School Lunches
“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.
“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...
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...ars of school. Once kids eat their lunches they normally want to go run around and use some of that energy from the food so they can concentrate better in class. It is also a good thing to require because school gym is the only exercise most teens and children get throughout the day. It helps cut the growing rate of diabetes and obesity. Sports are also a good way to stay active and healthy. Not only are you constantly moving and getting tons of exercise, but sports teams normally offer a good healthy snack after games such as peanut butter crackers and juice boxes or nutrition bars and bottled water. It all makes a huge difference in the development of children and teens. If we take these small steps to change, we can easily redirect the lives of children and teens health. Having more nutritious lunches can have a positive impact on the health of American teens.
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.
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...
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:
Since the fast food industry is targeting America’s youth, providing healthier options on children’s menus will reduce the rate of childhood obesity and allow for a healthy future.
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 ...
Moreover, the controversy over cafeteria food is whether or not it is healthy for all students from elementary schools to colleges. Numerous factors lead to unhealthy eating in schools and on campuses. Sometimes options with better nutrition are offered, but when there are, they tend to be less appealing than the unhealthy foods which turns to obesity. Many schools are undergoing budget cuts and changes, and healthy food tends to take a back burner when deciding where the limited amounts of money should go (Gupta). Unfortunately, when schools do have healthy ingredients, the food is usually prep...
The students of our school should rally together and hang the cooks in the Cafeteria. Well, maybe that is a little too dramatic, but something has to be done about the school lunch. The stuff that they serve the students is truly awful. Students should not be forced to eat in the cafeteria because the meals are not prepared well, there are foreign objects in the deserts, and many kids have gotten ill after eating certain items.
They say school lunches are not meant to satisfy all the needs of all the students. That they are meant only to feed the students, just enough, so that they can continue their learning without losing concentration if those students did not come prepared with their own food. But, what if there was another way to get home cooked meals, even if you didn’t come prepared? What if there was a better way? “We all want to eat good food.
2 out of 3 middle school student 's are obese or overweight due to eating the school lunches regularly. Based on the Unhealthy school lunches stats released by experts, kids who eat school lunches can have high cholesterol or LDL kids who bring their lunches with them have a lower chance of having high and bad cholesterol.This is important to middle schools where children become more independent. The choice that kids make about their eating habits at home and at school will expand and continue eating as much as they already have been going through life. People who eat school lunches are more likely to become obese. The student 's that eat two or more servings a day, like hot dogs or chicken daily, that will become a fatty meal. Student 's who eat 2 servings less of fruit everyday will not be healthy. One-third of all kids in the United States is obese or overweight. That means they are at a high risk of diabetes and heart attack when they get old. Student 's who eat
In the past decade, teens in America have disregarded their healthy state due to lack of eating habits and exercise. However, teens are not to blame for becoming obese. Because of stress, depression, social pressure, and their grandparent's eating habits, it can be the key factors for teen obesity. As a result, schools can be the change in a teen's life by encouraging healthier eating habits.
Junior High and high school have multitudinous differences compared to each other. Some of those differences are: more work in classes, better lunches, and instructions in school. However, the differences can help you succeed in high school. Having more work in high school is a substantial difference compared to Junior High. I do hate the amount of imperative work that I’m faced with now, but I am however able to finish it.
The very first meal of the day is often referred to as the most important one. While this may hold true nutritionally, it is not ideal for social and emotional connections of the family. Multiple studies have been done to show the positive effects of breakfast consumption on young people, including one study in 2011 that specifically examined the effects on adolescents (Cooper). Cooper’s study took a sample of 60 children in 8th grade and 36 children in 10th grade from 5 different schools and randomly placed them into two different groups where one group was served breakfast at school and the other was not (2011, p.432). They were tested 15 minutes after eating breakfast on their mood and cognitive functions.
Eating the right foods is a very important for us to maintain a healthy body. So, why is it vital for us to make sure our students eat the right meals at school? This question has many answers and not enough solutions, but two major problems is the lack of both proper nutrient and healthier food choices. There are changes being made to improve to our schools and lunch programs, known as the National School Lunch Program (NSLP), to increase access to healthier food choices and changing the serving requirements so students can get the right intake of proper nutrients. Why are the changes are suddenly being made, exactly? I am here to inform about the new changes to schools’ lunches and breakfast are being made to decrease child obesity, introduce
Teenagers today have been introduced to convenience foods. Everybody will look for an easy way out once in a while, but these teens are taking that route too often with their diets. The increasing popularity of fast food restaurants makes the consumption of high fat and high cholesterol foods very enticing. Teens today have very unhealthy eating habits and this is causing increasing weight and an increase in eating disorders. The parents of these teens are influential on these habits. The average middle age person is twenty pounds over weight. The children of these people follow in their footsteps as the youth of America becomes increasingly obese. In thirty years the eating habits of young people have changed drastically for the worse. This gives a very grim outlook on the future of our country.
Getting something to eat from a convenience store or a fast food restaurant is an everyday thing for most teenagers. For breakfast it’s a sugar covered donut, for lunch: a bacon cheeseburger from a fast food restaurant near the school, and for dinner: mom’s homemade 4 cheese casserole! A typical day for an unhealthy teen! Today’s teens are not getting enough nutrients; most teens rather not eat then have fruit or vegetables. Which is a very bad idea because it will have an effect on you later down the road; making better choices and looking at how healthy food actually is, can stop: obesity, diabetes, cancer and heart problems. Adolescents need a more fit diet, it will help now and when our body most needs it in the future.