Healthy Lunches In Schools Research Paper

Childhood obesity is when a child is well overweight for his or her age. One of the main causes are dietary patterns. According to the Center of Disease and Control Prevention, almost half of the United States middle and high schools advertise foods with high sugars, fats and salts. In addition to that, they also have a high calorie count. This makes it very difficult for students to make healthy choices. The first large school lunch project began in Boston high schools in 1894. Ever since then the government has claimed that they have been providing nutritious lunches for students. Between 1894 and 1977….. but in 1977 according to food timeline, America’s school lunches are the reflection of student’s food habits. The general accounting officer argues that, “The government subsidized school lunch served to 25 million American School Students may be harmful to their health”. This means that the unhealthy meals that are served to our students are not nutritious. He also argues that it creates sustenance for some of our children but it may lead to obesity in others due to the large portion sizes and the decrease amount of supplemental nutrients. Because America has cut spending on school lunches, they have only been able to provide a limited amount of healthy options to schools. Over time the quality of nutrition has went down and now we are at the point where we have no choice but to take action on

The harsh stereotypes of cafeteria food and negative connotations of assumedly horrible lunch ladies are as old and traditional as the American school system itself. Interestingly, the concept of the school lunch is one that has been revolutionized over and over to fit the needs of American youth. The overarching program that oversees and occasionally refurbishes the American schooltime meal is the National School Lunch Program, put on through the United States Department of Agriculture. In 2012 this program provided over 30 million children meals that were nutritionally sensible as well as fiscally responsible (United States Department of Agriculture, 2013), frequently offering these meals at reduced or no cost to children otherwise unable to afford them. In addition to keeping costs low to accommodate low-income students, the National School Lunch program has found that it must also balance an increase in highly-nutritious foods to battle childhood obesity, with the task of appeasing the increasingly picky eaters that comprise American youth. It is within the realm of trying to strike this precarious and delicate balance that the National School Lunch Program has created the problem of children refusing the nutrients they are being provided, therefore wasting insurmountable amounts of food and learning incredibly unhealthy nutritional habits along the way.

About 220 billion lunches have been served since President Truman’s signing of the National School Lunch Act in 1946. However, according to the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine study, about 36% of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight and 20% are obese. The rate of obesity has risen since the 1940’s, but school lunch has made revisions to create meals to be healthier and more nutritionally dense for the child. Research has shown overweight people are only becoming more overweight and normal weight people are staying the same or developing healthier lifestyle

The food that is served at schools has too much fat. You don’t want to be fat do you? People bully others that are fat. This is why we need healthy lunch! If we don’t start getting healthy lunches, we are going to have to start packing our lunches. School lunch contains fat vitamins.

Logic suggests school lunches should be changed. While they may taste good, many choices in school cafeterias are unhealthy, or high in calories. In fact, many school districts don’t follow codes for school lunches made by the government, making them high in fat, carbohydrates and sugar content. As a result, American children who eat unhealthy meals at school will make the same unhealthy choices later in life as adults. In 2012, the U.S. Government updated the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs or NSLP (Angela). This set of standards stated that going forward, school lunch programs had to count fruits and vegetables as separate meal groups, offer fruit every day, make half of grain choices whole grains, offer different meal

In many schools around the country, high school lunch is off-putting to students. The government has set many laws in place, to improve nutrition where it is lacking in many schools across America. Where the meal adjustment lowered the calories of the meals, it has created deficiencies in important nutrients that are necessary for students of all ages to learn to the best of their ability. Often, many students also find the lunch unpleasant, and unsatisfying. Many researchers, and authors have all gathered a wide collection of evidence that all supports problems with lunches found in American schools throughout the country.

If students ate healthier school lunches, it would result in healthier food choices at home. Children who are provided with sugary, fatty foods at school can develop poor eating habits at home. School lunches that provide more calories than a child needs to maintain their body weight can lead to weight gain and obesity. Overeating can not only compromise the child's health, but lead to health problems in the future. Children who are overweight have increased risks of developing health problems and become obese adults. Healthy lunches with appropriate portions can help support a healthy

Therefore we need to change the school lunch system even if we would spend a bit more money on school lunches.As a result, we would offer healthier and satisfying school lunches. It would only cost about $5 per child and annually about $27 billion dollars,it may sound to be a costly price. In response to that,there would be an immense outcome of benefits,such as lessening obesity and kids would be able to focus more in school because they would be obtaining healthier school lunches. Proven by researchers' children can process and learn more accurately by eating nutritious meals,unfortunately current lunch meals can not help improve that. Also,several kids are only able to get their meals at school because of financial circumstances.So if it was possible to have nutritious lunches they would get healthier vitamins and

With obesity, especially among children, increasing in America, the topic of healthier school lunches is a big controversy. Schools all across the country are being forced to choose between healthy lunches and the students’ favorite lunches. Changing school menus is a bad idea. For some students, this could be the only meal he or she receives each day. This may also cause students to bring unhealthier food or skip lunch all together and substitute it with fast food.

School lunches, the fight to provide healthy food for kids at school, is a battle that has been going on for years with little progress. Here at SVMS, precautions have been made to help kids make healthy choices, sugary sodas aren’t sold, candy isn’t available for kids to purchase, and there is a health program that teaches kids about nutrition, but kids can still be found with lunches made completely up of chips and other unnatural food products. I think there is a different approach to helping kids get the proper nutrition, by focusing not so much on the calories and percent of sugar in each food item, but the context of where the food came from, and how the kids attain it.

stated, “Except for smoking, obesity is now the number one preventable cause of death in this country. Three hundred thousand die of obesity each year.” Obesity is a growing problem in our country, and as a result, it has doubled from 1980 and tripled for teenagers. One of the causes of obesity is the choices for school lunches. For example, schools offer pizza, burgers or a sandwich, with little nourishment but should include healthy options such as salads with oil and vinegar or a burger with veggies instead of fries. The latest data shows the childhood obesity rate from two to nineteen years old is 18.5 percent (State of Obesity.org). The first National School Lunch Act was passed in 1946 by Congress because it away to boost the well-being and health of the Nation’s children who were malnourished in the Great Depression. As a result, school lunches are a significant contributor in our youth becoming obese, along with a sedentary lifestyle, socioeconomic status, genetics and lack of income. Salad bars in all schools serving low-calorie dressings, lean meats, fruit, and vegetables would help kids reduce their chances of health issues. Furthermore, revisions to the policy from a fast food concept to healthy lunches would benefit kids in numerous ways. Similarly, healthy food equals healthy students both physically and psychologically, while putting the power back in the hands of the parents making decisions instead of companies like Schwan Corporation.

Schools should serve healthier lunches to benefit both the students and the schools. It benefits both the school and the students because eating healthy can improve academic performance. The students academic performance helps the school look good. Students who don't eat health tend have a hard time concentrating in class and don't

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.

Although there may be less fats and calories, students are unhappy with the smaller portions and more expensive prices. So many kids, in fact, that students will bring lunches from home, or even leave campus to purchase food from fast food restaurants. If students have so many options outside of the school lunch program, what is the purpose in enforcing such a strict program? While there are good intentions behind the idea, there needs to be a better way to improve the diets of students in public schools.

There needs to be some sort of regulation imposed on school lunches, in order to fight the growing obesity epidemic. Many people disagree with this statement, and have their own thoughts on the matter. The National School Lunch Act was passed in 1946 by President Harry Truman. All over the country, school districts joined lunch programs designed to feed children at free or reduced prices. In doing so, school districts had to follow specific guidelines that these programs required. Over the years, these standards have changed increasingly in order to provide children optimal nutrition. While many districts have fully taken advantage and successfully made the turn for the better, others struggle or are taking a little more time in