It was the end of my 8th grade year, and our eager middle school class took its first trip to tour Lincoln. The classes were bigger, the hallway was bigger, but most importantly, the lunch room was bigger, and so were the choices of snacks. But when freshman year started, LHS’ array of cookies, chips and creamed-coffee diminished, and we were left with the ‘low-fat,’ ‘low sugar’ fakes.

Right before I entered high school, Michelle Obama created a healthy eating program that set restrictions on the fat and sodium content that the school served. I was crushed that the school store was now an off brand of what it used to be. But as the obesity rates in America soar, the importance and knowledge of clean-eating has become a necessity instead of a nuisance.

Trump’s Secretary of Agriculture, Sonny Perdue, has recently made actions to loosen the restrictions and standards on what public schools serve for food. Michelle Obama’s clean eating plans that regulated the sodium, grain and sugar amounts that were in the foods, changing pasta to whole-wheat and high sodium foods to low-sodium and low fat, will now be un-done. Perdue claims that the food is being put to waste because students refuse to eat healthy lunches. While this is true, it is avoiding the soaring rates of obesity that the U.S. experiences.

According to LA Times, the amount of children labeled obese has tripled since the 1970’s, increasing the chance of type 2 Diabetes. Children labeled as obese are also more prone to bullying, which lowers self esteem and can lead to depression.

Obama was one of the first to confront the astonishing levels of obesity, and to do it successfully. If students are given the chance to eat unhealthy in school, odds are that they will do the same at home. Even if students are only eating one healthy meal, that one meal being at school, it is healthier than constantly eating unhealthy.