Analysis Of The Real Problem With Lunch By Bettina Elias Siegel

The article “The Real Problem With Lunch” written by Bettina Elias Siegel is about the everlasting struggle of replacing unhealthy American public school lunches with better alternatives. She’s reaching out to parents, students, school representatives, and other influential people to change how American society views junk food, in hope that it will affect choices children make about lunches at school. How convincing is Siegel’s argument overall? Although she doesn’t fully address the strides made already by public schools to better their lunches, she strategically balances her use of argumentative tools: pathos, ethos, and logos. She uses statistics, facts, and empathy to urge her point of bettering lunches for children. Siegel has been studying and writing about school lunches for 7 years now, and she has her own website The Lunch Tray where she consistently blogs about this subject of children’s lunches. Her message has remained the same, she wants to better the nutrition of American children. To grab the attention of her audience she uses an anecdote about the way we tend to jokingly pit American lunches against those from other countries. From there she riles up those who

“[I]n 2004, Pew Charitable Trusts showed that schools’ total needs exceed $5 billion.” (“The Problem With Lunch”). Since 2009, schools have been asked to maintain a much tighter budget. She attached a link to the Pew Charitable Trusts site which shows a list of pdf files, each indicating the needs for each state’s schools. The studying she does here includes a lot of logic, as well as showing the depth of the research she’d done. On top of this, she goes on to provide statistics for malnutrition in American children, many lacking in vegetables, and many overindulging in junk