Essay On School Lunches In America

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.

In just the second

paragraph Bittman mentions that he had gotten the opportunity to sit down and talk with Zetta Reicker who is the director of the student nutrition services at Roosevelt Middle School, as well as Kristine A. Madsen, an associate professor at the school of public health, and a few students who ate lunch that said “For institutional food – was better than O.K.”(Bittman par 2) Bittman could have done a bit more in this paragraph by using ethos to build trust with the readers. He mentioned that he had sat down to talk with Madsen and Reicker, but it does not establish credibility that he had talked with them on this subject but he did not offer much subject matter on the topic.
Bittman does a much better job starting the following paragraph by saying “For me, the primary takeaway is that since school food is often times healthier than what many kids get at home, participation is just a matter of economics (the more kids served the more efficient the program), but can have a real impact on kids’ health.”(Bittman par3) Bittman makes a good use of logos with the reasoning that we need to focus on getting more kids to simply participate in the school lunch program.

Obviously if more kids are encouraged to participate then the program will be more effective leading to healthier kids across America. Bittman continues to use the logos appeal by stating “We want kids to be eating school lunches, because those are the only meals most get that are prepared for them according to constantly evaluated and (we hope) ever-improving standards.”(Bittman par 3) Bittman uses this stat to show the importance of making school lunches available for each and every student, because there are many kids out there whose families do not prepare meals for them so the schools need to do a better job of providing

one.
In the next paragraph he explains all of the changes and improvements that have been made over recent years in regard to making school lunches much more acceptable for all students. Bittman says “Access to school lunches has been improved; there was a time where a cash-paying students had more choices than the free-lunch candidate, and now the system in San Francisco is blind to how the lunch is paid for.”(Bittman par4) Bittman uses the logos appeal to show that free-lunch students although, yes they did receive a free meal every day, the selection and quality of those meals were not as good as their cash-paying counterparts. “Food is made available not only in the cafeteria but also outdoors during recess and in the hallways(preventing long cafeteria lines so long kids were getting their food as the next class was starting.”(Bittman par4) He also says “And the food is better; what was once frozen is now prepared fresh.”(Bittman par 4) This is usage of the logos appeal, yet again, by stating the fact that the school system is making actual improvements and adjustments to how not only their food is prepared, but how accessible it is to their students.