Balancing School Lunches and Environmental Impact

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All across the nation, contemporary schools and students have worked to find a middle ground when it comes to dietary offerings. It is widely accepted that often times, students’ look forward what ‘lunch-time’ offers-- the glory of leisure and the freedom to fuel their bodies with whatever that they might choose. Each day, the cafeteria menu details a variety of choices ranging from the humble Caesar Salad to the traditional peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The diversity is endless, and yet, for some reason, students are still often displeased with the myriad foods. While it might be easy for schools to comply to these students’ demands, it is not justified to do so if doing so is ultimately detrimental to the already-degrading environment …show more content…

In relation to the modern world of food, in terms of ways in which people or families have grown accustomed to this in turn affects the ways in which students and teenagers eat. In Jonathan Safran Foer’s article, “The American Table and The Global Table,” he expresses that people consume so mindlessly and ignorantly that as a nation, we are giving the government opportunities to manipulate the ways in which food is perceived. Foer argues that “today, to eat like everyone else is to add another straw to the camel’s back” (Foer 971). This is significant in that it highlights the role that consumers play in the food industry. Put bluntly, the more mindless demands that are made, the worse the situation becomes. Students and adolescents, ambitious and goal-driven, often claim that it is important to stop such unawareness, but the irony lies in the fact that we might be just as unaware. The more we demand, the more the government complies and essentially, people are “sending checks to the absolute worst abusers” (Foer 968). As administrators in the cafeteria, where finances are limited, and time is constrained on a daily basis, I believe it is so important that your team continues to implement quick, but sustainable food choices. In a sense, it is purely the matter of the ways of how easily students can be conditioned into choosing the right foods and by continuing to maintain these healthy options students will be able to avoid the growing epidemic, obesity. Michael Pollan claims that “daily, our eating turns nature into culture, transforming the body of the world into our bodies and minds,” and what can be drawn from this is that people are affected by habits and if students are habitually surrounded by these healthier food choices, the result will be most significant and beneficial in the end (Pollan 10). While I am not saying that by implementing a

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