Hunger-Free Kids Act Research Paper

Being the petty teenager I am, I decided to research the weaknesses revolving around America's current public school lunch program after getting into an argument regarding the healthfulness of school meals. I was called a picky eater for virtually refraining school meals from entering my diet for the past few years, whereas I concluded that a majority of my peers would agree that our school lunch program is far from desirable. To support my claim, I began to research school lunches and its correlation to child obesity. I also went into detail on the impact of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act and how governmental mandates have shaped our system. However, I also discussed the unhealthy and wasteful mindset about food our children obtain and carry from their experiences as a student. Finally, I critiqued the school meal programs of other modern countries to help point out possible approaches to fixing the system.

The first reason why the healthy hunger free kids act is a good idea is because it improves student nutrition. Four schools in massachusetts did studies and they showed that the new law did have a positive impact. After the program, students wanted/ate 16% more fruits and veggies. Students were suddenly moving veggies from the side of the plate to the middle. (C) (B)This shows that kids

Nevertheless, the National School Lunch Program provides unique ideas for improving the program in the future. By improving the guidelines into modern needs it helps to think about what can be changed to make it better in the future. Talk From Earth wrote in "Cafeteria Food - Improving School Lunches - How to Make Cafeteria Food Better for Kids and the Environment," that by banning sugary food and food from school lunches, it causes the administrators and many parents to want to have healthy lunches and be more green. This got me thinking how urban schools can achieve this same success in developing a more nutritious lunch in different ways. By schools teaching better eating habits it can affect the future for students. As Elisabeth Leamy

About 220 billion lunches have been served since President Truman’s signing of the National School Lunch Act in 1946. However, according to the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine study, about 36% of children ages 6 to 11 are overweight and 20% are obese. The rate of obesity has risen since the 1940’s, but school lunch has made revisions to create meals to be healthier and more nutritionally dense for the child. Research has shown overweight people are only becoming more overweight and normal weight people are staying the same or developing healthier lifestyle

Most students will not eat all of their lunch since the “Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010” was put into action.

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

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?

School lunch programs need to change, and in order to implement this, “In 2004, Congress required every single school in the district to develop local wellness policies regarding food available in school, nutrition programs, and physical activity programs”(Haugen & Musser,2012). The government was trying to put in place programs to help children be healthy in their food choices as well as ways to get healthy if they were already overweight by incorporating physical healthy programs. Schools need to limit the amount of fatty choices and put more healthy products in their school cafeterias. Nutrition education programs can help students to learn the dangers of obesity and show them that their health is something that needs to be taken seriously

Elementary through high school students complain about how poorly made the food is and how they are still hungry after lunch. “Kids get seconds if they are still hungry, but they choose unhealthy selections”(citation) Schools are basically starving students by not giving them enough protein and nutrition. Schools in America need to step up their game. They all need more fruits and vegetables in their school lunch lines. They should gradually add more and more healthy foods, so the

Of all of the problems that dishearten children today, the one that bothers them the most is being unhealthy. Five out of six students from the Manalapan Englishtown Middle School agree that there should be a change in the schools' cafeteria foods; they came up with a solution to help kids be healthy. Unhealthy foods should be eliminated in schools for many reasons. First of all, kids concentrate better when they are healthy. Being healthy helps children to concentrate better because if they are healthy in the inside and the outside, they will not have to worry about their health or how they look. Secondly, having only healthy foods in school help parents to take good care of their kids. For instance, imagine a mom that is a seventh

Childhood obesity had become an epidemic of national attention. Research after research has shown us frightening evidence about the health risk facing America’s Children. This dilemma cannot be solved without extensive action. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2012 is a piece of legislation, signed by President Barack Obama, which aims to conflict the overwhelming epidemic that touching the entire nation. Many conservatives argue this act and would like to withdraw the legislation, believing that it is not the appropriate way to go about administering the problem.

According to the Centers for Disease Control, “Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years,” meaning that America’s children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For, as the world waged war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of the country’s soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling excess agricultural goods was more important than building a healthy, well-balanced meal for students. Unfortunately, many children coming from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school lunches, so in order to compensate, the School Lunch

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

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.

Better nutrition in schools is critical being students will eat food that is better for them. Research shows students that eat school meals are more likely to obtain a healthier weight than students that bring a lunch if the school abide National School lunch program (NSLP). This shows that school lunch is healthier by