Research Paper About School Lunches

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.'

Children in America are faced with different choices every day. Some of these choices can be either good or bad for them. But these children don't really know the consequences of their actions, but the school does. Schools are serving unhealthy and un properly cooked meals to children every single day. These food companies make big money from these schools because the schools just buy the lunches so the kids will eat something. The schools don't really care what goes into the students stomachs, but as long as the school meets the requirements it's okay. Then the students just eat it because it looks and taste good, but they don't have an idea of what their eating is made out of or where it has been before. The government needs to start making school lunches more healthy for these students, if not then then unfortunately the number of obese children will rise.

The author’s intention is to inform the reader that the healthy lunch programs are failing. The author provides plentiful information and research on the failing school lunch programs in the U.S. “In the war to get America’s children to eat healthier, things are not going well.” Kids are not eating their vegetables. This has become a big problem in America and steps need to be taken to stop unhealthy eating. Like The Agriculture Department mandating that students in the federal lunch program choose a fruit or vegetable with their meals. This solution didn’t work and actually worsened the problem. “Their consumption of fruits and vegetables actually went down 13 percent after the mandate took effect.”

How many people here sometimes look at the school lunch and say to yourselves, "What is it?" Most of us would agree or that if not most of us would. After getting lunch, do you just throw the food away after getting the lunch right away? You might just bring your own lunch because the school lunches have changed? Also you might have a problem with the lunch menu being messed up? The cooks with the lunch should be able to make better food than what is currently being served.

School cafeterias have been notoriously known for having unhealthy, unappealing food. Students at schools are being forced to eat these foods, when parents cannot provide regular lunches for their children. These lunches usually include the following: pizza, soda, cheeseburgers, chicken sandwiches, and others, all filled with artificial ingredients and preservatives. To address this problem, there should be a switch between the foods and drinks being served, and I have just the ideas that will be delicious and healthy. Authors Alice Waters, Katrina Heron, and Mark Bittman all agree that some initiative needs to be taken to fix this unhealthy food problem, and so do I. Together, the student body and parents will address the school board with healthier food options that are better tasting and better for the body.

The National School Lunch Program is a federally funded meal program operating in over 100,000 public. It provides nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2012 based on the child's household income (USDA). The program is managed by the Food and Nutrition Service at the Federal level and by a State education agency at the state level. We will be looking at the statistics of the National Lunch Program for five local schools, and compare the number of students enrolled in the districts and the percentage that are receiving free or discounted meals at school. Additionally, the requirements to be eligible to participate in the program, as well as the reimbursement the school

Childhood and teenage obesity has been an issue in America for more than twenty years now. The percentage of obese children has nearly doubled in this time, according to the article “Is Your Kid Failing Lunch?”. Today’s generation of kids is recorded as the fattest generation in history. One of the main causes of this is believed to be fast food kids are exposed to every day in school lunches. Schools are now starting to serve fast food in their lunches as more kids demand it, causing an increase in the schools profit. Outside of that, Americans are currently spending more than $100 billion a year on fast food. Each day one in four Americans will eat at a fast food chain (Beaver). This is easy to believe as the global fast food industry spent

While reading this article my viewpoint was challenged. Childhood obesity in the United States and school lunches have always seemed to go hand in hand because of all the national attention public school have been receiving within the past ten or so years. However, the studies that Sloviter provided made clear suggestions that school lunches in the United States may not be so terrible or unhealthy as I have been assuming. It is still slightly odd that this is so, considering in my previous research statistics have shown American school lunches to be high in fats, carbs, and sugars.

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

Do you know that school lunch is bad for children? Have you ever packed lunch because the food looks fattening or gross? Do you want healthier food? Has school lunch ever made your tummy hurt? I believe school lunch is bad for children because they serve food that is fattening which causes obesity, food that causes stomach viruses that will cause students to get sick and does not feed children enough.

Students have become more restricted than ever when it comes to picking the food they want to eat in the cafeteria, most of the food is healthy and has the essential vitamins and calories a student would need. The healthy hunger free kids act was implemented in 2012 and took away the use of grease, high sodium products and more. This aimed to yes take away all the tastier foods but also to try to opt for a more balanced and healthy lunch. When a student purchases a lunch, they are encouraged to take at least one fruit or vegetable and a low-fat milk. However, most of these “required foods” end up in the trash. Most of the time it’s a hit or miss with school lunches because not all school operate the same.

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

America’s lunch program has been established ever since President Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act on June 4, 1946 in order to ensure the health of children. (Rafidi 1) Providing lunches for students is essential in order for them to receive the nutrition they need but if one think deeper about this, is the current lunch program really beneficial towards the youth that will soon shape the future? Just recently in 2010, First Lady Michelle Obama stepped up hoping to maintain the growing problem of childhood obesity by inspecting the food that was sold in schools. In a 60 years time frame, school lunch has become an issue that was once thought to help reduce malnutrition to food that may be harmful to teens’ body. This should

What is this food doing to our children? The childhood obesity epidemic has increased because of the contribution of junk food that is being served in public schools. It has been found that children who eat fatty school foods are more likely to become obese than those who brought lunch from home. Why is this we may ask has a lot to do with the above student that I stated brought their lunch from home daily. You can count the intake of calories that is in your lunchbox but you have no idea what is in the food from you school, half of the time you will not even know what the food is. Also, the specials that are provided for students on special food days increases their calorie intake as well such as; pizza day or wing day. On these days children have shown to intake more food because these are the days that they provide greasy foods that taste swell and the children like them so they will gravitate to them because they do not have the proper knowledge to know what this food can do to your body.

Do you think that school lunch are not that good or maybe the school charges to much for not enough food. School lunches should be gone and we should get to go home for lunch or get to go to some restaurants with are friends. Most people want to go home for lunch because the schools food taste weird. When people eat the schools food they're afraid of the fact that the food has no color and the food is not cooked all the way sometimes. Also the food has no good feel or taste in it because they are not allowed to put seasoning in the food at school. The schools food is also boiled not fried.