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childhood obesity school prevention dissertation essay
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The average school lunch has about 900 calories, which is about half of the amount of total calories a child should consume daily. Many schools attempt to serve healthy lunches for students, but sometimes they are not aware of what "healthy" is. Other times they do not feel it necessary to spend a large amount of money on healthy food. If schools knew how healthier food would affect a child academically, they might be more inclined to pay. The American government must increase school funding, so that the schools can make this change for the students' benefit. School officials must also look at the percentage of children who are obese, and consider how providing a healthy school lunch will help to lower that number. Healthy school cafeteria food is essential for school aged children in the United States because it will help them pay attention in school, improve their learning capabilities, and minimize childhood obesity.
Healthy school lunches would help students academically. There is not a teacher who would want their students to be distracted. Often when children are hungry, because of a light lunch, or a lunch full of simple carbohydrates, they will become distracted. If schools serve lunches with whole grains and protein, the students would stay full and attentive much longer than a student with a lunch of sugar, white bread, and lush greens. Although many believe that schools should provide a healthy lunch for students, there is a small percentage which feels that because of the budget cuts, schools should not pay for more expensive and healthier food. Shereen Jegtvig, a nutritionist, wrote "Appleton, Wisconsin replaced their regular poor-quality school lunches with healthy fresh food…changes resulted in improved b...
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Ronzio, Robert. “National School Lunch Program.” Health Reference Center. Facts on file, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .
Smolin, Lori A., and Mary B. Grosvenor. “Obesit Crisis/We Need to Start Young.” Health Reference File. Facts on File, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .
Swaminathin, Nikhil. Do Healthier School Lunches Curb Bad Behavior? Good Education. N.p., 28 July 2010. Web. 9 Mar. 2011. .
Turkington, Carol, and Albert Tzeel. “Shildhood Obesity.” Health Reference Center. Facts on file, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2011.
The intake of proper nutrients helps balance the maintenance of bodily functions; supporting the longevity of a healthy lifestyle. (Denton, Carolyn. “How does food Impact Health?” www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu). With constant technological advance in the world, it is important to become aware of how frequent the world changes daily in preparation for self-maturity. What is a more effective way to approach the real world than to have a direct experience? The researcher will address the topic on why community high schools in America should allow its students off campus during lunch. Allowing children to have a better lunch option could help educational strength as well as attend to other essential needs. (Anderson, Melinda. “Do healthy lunches
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...
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is used by students throughout the nation and is constantly under evaluation to give students a healthy and balanced meal. The program regulates and standardizes the lunch provided at all public schools, and even some private schools. Through the NSLP, it is ensured that school lunches are (generally) the same from school to school. The NSLP makes certain that a nutrient-rich lunch is available to all students that attend these NSLP using schools throughout the nation. Though it receives a great deal of controversy, this program is found efficient by parents and supplementary to children and adolescents alike.
We all remember that day when President Obama took office, and our school lunches changed forever. First Lady Michelle Obama, felt that too many American kids are overweight, so she thought she needed to make our school lunches healthier, with more fruits and vegetables. One of the major changes she made was how many calories the school cooks were able to give the kids. The new requirements are as follows: up to 650 for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, 700 for sixth through eighth graders and 850 for high scholars. These numbers are consistent with the Mayo Clinic’s recommendations ( Kuczynski-Brown). The main goal of cutting calories and taking away junk food, was to insure that kids are getting served a healthy lunch. At each lunch, schools must still provide a cup of fruit, a cup of vegetables, two servings of grains, two ounces of dairy, and a cup of fluid milk, so that students can get their needed vitamins and nutrients (Anonymous) . They are also wanting more local farmers to be involved, and give more of the food they grow to the school. At the high school I went to, we built a green house, and planted a garden to give us some local grown food. It was part of our Ag Science class. More and more schools are starting to do the same thing. The stats of overweight kids is really high. The guidelines are as follows:
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.
"School Meals Need to Get Healthier: Report." Healthday. 29 OCT 2009: n. page. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
First of all, an increasing amount of kids are becoming overweight because their schools pressure them to eat sugary, fatty, and high-calorie foods. Not only do many schools promote consumption of harmful foods, many schools also actively serve them in school lunches. In 1963, 4% of kids were obese; currently, approximately 17% of kids are obese. Some might argue that kids themselves are the reason for the increase, because school lunches also provide healthier foods. Unfortunately, most kids do not have much of a choice - healthier foods are priced much higher than their unhealthy counterpart, consequently many parents do not want their kids to buy the more expensive, yet healthier product. In my 3½ years ...
“More than a third of the county's children are overweight or obese.”(Gustin, 1). As shocking as this is, it's true. One of the big reasons that children and teens are overweight is because of the foods that they eat. They are fed these fattening and unhealthy foods by the school system. Their futures can be changed if we change our choices. Having more nutritious lunches can have a positive impact on the health of American teens.
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 ...
School lunch is an obvious problem that has yet to be fixed. Mark Samuelsson once said, “We struggle with eating healthily, obesity, and access to good nutrition for everyone. But we have a great opportunity to get on the right side of this battle by beginning to think differently about the way that we eat and the way that we approach food.” A well know fact to almost all students and their parents is that there are many problems with school lunches and it needs to change. Not only is school lunch unhealthy, but it also does not taste good most of the time. Some people feel that school lunch is not that big of a deal so it should be very cheaply processed in factories and preserved, but that is not the case. In order to solve the lingering
To start off, many school’s consider healthier foods to cost more. In the book, School Lunches: Healthy Choices vs. Crowd Pleasers, Amanda Lanser shows why it is worth the cost. “When the new dietary guidelines went into effect in 2012, that money did not stretch as far as it had in the past.” Healthier food is more costly, but it is better to consume healthy foods than junk food. Many schools consider the money that they get from kids buying unhealthy items instead of the outcomes of the kids' weight. Schools could have fundraisers or events that they can get money from to pay for the costly food. Because of schools some kids aren’t learning how to have a healthy lifestyle. Also some kids who are healthy and are starting to follow the ways of unhealthy
School lunches are to provide nourishment for students so they can excel in the classroom and on the field, not leave them broken down and tired for the rest of the day. Poor nutrition standards allow for school lunches to offer the minimum requirement to students. The quality of food is diminished with pesticides and other harmful chemicals, which also does not provide enough nutrients for students’ brains and bodies to grow and mature at a healthy rate, and finally the amount of food given to students is not adequate for every student, because every person is different, the amount of food given to each student should be different as well. Once these things are addressed, school lunch can change for the better and provide the nutrition needed for every student to achieve greatness and someday be a future leader of
The health of school lunches has been a very controversial topic among students, parents, schools, and the government. Parents want their children to be healthy, but at a low cost. It seems that the “healthier” the school lunches are, the more they cost and the less kids want to eat them. Also, the proportions of food may not be enough to fill the students’ stomachs. Many children also have food allergies and other medical conditions that may need to be accommodated. Many parents feel that the lunches being served to their children are unhealthy and overpriced. Although the government and schools seem to be trying to fix these problems, some parents say they are not making much progress.
“Our Schools need to start teaching kids how to be healthy.”- Unknown. School lunches have created a chronic problem in a school setting, and since it hasn't been fixed, 6-11 year olds have had a 17% increased chance of becoming obese (Centers for Disease control and Prevention). Most school districts don't even bother changing the food restrictions just so they can please their students. Unhealthy school lunches are a huge problem among children in the United States, it can cause obesity, stress, and many other problems.
Have you ever tasted school cafeteria food? I don’t think you would want to. In school story books, do you have characters saying that the food tasted good at school cafeterias? Nope. Why is this? 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, advanced lunch system should be implemented.