The National School Lunch Program

The author’s ethos by describing some of the current uses for the funds being provided, demonstrating the concerns, and showing the aggravations that some Americans towards the issue. Waters and Heron state “Parent advocacy groups like Better School Food have rejected the National School Lunch

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.'

The NSLP is “a federally assisted meal program operating in public and nonprofit private schools and residential child care institutions. It provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost or free lunches to children each school day. The program was established under the National School Lunch Act, signed by President Harry Truman in 1946” (National). It was created after a study was conducted by congress into why so many young men did not meet the requirements of the WWII draft. It was found that there was a connection between physical deficiencies and malnutrition during adolescence. After the study was published, the government took it upon itself to regulate what children ate. Its focus has now been shifted from battling malnutrition to battling childhood obesity, yet there are plenty of statistics that denote childhood obesity is not caused entirely by poor food choices.

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.

The National School Lunch Program is an enormous federal program that has grown to become the second largest U.S. food and nutrition assistance program in both numbers of children served. In 2009, over 31 million children participated in the NSLP each school day at a cost of 9.3 billion to the Federal government. The SBP reached 11 million children at an additional cost of 2.4 billion. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) administers the program on the federal level and provides oversight of the states agencies that are responsible for the program, in Georgia, the department of education manages the statewide program. Ultimately, the success of the program resides with the local school district or each individual school food authority who implement the program to the students. The laws establishing the National School Lunch Program and School Breakfast Program stated that schools had to run their nutrition programs profit free and set the monetary per meal rates to reimburse the individual school. Rates for school year 2009 were $2.72 for free lunches, $2.32 for reduced cost lunches and $.26 for paid lunches. Today, almost half of all lunches served are provided free to students, with an additional 10 percent provided at reduced prices. Although schools are not required to offer NSLP meals, 94 percent of schools, both public and private, choose to participate in the program. Little

“The physical and emotional health of an entire generation and the economic health and security of our nation is at stake” a quote made by the First Lady, Michelle Obama, as she launches her comprehensive initiative to change the way children think about nutrition and physical fitness (“Learn the Facts,” 2010). Three decades ago, children lived active lives that kept them healthier. They walked to and from school, ate home cooked, reasonable portion meals with vegetables and played outdoors most of the time. Today, children ride the bus instead of walk, eat more fast food and snacks throughout the day because parents are busier, and watch more television or play video games rather than be active outside with peers (“Learn the Facts,” 2010). Young children are becoming overweight and obese along with being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes more frequently. They are making poor dietary choices, inadequate physical activity, and spending too much screen time all contributing to the obesity crisis. One of the effective solutions to reversing the trend of childhood obesity is to provide safe, affordable and accessible after-school health and physical fitness educational programs for all school ages across the nation.

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.

How would you like it if the lunch lines weren’t so full but your students all had a filled stomach? Well I honestly believe that if you gave only 11th and 12th graders the opportunity to leave campus for lunch and it would make everyone’s life easier.

This legislation increases access to healthy food for low-income children, first by setting new standards to the free-lunch program that increase the number of eligible children by 115,000. This is facilitated by federal reimbursement for schools in areas with high concentrations of low-income children and the elimination of paper applications. For these children, the lunch they receive at school may be the only meal they can depend on every day. One of the goals of this legislation is to make sure that this one meal is as healthy and nutritious as possible, so the USDA has been granted authority to create nutritional standards for all foods sold in schools. The bill allocates $4.5 billion to implement new health standards, and reimburses an average of six extra cents per meal for schools that meet the new nutrition standards. Another use of the funds included in this bill includes providing resources for schools to utilize local farms and gardens that provide fresh produce. A study from Social Science & Medicine, Lee, 2012, suggests that availability of local foods is linked to healthier weights. The bill also required the USDA to develop new nutrition standards for the meals and

The goal of any educational institution should be to have postive impacts on the whole child. Nutrition is one aspect of the whole child that schools could improve upon. For a variety of reasons, there is a disconnect between the educators of a school building and those responsible for student’s nutrition. At school, students have a unqiue opportunity to make decisions about their nutrition, with the assistance of their parent in some cases. The following literature review investigates the National School Lunch Program in its effects on childhood obesity. The workshop to follow offers a plan to help impact childhood obesity through family education.

Starting at the beginning, the National School Lunch Program was created in 1946 to ensure that each and every American child could receive needed nutrients from their school lunches (Stallings). At the time, we as a nation had just come out of World War II and resources at home were low. The National School Lunch Program provided kids at least one nutritious meal per day. This help from the federal government meant that parents would no longer have the burden of preparing a school lunch for their children each and every day. Then, in 1975, The School Breakfast Program (SBP) was added so that children

In her presentation “what’s wrong with school lunches” Ann Copper (2007) stats that school lunches is a social justice issue. In the United Stats there are a series of problems in the food system . only few companies control the most of the commercially produced seeds in America, it makes people’s grocery choose lack. Also there are a lots of chemicals be used in animal husbandry, but government allow these kind thing happened. Further more many companies invested huge amount of money on advertising non-nutrient food, this will mislead our children on their food chooses. Moreover the thing is much more prisoners than farmers, so we do need import food from other countries. These kind things bring out very considerable consequences such as our

Chlidren born in the year 2000, will be the first generation in the American history to die younger than their parents, and the major cause is the food we have feed them. We are one of the most unhealthy country in the word; where disease linked to diet is the first cause of death, but the good news is that obesity is a controllable risk factor. So we can easly save the next generations if we just begin to find weher are the weakness and the mistakes that lead us to this awful reality. One of the fundamental piece of this issue is our school lunch program. Schools, which are supposed to give our kids the good example are serving kids cheap and unhealthy food. Clearly, American school lunch program

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

One of the core values of social work is service, whose goal is “to help people in need and to address social problems”.2 The goal of the National School Lunch Program is consistent with the values of social work through the cooperation among the three agencies of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA): the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS), the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), and the Farm Service Agency (FSA). The FNS serves as the primary liaison between USDA and local education agencies. It is responsible for the general administration of the National School Lunch Program. The FSA and the AMS work hand in hand as the purchasing and delivery arm. In the past 68 years, over 31 million children have been served nutritious lunch in more than 101,000 public or non-profit private schools that participated in the National School Lunch Program.1