Nutrition - Teaching our Children to Eat Well When I look back at my experience through elementary and secondary school, and think about school lunch my memories are not cherished. The gray messy masses that smell and jiggle in a nebulous blob while the lunch lady deposits it onto my tray. No, those were not fond memories at all. I do remember having to look at the month ahead with my mother, because she wanted me to eat at least eat one school prepared meal a week. These were tough decisions for an elementary student, with picky taste in food. I remember most of the students in my class eating the chocolate cake or the cookies as the main course of their meal. Now that I look back on this, I realize how foolish it was that teachers did not pay better attention to our diets. American's "sweet tooth is tied to sour health" according to Jane Brody of The New York Times. We are "squeezing out nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables, whole grains and low-fat dairy products that can help to prevent disease." A nutritionally complete diet should involve no more than ten percent of its calories from added sugar; "American children now consume nearly twice that amount. The average teenager derives 19 percent of calories from added sugar, with the average boy consuming 34 teaspoons and the average girl consuming 24 teaspoons of added sugar daily, according to Federal surveys. Younger children, too, have diets far sweeter than desirable: 6- to 11-year-olds get 18 percent of their calories from added sugars" (Brody, 7). Yikes, these numbers do not look good when trying to promote nutrition, but how does one teach children to eat things like vegetables? Some children do not like to eat the vegetables that are given to them because they are not quite sure what is in the mushroom surprise. A lot of children just do not like school lunches, while others really enjoy them. Some may think that they are fattening, rubber in them, too greasy and unhealthy. While others find them more convenient, taking some chaos out of their morning routine, since they do not need to pack a lunch, or worry about what to eat. Nancy Polk, for the New York Times, wrote why in the past 5 years, the regulations for the School Meals Initiative for Healthy Children needed to be put in effect. This drastically changed the way we feed American youth. They specifically looked at makin... ... middle of paper ... ...bits for life. Life-long learning and health have been proven to go hand in hand, teaching our children to eat well is just as important as teaching them to read. This might be the key to unlocking a whole new power. A power for learning. A power that will someday set the standard for the world in which we live. Bibliography: Brody, Jane. "Increasingly, America's Sweet Tooth Is Tied to Sour Health." New York Times. New York. September 21, 1999. Friedman, BJ. "Nutrient Intake of Children Eating School Breakfast." American Dietetic Association. Journal of the American Dietetic Association. Chicago. February 1999. Gottlieb, Robert. "The State: In Reforming Schools, Don't Forget Students' Stomachs." The Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles. California. December 27, 1998. "Guidelines for School Health Programs to Promote Lifelong Healthy Eating." Journal of School Health. Washington D.C. January 1997, Vol. 67, No. 1. "Healthy School Meals…Healthy Kids! A Leadership Guide for School Decision-Makers." Food and Consumer Service (USDA). Washington D.C. 1997. Polk, Nancy. "Better School Lunches, Fitter Children." New York Times. New York. February 21, 1999.
Zhao, Emmeline. "School Lunch Rules For Healthier Meals Get Mixed Reviews From Students." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, 14 Sept. 2012. Web. 26 Apr. 2014.
Government date shows that in the past thirty years, rate of being overweight in six to eleven year olds is up 19% and 6% in age 12 to 19. Without support, school lunches remain high in fat. (Finkelstien) According to the CDCP, obesity is double what it was in children and triple in adolescents since 1980. Many reforms were attempted to help this problem, but many inadvertently caused more problems. (Finkelstien) A 730 calorie lunch should have no more than 24 grams of fat and no more than 8 grams of it saturated yet the average USDA lunch has 31 grams of fat and 14 rams of it is saturated. (Yeoman) These very high levels of fat are why obesity is becoming worse in children. It can be concluded that school food is still extremely high in fat and this can be directly linked to the high rates of obesity in young children and
"School Meals Need to Get Healthier: Report." Healthday. 29 OCT 2009: n. page. Web. 14 Dec. 2011.
Unfortunately, in today’s society, school administrators focus heavily on standardized test scores and school rankings thus adding more pressure on students and teachers. This being said, schools have begun to focus on providing healthy foods because they help increase a person’s cognitive and critical thinking ability. It is seen that nutrition plays a great role in students’ performance on exams and physical activity due to the correlation between school provided meals and low student
Entirely eliminating unhealthy foods from the school menu will substantially lessen the possibility of students choosing to eat the foods that are relatively equivalent to fast foods. Instead, the school menu should contain healthy and appetizing meals that are easy to prepare. I suggest keeping the “good foods” which are the salads, snack packs which contains celery and seasonal fruits, and the chicken wrap. In addition, I suggest adding more healthy meal options like tuna & white bean wraps, chicken quinoa burrito bowls instead of the tasteless Asian rice bowls, and bean burgers instead of the processed smokey barbeque
Ronzio, Robert. “National School Lunch Program.” Health Reference Center. Facts on file, n.d. Web. 15 Mar. 2011. .
The Manhattan Project was the code name for a science project conducted during World War II by the United States with the partial support of the United Kingdom and Canada. The ultimate goal of the project was the development of the first atomic bomb before Nazi Germany. The scientific research was directed by physicist Julius Robert Oppenheimer while security and military operations were carried out by General Leslie Richard Groves. The project was carried out in many research centers being the most important of them the Manhattan Engineer District located on the site now known as Los Alamos Manhattan Project was the code name for a science project conducted during World National Laboratory. The project brought together a wealth of scientific luminaries as Robert Oppenheimer, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Ernest Lawrence, etc. . . . Since, after experiments in Germany before the war, it was known that atomic fission was possible and that the Nazis were already working on its own nuclear program, several bright minds met. Many Jewish ex...
We have definitely improved school lunches in America, however they still leave something to be desired. This is something that seems so simple to fix, but why is this problem so prevalent in our society? Mark Bittman explores this issue in an article “Serving up School Lunches of Tomorrow.” Bittman builds credibility by “joining forces with researchers from the Department of Agriculture and the University of California, Berkley’s School of Public Health to evaluate a program to increase school lunch participation, improve nutrition, reduce waste, and ultimately counter tendencies towards obesity.”(Bittman par1) And what they are doing to improve school lunches for their students. This article makes the claim that America needs to make an effort to make school lunches healthier and a lot more accessible for all of its students.
The School Nutrition Association claims “school-prepared meals provide about one-third of the necessary daily nutrition requirements for students” (“School). This nutrition requirement is based on a 2,000 calorie diet. However, research has shown that students in adolescence
Unhealthy school lunches served in cafeterias across the nation are a major contributing factor to the development of childhood obesity. They are well known to be high in fat, sodium, and sugar, while also being outright unappetizing. It is currently estimated that about a third of kids and adolescents in the United States are overweight or obese. In addition, poor nutrition from school lunches can lead to chronic health problems over time and is also tied to poorer academic performance. While the US government updated the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs in early 2012, not all schools have implemented the changes and not all students are choosing to eat the healthier options
Tanaka, N., & Miyoshi, M. (2012). School lunch program for health promotion among children in Japan. Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 21(1), 155–158.
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.
On August 2, 1939 Franklin D. Roosevelt received a letter from the famous, German physicist Albert Einstein. It stated and explained the potential of using uranium as a weapon of mass destruction, and that the United States would be wise to begin funding a project for this (Kross). Franklin D. Roosevelt didn't see a need to start full force on a project like this until after the attack on Pearl Harbor. After Congress declares on both Japan and Germany, Franklin D. Roosevelt puts General Leslie R. Groves in charge of the project. Groves named the project: "So that top-secret endeavor to build the atomic bomb got the most boring of cover names: The Manhattan Engineer District, in time shortened to The Manhattan Project"(Broad). As the project grew the city of Manhattan's role shrank and by 1943,"… the Manhattan Project was not physically located in New York City but scattered across the country" (Kelly 219). The first "secret city" was Los Alamos in California and Groves was so concerned about secrecy, people actually had a pass they had to carry with them when they left because without it, coming back into the secret gated city of Los Alamos was nearly impossible. Most of the time even with the secret cities, many worked at universities or even their own businesses: "It was supersecret, at least 5,000 people were coming and going to work, knowing only enough to get the job done" (Broad). People also literally had to up root themselves and move all the way across the country to Santa Fe California and they could not tell anyone where they were going. Not only was there just scientists, there was physicists, engineers, military personnel and families. At one point the Columbia University had 700 people employed in the project and ...
Many cafeteria workers and staff members in 49 states have said many students do not want the governments new school lunches. Almost 7 out of 17 schools with have been seen with students throwing away some or all their fruits or vegetables, even the cafeteria workers are suffering under these new standards. About 60.3 percent of school districts want flexibility to be given to all schools to improve their ability to provide and give good nutrition without harm to any instructions and school district operations. Schools should know by now what is good for students and what is not, but they should not go overboard with the wheat and whole grain items. Another example that shows that schools should be responsible for providing a nutritious lunch is knowing that there are a variety of ways to make healthy foods taste good for school students. Healthy tasty food that will risk diabetes and obesity .One of the biggest reasons people do not eat healthy foods is because they feel it as if it will not taste good. The problem is, if your health food does not taste good, you are eating the wrong health food. Just because something is good for you does not mean it has to taste nasty, boring, or completely gross. There are plenty of ideas out there for eating healthy without making sacrifices on taste. “It is silly that people are worried about kids throwing things out. There are many ways to make
School lunches leave students with limited options, leaving no room for improvement in the fight for childhood obesity that one in three children suffer from. (8) Having the same, repetitive, items that are high in fat, sugar, preservatives, and additives(1) increase chances of cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes in students to name a few.(2) Even with the additional ameliorates directly from the White House, they only affect federally funded schools, excluding private schools. (4) With these weaknesses in our school lunch system, reform is definitely needed to conquer these common issues.