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Childhood obesity united states
Healthier school lunches
Healthier school lunches
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Food for Thought
Look at almost any health statistic comparing the United States with the rest of the world, and you’ll see that we are disease ridden, overweight, and hyped up on sugar. It doesn’t take much time to realize that our unhealthy habits aren’t just a problem for adults, but that the childhood obesity rates as well as childhood diabetes rates are on the rise. In my opinion, this has a lot to do with what we are serving in public school cafeterias across the nation. On the website Fed Up you can see examples of what’s being served; grease laden pizza, grey mystery meat sandwiches, and a host of other barely distinguishable foods. Schools should be a place of nurturing minds, preparing children for their futures, and teaching them how to care for themselves. What our children are being fed though, is not food for thought; it’s food for fodder. With out of control portions, little to no supervision over what they are eating, and nutritionally lacking items, it’s no wonder why America is so unhealthy.
In many countries around the world that serve school lunches, you see a w...
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.
The philosophy of Tae Kwon Do is to build a more peaceful world. To accomplish this goal Tae Kwon Do begins with the foundation, the individual. The Art strives to develop the character, personality, and positive moral and ethical traits in each practitioner. It is upon this "foundation" of individuals possessing positive attitudes and characteristics that the "end goal" may be achieved.
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.
In the United States the daily public school lunch consists of pizza, cheese burgers, Chef Boyardee ravioli, fried chicken fingers, French fries and it gets worse. Most American students hate the lunch that their school provides, which means as soon as they are able to drive, they leave school and go to the nearest fast food restaurant. "Critics say that school lunches contribute to the fattening of the United States." (5) The most controversial argument about US school lunches happened when "David Stockman, Reagan's budget director, proposed classifying ketchup as a vegetable to meet dietary requirements while also slashing costs." (5) Honestly, what's next? American school lunches have to meet the recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines, which obviously is not good enough considering "30% of individuals calories come from fat, and 10% from saturated fat." (5)
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:
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.
The health of future generations must be guarded to insure a thriving country in days to come. Healthy people equals a healthy strong nation. It is vital that we more fully invest in the health of children and help them to learn how to eat well and properly care for their bodies. Serving healthy school lunch is an ideal way to teach children good food habits. Also,we must at least hold school cafeterias to the same safety standards required by restaurants. Serving unsafe food also can lead to sickness and possible death. We must do better. We can look to other nations for examples on how to incorporate healthy lunches and how to fund them. We can be better. We must do better! If other nations that do not enjoy as much overall wealth as we do can feed well balanced healthy meals at school we can to. We
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 ...
I very much enjoyed watching the series Misunderstood Minds. There were a variety of different students with disabilities that caught my attention and inspired me to teach special education. Each child in the series taught me something new about special education.
To conclude, unhealthy foods in the cafeteria and the vending machines are the worst examples for the kids to maintain the healthy eating habits. Us Parents have to step in to make changes for our kids because in doing so would determine what kind of foods our kids are consuming. We do know for facts they are not getting the proper nutrients while in school, although they do spend in average of eight to 12 hours in schools. We, the parents, can start to make a difference, by attending the school meetings and being active in our kids functions in schools.
Kids are not getting enough nutrition during their lunch because of the poor food choices served in schools. Perhaps, kids choose poor foods because over $4.6 billion dollars is spent marketing those foods to them (Children and Fast Food). The school lunch foods contain high amounts of saturated fat, salt, and sugar. When kids eat the school lunch items in excess amounts, it can cause weight gain, memory loss, and slow brain development (Children and Fast Food). The poor choices made during the day may be contributing to an increase in childhood obesity. The National Institute of Health stated that 25 percent of children are overweight; the figure has nearly doubled since the 1960’s (Beaver). Schools are trying to address the issue by enforcing strict new food policies. For example, a school in Ontario will forbid all fast-food and will required eighty percent of all meals to consists of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthy options (The State Has No Place in the Lunch Bags of a Nation). Although some schools have organic choices and have made changes to their menus, kids prefer to eat burgers, pizza, and other fat-filled foods. If the nation is going to shift this negative momentum, school administrators need to take a serious look at the issue, which may be more complex than it seems on the
But, Children don’t have many choices of what they can eat at lunch. Students have to choose between a greasy pizza, bean burrito, or greasy pancake looking hamburger most of the time. If the economy paid more attention to schools and making the future generations healthy it would give the kids of today a lot better chances against things like bullying and etc. For example, a result of childhood obesity is bullying, bullying leads to depression and possible suicide. If Americans really wanted to make the world a better and healthier place they should start with the kids, they are going to rely on in the future. Hopefully the United States will finally take this step to make this land of the free, free and healthy then in the end,
The amount of people with obesity has multiplied since the 1970s. ¨the percentage of children with obesity in the united states has more than tripled since the 1970s. Today about one in five school-aged children has obesity¨ (¨Childhood¨). School lunches need to be more healthier to help the rate of obesity, of school-aged kids, decrease. The amount of calories a day a child should consume is about 2,200 calories, which is just about two times larger than an average school lunch. ¨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¨ (¨Childhood¨). Schools do not have enough nutrients in their lunches to be known as a healthy lunch. ¨Nutrition is important, it helps our bodies and brains grow and develop into the way that they are supposed to, Schools claim that they offer the nutrients in foods, but according to an online study 15 percent of 13-15 year old girls are obese and 14 percent of 13-15 year old boys are obese and schools can be at blame for that¨ (¨Reduce¨). Schools should take action on making sure that their students get a healthy lunch while at school, and that is free from trans and saturated
In the United States 20.1 million free lunches are served annually to children living 130% at or below the poverty line. This means low income students who eat reduced or free lunch aren’t getting the nutrition they need. According to research done by The University of Michigan Health System in Ann Arbor, people who eat school lunch have higher cholesterol or LDL (low-density lipoprotein). The study also shows that kids who eat school lunches are more likely to not eat the proper servings of fruit and vegetables, be overweight or obese, as well as not participate in physical activity. For many children free school lunches are the only lunches they get in a week. Even though schools have lost up to $30,000 dollars in attempting to make healthier free lunches, their problems may be solved by cutting a small portion of the budget from each other program. To sum up, low income students aren’t getting their needed nutrition through junk food filled school
Brody states,”Schools that introduce healthful foods in the classroom have shown that they are more likely to be eaten in the lunchroom and at home,”(Brody, 2011). If students are educated about healthier foods, they will realize that if they constantly eat unhealthy foods, they can potentially become obese. As a result, they may become diabetic. Brody uses a quote from Dr. Gortmaker,”’Marketing of food and beverages is associated with increasing obesity rates and is especially effective among children,’”(Brody, 2011). Foods and beverages such as chips and sodas are marketed towards children so the children should know this and be aware of the companies that are trying to make money off of selling obesogenic foods to children. Students should prevent themselves from wanting junk food all day because it's advertised to them specifically. Students should know the basics of why unhealthy foods are bad for them and companies selling the food advertise their unhealthy foods to