Universal Free Lunch in Public Schools
Not one parent wants to see their child go hungry. Several students do not eat during their lunch period because they cannot afford it, or unable to bring food from home for many reasons. Most schools offer free and reduced lunch programs. Not every family may be eligible for these programs. In today’s economy, even middle-class families sometimes cannot provide their children with money for school lunches. A child missing a meal, and going hungry is one too many. Funding to provide all students with two meals per day during school is imperative. Free lunch in public school should be available to all students, despite the level of income.
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.
Offering sufficient amounts of nutritious food in schools is more significant than many comprehend. Students who consume full, nourishing meals for breakfast and lunch benefit
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When children do not eat a healthy meal, their concentration and energy become more difficult to manage. The “Journal of School Health” issued a study in 2008 about the eating behaviors of approximately 5,000 school children. The research showed that children who ate more fruits and vegetables, accomplished higher grades on tests compared with children who consumed a high-fat, high-salt diet
In order to maximize our program’s ability to provide nutritious meals and snacks, we participate in the federal school nutrition programs, which includes the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs. According to the Department of Agriculture, the National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program for public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions (2015). It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. On the same note, our program participates in School Breakfast Program. The department of Agriculture specifies that this program provides cash assistance to states to operate nonprofit breakfast programs in schools and residential childcare institutions. Both the National School Lunch Program, and the School Breakfast Program, ensures that the children receive the adequate nutrition while the our
School lunches are not the epitome of meals in the world. Raising the level of nutritional output would highly increase the healthiness of the student’s body. For example, if a child were to drink only water at school the health benefits would help that student, just by cutting out the sugar and the calorie intake. If schools were to serve grilled chicken instead of fried chicken, the student would not have that extreme carb intake just from the fried part alone. Chicken and vegetables should be the entrée for most school lunches, of course, this does not allow for a great variety of meals, but the healthiness of the students would increase over time and could possibly be the healthiest thing they eat that day, but the only thing that they eat at all. The poverty in Mississippi is abundant, which may mean that children do not get three square meals a day, but maybe only one, which is at school. Therefore, the best way to affect student’s healthiness is by putting good, nutritious, and energizing food on the plate in front of
School lunch programs need to change, and in order to implement this, “In 2004, Congress required every single school in the district to develop local wellness policies regarding food available in school, nutrition programs, and physical activity programs”(Haugen & Musser,2012). The government was trying to put in place programs to help children be healthy in their food choices as well as ways to get healthy if they were already overweight by incorporating physical healthy programs. Schools need to limit the amount of fatty choices and put more healthy products in their school cafeterias. Nutrition education programs can help students to learn the dangers of obesity and show them that their health is something that needs to be taken seriously
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP), originally initiated in 1946 under the name the National School Lunch Act, has served in excess of 224 billion school lunches to children throughout the United States since its inception (National School Lunch Program). The goals of the program include serving a school lunch that meets certain nutritional requirements and is available at low or no cost to eligible students (National School Lunch Program). While the program has undergone many changes over the decades, the core tenants of the program have remained intact. Changes should be made to the way the National School Lunch Program operates to ensure that all students have access to a lunch that is nutritious and affordable for all income levels, while accommodating the palate of each child.
From the time they were in elementary school, students have heard about the importance of nutrition. Although they have been taught the value of a balanced, healthy diet, students continue to ignore the recommendations given to them and even complain about the steps that the school administration takes to improve the nutritional quality of the foods within the cafeteria. While the students may not realize it, obesity in children and teenagers has been steadily increasing, and schools nationwide are taking action to combat this epidemic (Rutledge 1). Schools should continue providing healthy foods on the lunch menu, as well as in the vending machines.
5). Simultaneously, they will learn the advantages of eating healthy foods. For instance, the nutritionists will help the children understand that eating carrots helps improve their eye-sight. Also, the children will learn about the importance of daily exercise and how it can reduce their risks of developing diseases later on in their lives. Through healthier lunches at school, the children will gain more energy. By eating foods with less amount of sugar at school, children will feel less drowsy and be able to concentrate more during class time. Healthier school lunches will also help lower the rates of children obesity. According to JAMA Pediatrics (2013), “Rates of obesity were much less pronounced in states where school meals exceeding the USDA nutritional standards (21.1% versus 17.4%)” (as cited in Walsh, 2013, para. 3). The time with the nutritionists and healthier school lunches will help children acquire a taste for healthier food choices and they will encourage their families to recreate these healthy foods at home.
The goal of this program is to resolve the obesity dilemma in America within our current generation. Also studies have shown that when children don’t eat healthy they seem to be sluggish, tried, not interacting with classroom activities, less attention span and with a better possibility of falling asleep in class or misbehaving. In 2012 the first major adjustment of the school’s food guidelines were announced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The goal for the new laws would be to improve the nutritional quality of the food that is served and consumed by school children daily.
Under the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 the U.S. Department of Agriculture was mandated to revise their nutrition standards for the first time in almost 15 years (SNA, 2017). These new standards require school cafeterias to offer more vegetables, fruits, and whole grains and to limit the students’ calories, unhealthy fat, and sodium in every school meal, breakfast and lunch. Under these standards schools must offer fruits and vegetables with every lunch and increase the portion
Nowadays, the lack of implementing better eating habits during a child’s early stages while in elementary school, has often led to obesity and serious medical conditions. In a child’s early stages, it’s important for them to be taught about healthy decisions in order to avoid any future health complications that can have a dramatic effect on their lives. Moreover, while improving better school lunches, students in school will more likely be able to acquire the necessary amount of energy to get through the day. With the nutrition and energy from healthy lunches, students will increase the possibility of undertaking numerous activities throughout the day as well as ameliorating their own knowledge in school extracurricular activities.
Completely preventable health issues - those that involve food intake - are perceived as being an epidemic in the United States by many. Unfortunately, it has plagued many school-aged children across the country, and these rates continue to climb as time goes on. A factor of this climb is not merely food intake at home, but largely food intake during school hours/in schools settings. As of today, there are 31 million students in varying homes taking advantage of school lunches; it is vital that schools provide quality lunches for students and increase the amount of healthy options, as many childhood diseases are directly correlated with unhealthy eating and students in poverty rely on these meals for proper nutrients and lifelong health.
What is your favorite part of your work day? The traffic getting to work, finding the parking spot that doesn’t exist, or Steve, the annoying co-worker across from you? No, we all know that lunch is your favorite. You get some time off to just relax with a good sandwich, some chips, an apple and maybe a cookie. This may be awesome for you but for students lunch has gone downhill. The food has been affected by the Healthy Hunger-Free Act. Causing schools to cut out the “unhealthy” parts of lunch. Because of these changes lunch has become semi-tasteless. If not tasteless, there is no flare to it, no layers of taste. This is causing less kids to buy the lunches and school is losing profit. Yet the Healthy Hunger-Free act is still seeing fewer
School lunch programs supplement children’s nutrition needs and without them many children would go hungry, be malnourished and lack the fuel needed to learn. Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, passed into law by President Barack Obama, reauthorized funding of the original Child Nutrition Act of 1966. Changes impacting not only the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs but also Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Summer Food Service Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Child and Adult Care Food Programs. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, for the first time in over 30 years, reformed school lunch and breakfast programs thereby improving nutrition for
This underscores the need to provide fresh, healthy lunches that form strong eating habits and give students the nutrition and energy they need to focus when they return to the classroom. Serving nutritional meals in schools will result in energized, focused, healthy, and successful children. There are people who are starting to join the fight against childhood obesity. According to Glazer, “The effort to ensure that our children live longer and avoid obesity has many voices, including former President Bill Clinton, who recently teamed up with the American Heart Association, and now Nickelodeon, to get the message straight to our youth about the importance of developing healthy eating habits (2005).
It is no secret that a nutritious diet is not only important for the health of a student, but their academic performance as well. A student’s dietary habits begins at an early age in school. Many pediatricians advise parents to give their children meals full with nutrients to help with proper development and brain function. However, the meals provided for students at public institutions in the United States are not meeting this simple standard. Despite efforts to improve school lunch programs, public schools in America are still providing students with processed unhealthy meals in addition to not allowing them enough time to consume their meal, which is affecting students’ obesity rates and mental health.
Childhood obesity is one of the leading causes of adult health problems and America’s schools are the one place that kids can find nutritious food. Most children have a very unhealthy diet, which majorly affects their health as a child and as an adult. An unhealthy diet can cause health problems such as diabetes, heart problems or cancer, in the present and the future. As hard as America tries to provide healthy foods for kids, unhealthy snacks are still available. Most parents do not have the money to buy healthy foods or food at all, so school is the only place a kid can find a healthy meal. The school systems have improved the meal choices, but should America’s children really be eating something that is frozen or premade. It could be considered their responsibility to feed kids healthy food, it might take extra work, but won’t it be worth it when a kid eats instead of going home hungry.