Should School Lunches Get Obese?

Have you ever taken a bit in your school lunch and just want to spit it all back out? Or how about the little portions you get? These types of school lunches should not be allowed to be given to the students because there are many reasons why school lunches are bad for health reasons. Although the school lunches are supposed to be healthier and better for our well-being, school lunches should change because it’s not very appetizing, there are little portions, and there isn’t any difference in the health level before.

Obesity can often be the consequence of living in a household that instill unhealthy eating habits. Schools can be a positive influence on teens early in life so that obese teens can lead into their adult lives with healthier habits. With these healthier habits, they may likely have more energy to become positive influences in others lives to be healthy and be able to do more. If schools can make such an impact on students’ lives, they should try, even if they needed to sacrifice extra money or instructional time. In 2007, there was a study that only one fifth of high school students had eaten fruits and vegetables at least five times a day in a week (Wexler, 2010). While it is unreasonable to force someone to eat these foods, if they are regularly offered as part of school lunches, students may eat them if they have finished the rest of their lunch and are hungry. Schools should be encouraged to even add fruits and vegetables to vending machines for healthier options.

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.'

Since 2009 Schools have been improving there healthy choices of food like fresh fruits and salad bars,but those foods take longer to eat (Hellmich). Turning school lunches into an actual sit down meal rather than a feeding frenzy is a good way of improving health (Parker-Pope). Students usually have less than 20 minutes to eat lunch which makes it less likely for them to choose the healthy choice (Elsevier). Kids often like to eat there favorite foods first,not giving them enough time to eat the healthy food (Hellmich). An increase in school lunches could encourage students to eat the healthier choice(5 Elsevier). School nutritionist suggest that students need to have atlas 20 minutes to eat (Hellmich). Research shows that when people consume meals faster they take in more calories because they get hungry sooner (Chen). The shorter lunch periods are starting to lead to more and more obese and overweight kids ( Hellmich). Doctors are saying there are more and more kids getting diabetes and other illnesses due to the lunches and something needs to be done about it

Many people are thinking, are school lunches worse than fast food restaurants? Well I’m a here to figure it out. Fast food may sound like a very unhealthy meal, but school lunches have a lot more calories. Most kids and teens would rather have fast food than their school lunch. The amount of calorie range from 750 to 850 calories. Now, fast food calories are much lower, ranging from 254 calories, for just a cheeseburger from McDonald’s. Kids also need 735 calories for lunch, so just a Mcdonald's cheeseburger isn't enough. Even though kids can bring their lunches, they might not wake up early enough to make it. Schools average start time is around, 8:30, and kids also need to wake up and

One in three Americans kids are obese or over weight which is a staggering and alarming rate at the same time. So looking 20 years into the future that number could double if nothing is said and done about what we are eating. The public school food in school lunches are unhealthy for many alarming reasons, but not much can be done immediately due to strict guidelines and budgets that schools must follow. A lot of it goes to kids not exercising, and more time watching TV, or playing on the computer. And now days more families have less time to make nutritious home made meals. So they tend to eat School cafeteria lunches that have minimal nutrition’s and harmful calories. To prevent your kid from being over weight mean adapting what you eat, and having to exercise at least 60 minutes a day. If the changes are made to change school lunches, it can help them from being obese, children can improve their lifestyle choices, and lastly it prevents them from getting harmful diseases.

Should school lunches be longer? According to The American Academy of Pediatrics a child should be able to have at least 20 minutes for lunch. But that means 20 minutes to actually sit down and eat — excluding time waiting in line or walking from class to cafeteria. It is a day-to-day occurrence hearing students complaining that the food is cold, having to shove the food down in order to eat everything on the tray, and my favorite is complaints on how food was thrown away since the bells have already rung. Why is this happening? How can they justify taking nutrition away for more instructional time? Multiple students go home after school and raid the refrigerator or cupboards grazing for food. Interesting enough most of the students will choose

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.

Have you ever felt under a major time church when it came to school lunch? In a poll conducted in 2013 by National Public Radio, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health, 20 percent of parents of students from kindergarten through fifth grade told us that their child gets 15 minutes or less to eat. School lunches should be longer because students feel rushed to eat and having too little time to eat leads to unhealthy choices. The first reason school lunches should be longer is because several students feel rushed to eat. Deborah Taylor, director of the Shawnee School Nutrition Services in Oklahoma, told USA Today that when people look back on the childhood obesity epidemic, they may blame the way kids rushed through meals, both at school and at home.

In the article Type 2 Diabetes in Children and Young Adults: A New Epidemic by Francine Ratner Kaufman mentions that in the past decade there has been an increase in child obesity usually causing the diagnoses of type two diabetes in children. In this past decade there has been an over all eight to forty five percent increase. The increase of this diagnosis is now being referred to as the diabetes epidemic. According to Medical News Today, diabetes is also mentioned as the diabetes mellitus; it is a disorder in which a person has high blood glucose levels, because there is not enough insulin production or because the body does not respond to the insulin itself. People with this disorder experience frequent urination, extreme thirst, and increased hunger. Healthier school lunches will lead to healthier nutritional choices throughout the children’s life. Through making healthier school lunches normal, which include junk food as opposed to the children’s exceptions, he/she will unintentionally learn about nutrition, healthier meals and increase their knowledge about why eating healthy is a worthy choice. Children who are provided with sugary and fatty foods at school or at their homes can develop poor eating habits that can last a lifetime. If a children’s eating habit needs to be changed there is no better place than school, because it is where he/she spends most of his/her

The food that is served at schools has too much fat. You don’t want to be fat do you? People bully others that are fat. This is why we need healthy lunch! If we don’t start getting healthy lunches, we are going to have to start packing our lunches. School lunch contains fat vitamins.

Central High School is planning to change our school lunches to something that is “healthier” and “less-fattening”. Many students disagree with this idea, but others are completely supportive about this idea. Students want something that will keep them full for the rest of the school day and not be starved to death by time they get home. This makes learning a lot harder and it makes paying attention a lot harder as well.

Americans today eat junk food constantly, knowing it diminishes their health. The American standard diet consists of unhealthy factors that lead to diabetes, heart attacks, and high cholesterol. School lunches consist of those diseases. Schools should mandate control and enforce regulations that would reduce the wide availability of unhealthy foods and processed snacks. Furthermore, junk foods should be taxed on a national scale and promote natural ingredients. Too many of our schools offer little or almost no

Many of the students that eat school lunch believe that it is not very good. They believe that we need better food. The school claims that the food is healthy, but according to most of the students that go here the lunch is terrible. The school thinks that we need to eat healthier at school. They are trying to make food healthy and not looking into the details, so they are still very unhealthy. For example one food may be low in calories but high in sodium. As a school we need to come up with a better solution to this problem.

Did you ever wonder if schools should try to have fast foods why? Schools should have fast foods, seeing that students are getting tired of school lunches also, school lunches now and then aren’t so good. Maybe it won’t be a deficient idea to have fast foods in school also schools can be getting extra money.