School Lunches In Public Schools

It is no secret that throughout this extensive journey that we call life, obstacles and hardships will be encountered. The fact that many precious young years are taken up by going to school is a mental hardship within itself and has been endured by all however, nothing seems to compete with the appalling school lunches. After experiencing twelve years under educational establishments and dealing with the exams, homework, the class work, and the daunting essays, none of these tasks can compare to what schools are considering as “food”. There have been countless days where all you could hear are loud whaling noises throughout a silent class, and all that could be done is to clench your stomach praying that the noises will stop and that nobody

Recently, in health class students observed meals served to students in these other regions. To no surprise there were many remarks on the quantity of the food, its appearance, and the type of food. One thing that the students immediately noticed was that all the other meals looked as if they were well prepared in the school's kitchen where as the lunches in the U.S. are already pre made and just reheated. For instance, on the Huffington Post a typical meal in Italy consists of local fish on a bed of arugula, pasta with tomato sauce, caprese salad, baguette and some grapes. The meal for the United States consists of fried “popcorn” chicken, mashed potatoes, peas, a fruit cup and a chocolate chip cookie, however from the picture the “chicken” did not look completely cooked and the mashed potatoes and peas look bland. The other school lunches are presented in manner that makes it seem as if they were home cooked meals made by a parent or guardian. Even private school lunches within the states are better than the food served at public schools but this is no surprise because the children's parents are paying lots of money for their child to be within the school. Schools believe that they are getting a great deal with the foods that they buy for the students when in reality most of the money is going into the

Students are being driven to several mental and physical diseases such as obesity because of the food presentation. The dismaying perception on food is due to the lack in presentation. On a day to day basis the lunch ladies slop the “food” onto the trays not fully caring on it apperance. Since this is the case children are becoming picky on what they will and will not eat. Although, schools are trying to diminish the obesity rates the students pickiness is actually doing the complete opposite and increasing the chances in early hood obesity. Students are refusing to eat the school lunch and are now stopping at deli’s before school so that they can stock up on sweets and junk food to keep them full throughout the school day. The constant run to the deli becomes a growing habit within these students, especially teens and will increase the chance of obesity. In addition, since the majority of students are against school lunches they usually starve themselves instead of eating. This as well becomes a bad habit and can lead to regular cases of fatigue, headaches, an unhealthy amount of weight loss during a short period of time and in extreme cases lead to eating disorders such as anorexia nervosa. People who usually are anorexic starve themselves in fear of gaining weight and in starving yourself because of the horrible school