other community nutrition programs that form a safety net for Southern Nevada residents who endure food insecurity. We’re fortunate to live in a region committed to the idea that no one should have to go hungry in a place where so many people have so much.
Finally, we urge voters to remember those 30 million kids when they go to the polls.