Changing School Lunches

The United States as a nation is struggling tremendously with high an outrageous obesity rate. According to the documentary “Weight of the Nation,” obesity is number five out of the ten leading causes of death. The lifestyle in the United States has become a “norm” that has to be changed quickly. It is imperative that we as adults draw into our youth the importance of eating healthy. We as people are in control of our own health and can prevent ourselves from getting chronic diseases such as heart disease, obesity, and diabetes.

Calories, obesity, epidemic―these words flash through daily conversion like wildfire. The American public today is severely concerned with the nation’s growing health problem, as they should be. Recently, the nation’s school lunches have had major renovations due to the alarming increase in childhood obesity. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) has set out to fix the problems concerning nutrition in school lunches. Because the National School Lunch Program is required to follow the most current version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA), school lunches are undergoing massive reform at the cost of students.

To change school lunches you would probably need to have power. Michelle Obama would show you this can be done. She changed lunches to be the way they are which was not meant to go negative. It just seems that the change of school lunches were affected more negatively than positively. Changing school lunches 100% is not what is needed. There does need to be a change though. Schools should watch what they are serving the the students but they could offer more food because no one watches the amount of food we are supposed to eat. We eat until we are full. If school lunches provided more at lunchtime it would be a better deal because students would not be so hungry for the rest of the day. Also, they could let up off the strict diet just a little

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

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,

Imagine if your school cafeteria plans to change your school lunch to a healthy lunch menu. Changing the school lunch menu to a more healthy menu is a bad idea because food will be more expensive, favorite foods will be gone, and students will be unhappy.

In scientific research, it was discovered that children who eat school lunch have a heightened chance of developing obesity. To add more, only 6% of schools monitor the USDA guidelines for school lunches. This results in many schools essentially having unhealthy school lunches that could enlarge the chances for obesity. As a student, this prominently shocks me due to the fact the food that I consume practically every day could affect my health. Although the percentage amongst chances of obesity by school lunch and without school lunches are low, it still could affect us in the future and may lead to a disease,” Recent data shows that while an estimated 30.6 million US students eat school lunches, only 6% of school lunch programs meet the nutritional requirements established by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Moreover, Dr. J. Axe, (2012), also, substantiates the correlation between childhood obesity with deficient school lunch menus, with statistics relating that students who repeatedly ate school lunches demonstrated 29% likelihood to portray obese tendencies than students bringing lunches from their home environment. Thus, offering nutritionally sound school menus is a significant strategy for the reversal of the childhood obesity epidemic and disorders associated with

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.

By expanding the number of these schools, it is speculated that childhood obesity levels in the United States would drop significantly from the 30% it is today (Cooper, 2010). By doing so, the future generation of the United States would also be less likely to contract other diseases later on in life, like diabetes and hypertension (Union of Concerned Scientists, 2016). Schools that exceeded the USDA’s nutritional standards were 12.3% less likely to have obese students, while school that did not meet these guidelines were twice as likely. Additionally, states that had more strict meal standards and assisted meal plans were home to lighter students. (Sifferlin, 2013). Although many claim that stricter lunch standards would lower the number of students participating in these programs (due to less appealing meals, for example), studies have shown that these numbers have not changed, and the number of students participating in the National School Lunch Program is still near 31 million (Sifferlin,

Changing the school lunch would be a poor decision as a result of income loss and the amount of calories we need to consume in a day. Students might start bringing in packed lunches, which could lead to a drop in revenue for schools. Consequently, prices will go up. However, schools require “healthier choices” but it doesn't guarantee a healthy lifestyle for anyone. First, most cafeteria fruits and vegetables aren't fresh, and mostly come frozen, therefore, they are not as high quality as the ones from the market. Therefore, the students will be discouraged to eat these foods. Fruits served during lunch are artificially sweetened to taste better, and while vegetables are great for a healthier lifestyle, it could be undercooked or overcooked,

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.

The obesity rate in the United States is sky-high. Two out of three children are either overweight or obese. Immense use of junk food and soda compounded with the lack of exercise lead the American kids to this dire stage. Because obesity can lead to heart problems and early onset of diabetes, the impacts of this problem are severe if not disastrous. It also costs the US government several millions of dollars every year to provide health care for them. These implications justifies immediately finding remedies to what ails our future generations.

The fast-paced lifestyle of Americans today results in unhealthy frozen T.V. dinners and take-out meals. In present day society, the role of woman and men are virtually equal. With this making both the mother and father of families busy, there is little time for home cooked meals. A hardy breakfast is replaced with sugary pop-tarts, hand packed lunches is replaced with money for fast food, and frozen T.V. trays take the place of a healthy dinner. These foods may all taste good, but they are not healthy. By giving children lunch money, the children are having the choice to buy whatever foods they please. It could be easily assumed that a child would choose a candy bar, chips, and a soda over a school lunch. Again, the children are not the only ones to be blamed here. The parents need to take time to guide their children towards what food is healthy and what food is unhealthy. By taking a little more time out of the day and making healthier food choices, the rate of childhood obesity could slow down, if not stop altogether.

Prior to the nineties our youth looked proportioned to their age groups. Today many students are as large as their adult counterparts. It seems like the days are gone when children eat a healthy meal before or while at school. In many cases schools are within close proximity to fast food restaurants; therefore in this busy and lazy society parents often choose to grab something quick before or after school. In some cases fast food has completely replaced home cooked meals. Unfortunately, this kind of diet is loaded with calories and fat, which is leading to a stunning rate of youth obesity. This lifestyle pattern along with the lack of exercise must be remedied because our youth are rapidly becoming the most obese and unhealthy age group.