The National School Lunch Program serves over 30,000,000 children across the nation, in comparison to the School Breakfast Program which serves around 11 million kids each day.1 For many, these two meals may be the only healthy meals they eat all day. Proper nutrition has the power to make or break a child’s development. Often, children who lack proper nutrition have trouble focusing in school. Research shows that children who eat a nutritious meal everyday tend to excel more in school than their counterparts who do not.2 Which is why to ensure that their students are performing better, and so that they can retain students and funding, many schools districts are now putting forth more effort in order to improve childhood nutrition, starting …show more content…
Michelle Obama once said, “Kids who participate in school meal programs get roughly half of their calories each day at school…This is an extraordinary responsibility. But it’s also an opportunity. And it’s why one of the single most important things we can do to fight childhood obesity is to make those meals at school as healthy and nutritious as possible.” As evidenced by First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign, childhood obesity, the improving of poor diets, promoting physical activity, and advancing the nutritional education of children are all at the forefront of childhood issues to mobilize around. Because of entities like the Let’s Move campaign and the Child Nutrition Act, schools have shifted their focus to the overall nutrition of school meals. By improving the nutritional values of school meals, as a nation, we are better equipping children to succeed …show more content…
The program was established in 1946 under President Truman, under the National School Lunch Act.3 The NSLP is instituted in public, nonprofit private schools, and some child care institutions. It provides nutritious, low-cost, or free lunches to schools. The NSLP and School Breakfast Program (SBP) meal requirements are constantly changing to meet the developing dietary guidelines in the United States of America. Currently they are trying to extend all of the nutrition standards to all food sold in schools, including vending machines, à la carte, etc. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s aims are trying to move schools in the direction of more on-site food preparation and cooking, hire more food trained professionals to cook the food, serving less sodium and eliminating dangerous trans fats, while serving more locally produced food, and provide more whole grains, vegetables, fruits, and fat-free/low-fat dairy products to students, in age-appropriate caloric servings.2 They also would like to improve the cafeterias themselves ensuring that there is enough room for each student in that lunch period to sit and have a healthy meal or if a child is uncomfortable eating in a noisy environment, for example, they would be moved to a quieter room, and that there is training opportunities and proper tools for those trained professionals to cook in these
“Remarks to the NAACP National Convention” is a transcript of the speech Michelle Obama gave to the NAACP Convention. Mrs. Obama urges the members of the NAACP to take action and support the “Let’s Move” campaign to combat childhood obesity. In this speech, Mrs. Obama stresses the four main components of her “Let’s Move” campaign. The first goal of the campaign is to offer parents with the information that they need to make healthy choices for their families. The second goal of the movement is to put healthy food into schools. The third part is to urge kids to play outside and be active. Finally, Mrs. Obama stresses the importance of ensuring that all families have access to healthy food in their community. Mrs. Obama uses logos and pathos
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 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.
Soda’s are leaving vending machines and being be substituted with less-sugary drinks, bread is being substituted for whole wheat and milk is being substituted to fat free milk. First Lady Michelle Obama took it into her own hands to provide the United states children with food that meets nutritional standards. “Through the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act championed by the First Lady and signed by President Obama, USDA made the first major changes in school meals in 15 years, which will help us raise a healthier generation of children.” (Leonard). Healthy Hunger- Free Act went into effect in 2012 some of the changes were that meals needed 5 components: grain, meat, fruit, vegetable, and milk. Students MUST take at least 1/2 cup of fruit OR vegetable for a meal.
However, despite the intention of protecting the “Nation’s Children”, the NSLP did not aligned with the values of the welfare state and instead what it lead was a neoliberal agenda that only seek to commodify students for profit, while bringing them under the brink of food insecurity. According to Patricia Allen (2005) in from “Old school” to “farm-to-school”: Neoliberalization from the ground up, the 1946 NSLP created a neoliberal agenda when it started to push more for the interest of commodities over the interest of students. Since its introduction in 1946, the NSLP already claimed to be an antipoverty and national security act. This meant that it was already part of the NSLP provision to support the domestic market by allowing governmental commodity purchases that will increase the price of goods in the national market, while in turn preventing another collapse. Thus, as a result of the NSLP act, many of the school lunches come from large scale domestic products. According to the United States Department of Agriculture(USDA), governmental commodity purchases represent 17 percent or less of national school meals, which is a percentile enough to shape how students and children generally eat. That said, many critics believe that the NSLP’s dependency on
Education plays a dominant role in the lives of students throughout the United States. Since most students spend roughly eight to twelve hours in school, it is important to make sure that they are provided with a healthy and nutritious breakfast, lunch and snack. 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 performance on tests.
The food made now is different since programs were first developed, including the way food is produced, distributed, and consumed. Also, school programs keep getting new rules added to them, but none are eliminated. The price of school food is viewed as a cost to be minimized rather than an investment. With this, we realize that children’s well being has not been the central focus and it should be the primary goal of schools. Poppendieck explores different questions that arise regarding children
Williamson, D. A., Han, H., Johnson, W. D., Martin, C. K., & Newton, R. L. (2013). Modification of the school cafeteria environment can impact childhood nutrition. Results from the Wise Mind and LA Health studies. Appetite, 61, 77–84. doi:10.1016/j.appet.2012.11.002
The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 100,000 public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to
Do you remember your favorite “School Lunch”? I do, I essentially had two favorites; pizza and hamburgers with fries. Think back, wasn’t there at least one school lunch that the lunch ladies made that everyone was so excited to eat. Kids that habitually brought their super hero lunch box with thermos would leave it at home and be in line for pizza or burgers and fries. We could also go back for “seconds”, it was the best meal of the week including what was served at home. The federal government has been involved in the NSLP (National School Lunch Program) since 1946 with the implementation of the National School Lunch Act. These initial programs developed the commodity distribution program for schools, institutions, needy households, summer
As part of her Let’s Move! Initiative and as an honorary chair of the Partnership for a Healthier America, First Lady Michelle Obama will keynote the Building a Healthier Future Summit at the Renaissance down town Hotel. Each year PHA’s Summit brings together nonprofit, government, private sector, philanthropic, and academic leaders to generate innovative solutions that help families and kids lead healthier lives (Partnership). Let’s Move! Was Michelle Obama’s first lead role in an administrative-wide initiative to make progress in reversing the 21st century trend of childhood obesity. In 2010, the First Lady announced this initiative and President Barack Obama followed her lead by creating the Task Force on Childhood Obesity to review all
The United States Department of Agriculture, (USDA), prioritizes school breakfast (Coles, 2000). The School Breakfast Program was just introduced in 1966. When introduced, the program was a temporary measure through the Child Nutrition Act of 1966. The basis for the implementation of this program was to accommodate children in areas where they had long bus rides to school and in areas where many mothers were in the work force.
The children that participated in the study were in kindergarten through fifth grade who selected at least one vegetable as part of the National School Lunch Program. When the program started providing more fruits and vegetables, the students were simply not eating them. If they are not consuming the necessary vitamins and minerals at school, then they are most likely not receiving any at all. For the program to actually work, the children need to be consuming the fruits and vegetables provided.20 When the children do not eat the fruit and vegetables it increase the plate weight. For 1,092 meals, plate waste averaged 35% of entrees.
We want to solve the problem by helping kids and adults each healthier by making healthier lifestyle choices when it comes to eating. We also want to also increase physical activity of children and adolescents. I believe with the proper diet and exercise we can help decrease the obesity issue in this country that has grown so much in the past two decades. These steps are vital to helping prevent childhood obesity and even kids who currently suffer from childhood obesity. Since the 1970’s approximately 15 percent of children and adolescents are now overweight. "Prevent Childhood Obesity-Get Your Kids Moving!" Prevent Childhood Obesity-Get Your Kids Moving!
Childhood obesity is a health problem that is becoming increasingly prevalent in society’s youth. For a number of years, children across the nation have become accustomed to occasionally participating in physical activities and regularly snacking on sugary treats. In result of these tendencies, approximately one third of American children are currently overweight or obese (Goodwin). These grim statistics effectively represent all the lack of adult interference, in regards to health, has done to the youth of America. The habits of over consuming foods and under participating in physical activities are all too common in the children of today. Children cannot solve this issue alone, though. These young people need to essentially be given the opportunities to make positive health decisions and learn about good, nutritional values.