How can schools provide healthy lunches at a budgetable price?

"For children, the National School Lunch Program provides a nutritious meal that contains 1/3 of the Recommended Dietary Allowance of necessary nutrients. For parents, the program offers a convenient method of providing a nutritionally balanced lunch at the lowest possible price. For schools, the program enhances children's learning abilities by contributing to their physical and mental well being. Studies have shown that children whose nutritional needs are met have fewer attendance and discipline problems and are more attentive in class." Students can afford to pay for the healthy lunches at school because of this program. So there's no excuse for the school to provide any junk food to the students.

                                

 http://educateiowa.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=369

Conclusion

To sum it up, school lunch is very convenient because parents are busy and don't have time to make lunch for children. However, it is not good for kids because school lunch are mostly made of frozen or fast foods. Children depend on lunch to eat and if it doesn't contain nutrition it would cause in the long term to have health problems. I think children are growing, so they need a nutritios lunch like beef, milk,vegetables and fruits. I believe school lunch needs improvement because lunch is vital for children because it provides them their daily energy and growth. Some people in China always said "If the young is strong, the country will be  strong; If the young is knowledgeable, the country will be prosperous." This represents that if children grow up strong and healthy they have the energy require to study, which then they can gain knowledge to help their country prosper. 

     

Health

School lunches is usually unhealthy in America because a lot of school serve students fast food for lunch. "Deep-fried popcorn chicken, tiny taters, bread, barbecue sauce, ketchup, milk. That high-fat, high-sodium, low-fiber menu is a typical lunch at a typical American elementary school." It can cause a lot of problems to the children such as obesity, heart diseases. Michelle Obama tried to solve the problems, I've read some articles about Michelle Obama's lunch plan and it was not popular and a lot of students and parents didn't like the plan. "Parents are saying that kids are coming home hungrier than before, and teachers are claiming that kids are hungry an hour after their lunch break, making them sleepy and unfocused." Provide healthy school lunches is very important to the students. "When choosing what to eat for lunch, making a healthy choice is really important. Here's why: Eating a variety of healthy foods gives you energy to do stuff, helps you grow the way you should, and can even keep you from getting sick." It is not just the school responsibility for the children's health, and it is also the parents and the children's own responsibity for eating health food. Parents and children should have a health diet. There are some students that choose to eat the unhealth food even the school can provide them some health school lunches such as vegetables and fruits. When I was in high school there's a lot of students don't like to eat vegetables, even the school provided vegetables. They just left the vegetables on the plate after they finished up the meat. So we should follow the MyPyramid chart and have a healthy diet.

http://kidshealth.org/kid/grow/school_stuff/school_lunches.html
http://www.parents.com/recipes/familyrecipes/quickandeasy/problem-with-your-childs-school-lunch/
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/250732.php

What should we eat in order to have a healthy diet?

We should follow the MyPyramid chart to have a healthy diet, and also do enough exercise every day. "Nutrition is the basis of long-term health and well-being and is vital for early child development- neurological and physical growth." We should eat more grains, vegetables, fruits and eat less meat, beans, milk, oil, sweets to remain a healthy diet. We eat too much meat, oil and sweets in our daily life. That make us absorbs too much sugars, fat and calories, it would make us overweight.

http://bloomingchilddevelopment.wordpress.com/nutrition/

What are the efftects of children eating unhealthy school lunches?

It causes obesity, lack of nutrients, increase in diseases. Children who are overweight and obese due to a high-fat diet are at an increased risk of developing other health conditions, such as heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes, depression and high cholesterol. Only fresh food can provide enough energy for kids and stop the feeling of hunger.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2IB7NDUSBOo  

Questions & Answers

Compare School Lunches To Other Countries

As we all know, most of school lunches in America is fast food,like hamburgers,french fries,chicken and steaks. Many kids depend on school to provide nutritious food for them, but actually they can't get enough nutrition they need from these junk food. Oppositely, the school lunches provided by other countries are better for kids' diet. The following pictures show that people in Asia always eat rice, meats, fishes, vegetables and soups as lunch. Compare  with  the food in America, these school lunches contain more proteins and vitamins instead of oil and fattiness. It is obvious that kids will become more healthy if they refuse fast food and start eating the food with more grains.

Japanese                                                            Chinese                                                     Korean

"The new federal requirements stateside, the first major nutritional school meal overhaul in over 15 years, offer less sodium and trans fats, more whole grains and a broader selection of fruits and vegetables to the 32 million students who take part in the National School Lunch and Breakfast programs. The rules also place a calorie cap on lunches: 650 calories for elementary school lunches, 700 for middle schools and 850 for high schools."American appeal to change the school lunches,to make it more nutritional. Asian food is much better for kids to eat. Like fruits, vegetables, grains are supposed to replace the current food in America. That will be benefit for kids' diet, they can get more energy in lunch time.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/09/school-lunches-from-aroun_n_2100142.html

Home Lunch Vs. School Lunch

Choice and Nutrition
Although school lunch can offer children to several choice, some children may make a wrong choice. Their food choices usually have no nutrition and it is no conducive to growth of children. Even some children do not like school lunch, they throw away food and starve because the food has become bland.This is severe consequences. Home lunch has better choice, parents can ask their children what they like eating and talk to their children about healthy choice to their lunch. A home lunch can give parents a better chance to giving their children a nutrition lunch. They can put more fruits and vegetables in home lunch. It is more nutrition than school lunch.Rose Alexande said "The obvious arguments include the one that bad food served in schools teaches kids the wrong way to plan and eat meals. Schools should be role models, not stoop to conventional or convenient policies."The writer wanted to show us that school aren't looking out for the children they only care for what benifits them best. Although, some argue that school lunch is convenient because parents are busy and have no time to make lunch.
http://www.lifescript.com/life/family/kids/is_school_food_bad_for_students.aspx

Schools Money Management on Kids Lunches

Have you ever wonder why as a child did we get junk foods like cupcakes for breakfast and pizza for lunch? At least, that's what I personally got everyday for school lunch. It was rare for kids to see healthy foods like salads, since the options for healthy foods was limited. Why was it limited? As you can see on the picture to my left side, instead of eating nutritious sandwich like the picture above. Some schools decided to spend their money on equipment like sprinklers. As sad as that is it gets worse, lately on the April 9, 2013 in a Massachusetts middle school some kids got turned away from school lunches because their parents didn't pay a dollar fee for their lunch. Personally, what the school is doing to these kids it's abuse just cause they feel the need to have the children's lunch money to cover unnecessary expenses like equipment's.    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mC3RD_BEFYA 

 

 

"In most cases, the cash-strapped districts used the misappropriated funds to pay for other expenses, such as salaries and equipment"

"The cafeteria fund diversions have led to cost-cutting measures, such as shorter lunch periods, inadequate staffing and serving processed foods instead of fresh fruits and vegetables"

"The cases mentioned in the report may only represent a fraction of misappropriated meal money in California because the state doesn't have the resources to monitor how its nearly 3,000 school districts spend their cafeteria funds"

Chea, a reporter from the San Francisco newspaper, stated the quotes above how school use their money ineffectively affecting the children in the schools. In other words, kids don't eat healthy foods, and get shorter lunches because schools are trying to save money to pay their staff members or buy materialize items instead of caring for the children's well-being. 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/06/california-misspect-lunch-money_n_2635578.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share

A Short Introduction/Backgroud About School Lunches

   

A friend of mine being on her last year of high school, told me that she was tired of the same food the school was providing for her. She believed it didn't contain the proteins she needed to give her enough energy to study through out the day. As we all know, most school lunches provide fast food because its financially beneficial for the school to supply cheap foods.

Also, parents don't have time to make lunch because they are working most of the time, so kids are always depending on school to provide nutritious food for them. Besides, it's convenient for some parents to let their kids eat at school because a school program provides their child free lunch.

"School lunch was at the forefront of news and media in 2012, as students complained about being served new foods they say lack flavor. The attempt to serve healthier meals in U.S. schools is aimed at combating obesity, with more fruits and vegetables served and a daily cap on calories. It has also meant smaller servings, prompting students in Wisconsin to boycott school lunches, and leading kids in Kansas to make a music video suggesting that they aren’t getting enough food at school." Kids are so use to fast foods that when schools tries to improve their diets, they refuse to eat it because they say it lacks of flavor. This indicates that schools have provided them unhealthy foods from the start for so long that their bodies got use to unhealthy foods, so when school tries to replace junk foods with healthy ones it tastes bad for them.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/07/healthy-school-lunch-amer_n_2426397.html

About Us

-Hey I'm Jacqui(for short) and I recently got my license. My major is Civil Engineer, but I'm aiming to get a Master's on Structural Engineering. I'm more of an active person, so I usually like to play any type of sports on my free time. One funny thing about me is that when I first came to U.S. and heard about wiener dogs, I thought American people where actually eating dogs. My first impression was how can they eat cute little dogs. After a while, I realize that they were referring to hotdogs instead of dogs. Doing this project was interesting for me because for the first time I know what's the reason most schools buy junk foods and also hearing from my teammates research I can see that school food values are different in other countries. Anyways, I just wanted to inform people that they should be more careful about what kids eat at schools, since they don't know the harms that it could do to their health. Mostly everyone can according that school lunches was funded by the government to provided the nutritional values that we have at home, but what some families don't realize is that schools buy foods that are cheap. That means unhealthy foods like chips, pizza, hamburger, chicken nuggets, etc. "As you can see, school lunches are made of mostly fast foods that take up to 51% of daily diets making kids become unhealthy". In other words, if you are a concern parent take action and demand that school lunches start to provide better nutrition's for your children like Obama Michelle. She is the white house lady and as she saw all this unhealthy eating habits that schools were having, she decided to take it upon herself to help children through out the country to start eating healthier. I hope that this blog brings knowledge of what is going on at some Americans school, the reasons behind it, and child's health.
http://www.sacbee.com/2012/07/08/4616281/california-school-lunches-missing.html

-My name is Yuk Cheung Lau and you can also call me Jack. I come from Hong Kong and I am 22 years old. My major is Finance and I am a freshmen. This is not my first year to study in America, I came to study in America when I was a sophomore in high school. I like the college life in America, students and teachers are really friendly and helpful here. I think I am going to be a businessman after I graduate. I enjoy the English 113A and 113B for my first year at CSUN. I've learnt a lot about writing skills and how to do well on the presentation. I think the blog and presentation we did this time is interesting and important for our daily life. It helped us to understand more about how to eat healthy during our daily life. My part was the questions and answers. I found out some information from the internet and got a couple of videos on YouTube. I found out there's a lot of school provide unhealthy school lunches to the students. It is really bad for the students because unhealthy food can cause them diseases, obesity and make them lack of energy. Healthy diet is important for all of us, I hope the government can find a way to solve the problem of school provide students unhealthy food.

-Hi I'm Yilin, a nice girl from China. This is my first year to study abroad. I'm glad that my spoken English is much better than yesterday. My major is Business Management. What I expect is to get a Bachelor's, and make many foreign friends during my college life. When the first time I came here, I was not used to American diet. Most of food in America is fast food, like hamburgers, French fries, chicken nuggets, coke and so on. It is totally different from Asian food. Like me, people in china always eat rice, meats, fishes, vegetables and soups as daily diet. I think that’s the reason why many people in America is fatter than those in other countries. Anyway, I’m interested to talk about this topic. It is a issue that kids can not get enough nutrition from school lunches. Indeed, I found many pictures show that school always provide kids fast food as their lunch. Because most of school lunches are funded by government, it is financially beneficial for the school to supply cheap food. Besides, parents are so busy in working that they don’t have enough time to prepare lunches for their kids. So people have to choose school lunches. However, I hope readers to realize that although it is convenient for kids to have lunch at school, it is bad for their health. Kids can’t get enough nutrition at lunch time and they will have no energy to spend the rest of the day. What’s more, I think it is important for government to change the food provided to kids. Kids can get more proteins and vitamins if there are more eggs, vegetables, fruits added in their school lunches. In addition, I suggest people in America can eat more grain food instead of junk food. Like rice, cereal, and bread. All in all, I hope this blog brings some suggestions to you to have a healthier diet than before.

-My name is Junxiao Shao. I am from China. I am a California State University student now. My major is finance. I want to be businessman in the future and make a lot of money. This is my first year in the Unite States. Before I came to the America, I already knew McDonald's, burger king and others American fast food. I thought I could be used to fast food in the US. But when I came here, I found I was not used to burger, pizza and steak everyday. I wanted to eat some rice, ripe vegetables, sauted meat and fish. I was very interested in what American people always eat at home or at school. So I choice “school lunch nutrition” this topic. I think international students and American students also were interested in it. After searched information, I found a lot of schools’ lunch is fast food. They were burger, pizza, chips and other no nutrition food. I think this is the reason why some people are fatter than other countries. I hope the government needs attention school lunch problems. It must be improvement. And I also hope more people can read our blog. We can attention school’s lunch problems together. We should be more concerned about the growth of the next generation. Because the country’s development requires youth. I hope every readers can like this blog and pay close attention to school lunch problems.