Should School Lunches Be Served?

School lunches all around America are not appetizing to the students. According to New York Times, “More than 30 million children trundle through school cafeteria lines every day in the United States and thanks to the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which took effect in 2012, they are no longer served greasy pizza, salty French fries and sauced up chicken wings. Meals must now be lower in fat, calories and sodium and contain lean proteins, more fruits and vegetables and whole grains. And kids from coast to coast are wrinkling their noses.” (Gonchar) This quote is telling the reader that students from all around the United States are disgusted by lunches. They would rather bring a cold lunch instead. As kids get lunches and hardly eat the trash cans fill up every day and almost over fill with the main course of the lunches for reasons like, it was too cold, it was gross, and it

They also force students to stay inside of the cafeteria with limited choices. As of 2016 approximately 17% of American children and teens were obese, a three-fold increase since 1980. One-third were either overweight or obese, including almost 40% of African American and Hispanic children(Alic, Margaret). The United States has had obesity problems for as long as I can remember, but nothing is helping these numbers decrease. To add to this, newer schools are being made with tiny kitchens for one purpose, to reheat pre made meals. A lot of schools do not have the necessary plumbing and wiring that’s needed to make meals from scratch. “Growing fear of handling raw meat and spreading food-borne illnesses, such as E. coli and salmonella, further hampered efforts to improve school lunches.”(Alic, Margaret). No efforts are being made to better the meals, But we haven’t done nothing different for the past decade. If students have been complaining for decades why not change the food or bring more choices to the plate. Put yourself in our position, if you had the funds, would you want to eat frozen meals every day for a whole school year. It makes it worse when it’s the same food every week. "Schools lose money every day because it costs more money to prepare meals than the reimbursement they get from the federal government," says Donald Schumacher, M.D.(Bornstein, Adams). The school

Have you ever thought why you’re school lunch looks so disgusting? Have you ever thought what it’s actually made of? Or why doesn’t this look like the way I ate it at home? For some schools, lunches lack in many different categories from visual pleasure to taste. If the school lunches taste so bad, why don’t we try another way to make them better. For a school in Greeley, Colorado, they’re doing just that. They’re firing up their stoves and are ready to get the ball rolling. There are many reasons on why the school is taking such a huge step backwards. Like, the routine of buying reheated foods and serving them without hesitation. The schools budget cuts or the kitchen being too old and small for the process of preparing such foods. As well as, the list of ingredients that do not need to be in the foods and the risks of diseases/bacteria in the reheated 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.'

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.

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

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

In numerous incidences around the country schools have reportedly denied their students school lunches because their lunch accounts are overdrawn in some cases by only a couple dollars (Green). Also, traditional packed lunches are under fire, in part, because some administrators who feel that the lunches are not nutritious enough for students have banned them (Eng, Hood). Because some school children are going hungry and have no other means of obtaining a meal during the school day, the school lunch program needs to take additional measures to ensure that the needs of all US students are being met.

The National School Lunch Program is a great resource for schools to use, to help provide children whom may not be able to afford their own lunches. The problem with the program though is that the recent changes to the requirements schools must follow make it difficult to provide lunches that are appealing and fulfilling to students. Schools also find that it is costing them more to try and follow these requirements and there is a lot more waste because students are not happy. The NSLP needs to change some of its requirements so schools can have some freedom in how lunches are prepared so students will be more likely to eat them. They also need to take in consideration that not every student should follow the same calorie count and how not have enough can affect a student, and too much creates waste. With certain changes the NSLP can be successful once again.

About 77% of 1,300 high school students surveyed said that they did not like the food, and about half said they ate school lunch 2 days a week or less. My first reason is that students say that they do not like the school food. Of those students who did eat the food, “only 13% said that the food taste good, compared to the 54% of school staff and 47% of parents”. My second reason is that some of the school food is not freshly made and doesn’t taste like it is either. Factory food took over most American schools in a rolling, greasy wave of chicken nuggets and pre-prepped everything over the last few decades.

Therefore, modifying the Healthy Hungry-Free Kids Act of 2010 is a great start to meeting the needs of a more diverse student body. In deciding to keep the program the same, active and athletic students leave school undernourished everyday. Consequently, students not receiving their nutritional needs could also quench their hunger with unhealthy alternatives. For example, they could choose to visit a gas station before a sport practice to get through the practice. A healthy lunch program is ineffective if, in effect, it causes students to consume more unhealthy alternatives. Overall, this either causes undernourished students or students indulging in unhealthy alternatives. Neither of these is a good outcome for the students health, it would more effective to offer a second serving of healthier food during

On behalf of the students of Clackamas High School we would like to discuss the problem of feeding in our cafeteria. We noticed that lots of high schoolers consume unhealthy lunches everyday only because they don’t have a different option. That leads to weight issues and skin problems. Lots of students just don’t realize how many junk food they are eating during those four years of studying here. I believe that everyone is able to make their own choice but when you are hungry, you don’t really care about what to eat.

Students very often waste their money on school lunches that they don’t eat or enjoy. If a student doesn’t like the lunch that the school is producing he or she may often not even eat the lunch or sometimes just let it sit then throw it away. By the end of the day the student goes hungry because he

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.

Today one in five school-aged children (ages 6-19) have obesity and people debate over how to decrease this number and prevent it from being more of an issue in the future. School lunches are often brought up in this discussion, some say that by getting rid of all junk food in schools would help decrease the number of obese students and prevent them in future by providing only healthy food options. On the other hand, they say that it's not that simple, the problems are at home and that getting rid of these items could decrease revenues for school activities from those products. Many people believe that junk food should be banned from schools across the nation.