Children's Eating Habits in France vs. United States
The way children eat is very different in every country. They are the most different in France and the United States. From children's lunch at school to dinner at home, they're diverse. Even the way they take their meals at home and how much they cost are unalike. It's not arguable that the United States is an unhealthy country, unlike France where good eating habits are learned very early in life and are practiced throughout life.
In the United States the daily public school lunch consists of pizza, cheese burgers, Chef Boyardee ravioli, fried chicken fingers, French fries and it gets worse. Most American students hate the lunch that their school provides, which means as soon as they are able to drive, they leave school and go to the nearest fast food restaurant. "Critics say that school lunches contribute to the fattening of the United States." (5) The most controversial argument about US school lunches happened when "David Stockman, Reagan's budget director, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable to meet dietary requirements while also slashing costs." (5) Honestly, what's next? American school lunches have to meet the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines, which obviously is not good enough considering "30% of individuals calories come from fat, and 10% from saturated fat." (5)
School lunches are so much more different in France. "Many schools already employ their own nutritionist, who works with a parents' committee to ensure lunches provide a healthy, balanced diet." (5) "A typical schools lunch in France cost anywhere from E1.50 to E4 a head, depending on region. Poorer parents only pay a small portion of that total." (5) What we in America serve our children the French consider adult meals, as the French believe good eating habits start early in life. A French school lunch consists of "a starter of grapefruit, followed by grilled chicken with green beans, then a cheese course and rice pudding for dessert. The day's snack is a tangerine. Once a week chips are on offer but with salmon lasagna, rather than sausage or burgers, while Thursday's pizza is served with a healthy green salad." (5) Children are not aloud pop or soda of any kind; they eat all of their school meals with plain water.
Janet Poppendieck is a professor of sociology at Hunter College in New York, and additionally she 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 recent changes in the Nation School Lunch Program’s dietary guidelines. Poppendieck’s book looks at the in depth reasons into 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 our 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.
Nutritionally speaking, the French have been getting away with murder: They eat all the butter, cream, foie gras, pastry and cheese that their hearts desire, and yet their rates of obesity and heart disease are much lower than ours.”(146). The French have a similar diet to Americans, but they eat three times as much saturated animal fat as Americans do and only a third as many die of heart attacks. The French eat a greater diversity of foods and have structure to their schedules. The French eat prepared meals at home, with high-quality foods and in between meals. They don’t snack because of the structure in their life, they create more quality time at the dinner table to socialize with their families. This social aspect of eating meals, enjoying them with loved ones has a big impact on their overall health. Another important aspect of the French diet is how they thoroughly enjoy different kinds of red wine, cheeses, and meats. This attitude towards what people are eating and how they feel about eating, has an effect on health. “Fischler and Rozin say that the biggest predictor of health may not be the content of someone’s diet, but how stressed out they are about food, and how relaxed they are about eating.”(149). Eating healthy relies on more than just a balanced diet, but on stress levels, and your overall
Cristler exposes the Los Angeles school district, which had experienced budget cuts and ended up serving things like pizza, tacos, and burritos for lunch to save the school money and time. These foods may have been saving the school money, but as far as caloric intake they were increasing greatly. Cristler gives many other insightful facts about the growth of calorie consumption over time. He states, “Just as the presence of supersized portions had stimulated Americans to eat more at mealtime, the sheer presence of a large variety of the overall habits of the American eater”. This comment pretty much sums up all the information and facts that Cristler gives about America’s epidemic weight gain. In chapter four, Cristler covers how schools started to be-little education and goes on to explain how the decrease in physical education has also contributed to obesity rates, especially in children. In the 1980s schools started to develop the post-industrial idea that there were more important tasks for schools to perform other than P.E., because America had now fallen behind Japan in productivity and job creation. Cristler mentions that what fitness opportunities remained for children grew increasingly class-based. Fitness became more individually focused and became based on clubs and memberships. I think these are good points that Cristler makes and they
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.
“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...
This is not the first time the U.S. has faced problems with the health of the nation. In 1946, President Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act. This legislation came in response to claims that many American men were rejected for military service due to diet related health issues. School lunch was established as “a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the nation’s children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food (Gunderson, 2013).”
Forty years ago in America childhood obesity was rarely a topic of conversation. A survey done in the early 1970s showed that 6.1% of children between the ages 12 and 19 were overweight. Eight years later the same survey was done and 17.4% were considered overweight (Iannelli). “Childhood obesity epidemic in America is now a confirmed fact since the number of overweight or obese children has more than tripled during the last 30 years” (Childhood Obesity Epidemic). “Over the last 20 years, the prevalence of obesity in children aged 6 to 11 years has tripled from 6.5% to 19.6%” (Childhood Obesity Epidemic). As a nation statistics should be alarming. Why are American children today so obese?
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 ...
Did you know that the United States is currently the fattest country? How is this even possible? Not only is it the adults that are gaining great amount of weight, it is that one in five children are considered obese. Why is there many children in the United States that have somewhat of large round physiques? Parents and guardians always want to do best for their children, but sometimes feeding them too much processed food will lead them to being overweight and obese. Being obese has no benefits at all. Obesity are known to increase blood pressure and can develop strokes and other problems linked to strokes, including high cholesterol, high-blood sugar, and heart failure. Even though some parents believe that even though their children are
Lunch is one of the most important meals of the day and is consumed mostly in school cafeterias for children and adolescence. Wholesome lunches are vital in maintaining a healthy metabolism and give children energy for the rest of the school day. Children are advised to eat healthily but do not always do so because the choices of tastier, fatty foods offered in school cafeterias. The National School Lunch Program, NSLP, which is a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools set nutritious guidelines for lunches served in school cafeterias (USDA). However, school campuses still offer foods high in fat as well as selling candy, chips, and soda in their vending machines, as well as their school shops. In order
In closing, I agree with Alice Davies perception in the things that she said in her article. The majority of American kids are becoming obese leaving them without a great future. Kids nowadays rather eat junk-food while watching television because it somehow comforts them. This act of behavior needs to be stop because it is bad for our society. The kids in our society should be fully energetic and healthy. It is better to have a healthy society than an unhealthy one. Family homes should be serving healthy food/limiting time of commercials, schools should banned junk-food machines, and restaurants could limit the amount of calories in their food to ameliorate the society. Lastly, it is the job of Americans to do something about this growing national public health disaster.
In the movie, Where to Invade Next, Michael Moore “invades” other countries with the prospect of bringing ideas back to the United States to improve various public-health related components, such as: worker conditions, education, school lunches, drug policies, and women’s health/rights. During this movie, there was one country that resonated with me the most—France. In this particular segment, Moore goes to a town near Normandy and tells the audience where he can obtain a three or four-star meal. Not to my surprise, he said an elementary school lunchroom. Prior to seeing this film, I watched several episodes of Parts Unknown, where Anthony Bourdain also sheds light on French school lunches and how they are prepared. However, there were some aspects that surprised me and even made me wonder why we, as Americans, do not teach our students how to develop healthier eating habits. As the movie progressed, I
Most Americans do not care enough to take a look at the nutritional values of the food that he or she is consuming. That is why America has the highest percentage of obesity in the world. This is a serious problem because one in every three adults is obese, and one in every six children is obese. There are many factors that go into the regular American diet, but most of those factors are not appealing nor is it healthy. Americans put way too much processed food into their daily diet. Some would say that other countries diets superior the American diet because of nutritional values that it carries. Other countries have proven that an active lifestyle is a huge element in the average weight of the country. There are many things that Americans could change about their diets and lifestyle that would help them to become healthier.
Today's culture promotes eating habits that contribute to obesity. People may serve large portions and foods that are most readily available instead of choosing foods that are most nutritious. Cooking with butter, chocolate and other high-caloric foods is a normal part of the American diet. Also, food is often used as a reward in this country. Children are treated to sweets for cleaning their room, and the team is taken for pizza or ice cream after the game. Seldom is eating only when hunger is present (What Causes Obesity?).