Should Changes Be Made to the Regulations for Foods That Are Served in Public Schools Essay Example

events.The focus of my audience for the paper is the vote from the parents, teachers and government officials who has the proper authorization to make a change to help and encourage our children.

The community as a whole needs to be informed of the hazards that these meals are doing to our children. I remember in middle school days there was always a kid that always brought their lunch to school. One day a classmate asked, “Why do you bring your lunch to school every day instead of just eating the food that is provided to you by the school”?The student then replied, “The reason I bring my own food is because it is healthier for me to know what is in my lunchbox verses trying to figure out what is the food provided to us from our public school cafeteria”. Evidence was provided that showed back in 2010 there were about 99,000 public schools in the United States of America, the number has increased since then. With this being said, each school has their own policy and procedure to follow but we are all under the same government.

All public school systems have to follow the mandatory government regulations which states in section 2 of the National School Lunch Act (42 U.S. C. 1751), “It is declared to be the policy of Congress, as a measure of national security, to safeguard the health and well-being of the Nations children and to encourage the domestic consumption of nutritious agricultural commodities and other means, in providing an adequate supply of food and other facilities for the establishment, maintenance, operation, and expansion of nonprofit school lunch programs.

What are the foods that are being served at public schools? School lunches must meet Federal nutrition requirements, but decisions about what specific foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by local food authorities.This is where the problem comes into effect because each local food authority is not based with the same protocol. The foods that are being served at public schools are ice cream, chips, soda, and candy, fried chicken, pizza, processed meats and the number one meal served to children in the United States is chicken fingers and French fries. What foods are schools required to serve in a school lunch? USDA provides most foods to the school system in some form. About 17 percent of the dollar value of the food that goes on the table in school lunch programs is provided directly by USDA as commodities.

Particular foods provided by the USDA are not required to be served to any school system. Public school food must meet the federal nutrition requirement that is implemented for each state, but decisions about what foods to serve and how they are prepared are made by the local school food authorizes. Most school lunches rely heavily on high energy, low-nutrient-value food, because it has shown to be cheaper. What is this food doing to our children? The childhood obesity epidemic has increased because of the contribution of junk food that is being served in public schools.

It has been found that children who eat fatty school foods are more likely to become obese than those who brought lunch from home. Why is this we may ask has a lot to do with the above

student that I stated brought their lunch from home daily. You can count the intake of calories that is in your lunchbox but you have no idea what is in the food from you school, half of the time you will not even know what the food is. Also, the specials that are provided for students on special food days increases their calorie intake as well such as; pizza day or wing day.On these days children have shown to intake more food because these are the days that they provide greasy foods that taste swell and the children like them so they will gravitate to them because they do not have the proper knowledge to know what this food can do to your body. Children born today have a one in three chance of developing diabetes in their lifetime, and this goes up to a one in two chance if they are African American or Hispanic.

Sugar is also a main cause for diabetes as well and this comes from all the sugary drinks and snacks that are served in the vending machines located at the school.Sugar can drive your child’s immune system into both under function and overdrive, with neither working to your child’s advantage. Research has shown that the function of white blood cells, called macrophages, which patrol the body to prevent outside invasion, is decreased by more than 30 percent for three hours after consuming the amount of sugar in a can of soda. According to Teitelbaum (2010) when children eat and drink so much sugar in lieu of eating a well-balanced diet, they don’t get enough of the nutrients they need

for optimal health and growth, such as fiber, vitamins A, C, and E, and folate, magnesium and calcium.Children replace milk, the number one source of calcium in their diet, with soft drinks.

Is there documented research to explain why children become obese? In the United States in the last past three decades has tripled and our children are being served food that real nutritional value. The reason we explain the lack of nutritional value is because the food is cooked frozen then preheated and most of the ingredients lacks nutrition. It has also been found that the vegetable oil is brominated; this is a flame retardant that is found in many popular drinks including Mountain Dew and Gatorade.The FDA has approved it to be safe but it is still unhealthy. Another name for this product is called BVO. The drinks, such as soft drinks are deemed as very unhealthy because they contain high fructose corn syrup and aspartame.

What foods should be served? We have never seen a child eat too many fruit, vegetables, or whole grains, but we have seen many who consume a lot of juice, soda, candy, doughnuts, cookies, and other highly processed items. the way to try and start change for the betterment of our children is to serve more fruits and vegetables on our lunch menus.Have a salad bar for the children to choose from and sell freshly made deli sandwiches, soups and maybe even sushi. Children need healthy snacks at school to choose from for example if they want chips, provide baked chips, low-fat crackers and fruit snacks in the vending machine.

In the place of white bread, wheat

bread can be provided as well, even with the pasta use wheat pasta. How do we educate our youth? Educating our youth about the importance of making healthy choices daily needs to be a national priority in this country. A great place to start to better educate our children is with school lunches and maybe starting a pilot project.This will help to eliminate the junk food from the schools and the vending machines. School lunches should provide great nutritious food to all students.

However, just limiting the calorie intake but still serving processed food will not be the answer. Substituting sugary soft drinks with diet soda and sports drinks does not solve the problem either. The expectation is for parents to ask why as a community do we feel that this topic is so important. Children will probably ask if we take all the sweets and caffeine out of the schools what will they have to keep them awake and focused?Research will consist of student and parent surveys, polls that have been taken from our government and our community.

Most information will come from facts and statistics. The information provided will be very credible for an audience to result back to in the need to make the change to our community. We need to bring awareness and hopefully have everyone on board with the idea to change the regulations for foods that are served in public schools for the children of the world. This will conclude my paper