preview

Junk Food

Decent Essays

Junk food has been getting a bad rap recently in society. It is believed that junk food is a leading factor in childhood obesity and should not be allowed in public schools. Due to this many school systems have enacted bans, or strict regulations that limit or completely exclude junk food in schools. Junk food should not be banned in schools because schools profit and are able to fund education and extracurricular activities through selling it, junk food isn’t as harmful as one would think, and even if schools ban junk food students can still be at risk of obesity through the use of outside sources.
Schools make huge profit through the use of vending machines and selling junk food that help fund after school activities and education. …show more content…

There are many studies that show junk food isn’t as harmful as many would imagine. According to Radford, “A study followed nearly 20,000 students from kindergarten through the eighth grade in 1,000 public and private schools. The researchers examined the children’s weight and found that in the eighth grade, 35.5 percent of kids in schools with junk food were overweight while 34.8 percent of those in schools without it were overweight”(1). These researchers came to the conclusion through this experiment that junk food in school wasn’t as serious in issue as one would think. Junk food isn’t exactly available twenty four seven while students are in school. As stated by Rosenthal “There really isn’t a lot of opportunity for children to eat while their in school, or at least eat endlessly, compared to when their at home. As a result whether or not junk food is available to them in at school may not have much bearing on how much junk food they eat”(6). For lack of a better statement, students can’t eat as much at school as they can when their at home. Whether kids have access to junk food or not, it is believed them gaining weight from it isn’t an issue. As quoted by Radford, “kids with access to junk food at school were no heavier than those without”(2). To be blunt, kids who eat junk food aren’t going to be any heavier than anyone else.

Get Access