Applying the Background and Methodology of the Research Process to Problems in Healthcare

Obesity can often be the consequence of living in a household that instill unhealthy eating habits. Schools can be a positive influence on teens early in life so that obese teens can lead into their adult lives with healthier habits. With these healthier habits, they may likely have more energy to become positive influences in others lives to be healthy and be able to do more. If schools can make such an impact on students’ lives, they should try, even if they needed to sacrifice extra money or instructional time. In 2007, there was a study that only one fifth of high school students had eaten fruits and vegetables at least five times a day in a week (Wexler, 2010). While it is unreasonable to force someone to eat these foods, if they are regularly offered as part of school lunches, students may eat them if they have finished the rest of their lunch and are hungry. Schools should be encouraged to even add fruits and vegetables to vending machines for healthier options.

One of the most controversial issues today is the question of how to address childhood obesity. Because of the large proportion of meals that children, particularly low-income children, consume in schools, cafeteria food has been targeted by dietary reformers as in need of a major overhaul. However, while many different types of new school menus have been proposed, the extent to which healthier foods can be offered remains controversial. Opponents to reform state that children will not eat healthier lunches, and that changing the food that children eat will have minimal impact, since the children will either bring food from home or eat food at home that is more 'kid friendly.'

Childhood obesity is a serious health issue currently affecting America’s population. School lunches have gained a spotlight in the search for prevention of child obesity because the majority of America’s youth eat two school meals a day during most of the year. Although the nutritional standards of school meals have been changed over the years, there is still room for improvement. With additions such as a la cart and vending machines, school meals quickly fall from the federal nutrition standards. As children grow they spend an average of 7 hours a day at school over half of the year. With almost 95% of America’s children attending school, it is one of the most stable and influential aspects of their life. With so much of a child’s time spent

According to National Heart Lung and Blood institute, in America, 1 in 6 kids are obese. Although obesity might not seem that much of a big deal, it is. Childhood obesity can lead to much worse health problems later in adulthood, such as higher risk of heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, hypertension, and even cancer, among many chronic health issues all caused by obesity. Many kids get about half of their daily calories at school, and for some, school is where they get all of their daily calories. Since school plays such a big part in affecting the lives of many kids across America, special attention should be shown to nutrition. This can help kids with obesity, as well as kids that don’t have much food at home to eat and only rely on school food. For many poor kids, they don’t have a lot of healthy foods at home, because they can’t afford it. So, they rely on cheap school food for their vitamins and nutrients. Because cafeteria foods, like hamburgers or beef and cheese nachos, are highly processed and filled with unnecessary fat ,those kids that rely on school for food won’t get the nutrients and vitamins they need and will go home hungry. Since kids are growing up, it is especially important for them to get the right food they need to grow up healthy and strong, and in a place full of kids that are growing up, it is only right to provide them with good and healthy food that will allow the kids to grow up into healthy adults without obesity, malnourishment, or any kind of health

Therefore, modifying the Healthy Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 is a great start to meeting the needs of a more diverse student body. In deciding to keep the program the same, active and athletic students leave school undernourished everyday. Consequently, students not receiving their nutritional needs could also quench their hunger with unhealthy alternatives. For example, they could choose to visit a gas station before a sport practice to get through the practice. A healthy lunch program is ineffective if, in effect, it causes students to consume more unhealthy alternatives. Overall, this either causes undernourished students or students indulging in unhealthy alternatives. Neither of these is a good outcome for the students health, it would more effective to offer a second serving of healthier food during

Being the petty teenager I am, I decided to research the weaknesses revolving around America's current public school lunch program after getting into an argument regarding the healthfulness of school meals. I was called a picky eater for virtually refraining school meals from entering my diet for the past few years, whereas I concluded that a majority of my peers would agree that our school lunch program is far from desirable. To support my claim, I began to research school lunches and its correlation to child obesity. I also went into detail on the impact of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and how governmental mandates have shaped our system. However, I also discussed the unhealthy and wasteful mindset about food our children obtain and carry from their experiences as a student. Finally, I critiqued the school meal programs of other modern countries to help point out possible approaches to fixing the system.

With the incidence of childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease continuing to climb, it is understandable that concerned individuals searching for effective methods of reversing this trend would target school lunches. Children consume up to half of their daily calories during school, but the government has not yet placed any limitations on the sugar content of their meals. When viewed generally, the implementation of restrictions on the amount of sugar in school meals appears to be the universal solution to combatting childhood health problems, but in practice it cannot be feasibly implemented in Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula Borough School District. Although sugar is a major factor contributing to the declining health of the adolescent

a) The motivation is to convince the readers that school lunches have become healthier as to erase the perception that cafeteria food is terrible. As well, these statistics are being used to determine if healthier school lunches "will help ease the obesity epidemic among the nation's children." This study was done as to determine the influence of school lunches on the obesity epidemic and to show whether the government has taken the right approach to lower obesity rates or need to take a different approach.

Increasing fruit consumption in school lunchrooms could be as simple as offering smaller-sized pieces that children can easily hold, bite, and chew (T. Baranowski, 1999, N. Bonnhoff, 2002). This ties into the larger project of evaluating the environmental strategies the school employs to encourage healthy eating and observes if such a strategy actually increases the consumption of fruit at the school lunchrooms. Similar evaluations can be used to asses if vegetable, milk or whole grain consumption is increasing and this can help answer some of the larger scale issues around obesity in the Ravenswood City School District. Scaling up this type of evaluation can further investigate whether a bite size fruit portions or strategic serving of vegetables might improve fruit and vegetable consumption in other places, such as companies, hospitals, and senior living homes. It also offers opportunity for policy change in the way the myplate guidelines are presented to children and schools can take steps to make fruits and vegetables more enticing to children.

Nationally, about 17% of people under the age of 20, about 12.5 million are considered obese. School districts that serve students food that are high in calories and fat are to blame for the growing numbers of obese children. Although school lunches provide students food at minimal costs, the poor quality of food served delivers inadequate nutrition and is responsible for the rising numbers of obese minors in the United States. In order to combat this growing problem, school districts must limit student choices in the lunchroom and provide healthier food nationally. Although some school districts may argue this, it is necessary to do so as school districts in Pennsylvania and Mississippi and university studies support this claim.

Schools lunches are not healthy as it causes childhood obesity. Obesity is an unrelenting health problem nationally. Obesity is a problem among adults and children. Research shows that 30 percent of adults are obese and 16 percent of children ages 6-19 years old are obese. One contributing factor to childhood obesity is that children spend majority of the day at school and consume more than half of their daily calorie intake there. All public schools are funded by the National School Lunch Program which annually provides $6.1 billion in total cash payments to local schools^ and an additional $4.7 billion in in-kind surplus food commodities Such as fruit juices and peanut butter(Schanzenbach 685). Obesity can lead to diabetes cancer and other health problems. Schools don’t want to make changes by replacing the bad food with healthier options because they will lose revenue and they don’t want that.

Healthier school lunches will help to stop the ever-growing percentage of obese children. According to the CDC, or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, obesity is caused when more energy is consumed than energy burned. This means that the heavy, caloric lunches that are being served across the nation are too sugary and lead to obesity. Healthier school lunches also mean that purchasable sugary snacks will have to disappear to keep students as healthy as possible. Moreover, a YRBS (Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance) survey was conducted every other year since 2003. Since 2005, states such as Oklahoma, Nebraska, Delaware, and New Mexico have had a rapid increase of obese teens. Oklahoma’s teen obesity rate rose 2% between 2005 and 2015,

Childhood obesity is one of the nation’s public health main challenge: About one third of children and adolescents (ages 6 to 19) are determined as overweight or obese, and more than one in six that group are determined to be obese in United States. As most people do not understand the difference between overweight and obesity, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases identifies this disparity—overweight refers to an excess amount of body weight that may come from muscles, bone, fat, and water while obesity refers to an excess amount of body fat. A 2010 study of 1003 southeastern Michigan sixth-grade students astonishingly revealed that those who ate school lunches had more 29 percent probability to be obese than those who ate their own home-made lunches. From that research, we can foresee the relation between obesity and school lunch program(approaches) as school lunch program usually offers low-nutritious food for its cheaper price. Therefore, in my paper, I would like to argue about the current American school lunch approaches which indirectly cause the childhood obesity should be re-evaluated through the comparison of school lunch systems between US and Japan, which has one of the lowest obesity rate in the world.

Federally-funded school meal programs, including the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP), serve an average of 31.3 million lunches and 11.1 million breakfasts per day at a cost to the country of $11.1 billion in 2011 (Food & Nutrition Services, 2012). These federally-funded meals are an excellent opportunity for regulation of nutrition as well as education regarding healthy choices. Obesity is clearly a great threat to the health of our nation, and the federal government must step in to defend its citizens against this growing threat. Children are at the mercy of their families, their social conditions, and their schools, predisposing them to obesity through poor nutritional options and a lack of education; the federal government must intervene through regulation of school meals and snacks to protect children from the abundance of unhealthy options while also educating them and reducing childhood obesity.

First, the selling of junk food in schools increases obesity in students. Authors Lee and Sprague wrote that “The American Obesity Association estimates that 15 percent of children between six and nineteen suffer from obesity.” (4). That statistic is alarming because it deals with only a thirteen year age range between the children. Diet is the most easily identified cause of obesity and most likely the source of behavioral change (Lee and Sprague 8). Since diet is one of the main causes of obesity, a healthier diet at school can help decrease the rate of obesity. Research shows that “Adolescents in states with strict laws regulating the sale of snacks and sugary drinks in public schools gained less weight over a three-year period than those living in states with no such laws, a new study has found.” (Tavernise 1). This research from a study shows that students in states who have stricter laws on the selling of junk food at schools