Attempt to include Processed Foods in Student lunch program

Big (processed) Food manufacturers’ lobbyists are attempting to push through House Bill H.R. 3532 using their friendly congressman Rep. Bruce Poliquin (Republican from Maine). Poliquin named this bill “Fruit and Vegetables Access for Children Act“.  The problem with this bill is that it would amend a perfectly good bill passed in 2002 by Tom Harkin (retired) which created the “Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program” for schools, particularly schools in the poorest parts of our country, which stipulated that snacks only contain only real fresh fruits and vegetables.

Rep. Bruce Poliquin

Poliquin’s proposed bill would broaden the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program to include frozen, canned, dried, and pureed fruits and vegetables. In other words, the junk food lobbyists are attempting to enter the school lunch program with their highly processed foods. Big Food would like to include “all forms” of fruits and vegetables, including fried foods.

Keep in mind that these are the same group of people that attempted to define pizza as a vegetable and french fries as a vegetable.  This is another attempt by Big Food to take over part of the school lunch tray and serve your kids low-quality, low-cost, highly processed junk food, courtesy of the federal government. On March 23rd, 2016 this bill was sent back to its subcommittee.

All of this porking makes me realize that there are a lot of barracudas out there, and they are not just under the water.  Okay, so this guy is really just a mackerel.