The Federal Government Is Now in Charge of What Goes Into All Public School Vending Machines

Or, as the Fort Myers (Florida) News-Press helpfully headlined the pre-write of today's White House bill-signing, "School meals get good, healthy boost from feds." Thanks, benevolent feds! (Read Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack's victory dance here.) Some of the article's paeans to centralization:

Dawn Houser, Collier's director of food and nutrition services, is looking forward to having a national nutrition standard for school cafeterias. The guidelines will be released by the federal government's Agriculture Department in January.

"Instead of having each state do a nutrition standard, we're going to have one standard," Houser said. "We're also excited that they're going to streamline the process for students to qualify for free and reduced price meals." […]

"If we can get children to eat correctly early on, we're going to set some good life habits," [said Wayne Nagy, Lee's director of food and nutrition services].

"We believe in stealth health," Nagy said. "That's where we give a kid what they like but it's full of healthy materials. We'll give them a corn dog but it has whole-grain bread and lean poultry meat."

Serving fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks is another option. Six Lee schools and nine Collier schools participate in the federal government's Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program, which makes fruit and vegetable snacks available at no cost to all children in participating schools. The program will be expanded with the new legislation.

Reason on school-lunch policies here, including this video: