Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act

Established in 2010, the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act revised the National School Lunch Program’s policies ensuring that children receive a nutritious lunch in school. These changes included offering fruits and vegetables, whole-grain foods, low-fat dairy products and limit calories, saturated fat and sodium (Fisk). Studies show that many children benefit greatly from well-balanced meals during the day.

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.'

Everyone loves the idea of a government that truly cares about him or her. Especially a government that would go so far as to layout a healthy diet plan to insure the health of your children and to battle childhood obesity. It is great that the government is concerned about adolescent obesity and the nutrition students receive at school. However, the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) Food and Nutrition Guidelines provide more problems for schools and they need to be eradicated, as well as repealing the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

The Hunger-free kids act is a nutrition program that provides all children with healthy food in school and to low income families. Because of this act schools are playing a larger role in children’s health. Included in this legislation other programs that focus on hunger has come into play such as: Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Woman, Infants and Children (WIC), Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP), Summer Food Service Program, After School Meal Program and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed). The programs under the Hunger-free kids act do not have a specific expiration date however,

Will The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act recently signed into law on December 13, 2010 by President Barack Obama be able to deliver healthier meals in the schools nutrition programs or will the bill overwhelm struggling school districts with additional unfunded mandates? Schools confront difficult issues on a daily basis that affect the learning ability of their students: struggling economic conditions, students from poor families, increased food insecurity across the country, and constant pressures to increase student performance. Providing healthy meals for children, who otherwise would eat poorly or not at all, is a necessity that our country has recognized and planned for many decades. Two measures authorized

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 was passed in order to reauthorize child nutrition programs. It provides funding and sets policy for nutrition programs such as the National School Lunch Program, the School Breakfast Program, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Each local agency that participates in the National School Lunch Program or other federal child nutrition program is required by law to establish a local school wellness policy for all schools under its jurisdiction.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the federal Healthy, Hungry-Free, Kids Act 2010 (Public Law: 111-296), provide an overview of the literature, discuss the implementation process, evaluate the policy, and provide explanations for continued support, or provide rationale on why the program should end. The Healthy, Hunger-Free, Kids Act (HHFKA) currently awaits re-authorization, and funding by Congress. The HHFKA was originally included in the Congressional reauthorization process, of the original 1966 Child Nutrition Act, (CNA) which establishing several nutrition programs for school aged children. The CNA was introduced as part of President Johnsons’ “war on poverty” (Matthews, 2014). The Healthy, Hungry-Free, Kids Act 2010, set new

Ever since Obama has come into office school lunches have become healthier and more satisfying for the students of the country. The Obama administration has worked very hard to make school lunches both healthy and appealing. The, Healthy Hunger Kids Act of 2010 required the USDA to make significant nutrition improvements in school meals, as well as to improve the overall excellence of foods at schools. Proponents of the program, such as, Michelle Obama say that the 524 schools that have withdrawn amount to a drop in a bucket compared to the other 100,000 schools nationwide that are participating in the program.

The passage of Healthy, Hunger, Free, Kids Act of 2010, mandated all educational entities who are participating in the National School Lunch Program and/or the School Breakfast Program to meet expanded local school wellness policy requirements provided in section 204 in HHFKA of 2010 (Federal Register, 2014). Provisions included in HHFKA of 2010 established new content for school wellness policies, ensuring stakeholder participation in development of new policies, requiring assessment, compliance, and reporting on the progress of local school wellness policies. Additionally, new rules would require Local Educational Agencies (LEA) to implement and provide new polices for marketing

One of the expectations of this Act is improving nutrition and focusing on reducing childhood obesity. By doing that it gives the USDA the authority to set nutritional standards for all the foods that are regularly sold in school during the day; including any school stores, vending machines, specialty items, etc. In addition, this Act builds on the work that the USDA has started to develop nutritional quality of commodity foods that schools get from the USDA, and use in their breakfast and lunch programs. Providing additional funding to schools that meet updated nutritional standards for federally subsidized lunches.

The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was passed in 2012, in order to counteract rising childhood obesity rates. Creators of these requirements specifically targeted schools. There are several specific examples of the way schools struggle to meet these demands from a variety of sources. In the article, “Why Some Schools Serve Local Foods And Others Can’t (Or Won’t),” Katherine Ralston, a USDA economist is cited as stating“[t]he biggest barriers to going local --- [...] lie in the details; contract requirements, paperwork and a difference in the scale of need at the school and production on the farm” (McMillan). Another article written by Alexandra Sifferlin, published in TIME and titled “Why Some Schools Are Saying ‘No Thanks’ to the School-Lunch Program” explains that “[...] schools are dropping out of the healthier school-lunch program because they [… can not] afford to participate [...Because] Kids […are not] buying the better-for-them options in the cafeteria”. With all the legislation passed and community efforts, it would seem that school lunches would be serving the optimum amount of healthy nutritional foods; however, in countless cafeterias across the country that is not the case. Long before all the controversy surrounding school lunchrooms, the National School Lunch Act of 1964 was passed for one simple purpose, to feed hungry children. According to Emelyn Rude, a graduate of Harvard majoring in Social Studies and a writer for Time, a

Many kids around the world often play outside with each other; whether that be at a playground or in a back yard. Though, in America, the majority of young people own some type of electronic. Instead of burning calories playing outside, kids decide waste their energy playing games on their devices. According to the USA Today, “One of every three children in the United States is overweight or obese”(USA Today). With the population constantly growing, and the kids getting lazier and lazier, the numbers of obese children is only going to increase. The government can help America by changing kid’s diets. The only way the government can manage what kids consume is through school. Changing school’s lunch menus will be a great start, since many schools in the United States do not provide nutritious meals, In fact, the University of Washington asked a handful of middle schools and high schools to participate in a study. The study compared the meal standards before and after menu changes. The professors then calculated the meal standards using the meals’ adequacy ratio (MAR) and concluded, “The nutritional quality increased by nearly 30%, from a MAR of 58.7 before the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act to 75.6 after implementation”(Chen). The scientists achieved this drastic increase to the meals’ adequacy ratio just by providing a healthy variety of foods and reducing portion sizes.

encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other food, by assisting the States in providing an adequate supply of foods and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation, and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs”.1

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.

After observing the latest statistics on the current generation of children in America, Michelle Obama setup the Nutritional Standards in the National School Breakfast Program, which set out to provide healthier meals to children everyday through the school (“USDA Unveils Historic Improvements to Meals Served in America’s Food”). This was what seemed like just the change the country needed to turn the tide in the fight against childhood obesity. This