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Cierra Houser

Professor Trotter

English 1201

20 Mar. 2019

School lunches

School lunches need better guidelines in order to help lower the obesity rate in America.

Right now, the average obesity rate in the United states is 18.5% (The State of Childhood

Obesity). This is a crazy statistic that needs to be changed. Parents also worry about their

children eating unhealthy even in the classrooms. The lunches in the united states are not as

appealing as those that can be seen in other countries. Although there are guidelines already in

place improving the existing and adding new ones will make a huge impact. New guidelines

need to be made in terms of nutritional value to ensure the health of both elementary students all

the way up through high school students.

First off besides the lunchroom food is still being brought in to the classrooms. Students

are able to bring in food for parties, or projects. Teachers even bring in food sometimes for tests,

or certain events that they have. As stated by Kristy Agresta in an article from EBSCOhost

“When a conversation around a change in food policy begins, it is often assumed that food

allergies are at the core. But with childhood obesity increasing rapidly, food allergies are not the

only factor contributing to evolving food policy” (36). Not only do parents have to worry about

their children having an allergy, but the food being brought in is not nutritional. Obesity rates are

at an all-time high, and extra food being brought in can contribute to this. Also as stated in the

text “Children spend a majority of their day in school approximately 1,000 hours per year.
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According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), one in six children and adolescents is

obese” (Agresta, 36). Children are in school a majority of the time, and if all they are eating is

food with no nutrition, how will they improve the obesity rate?

Some parents have rallied against this idea of taking away food from the classrooms.

These parents argue that it is taking away freedom. “Some say that removing food sharing and

parties from the classroom is an attack on personal choice and civil liberties” (Agresta, 37). The

parents do not want the school taking the food away from the classrooms due to not wanting

their freedom taken away. Some schools have pass regulations making the only food brought it

nutritional. “Schools across the country have chosen to remove food from classroom parties

entirely” (Agresta, 37). There are no federal laws on having food in the classrooms, it is up to the

school district itself. Even though banning food in the classroom can take away some freedoms

the health of the children is a bigger concern.

Eating more nutritious foods at lunch can also help a student academically. A study was

done by associate professor Michael L Anderson. Anderson is an associate professor for the

Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics and the University of California Berkeley

(Anderson et al., 62). A study was done to see the connection between diet, cognitive

development, and cognitive function (Anderson et al., 62). The goal was to see if eating more

nutritious food will help improve test scores. The study measured what happened when students

were offered healthier lunches on the end-of-year tests. The study was performed on public

school students in California (Anderson et al., 62). The tests measured a span of five academic

years. “Thus, increasing the nutritional quality of school meals appears to be a promising, cost-

effective way to improve student learning. This can be shown to benefit the obesity rates as well

as help students develop better eating habits (Anderson et al., 64). After doing the tests it did
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prove that eating healthier meals at school will help to improve their learning. Also, while the

students are learning more, it will help cut the obesity rate, and have plenty of health benefits.

The Physicians Committee is a group of doctors with hopes of changing the food children

eat every day in school. “If you look at what is being served in the school lunch line its pizza its

hamburgers its french fries its unhealthy its unhealthy high fat foods” (The Physicians

Committee). The options students have at school are not nutritious, and they are harming the

students over time. One regulation that schools must have is to serve student at least one fruit.

“The fruit cup was one of those prepackaged ones that are in the heavy syrup so there’s nothing

really healthy there” (The physicians Committee). So, as this quote shows even the fruit that they

are supposed to have is not nutritious in any way. Many schools see this as a problem and want

to find a way to make things better. “The first thing that you need to know is that as of right now

already without the law fully having to go into place over ninety percent of the schools are

already in compliance which means they’re stepping up” (The Physicians Committee).

Other school districts are scared to start fixing healthier meals because they think

students will not eat the food being served to them. Most of the time the students do want to eat

unhealthier food, and when forced to eat healthier food they will not like it. “The schools tend to

think well kids aren’t going to eat healthful foods and they really like chicken nuggets and french

fries so let’s just give them chicken nuggets and french fries” (The Physicians Committee). But

we need to think about what is important and that is making sure the students are healthy.

It is important to view how the school lunches in the united states differ from lunches

around the world. This is what WQAD.com wanted to find out. WQAD is a news sourced based

out of Illinois. “In many parts of the world, schools can barely afford classroom supplies, let

alone daily meals, but nonprofit organizations or government programs often step in with feeding
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programs to provide free meals that include meat and veggies” (“How School Lunches Measure

up in Countries around the world”). This shows many schools have a problem affording things to

teach the kids let alone being able to provide a lunch or even a healthy lunch. Compared to other

countries around the world the United States has shown to have some of the highest nutrition

standards (“How School Lunches Measure up in Countries around the World”).

One problem is that some students do not get very much time to eat while others have

plenty of time to eat. “We don’t have national standards for the lunch period length, and as a

result of that, we see a lot of variability within schools. Some kids have as little as 15 minutes for

a lunch period. Some kids have a lot more than that” (“How School Lunches Measure up in

Countries around the World”). A study was done to see if the students were more or less likely to

eat healthy depending on the lunch period length. “The researchers found that students were

significantly less likely to select a fruit as part of their lunch if they had less than 20 minutes to

eat their meal, compared with at least 25 minutes” (“How School Lunches Measure up in

Countries around the World”). This is a problem that needs to be solved in order to help students

achieve the goal of eating healthier. After the research was over an overall conclusion was that

students should have a 30-minute lunch period (“How School Lunches Measure up in Countries

around the World”).

Other countries have different guidelines than we do when it comes to school lunches.

Brazil does have limitations on processed foods as well as foods that includes sugar, salt, and

saturated fats. Fresh food is made daily from scratch, also menus are developed by nutritionists

(“How School Lunches Measure up in Countries around the World”). In Taiwan, south Korea

and Japan Calcium is part of their school lunch regulations( Meeyoung et al., 160-168). “In

other parts of the world, however, school lunch is not as common. A paper published last year in
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the journal Healthcare in Low-resource Settings assessed health services in primary schools in

Nigeria’s Enugu East and found that lunch was given by only one private school. One public

school had a free meal program, but it collapsed” (“How School Lunches Measure up in

Countries around the World”). So, while countries have different school lunch regulations some

don’t even provide lunch at all.

Fig. 1 shows the differences in lunches between the United States and Brazil (Brilliant

News).

This is the difference between school lunches the U.S.A. versus what they look like in

Brazil (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNMemslD1E). After reading the differences

above, now you can visually see the difference. First off, in Brazil there are far more food

options on the tray compared to what is on the tray from the U.S.A. Secondly, the food is way

healthier, they have greens and beans and whole grain bread. On the U.S.A tray there is a milk, a

fruit juice cup, and some mozzarella sticks. The visual difference is outstanding, and remarkable,
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and quite frankly can be seen as embarrassing to the U.S.A. Changes need to be made in order to

fix what goes on our student's lunch trays.

Kate Murphy a writer for the New York Times created an article showing why students

do not like school lunches. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act is a law set in place as of 2012 to

make school lunches healthier. Students across the nation have problems with students tossing

out food, or opting for something else, this causes the schools lose money (Murphy, “Why

Students Hate School Lunches”). So, as school lunches have started to get healthier students are

just plain not eating it. “Consider that in France, where the childhood obesity rate is the lowest in

the western world, a typical four course school lunch would probably not pass muster under the

Healthy, Hunger-Free-Kids Act, because of the refined grains, fat, salt and calories” (Murphy,

“Why Students Hate School Lunches”). The obesity rate is lower in France, but the regulations

are less strict there. This could be due to many of different variabilities. Students who eat school

lunches in the United States can have less than 20 minutes to eat while students in France can

have 2 hours to eat their lunch (Murphy, “Why Students Hate School Lunches”). This is a very

good comparison between what lunches look like in America versus what they look like in

France.

A good way to help students want to eat healthier foods is by letting them pick out what

they want. “To reduce waste and bring back students who have opted to pack a lunch or, in the

case of high school students, go off campus for fast food, his district’s cafeterias have installed

stir-fry stations with abundant vegetables so students can have meals made to order” (Murphy,

“Why Students Hate School Lunches”). This allows the students to essentially make their own

food exactly how they want it. This is more appealing to them instead of having to just take what

the lunch lady puts on the lunch tray. “In Minneapolis, Mr. Weber is phasing out processed food
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in favor of more scratch-made meals prepared in full on-site kitchens that are being installed in

all his district’s 62 schools over a six-year period. He has also partnered with local chefs to

sponsor “Junior Iron Chef contests,” where students compete to come up with cafeteria recipes”

(Murphy, “Why Students Hate School Lunches”). This is a very smart idea considering most

students would love to be able to help create the menu. This gives them the opportunity to

actually help and take away some of the load of the school lunches ladies. It also will help them

to actually want to eat the food, and not throw it out since they created the menu for it.

Nearly 100,000 school serve lunch to over 30 million students a day. 20 million of those

lunches served are free, 2 million are served at a reduced price, and only nearly 8 million pay the

full price (School Nutrition Standards). So, more than half of the lunches being served every

single day are free of charge. If students are not paying for the lunch that means they are in

poverty. These students are most of the time not eating nutritionally at home due to the cost.

Furthermore, when they eat that school that lunch needs to be nutritious to keep those students

healthy.

Another problem with school lunches is getting the healthiest food for the amount of

money parents are already spending. The average price of a school lunch for a high school

student is $2.74. The average price of a lunch for a middle school student is $2.68. And lastly,

the average price of a school lunch for an elementary student is $2.48(“School Nutrition

Standards”). For this price students receive a milk a fruit and usually a slice of pizza or another

small processed food. It is difficult to get enough healthy food on the students tray for the prices

listed above. Healthier foods usually cost much more than the unhealthy processed foods. This

becomes a problem considering most of the American students receive free lunches already, if

prices went up even more would have to go on the free lunch program.
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Works Cited

Agresta, Kristy. “Food in Schools: To Eat or Not to Eat?” Education Digest, no. 4, 2018, p. 36.

EBSCOhost,

sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d

b=edsgea&AN=edsgcl.563417997&site=eds-live. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019.

Anderson, Michael L., et al. “How the Quality of School Lunch Affects Students’ Academic

Performance.” Education Digest, no. 6, 2018, p. 61. EBSCOhost,

sinclair.ohionet.org:80/login?url=https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&d

b=edsgea&AN=edsgcl.533505517&site=eds-live. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019.

Committee, Physicians, director. Public School Lunches In America: What Your Child Eats

Matters. YouTube, YouTube, 27 Sept. 2018,

www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBJzqMtuo0U&t=329s. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019.

“How School Lunches Measure up in Countries around the World.” WQAD.com, WQAD.com, 9

Apr. 2018, wqad.com/2018/04/09/how-school-lunches-measure-up-in-countries-around-

the-world/. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019.

Meeyoung Kim, et al. “Comparison of the Nutrient-Based Standards for School Lunches among

South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan.” Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, vol. 26, no.

1, Mar. 2017, pp. 160–168. EBSCOhost, doi:10.6133/apjcn.102015.16. Accessed 18 Mar.

2019.
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Murphy, Kate. “Why Students Hate School Lunches.” The New York Times, The New York

Times, 26 Sept. 2015, www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/sunday-review/why-students-hate-

school-lunches.html. Accessed 18 Mar. 2019.

News, Brilliant. YouTube, YouTube, 9 Apr. 2018, www.youtube.com/watch?v=WfNMemslD1E.

Accessed 3 Apr. 2019.

“School Nutrition Standards .” School Meal Trends & Stats, School Nutrition Association ,

schoolnutrition.org/AboutSchoolMeals/SchoolNutritionStandards/. Accessed 18 Mar.

2019.

“The State of Childhood Obesity.” The State of Obesity, www.stateofobesity.org/childhood/.

Accessed 2 Apr. 2019.