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School Lunches Research Paper

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It’s becoming common in America that kids are obese. Fast food joints, unhealthy meals at home, and even school lunches are contributing to obesity in young children. Monday through Friday kids spend most of their time at school. being educated in just about everything besides the food they put in their bodies. You would think at school kids would be given a nutritious meal along with some knowledge on how to live a healthy lifestyle. But school lunches in America contain large amounts of sodium and fat, there were six students that helped out with an experiment, “All six samples exceeded the recommended 500 milligrams of sodium, four of them had more than 1,000 milligrams” (“Tests show school lunches high in sodium’). Schools exceed …show more content…

These lunches are required to provide no more than 30 percent of calories from fat and less than 10 percent from saturated fat” (Food Research and Action Center). Are schools ultimately meetings these standards that are set for these students? In the article “What is the Nutritional Value of an Average School Lunch?”, According to the third School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study, published in 2007, schools consistently don’t meet the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s fat requirements. The survey for the 2004 to 2005 school year showed that most school lunches had 34 percent of calories from fat and only about 20 percent of school met the total fat guidelines (Miller). On the other hand, most schools are not meeting health inspections as well. There have been cases of students getting sick from the lunches at school. It’s very likely that it came from food being kept at the wrong temperatures. In an article called “How safe is school cafeteria food?”, inspector Troy Skow found hamburger meat that were below the serving temperature (Hansen). Bacteria can grow on food if it’s not kept at the right temperature which can lead to kids being ill. In the same article professor Berg states that, “The bacterial growth goes on constantly. And it replicates faster and it replicates exponentially. So if it’s seven minutes, it here. If 14 minutes, it’s doubled. It keeps doubling. And so the longer it sits out at a temperature…the more dangerous it gets” (Hansen). It’s a scary problem because school cooks are not as careful with serving food correctly, which can lead to sickness. Hansen also came across a school in St. Louis that had 45 students sick along with a teacher after eating their school

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