During President Barack Obama's first term in office, first lady Michelle Obama led a congressional effort to get the nation's schools to serve healthier food options making the reduction of childhood obesity a priority.

In 2010 legislation was passed with the support of the White House that set regulations on the amount of sodium in school cafeteria food and increased whole grains and servings of fresh fruits and vegetables, according to The Washington Post.

However, since then, the measure has been met with stark criticism from the GOP as well as some school districts, primarily in rural communities across the nation, that have argued it is not cost effective.

A House committee voted Thursday to allow school districts to temporarily opt out of the first lady's nutritional standards she set. The measure had overwhelming Republican support with the help of the School Nutrition Association, a key-lobbying group that once publicly-backed the Obama standards, The Post reported.

School officials, such as Lyman Graham, a food service director for consolidated schools near Roswell, N.M., claimed that their schools' trashcans have been filling up with fruits and vegetables the schoolchildren do not want to eat.

"We can't force students to eat something they don't want. Many families in the Southwest will not accept whole-grain tortillas," Graham said. She added that "schools can't change cultural preferences. And with sky-high produce costs, we simply cannot afford to feed our trash cans."

In Harrisburg, Arkansas, the children are merely playing with their applesauce containers and then throwing them away after lunch, said Child Nutrition Director Dolores Sutterfield.

"Older students, especially, know what they want, and some days they simply don't want a fruit or vegetable," she said.

However, the first lady, along with other school nutrition officials from New York, Los Angeles and Burke County, Georgia, a rural district filled with low-income families, gathered at an event earlier this week where they claimed the standards were initially met with protest from students but has since become a success.

Donna Martin, the Burke County school nutrition director, admitted that the program was tough to implement at first but now the children in her district are perfectly happy to eat fruits and vegetables.

She said it was a dangerous plan to remove fried chicken off the school's lunch menu, "but we have an herb-baked chicken that our children love. We bake our French fries, and we have whole-grain, locally grown grits we do for breakfast that are awesome."

Norfolk schools' nutrition official Helen Phillips said the schools that have struggled with current situation comes from a lack of preparedness.

"Some of that struggle comes from not being prepared, and some of it comes from attitudes (such as), 'I can't,' 'I won't' or 'This is hard,'" Phillips said. "Some people are having financial constraints. Some people have suffered a decrease in participation."