Republicans Are The Swamp Soldiers In D.C.'s Milk Wars

If Republicans really want to fight the culture war, they would take on major food industries pumping children with excess sugar.

Republicans love to trash “the swamp” as if it’s only liberals who habitat the Beltway ecosystem of political patronage.

While Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy spars with the White House on the debt ceiling, the number three lawmaker in GOP leadership has waged another crusade against the administration. House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik, whose upper-New York district attracts big money from Big Dairy, is leading the charge against changes in federal nutrition standards that threaten chocolate milk in public schools.

“Elise Stefanik, Republicans Push Back On Biden’s War On Chocolate Milk,” ran the weekend headline from Breitbart News.

The paper outlined the GOP effort to thwart a new proposal from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aimed at reducing childhood sugar consumption. In February, the USDA issued new rules to ban flavored milks in elementary and middle school with a limit on chocolate and strawberry flavors in high school.

“This approach would reduce exposure to added sugars and would promote the more nutrient-dense choice of unflavored milk for young children when their tastes are being formed,” reads the agency proposal.

Federal law requires the USDA develop K-12 nutrition standards in line with the nation’s dietary guidelines. The agency recently capped a limit on added sugars to no more than 10 percent of calories. A government report from May last year found about 17 percent of calories in school breakfasts and 11 percent of calories lunches were added sugars. Flavored milks were the primary culprits, with fat-free flavored milks contributing “29 percent of the added sugars in breakfasts.”

Republicans on Capitol Hill are taking a stand against the new guidelines as an episode of federal overreach. Stefanik proposed a bill with nine Republican co-sponsors to counter the bureaucratic measure and pledged Thursday to “do everything in my power to stop these efforts.”

“When New York City Mayor Eric Adams tried to ban chocolate milk, I led the successful effort to fight back and won on behalf of families and farmers,” Stefanik said in a press release. “Now, Joe Biden is embracing his Far Left radical proposal to ban chocolate milk.”

Stefanik’s payout from the agriculture industry? Nearly $150,000, according to OpenSecrets. More than $17,000 from the dairy lobby.

Pennsylvania Rep. Glenn Thompson, who chairs the House Agriculture Committee and is a co-sponsor of Stefanik’s legislation, also framed the debate as an item in the culture wars.

“First it was your gas stove, and now it is your child’s school meal. President Biden’s proposal to ban chocolate milk is another example of brazen government overreach,” Thompson told Fox News. “I’m proud to stand with America’s dairy farmers against Biden’s intrusion into our school cafeterias. Chocolate milk is a calcium-rich favorite, and it is here to stay!”

Thompson’s payout from the agriculture industry? More than $939,000, according to OpenSecrets. The Pennsylvania congressman is the top recipient of political contributions from Big Dairy having raked in more than any member in either chamber to the tune of $75,000.

Meanwhile, when did it become conservative to protest responsible federal spending? The new rules to reduce consumption of additive sugars in schools are proposed at a time when nearly 1 in 5 American children are categorically obese. Childhood obesity has become such a problem that the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recently proposed new recommendations to tackle the crisis featuring a cocktail of pharmaceuticals and extreme surgeries often reserved as last resort. The AAP’s primary funders also happen to be major pharmaceutical companies eager to capitalize on a new generation of lifelong medical patients.

The high rates of child weight inflation spells disastrous implications for the future of chronic disease and infertility. Children today are already witnessing the consequences of obesity with cases of type 2 diabetes doubling under lockdown, and it wasn’t just their blood sugar that spiked uncontrollably. Child BMI rates also doubled under school closures. It turns out sending kids home where they relied on processed food to cope with lockdowns wasn’t the best thing for children’s health. Big Food was excited to rake in the profits, with sales of packaged products spiking at the same time. Big Pharma on the other hand, can see the green in health care, $95 trillion over 35 years to be exact. Oh wait, that’s just on chronic disease alone. To put that into perspective, the entire U.S. GDP is only $23 trillion.

If Republicans really want to fight the culture war, they would take on major food industries pumping children with high levels of a substance found to be more rewarding than cocaine.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) let the food industry get away with marketing ultra-processed cereals saturated with sugar as “healthy” for years before finally doing something about it. Now the corporate food manufacturers have deployed their shock-troop lobbyists on Washington to keep it that way.

Federal food programs, however, are subsidizing a childhood diet laced with excess sugar. About 60 percent of American schoolchildren are enrolled in either the National School Breakfast Program or the School Lunch Program, according to the American Action Forum. The federal milk mandate requires schools provide cow’s milk for every student on assistance. That’s a lot of milk in K-12 cafeterias, with the average cup of chocolate cartons containing 11 to 17 grams of added sugar. Why are Republicans more interested in protecting chocolate milk than attacking the industry that’s making us sick? That’s the real culture war. If Republicans want to gripe about federal nutrition standards coming from D.C. to begin with, that’s fair. But as long as American tax dollars are being spent on cafeterias, there should be some interest in spending it responsibly.

Stefanik claims “flavored milk is one [of] the best ways for kids to get essential dairy nutrients for growth and development.” Except it’s not. Children can get their vitamin D from playing outside and their calcium from almonds, fish, leafy greens, and fresh oranges to satisfy a sweet tooth.

In April, a coalition of 37 producers that supply more than 90 percent of milk in schools announced a pledge to cap added sugars at 10 grams per eight fluid ounces. That’s still no small amount considering the American Heart Association caps intake at 25 grams. Even then, there’s not a single biological process in the human body that requires added sugar, let alone in a developing body. A quick glance at grocery items advertised to children will reveal kids eating far more than 25 grams of added sugar beyond the school cafeteria.

The end result is a sedentary generation that can expect shorter lives than their parents. House Republicans, however, have confused the administration’s effort to curb excess sugars subsidized in schools as a new front in the culture war. But the real victim in the food fight remains the children, whose life expectancies have fallen by an average of as much as five years. Was the milk worth it?

Links:

The Jerusalem Post: Men today are weaker, and this is disturbing - here’s why

NBC: Social media is driving teen mental health crisis, surgeon general warns

New York Times: Many Women Have an Intense Fear of Childbirth, Survey Suggests

Daily Caller: ‘You Should Go To Jail’: DeSantis Touts Legislation Banning Child Sex-Change Operations

Fox Business: California Assembly passes bill banning ‘toxic’ chemicals in Skittles, PEC, Hot Tamales and more

Washington Post: Cardiovascular disease is poised to kill more older people

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