The Benefits Of School Lunches

In “I’d Rather Smoke than Kiss,” the author Florence King expresses her disdain towards this new wave of hatred that has surged against smokers. King views these attacks on smokers as an outlet for Americans to demonstrate who they truly are without being judged. First of all, King labels all of those who hate smokers as “smokists” (Allyn and Bacon 315). Smokists hide behind this flourishing concept of “passive smoking” (315) in order to freely express their intolerance towards smokers without any obvious repercussions. Smokists do not care for what smokers might think they just seek their own well being, thus King views them as practitioners of a “sadistic brutality” (316). This group of misanthropes portrays smokers as uneducated and disgusting individuals that only inspire the vilest of emotions from the rest of the superior Americans. Therefore, many of the smokist’s campaigns only inspire that.

Every weekday in America millions of kids and teens line up in their schools to buy a lunch. Many of those students buying lunch typically do not even enjoy what they are given. The article “Why Students Hate School Lunch” by Kate Murphy argues about why students are wasting much if their meals due to recent health changes whereas the article “Why Some Schools Are Saying ‘No Thanks’ to the School-Lunch Program” by Alexandra Sifferlin argues on why schools are dropping the new health programs because students are wasting food or not buying at all. Looking at both articles they both question and argue why schools and students are not satisfied with the Healthy Hunger-Free Act of 2012. This act is causing students to not eat school lunches and money to be wasted. Both articles argue against the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act but the difference between the two articles explain is that one argues a student’s opinion versus the other that explains the economic effect it takes on schools.

a) The motivation is to convince the readers that school lunches have become healthier as to erase the perception that cafeteria food is terrible. As well, these statistics are being used to determine if healthier school lunches "will help ease the obesity epidemic among the nation's children." This study was done as to determine the influence of school lunches on the obesity epidemic and to show whether the government has taken the right approach to lower obesity rates or need to take a different approach.

Do you ever receive a school lunch and are disgusted by the quality of it, wish you could have the power to change the school’s lunch schedules, or want to stop eating lunch all together? Well, you are not alone, because most students feel the same way! Seventy-seven percent out of 1,300 high school students surveyed, say that they do not like school lunches, and half of students reported that they ate school lunch two days a week or less. However, this could be changed by providing students with a wide range of foods, including those being high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and beneficial vitamins that students need to grow and develop. So, should schools be forced to serve students healthy lunches?

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

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

The National School Lunch Program (NSLP), originally initiated in 1946 under the name the National School Lunch Act, has served in excess of 224 billion school lunches to children throughout the United States since its inception (National School Lunch Program). The goals of the program include serving a school lunch that meets certain nutritional requirements and is available at low or no cost to eligible students (National School Lunch Program). While the program has undergone many changes over the decades, the core tenants of the program have remained intact. Changes should be made to the way the National School Lunch Program operates to ensure that all students have access to a lunch that is nutritious and affordable for all income levels, while accommodating the palate of each child.

School lunches can be gross sometimes. We should have the opportunity to leave the campus during our lunch period. Off school campus lunch could save the school money, give students a short break, and this would be great for the students who skip lunch because they don’t want to eat school lunch. Some might think the students may not return or could get in trouble when off campus, but I disagree.

Many public school students on average only get about 20 minutes or less to eat there lunch. Because of that about 1/4 of students lunches will not get eaten and it will get thrown away. School lunches should be longer for many reasons, but the main reasons that school lunches should be longer is because students would be able to have healthier meals, students who have a longer lunch do better in school and because students would have more time to  socialize with each other. Longer lunches in school would have many benefits for students.

During the Great Depression, schools began to provide lunch programs for school students, since many homes could not afford to feed their children a full, well-balanced meal (Hinman 16). Throughout the past eighty years the budgets, regulations, and policies have been changed multiple times. Whether or not these changes are helpful, are up for debate, and are topics many school boards and legislative bodies are forced to discuss. Some of the most controversial topics being discussed are the cost students pay, the quality of the food, the amount of food going to waste, and the obesity rate of students. The lunches that are served in schools are typically over priced, made of poor quality, thrown away, and is one of the leading causes to the increasing obesity rates.

Nationally, about 17% of people under the age of 20, about 12.5 million are considered obese. School districts that serve students food that are high in calories and fat are to blame for the growing numbers of obese children. Although school lunches provide students food at minimal costs, the poor quality of food served delivers inadequate nutrition and is responsible for the rising numbers of obese minors in the United States. In order to combat this growing problem, school districts must limit student choices in the lunchroom and provide healthier food nationally. Although some school districts may argue this, it is necessary to do so as school districts in Pennsylvania and Mississippi and university studies support this claim.

There have been on occasion when I was at grade school that I have seen at least one of the teachers giving a student money for the student’s lunch. Another close encounter that I can recall is when one of my close friends couldn’t afford a school lunch and I told her I would share my free lunch with her, and that we could just split the whole thing, thus she wouldn’t go famished through the rest of the school day. There has to be way more incidences such as these in Americas public schools because these public schools are reporting that they lose an estimate of about $350,000.00 dollars in school funds annually in unpaid debts , and one of those reasons is teacher giving students money when the students need it. If we could provide free lunches

The organization of Debatewise stated that controlling the foods that students consume is important in combating obesity, as the dieting habits that most people form originate from when they were young. This is why it’s so crucial for schools to introduce healthier options in schools. If these unhealthy habits are developed, the students are “at higher risk for having other chronic health conditions and diseases that impact physical health..”, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. These conditions can affect them emotionally and physically, including depression and obesity, which are important health issues both linked with the consumption of junk foods. The selling of junk food in schools is not a small problem either, as it concludes from a study by the Institute of Medicine in 2003 that elementary schools earn approximately $442 million annually from junk food sales. The importance of changing the school lunch programs to implement healthier options is high when there is so much money being spent by the students. Although obesity is a real problem due to the selling of junk food, it can lead to other problems that leading a healthier way of living could fix. For instance, the University of New Hampshire Cooperative Extension states junk foods, due to processing that removes vitamins, minerals, and fiber from the product, are empty calories that are ultimately worthless to the body. This alone contributes to unneeded weight gain and provides no additional sustenances that help the body grow. The Harvard Health Publications describes this to be a serious problem, and acknowledge not only this to be a complication, but mentions the unnecessarily high amounts of sodium levels in the foods, stating that “...the average

Federally-funded school meal programs, including the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and the School Breakfast Program (SBP), serve an average of 31.3 million lunches and 11.1 million breakfasts per day at a cost to the country of $11.1 billion in 2011 (Food & Nutrition Services, 2012). These federally-funded meals are an excellent opportunity for regulation of nutrition as well as education regarding healthy choices. Obesity is clearly a great threat to the health of our nation, and the federal government must step in to defend its citizens against this growing threat. Children are at the mercy of their families, their social conditions, and their schools, predisposing them to obesity through poor nutritional options and a lack of education; the federal government must intervene through regulation of school meals and snacks to protect children from the abundance of unhealthy options while also educating them and reducing childhood obesity.

Millions of kids across the country are required to buy a healthy lunch from the school cafeteria, but are healthy lunches really necessary? Many parents believe that the school system is providing children with a healthy, proportional meal but what many parents do not know is that the school lunches given to the students lack many of the essential elements a student needs to maintain a full stomach for the whole school day.