The only reason majority of schools haven’t switched to a healthier lunch food supplier is because there are cheaper alternatives. Schools should switch their lunch providers to a healthier alternative. Should cost really determine how healthy students are? Many students skip lunch merely because of its low quality taste, and some students even protested a lunch providing company called Sodexo, which provides lunch for prisons as well as most schools. Schools that have switched are seeing an increase in students’ moods, productivity, and most importantly- grades.
Schools Base Quality On Price
Low quality and less healthful food suppliers are cheaper- and schools like to save their money. One of the companies that supplies food to cafeterias also serves food to prisons. (“Super”) Prison food is stereotypically bland and is only really meant to sustain life. Is that the kind of quality we want? Obviously, better food will cost more. Price is always higher with quality. However, what is the real cost: money, or students’ health? Quality is simply more important when it comes to school..
Another problem with money is paying the lunch ladies. Paying them will be worth it, as they will actually have to cook and take care of the food. Why pay someone to heat something up? The way things are now, there is hardly even a point in having lunch ladies there. Their only purpose currently is to make sure that the students behave, but surely you could just have other staff members take that job.
In the long run, a good school will attract more people, so they may actually make money off of it. Schools don’t think this way, unfortunately. Most people are more focused on the money they have and are making, rather than the money they can have a...
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...ot a prison, its a place for learning and teaching. A proper diet affects learning more than people think.
Schools should switch to healthier lunch providers. It’s worth the price, even if it may be much more money than the less healthy alternatives. Students don’t eat the garbage they are fed now, and the companies that provide them their food are dishonest and in no way concerned about the students’ health. (“Students”) Healthier lunches have been proven to make students happier, smarter, and nicer. Healthier lunches are an important choice.
Works Cited
"Students Raise Concerns About Sodexo." The New Paltz Oracle RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
"Super Size Me Script." Super Size Me Script. N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Dec. 2013.
"Wisconsin Schools: A Different Kind of School Lunch." Wisconsin Schools: A Different Kind of School Lunch. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Dec. 2013.
Janet Poppendieck is a professor of sociology at Hunter College in New York, and is the author of several books, including her most recent Free for All: Fixing School Food in America. This book centers on America’s recent interest in whether or not our school lunches are healthy. This issue has been put into the spotlight recently through shows such as Jamie Oliver’s School Food Revolution and in the news because of recent changes in the Nation School Lunch Program’s dietary guidelines. Poppendieck’s book looks at the in depth reasons why school lunches have turned into what they are today, what challenges need to be faced in order to fix school lunches, and ultimately how the system should be fixed. She accomplishes this by interviewing her current college students about their previous school lunch experiences, working in a school cafeteria, interviewing current school employees, and looking at the history and policies of the National School Lunch Program.
has to spend more money on changing school lunch system from eliminating unnecessary spending portion of system and create farming class. As reported by Cooper, “ The National School Lunch Program needs 8 billion dollars to feed 30 million children a year to serve high quality foods.” However, this price of amount has to be double to serve healthy foods to students because our next generation has to grow up with high quality foods not with low quality foods. Moreover, according to Cooper, the U.S. spends more than 100 million dollars on fast foods portion which the U.S. suppose to spend less amount of money on fast foods to improve the entire food system of the country. If the U.S. government lower the expense of fast food system and raises the amount of money for school lunches, entire schools of the U.S. would get positive results. For example, students could brainstorm very fast as Albert Einstein, and gain more energy to work out on their gym classes. Furthermore, school have to create agriculture class for students to have strong knowledges in foods. Students can literally be ware of what they eat at their lunch times; they will know vegetables grow in the ground and how foods are really fresh. Therefore, schools must provide farming class as in Berkeley; students have rights to know how foods are important to them. As a result, students could get a lot of benefits for changing school
I don't think our school lunch is healthy because it has fat and too much sodium. Although it is good it is fattening it is the reason for much of the obesity in the U.S. Many kids have no other option to eat the unhealthy school lunches or they will be hungry.
Two meals a day, less than 2500 calories, not enough to fill a toddler. Where and what is this place? Who is getting this food? Prisoners in the jails of the United States are where they are receiving these meals. One of the biggest complaints that come from Inmates is their food. Studies have shown when an inmate is released from incarceration, the first conversation they have with the outside world is the food but is it honestly all that bad? Is there no variety? The average American thinks of a prisoner's meal as a punishment, but they receive a mandatory set of meals and some food they are able to purchase themselves.
Schools are meant to give our children a healthy and nurturing environment, and yet so much of the lunches in schools are fattening; does this stop schools from achieving the aforementioned goal? Childhood obesity in the United Sates continues to be a growing problem despite so any new programs to help combat it, and new research is showing how schools may be playing a large role in childhood obesity. School lunches are showing to be the problem, they encourage poor nutrition in our nation’s students, and simple reform is proving to not be enough to stop the rise in obesity rates.
The inmate’s health and nutrition is an important part in running a prison. The inmates should be fed properly, and also their emotional status should not be ignored, and it should be taken into account.
“More than 76 percent of schools sell soft drinks and sweetened fruit drinks, but fewer than half offered bottles water. Fewer than 15 percent sell low-fat or nonfat yogurt, and fewer than one third order skim milk. Only 25 percent of schools say they've reduced fats and oils in recipes.”(Spake, 2). Choices at lunch range from greasy to unidentifiable. Most students eat school lunches five days a week. So most of the food they eat throughout the week comes from the school cafeteria. Although, the schools do tend to offer healthy choices such as salads, subs, skim milk, and unlimited fruits and vegetables. “Each week Phoenix students are served a variety of fruits and vegetables from guava to grapes and jicima to red peppers. School officials hope that by exposing children to fruits and vegetable they may develop a taste for them and request their parents to buy them.”(Bailey, 1). Real meat is becoming an issue in schools. “According to reports issued by the Physicians Committee for responsible Medicine (PCRM) the USDA dumps hundreds of millions of pounds of surplus beef, chicken, cheese, and pork on the National School lunch Program.”(Lord, 42). Chicken isn't whole white meat; some of it doesn't even taste like meat! Let’s move on to unhealthy foods. There are unlimited amounts of un...
Allowing healthier school lunches will decrease obesity in children because it will give them the proper nutrition to reduce the risk of health issues. Since obesity causes many health issues, maintaining a proper nutrition will reduce the risk of health issues. According to Star- Telegram, a daily newspaper that serves Fort Worth and areas of North Texas states, “[School lunches that have] a meal of pizza sticks, a banana, raisins and whole milk has given way to whole wheat spaghetti with meat sauce, a whole wheat roll green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, kiwi and low-fat milk … This change will help more than 2.4 million Texas students who receive a free or reduced- price school lunch to lead healthier, more active lives—in and out of the classroom”(Par. 2 and 4). School lunches are supposed to guarantee students a well balance meal, so they can have the energy to proceed with their classes throughout the day. Meanwhile, students who receive a f...
A prison’s focus on cost-cutting leads to distasteful meals and unsatisfied appetites. In some prisons, the food is considered so inedible or devoid of nutrition that inmates who once used cigarettes as currency favors now uses ramen noodle packs. Prison cuisine is already limited but food services are often first to be downsized or turned over to private companies. The result can be a reduction in the quantity or the quality of the food. In some Texas or Tennessee prisons, inmates are only given two meals a day during the weekends. Meals that are high in carbs and low in vegetables and protein, leaving many prisoners hungry for more. Most prisoners today recognize that offering satisfying meals that taste good can allow prisoners to eat their
In Ohio, five murders escaped a maximum-security private prison. The food budget can easily be manipulated compared to other parts of the budget. As a result, it is important to examine the food quality in prisons. In a case study of Taft Correctional Institution (a private prison), this private institution ranked the worst in quality of food, variety of food, and amount of food compared to all BOP facilities (Camp et al., 2002).
Having different food can affect a child health. There are milky ways, cake, cookies, pizza and lets just add some French fries in there and call that lunch. Don’t forget the drink sweet tea, pop and milk that one doesn’t choose to drink it. The students would go back to the class rooms after twenty minutes and be hungry at the end of the da. Garland said, “Instead, we allow school cafeterias to dispense the same junk food that kids could buy in any mall” (621). There has been so much junk food and soft drinks in schools that makes the student health unsafe and a distraction to their education. Garland mentioned that the students are filling up with fat, salt and sugar rather than filling up with fruit, whole grains and vegetables. Schools should be about healthiness, and well balanced diets. With having Students eat healthy can boost up their energy and ability to learn. With that being said when I was in high school it was nothing but junk food for three years. When Michele Obama changed the law on the school lunches my senior lunches have changed. It was nothing but healthy food like whole grain, no sweets, two scoops of fruits and vegetables. At Odessa they had a school store loaded with junk food that would be sold out by forth period. When the law came to the school there was nothing but baked chip and replaced with other baked nutrition food or we had nothing at all. The drink machines were changed out
According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” meaning that America’s children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For, as the world waged war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of the country’s soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling excess agricultural goods was more important than building a healthy, well-balanced meal for students. Unfortunately, many children coming from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school lunches, so in order to compensate, the School Lunch Program changed its focus to help these students. This program, however, decreased schools’ lunch budgets, and schools had a hard time keeping up with the amount of free meals they had to provide, so they came up with some extra ways to increase revenue. However, in a small town in Massachusetts, one chef makes a difference in the health of the school lunch students eat each day, and proves that hiring a trained chef to cook real, healthy meals can increase profit. Unfortunately, that is not the case in most schools across the nation. The quality of health of the food being served in school lunches is extremely poor and was allowed to decline even more with a new set of rule changes. However, there are some improvements currently being made to increase the quality of health of the food being served to students, including teaching them all about food and its nutritional information, both good and bad. In order for students to eat healthier lunches at school, the USDA needs to implement healthier ...
Schools with enormous food courts where students can buy meals and drinks from commonly known franchises, such as McDonalds and Coca-Cola, are the schools with the most health problems. Fast-food franchises are showing up everywhere, but do these businesses belong in high schools? No! Schools are here to enlighten students for life after school. If high schools promote bad eating habits by placing fast-food franchises in their cafeterias, then how can students eat right and healthy beyond high school.
However, the statistics that the author has presented to the audience; concerning these categories are just as interesting and as significant. The correctional facilities quality of living conditions when pertaining to cuisine is unpleasant. For example, the author discusses the equivalence between education, health care, and military facilities when compared to prison food, “Typically, the least expensive food is purchased by the subcontractor correctional facility…fruits, vegetables, and even meat are purchased at a discount…unsellable in a retail environment” (Ross, 2012, pg. 414). Therefore, within the general public many would not consider the quality of correctional cuisine to be as savage.
Why is this a problem? Cafeteria food is often cheap, bought in bulk, high in calories, malnutritious, and microwaved. Student polls and opinions prove this. Therefore, this leads to a suggestion: Healthier, tastier foods and a better, more advanced lunch system should be implemented. First of all, students aren’t motivated to eat unhealthy, not-tasty food.