School Lunch Program Analysis

This opinion piece shows the new school lunch programs intent to have healthier lunches has proved otherwise. Michelle Obama created this program to help childhood obesity and hunger by making school lunches healthier and more available to kids in poverty. This program expires in September and this article believes the new program will need to be changed to stay in effect. First, the piece expresses how much is spent of the Hunger-Free Kids act, which is $12 billion a year and an additional $3 billion for the breakfast program. This program covers almost half of American kids. The distribution of this money isn’t based on need; a school system in Chicago gives free meals to the entire district opposed individual families. One of the main

The USDA’s Office of Inspector General believes that this program has “improper payment”. Senator John Thune stays that the National School Lunch Program has wasted billions of dollars. He believes that it is important to have a program to help the less fortunate but skewed payments are costing taxpayers a lot of extra money for something that is not beneficial. A new branch of this program has started to follow kids to parks to delivery carrots; Bertrand Weber, the Minneapolis public schools nutritional director, guides this. She is trying to bring this program to the entire district, which would cost another $6 million. Another program that is becoming more popular is connecting school cafeterias to local farms. There is funding available for this but it has not yet been utilized. Overall the authors are saying that the Hunger-Free Kids Act is not helping with hunger or childhood obesity. They believe there is too much money being put into this program without considerable results. Also, with all the wasted food kids still aren’t getting the nutrients they need. This piece does a great job of using common sense and credibility to break through the perception of this school lunch

The authors have the opinions of the USDA’s Office of Inspector General and a US Senator stating that they also disagree with this school lunch system. The Inspector General states that the National School Lunch Program has, “high rates of improper funding”. If he is saying this then there must be a lot more people thinking the same thing. In addition, Senator Thune states that, because of the improper payment, taxpayers are paying an extra $2.7 billion for this program. These professional opinion is that this money could be put to a much better use and that is appealing to most taxpayers today, because if the American people have to pay taxes they want to make sure it is put to good use. Although this opinion piece has good credibility and is convincing, it does not include much of an opposition. It states that Michelle Obama is backing this program and her intent is to help under privileged kids and reduce obesity in children, but beyond that it doesn’t include the other