The latest rap on First Lady Michelle Obama’s food standards for schools is that new rules, implemented July 1st, will ban bake sales and other fundraisers that involve selling anything sweet and calorie laden.

It doesn’t totally ban them, but the law requires they be “infrequent,” letting states decide how they’ll use their exemptions from nutrition requirements. Different states are handling it differently. A spokesman for the Tennessee board of education said, “Schools have relied on these types of sales as revenue streams for sports, cheering clubs, marching bands. We get the obesity issue” he said, “but we don’t want to jerk this out from under the kids.” Tennessee will allow schools to sell food items that don’t meet federal standards 30 days out of the year. Texas, on the other hand, is really strict. This year there will be no exemptions from federal sweets standards.

In dealing with childhood obesity, Michelle Obama hopes to create a “cultural shift.” She says the country is “at a pivotal moment, a tipping point” and “if we keep pushing forward we have the potential to transform the health of an entire generation of young people.” Really?

The 2010 Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by the First Lady, overhauled nutrition standards affecting schools that participate in the federal school meals programs. This covers more than 30 million children who receive free or federally subsidized school lunches. The law started with regulating lunches. It’s being implemented fully this school year. Now, federal nutrition standards extend to all food and beverages sold on campus throughout the school day.

The problem for many schools is:  the program is financially unsustainable. After three years of trying to meet the standards, many school systems are pulling out. Vicky Hanson, food service director for Wisconsin’s Glendale school district said, “we put it out, but they just don’t take it…It’s always in the trash.” Another complaint: calorie limits are leaving muscular athletes hungry at practice time.

Food waste and expensive kitchen overhauls were common complaints in a survey conducted by the Government Accountability Office of school nutrition officials in all 50 states and Washington D.C.

One Pennsylvania superintendent of schools said decision-makers in his district “are on the edge of actually pricing ourselves out of business.” He says, “We cannot raise our prices enough to pay for what is required by the mandates.” Hmm… federal funds are making the school lunch program too expensive.

The First Lady’s fit persona is, in itself, an advertisement for healthy eating. It’s great that she’s interested in the foods offered at schools. But federal laws that give the U.S. agriculture secretary new jurisdiction over the entire campus are draconian — and expensive. In fact the law is undermining its stated purpose, which is to add millions more students to the school lunch program. Instead, with districts pulling out perhaps the program will fall under it’s own weight – no pun intended.