School Lunches are Preposterous Schools worldwide try to make changes for the better when it comes to the nutritional values of things served at school lunches, or do they? In 2010, Michelle Obama came in to better the school lunches by increasing its nutritional value. Many parents below the middle class line get help from the government to pay for their child’s lunch. Even middle class are having a difficult time paying for lunches. Many students are even coming home hungry because what was being served at school isn’t worth the little money some of them have. Nathaniel Johnson states, “In 2012, diabetes cost U.S. residents $245 billion, and the cost of obesity was estimated at $168 billion in 2010” (web). That means the change for better food got worse from 2010 to 2012. The quality, the amount, and the less amount of access to freshness are the problems with our nation’s diet …show more content…
Before 2010, students were allowed to choose from whatever hot foods line they wanted and the food wasn’t as regulated. Then the government came in to change the school lunches for the better, to make them healthier. But not many students wanted to acclimate to what they are being served. The snack lines became longer and hot lunches unwanted. Shanthy Bowman says, “Adolescence represents a time of increasing autonomy, and teenagers purchase more fast food with their own money” (web). More and more children are buying the food they want rather than what they should be eating and parents are allowing it. Unfortunately, it is creating the problem of spending more for junk food and less on healthy nutritious lunch. Nestle says, “Schools are perfectly capable of producing nutritionally sound foods that taste good and are enthusiastically consumed by students as well as teachers” (256). They can make a change but why would they want to. They choose to believe that school lunches are better for
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.
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...
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...
We all remember that day when President Obama took office, and our school lunches changed forever. First Lady Michelle Obama, felt that too many American kids are overweight, so she thought she needed to make our school lunches healthier, with more fruits and vegetables. One of the major changes she made was how many calories the school cooks were able to give the kids. The new requirements are as follows: up to 650 for children in kindergarten through fifth grade, 700 for sixth through eighth graders and 850 for high scholars. These numbers are consistent with the Mayo Clinic’s recommendations ( Kuczynski-Brown). The main goal of cutting calories and taking away junk food, was to insure that kids are getting served a healthy lunch. At each lunch, schools must still provide a cup of fruit, a cup of vegetables, two servings of grains, two ounces of dairy, and a cup of fluid milk, so that students can get their needed vitamins and nutrients (Anonymous) . They are also wanting more local farmers to be involved, and give more of the food they grow to the school. At the high school I went to, we built a green house, and planted a garden to give us some local grown food. It was part of our Ag Science class. More and more schools are starting to do the same thing. The stats of overweight kids is really high. The guidelines are as follows:
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.
First of all, an increasing amount of kids are becoming overweight because their schools pressure them to eat sugary, fatty, and high-calorie foods. Not only do many schools promote consumption of harmful foods, many schools also actively serve them in school lunches. In 1963, 4% of kids were obese; currently, approximately 17% of kids are obese. Some might argue that kids themselves are the reason for the increase, because school lunches also provide healthier foods. Unfortunately, most kids do not have much of a choice - healthier foods are priced much higher than their unhealthy counterpart, consequently many parents do not want their kids to buy the more expensive, yet healthier product. In my 3½ years ...
“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 average school lunch has about 900 calories, which is about half of the amount of total calories a child should consume daily. Many schools attempt to serve healthy lunches for students, but sometimes they are not aware of what "healthy" is. Other times they do not feel it necessary to spend a large amount of money on healthy food. If schools knew how healthier food would affect a child academically, they might be more inclined to pay. The American government must increase school funding, so that the schools can make this change for the students' benefit. School officials must also look at the percentage of children who are obese, and consider how providing a healthy school lunch will help to lower that number. Healthy school cafeteria food is essential for school aged children in the United States because it will help them pay attention in school, improve their learning capabilities, and minimize childhood obesity.
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 ...
School lunch is an obvious problem that has yet to be fixed. Mark Samuelsson once said, “We struggle with eating healthily, obesity, and access to good nutrition for everyone. But we have a great opportunity to get on the right side of this battle by beginning to think differently about the way that we eat and the way that we approach food.” A well know fact to almost all students and their parents is that there are many problems with school lunches and it needs to change. Not only is school lunch unhealthy, but it also does not taste good most of the time. Some people feel that school lunch is not that big of a deal so it should be very cheaply processed in factories and preserved, but that is not the case. In order to solve the lingering
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.
To begin, school meals do not set a solid foundation for children regarding the diet habits they will have for the rest of their lives. For example, they are teaching kids that greasy pizza and corn dogs are a part of a healthy, nutritious diet. One student says, “We think school lunches are healthy because they have all these posters in the cafeteria telling us to eat healthy food and be active; we think the school is doing their part by serving us healthy food too, but they are not” (Jimenez). Not only do children think that this cheap food is a good choice, but schools also think they are benefiting because of how much money they conserve.
Low-cost meals are not worth the price of the medical bills that are promised to come and it is still very possible for schools to distribute nutritional lunches for an affordable price. It is necessary for legislation to make the change. Furthermore, it is ridiculous that emotional disorder numbers among adolescents have skyrocketed due to the lack body image, which is highly influenced by the way the eat. Therefore, it should be encouraged for schools to improve their meals, but that is only going to be achieved if a series are strict laws are placed, limiting calorie, sugar, fat, carbohydrate, pesticide, and other chemical intake. Lastly, Americans have always focused on exams and performance in a classroom environment, but they ignore the fact that what students eat, highly influence their performance. Ergo, increased meal funds would only benefit different school systems, through increased academic accomplishment rates. Although it is a grueling process to pass new regulations, it is vital for all students that school meals be improved in order to protect their physical and mental
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
One reason our school should get a new lunch menu is many students do not like the food served. For example, a survey was taken and of the 31 students 100% said they disliked the food. As student Bryan Huang said, “The lunches are horrible, they need better choices and more choices.” In other words, the food is not delicious and there are not many choices. Also, when children don’t get proper nutrition they have trouble focusing in school. Most students do not buy lunch because they feel it is unappealing and do not like the food served. Many students go to other kids and ask for food. In addition, many students do not eat breakfast so they rely on lunch to fuel them for the day. But, if they do not like the food served they won’t eat so they starve for the rest of the school day, which can