“Life finds a way,” Jeff Goldblum’s character says in the very first “Jurassic Park” movie. That could be amended to “markets find a way,” or perhaps even, “Sorry, Mrs. Obama, kids don’t want your lunches.”

It seems that black markets are springing up in schools throughout the country, with kids dealing with proscribed substances — like salt, ketchup and sugar. It’s all in response to the heavy-handed rules advanced by the first lady’s healthy lunch initiatives.

“During a congressional hearing this week examining the cost of compliance with nutrition regulations for states and schools, a Hartford City school administrator recounted how the Obama administration’s regulations on school meals have led to unintended consequences,” the Independent Women’s Forum reported last week. “The most ‘colorful’ example being the black market for seasoning. Students have been caught bringing — and even selling — salt, pepper and sugar to school to add taste to the bland and tasteless cafeteria food.”

That school administrator, John Payne of the Blackford County Schools in Indiana, explained how students have rejected the first lady’s lunch rules.

“Since 2012, student participation in free and reduced price meals has decreased from 56 to 54 percent in my district with a rise in food waste,” he reported. “Students are avoiding cafeteria food. More students bring their lunch, and a few parents even ‘check out’ their child from campus, taking them to a local fast-food restaurant or home for lunch.”

The new lunch rules even serve to stigmatize poor students, he added.

“It is clearer now with the new restrictions which students are from low-income households and which are not, because the free and reduced price meal has no additions or extra portions, whereas students able to purchase from the a la carte menu can obtain more food,” he said.

This is nothing new, of course. The Washington Post surveyed tweets from students dissatisfied with their lunches.

“School kids around the country are tweeting rather unfortunate pictures of the meals they’re being served at lunchtime, and thanking first lady and healthy school food advocate Michelle Obama for their bowls of mush and mystery proteins,” the Post reported. “Based on some of these photos from children, it might not be surprising why so much of the country’s public school meals are going to waste.”

The first lady is unbowed.

“First lady Michelle Obama is ‘confident’ that controversial changes to school lunch programs undertaken after her lobbying will ‘eventually be embraced by kids,'” The Hill newspaper reported in February.

“We’re really thinking about the kids who are kindergartners today,” Mrs. Obama said in an interview. “If all they know are whole grains and vegetables, by the time they’re graduating from high school, this will be their norm; they won’t know anything different.”

What’s missing here is choice and instruction. Mrs. Obama’s efforts do little to help teach children to make good choices; as she said herself, they don’t know any different.”

But like in any other centrally planned economy, black markets spring up. Kids are creative. Not to mention devious.

Life finds a way.