Trump administration reform considers certain pasta as vegetable

As per the new rules proposed by the United States President Donald Trump administration, certain kind of pasta can be considered as a vegetable for millions of public school meals. The new school guidelines were released by the US Department of Agriculture last week which would allow more foods like pizza, burgers, and french fries to start appearing on school menus. This is also the part of the revision of the school lunch program by former First Lady Michelle Obama. 

Ex-US President Barack Obama's administration reportedly intended to reduce childhood obesity in the country. However, the new administration believes that the new rules would “simplify” the existing policies under the 2010's Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act. Under meal reforms, the school nutrition professions have “more flexibility” to serve healthy meals according to the preferences of students to reduce food waste. 

According to the official USDA website, “Pasta products made of one or more vegetable flour(s) may credit toward the vegetable requirements. Consistent with vegetable crediting, ½ cup of pasta made of 100 per cent vegetable flour(s) credits as ½ cup of vegetables.”

The USDA Secretary Sonny Perdue said in a statement that the proposed changes would “empower schools” to serve “best” to children in the country and have the potential to benefit nearly 100,000 schools and institutions which further feed 30 million children in the US through USDA's school meal programs. Furthermore, according to the official news release, the schools have been reporting “too much food waste.”

“Schools and school districts continue to tell us that there is still too much food waste and that more common-sense flexibility is needed to provide students with nutritious and appetizing meals. We listened and now we’re getting to work,” said Secretary Perdue. 

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USDA clarifies, critics call it 'unhealthy'

With the announcement by the Trump administration, most political critics claimed that the Republican US President is trying to propose junk food in meals. However, soon after the USDA Nutrition department touted its own reform as setting the 'record straight' on the proposed school meals flexibilities. This was also followed by a series of tweets about how, fries, potatoes, and other “unhealthy” food items and how the changes would affect the school meals.

Immediately after the announcement, several angry citizens presented varied views on Twitter, while some youngsters were happy about getting 'tasty' food in schools, other were criticising the new policy for being 'unhealthy'. 

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