Federal Nutritional Guideline For School Lunches

Lunch is a very important meal for most students, seeing how they get a break from whatever subjects they are learning in school to refuel their empty stomachs and minds. Although in recent years, school lunches haven't been the most sought-out due to various reasons. One of which is the effort to make school lunches healthy. Although the nutritional guideline for school lunches gives students healthy food, the federal nutritional guideline makes school lunches worse for students and schools. Schools have had a harder time keeping up with the changing requirements for lunches and has led to limited opinions on what they can serve. Without proper financial investments, schools aren't able to make the changes to meet the guidelines. Lastly, the

If you look back at lunches from decades ago, you’d notice the enormous amount of changes in what schools served then compared to now due to the federal health guidelines, but how have schools dealt with the changes to lunch guidelines now? Over the years, the nutritional program has changed “with the implementation of various nutrition standards and guidelines”. However, as these regulations have become more stringent, schools have found it increasingly challenging to meet the requirements while still offering meals that students find appealing” (Sanchez). Schools now have a hard time keeping up with guidelines and having lunches that students would want. There is to be a balance between having food that is healthy but also good, but with the tremendous changes in federal health guidelines for school lunches, the balance of food is broken. The restrictions and guidelines put on school lunches have led to schools only focusing on the health part of lunches instead of thinking if students would even want to try

Now, doing such things as making school lunches healthy is a very costly thing. Replace whole lunch menus and order schedules. Most schools want to make the change and follow the guidelines, but the cost of money is a greater problem than having unhealthy lunches. School food officials say the proposed changes are well-intended but, “without a serious financial investment in the staff tasked with cooking those healthier, nutritious meals, they won't become a reality.”(Jimenez) Without the funding, schools can’t serve healthier meals. What makes this important is the factor of paying people who are able to serve such health-related food in such mass quantities. For a place to make as much food as to feed hundreds or thousands of mouths, while keeping it healthy nonetheless, it would of course involve many workers to mass cook lunches that would feed every student, but they wouldn’t be doing it for free. So in paying every worker, the equipment, the ingredients they use, it would cost a huge sum of money. Although employee payment is a financial problem for healthy lunches, the lunches themselves are pretty expensive also. The School Nutrition Association has claimed that “the mandate is a burden on school budgets”. Healthier meals are more expensive to produce, kids don't like them