PALATINE, Ill. – The Feds are so desperate to make their school lunch overhaul work, they’re going cafeteria to cafeteria to lobby students.

USDA bureaucrat Audrey Rowe lobbies students to like Michelle O’s lunches

USDA bureaucrat Audrey Rowe has that task and news cameras captured her attempting to persuade students that her idea of a good lunch should be their idea of a good lunch, too.

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Rowe, head of the “Healthy Lunch Initiative” and sidekick to First Lady Michelle Obama during the lobbying and passage of 2010’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, made an appearance at Palatine High School to serve lunches, with an extra helping of “enthusiasm,” according to Fox 32.

But the latter didn’t help the former go down any easier.

“The lettuce is gross, the cheese is like gross. Everything about this lunch is gross,” student Jaye Reynolds tells the news station.

Another student, Michaela Williams adds, “I get the peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the french fries from the ala carte line. I don’t like the regular school lunches anymore, doesn’t taste as good. They try to make it healthier, but when they’re making it healthier it takes the flavor away from all the food.”

The reporter interviewed several students returning to campus from runs to local pizza and burger joints.

“I don’t like the food, it doesn’t really taste that great, and I try to go off campus as much as I can,” junior Jason Zych says, getting ready to tuck into some fast food.

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Junior Andrew Kamath added, “I don’t really mind the lunches, I think that sometimes it can be really good, and other times it can be pretty bad.”

“I don’t really like the new school lunches, I don’t think we should be told what we can and can’t eat,” said senior Janiie Todd.

Rowe was trying to convince students the changes weren’t being done “to” them, but “for” them.

Because everyone know D.C. bureaucrats know best.

But seeing Audrey literally lobbying students to like the new lunches, it brings up a question: Is this really how this woman spends her time? She jets around the country to talk to handfuls to students, trying to convince them to eat kale chips and black bean burgers?