The Latest: FDA postpones rules for calorie labels on menus
April 30, 2017
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on new nutrition standards for school lunches (all times local):
5:50 p.m.
Customers looking for calorie labels on restaurant menus and grocery store displays will have to wait another year.
The Food and Drug Administration has decided to delay calorie labeling rules set to go into effect this week.
The law was originally passed as part of the health care overhaul in 2010. It requires restaurants and other establishments that sell prepared foods and have 20 or more locations to post the calorie content of food.
Supermarkets and other businesses opposed to the rules say they are burdensome.
The FDA said Monday the delay "allows for further consideration" of ways to reduce costs or make the rules more flexible.
The decision comes the same day that the Trump administration rolled back some nutrition standards for federally subsidized school meals.
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1 p.m.
Schools won't have to cut the salt in kids' meals just yet. And they can skip the whole grains and replace the non-fat milk with 1 percent. That's the word from the Trump administration on Monday.
Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue traveled to a school in Leesburg, Virginia, to announce that the administration was rolling back some nutrition standards for federally subsidized school meals.
Former first lady Michelle Obama had pushed hard for her healthy eating initiative, but some schools complained that the Obama administration standards were too restrictive. And some students didn't like the taste.
Perdue said, "If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition — thus undermining the intent of the program."
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10:40 a.m.
The Trump administration is preparing to roll back some nutrition standards for federally subsidized school meals, a key part of former first lady Michelle Obama's legacy.
As his first major action in office, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue is planning an announcement Monday afternoon at an elementary school in the Washington suburb of Leesburg, Virginia. The Agriculture Department said ahead of the announcement that a new rule would provide "regulatory flexibility."
School nutrition directors have said many of the standards are unworkable. They have argued for changes to whole grain and sodium requirements, in particular, saying it's hard to make foods that are high enough in whole grains and low enough in sodium that kids will eat.
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