Serving Lunch For School Children Essay

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.

School lunches are often unsung heroes of many modern American households. Frequently overlooked and disregarded because of their stigma, school lunches are a key ingredient that may help make the world a better place. Unknowingly, great numbers of individuals in our communities deal with food insecurities every day of their lives. It baffles me that in an advanced society many people do not have the resources to provide food for themselves or their families. Until it affected me personally, I was unaware nor passionate about the struggles of food insecurity. My passion for solving food insecurity in my local community has led me to gain both experience and leadership through understanding and advocating for those around me.

One in six children in the United States do not know when they will get their next meal. Children who are facing hunger struggle in school, are more likely to repeat a grade, have developmental concerns and have behavioral problems. The National School Lunch Program has brought meals to millions of children from food insecure families for free or reduced rates.

This article by Great Schools is addressed to parents considered about the current school lunches provided to the children in their district. Unlike any other source, this one focuses solely on 3 organizations that advocate. The diversity of the listed projects gives an opportunity to expand on different approaches to solve the various problems of the lunch program. However, there is no attempt to address the current issues of our system, requiring a previous understanding of how the school lunch system currently operates.

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

A solution to have better school lunches is to increase the budget of school spending for children, this mean having more better quality food which children will enjoy more and have more nutrients. Nutrients and low fatty content is what is being aimed for here, since we are trying to prevent children from eating harmful foods to there bodies. Also if not able to get better quality food at public schools, they should implement a law where children have to physical activities like exercising inside or

The lunches served in Frederick County Schools, and Urbana High School in particular lack nutritional value and are unappetizing. When interviewing Casey Ballow (a student who buys lunch everyday) about whether the school lunches are nutrional she said “The majority of students walk out [of the lunch line] without the most nutritional part of their lunch”. FCPS has made snacks whole grain, which usually makes them less tasty. Packing a lunch is a hassle because it is both time consuming and expensive, not to mention you cannot bring any warm foods. When asked why Casey chooses to buy a lunch, despite getting “soggy chicken patties and burnt french fries” she said “Buying a lunch saves me time in morning”. There is not a wide enough selection of lunch foods for students.

School lunch rooms have been evolving over the last decade. Healthier food choices and better-quality food are just two of many improvements happening inside school cafeterias. Although school lunch rooms are making various positive changes, there are still negative consequences for some students. Most students can go through the lunch line and not have to worry about the cost of the meal and whether they have enough money to buy a hot lunch. On the other hand, some students are constantly worrying about not being able to eat lunch due to the price. According to a CNN article titled “School Lunch Shaming” by Heather Long, “…an alarming number of American youngsters still can’t afford a $2.35 lunch, despite the dramatic expansion of free and reduced lunch programs” (paragraph 1), which demonstrates the struggles that these low-income families face when it comes to buying their student school lunches. Staff working in cafeterias have started to “shame” those students by taking away the student’s food and giving them a bag containing a cheese sandwich and milk to those students who are unable to afford their lunch. States such as New Mexico are taking a stand against school lunch shaming and have banned lunch shaming completely. Long also explained that, “The USDA is urging districts to stop “embarrassing” and “singling out” students who don’t have enough money for lunch” (paragraph 9), which further demonstrates the lengths people are going to solve the lunch shaming issues.

“The National School Lunch Program, or NSLP, is a federally assisted meal program operating in over 101,000 public and non‐profit private schools and residential childcare institutions.” ("National school lunch," 2011) This government-run program is headed by the department of Food and Nutrition standards, a subgroup of the United States Department of Agriculture. “It provides nutritionally balanced, low‐cost or free lunches to more than 31 million children each school day in 2009.”

The National School Lunch Program is a federally assisted meal program that operates in over 100,000 schools and child care facilities. Those who participate in this program get cash subsidies as well as food from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Participants are also required to followed dietary guidelines. Meals provided to the students must meet certain nutritional standards and free and reduced priced lunches must be made available to those who need it. By regulating what the schools can serve and

Ring. Ring. Ring. The twelve o’clock bell sounds for lunch. Hundreds of thousands of students around the United States of America rush from their classes to the school cafeteria. Children and teenagers ranging from grades K-12 grab a lunch tray and jump in line. The food that these students get to choose from has changed over the past years because of the new National School Lunch Program regulations, which limit the different foods that can be offered in schools. The passing of the National School Lunch Program has led to the implementation of new nutritional standards when deciding what foods can be served, changed the type of foods that are required to be served, established new rules on how the regulations are monitored, and

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

The students of our school should rally together and hang the cooks in the Cafeteria. Well, maybe that is a little too dramatic, but something has to be done about the school lunch. The stuff that they serve the students is truly awful. Students should not be forced to eat in the cafeteria because the meals are not prepared well, there are foreign objects in the deserts, and many kids have gotten ill after eating certain items.

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

On the other hand, you may be thinking, “$3.75-$4.75 is cheap for a school lunch”, “Who would pay for it?”, or “If it’s good enough for school standards, then it MUST be healthy”. $3.75-$4.75 is not cheap with the economy failing and families having to stretch their dollars. About a year ago, the lunch was $2.50. If a student bought a $4.75 lunch every day for a month, about thirty days, the total would be $142.50. Multiply that by twelve months and it is $1,710 a YEAR. Compared to the $900 a year with the $2.50 meal, lunch prices ARE pretty darn expensive. Secondly, if enhanced foods and lunch system were implemented, some might say it would take a huge amount of money to actually start the project. However, if tax dollars are enough to pay for billion dollar roads, then it’s enough to start a respectable lunch system. A portion of the tax dollars could be used instead of it all going to highway and road construction. Finally, the food may fit school standards, but it may not be such a good choice. Most people eat 2,000 to 2,500 calories a day, depending on their needs. How healthy could a tortilla with beans, or a piece of meat slapped between two slices of bread, be? Not to mention the amounts of saturated fat, trans fat, and salt! If you checked the