School Lunches Essay

Obesity rates for kids have gone up drastically the last couple of decades, could this be caused by the public school lunches? In the past 40 years the percentage of obese children has gone up, from 5% in 1978 to 18.5% in 2016. The problem is the numbers of obese kids are just going to rise if we don't change the way the public school system feeds our kids. School lunches are even often known to be disgusting and unhealthy. To help this problem we need to improve the nutrition in the school lunches. Another thing that we can do is educate kids in school on how to obtain a balanced diet. For these reasons we need to improve the American school lunches system. Improving school lunch nutrition is essential for our children. Students who eat school

One of the most important things when you're growing up is what you eat. Teaching kids how to eat healthy and how what you eat affects you is essential and should be mandatory to be taught at schools nationwide. Alyson Grioux, current M.Ed student, at Brandon University states, “Children acquire and learn eating habits as they grow and develop. Implementing quality nutritional education in the school day can have positive effects on a student’s interactions with nutrition.” (Pérez-Rodrigo & Aranceta, 2003). Children that don’t acquire education about nutrition are more likely to have a bad relationship with food as an adult. It's important to have a good relationship with food because without a healthy relationship it can be hard to gauge how food is affecting your body and if it's healthy for you. When you have a bad relationship with food as a kid it's hard to break that habit when you go to adulthood. Thurshanthi Perea, who works at Linus Pauling Institute, Oregon State University Graduate states, “Poor food choices in childhood are core contributors to obesity and chronic diseases during adolescence and adulthood.” (Perea et al.) If you grow up with poor food options as an adult you will be more inclined to pick those foods. This is important because if you start off with a bad relationship with food it is increasingly harder to learn how to get a good diet as an adult.