Many schools are making the choice to change their school’s lunches into healthier options for children, however some go to an extreme to assure children’s healthy eating habits. Although convincing arguments have been made for the need for healthier lunches for kids in school some take this to the extreme of even banning certain foods or ingredients in the lunches themselves or in the case of the Little Village Academy School in Chicago, banning lunches from home altogether.
Nutrition in school is important since kids receive about 30% of their daily food intake during school hours and has recently become more a more prominent issue than ever before. This is in part due to the abundance of overweight and obesity in American kids and also due to Michelle Obama’s support of the Hunger-Free Kid Act which calls for higher nutrition in lunches served in schools.
It has been reported that most of the students that are overweight, obese, or at risk for either are more likely to be poorer and to qualify for free or reduced lunches but this is not always the case. At this school in Chicago, where the price of lunch for students that do not receive aid or discounts totals $2.25, banning lunches has parents in a fervor since most that must pay the full price cannot afford these charges.
Although it may seem minimal, they add up to more than parents are willing to spend and this isn’t the only place that reductions and restrictions on lunches from home occurs. In states all across the country schools are changing the rules when it comes to food in an effort to combat childhood obesity, but at what price?
I’m not trying to say that more nutritional school lunches are a bad thing, only that this issue must be looked at further to come up with better solutions than over regulating what kids can and cannot eat every day in school.
No comments:
Post a Comment