At least 1.6 million students who previously paid for their own lunches at National School Lunch Program cafeterias have dropped out because they don’t like the new menus or the associated price increases, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says in a new report. In that report, GAO documents some significant shrinkage in the school lunch program during the 2012-13 school year because of changes dictated by the Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. But there is no shrinkage for any of the nation’s top three nutritional programs — all run by USDA — in the proposed budget for fiscal year 2015 sent to Congress earlier this week by President Obama. The National School Lunch Program will get $20.537 billion for fiscal 2015, up from $19.287 billion in the current year. The changes required under the 2010 act took effect mostly during the 2012-13 school year. Food stamps — now called the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program or SNAP — is the nation’s largest nutritional program, which will cost taxpayers $84.256 billion in fiscal 2015, which begins Oct. 1, 2014. In the current year, the electronic SNAP cards will ring up $82.169 billion. Prior to that school year, GAO said the National School Lunch Program served 31 million school children at a cost of about $11.6 billion (fiscal 2012). Changes imposed on the 100,000 schools in the National School Lunch program involved both portion and calorie control, especially calling for more fruits and vegetables, mostly to combat childhood obesity. USDA’s Women, Infants and Children’s (WIC) program will, under Obama’s budget, get a bump to $6.823 billion, up from $6.715 billion in the current year. WIC is the nutrition program for low-income, at-risk pregnant and post-partum women. Obama’s budget calls for $60 million for breastfeeding counselors and $30 million for new technology. Overall, Obama is asking for an increase of about $3.5 billion for the three largest nutritional programs provided by the federal government — to $111.6 billion, up from $108.1 billion. Once the top three programs are included, USDA’s total spending on food and nutrition in fiscal 2015 will reach $155 billion. This includes includes spending on hunger programs and USDA’s spending on surplus commodities. Giving away blocks of cheese and other staples, for example, preceded the food stamp program and have not gone away.