By Milette Millington
Attorney General Letitia James, along with Attorney Generals from California, Illinois, Minnesota, New Mexico, Vermont, and Washington D.C., this week filed a lawsuit yesterday against the Trump administration over nutrition standards in schools.
Established in 1946, the National School Lunch Program is a federally subsidized program that provides students with healthy, balanced meals in schools at low- or no-cost. Since that time, Congress has taken action to ensure that program’s nutritional guidelines keep current with the best scientific evidence with the most recent modernization occurring in 2010 with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, according to the press release on James’ website.
James announced the filing of the suit Wednesday in front of Public School 67 in Brooklyn, which serves residents of Ingersoll Houses run by NYCHA (the New York City Housing Authority). She said that ninety-nine percent of those students qualified for free or reduced-price meals, according to the report in the New York Times.
Last year, President Donald Trump’s Department of Agriculture issued a ruling allowing for more sodium and cutting the whole grain requirement in half.
About 30 million children in public schools are eligible for free and reduced-price lunches, and for many low-income students, the food they consume at school comprises much of their overall diets, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
That number includes the students living in the Ingersoll public housing, as well as many other neighborhoods throughout New York City. James said in a statement, “The Trump administration has undermined key health benefits for our children…with deliberate disregard for science, expert opinion, and the law.”
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.