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Essay on unhealthy school lunch
Childhood obesity united states
Childhood obesity assignment
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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 ...
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...ut food and its nutritional information, both good and bad.
Works Cited
Christie, Kathy. “Stateline: Even Students Are What They Eat.” The Phi Delta Kappan 84.5 (2003): 341-342. PDF file.
Kalafa, Amy. Lunch Wars: How to Start a School Food Revolution and Win the Battle for Our Children's Health. New York: Jeremy P. Tacher/Penguin, 2011. EBook Reader.
Levine, Susan. School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print.
"National School Lunch Act." Poverty and the Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009. Credo Reference. Web. 21 January 2014.
"School Meals." fns.usda.gov. N.p., n.d. Web. 02 Feb. 2014.
Wu, Sarah. Fed up with Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth about School Lunches--and How to Change Them! San Francisco, CA: Chronicle, 2011. E
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.
This documentary takes a look at how our school’s lunch programs and government play a role in the spread of obesity across the nation. The film really attempts to drive home the idea that our children are being immorally brainwashed into wanting unhealthy foods. At some points of the film, it appears that the director uses big companies and school lunches as a scapegoat for our nations crisis. It is a valid point that our nation’s children are being
Since the beginning of time, schools were always a place we could trust. A place where we could send our kid(s) off to without worry of what they may be learning, doing, or eating, but perhaps we should be. As the craving of fast food is growing, so is the demand for it. Some schools have taken advantage of this and brought fast food into their schools, providing it for lunch. A high school in California serves McDonald’s, Subway, and even Quiznos to their students for lunch (Lehmann). The school claims the kids are more likely to buy school food when they see brand foods (n.p.). Schools get money from the National School Lunch Program for every meal they serve, but that money from the government only covers so much (n.p.). To pay the rest of the lunch staff, facilities costs, and food, schools turn to the money they make by selling lunches and breakfast to their students (n.p.). Another school in California has even tried to mimic Round Table, a brand name pizza in their area, with healthier ingredients, but was only able to sell 250-300; when they sold Round T...
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...
The School Lunch Program was first initiated under Section 32 of the Agriculture Act passed in 1935. The law outlined which programs would receive donations of surplus USDA foods, which include but is not limited to: schools, non-profit summer camps, and needy families. It was not until after World War II that the National School Lunch Program was fully developed under the National School Lunch Act of 1946. Signed into power by President Truman, the act provided federal cash support for the nation’s school lunches, as during WWII, the USDA was only able to ship a limited amount of food to schools due to food shortages and transportation issues.
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 who 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 behavior.... ... middle of paper ... ... 1.
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
As an average American student walks down the lunch line they might see whole-grain bread or noodles being tossed on their plate. “Who would want to eat this?” A common question asked by the student when they encounter the reduced calorie meal. Believe it or not, the changes, no matter how unappetizing they may be, were made in interest of the health children across the nation. After her husband was elected President of the United States, Michelle Obama took initiative of her own and started a campaign called “Let’s Move!” The campaign was developed to put a stop to childhood obesity through exercise and nutrition. Besides endorsing exercise to the children of America through commercials and advertisements, this movement included new guidelines that schools across the nation had to follow. This caused controversy between the students and schools and the government that will be covered throughout the essay. This paper is about Michelle Obama’s school lunch guidelines and how they are affecting schools and students across the nation.
It would be a great idea for all schools to switch to an healthier school lunch. They should change it because it will help children focus on test, quizzes, and inside of the classroom when taking notes. The kinds of foods that should be token away is the kids least favorite foods. For example kids will write down the most ten hated school foods served, which ever is the most voted gets token away. Then kids could give options of healthy school lunches to be replaced.
“Would you eat it?” A simple question expressing so much. As most know, and have probably experienced, school lunches are not as high quality as they could be. Though the federal government emplaced many rules and regulations regarding school lunches, the food served, in reality, isn’t healthy, visually appealing or flavorful and should be improved. As a student, it is quite disappointing to see there are no fresh fruit/veggies or good quality food available. “Schools should offer more healthy options, fresh food and less junk food” (Blais). What is being served is impalpable. It all comes back down to the same four word question, “Would you eat it?”.
With the implementation of the “Healthy Kids Hunger-Free Act” schools are not serving as many lunches and participation is decreasing. According to the Government Accountability Office (GOA), “Nationwide, student participation declined by 1.2 million students(or 3.7 percent) from school year 2010-2011 through school year 2012-2013, after having increased steadily for many years”(sec. 1). The school lunches became more distasteful and bland; the combinations of foods did not make sense, and the portion sizes decreased significantly. In order to support the cafeteria
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.
School lunches are a huge problem at school, lunches should be healthier, fresher and students should be able to enjoy them. The school should take action and get more money so they can have a kitchen where the food should be hand made and be able to use fresh products from a local farms.
concerns for American children (Alaimo et al., 2001) because they have been linked with certain