A+Food+Revolution

Obesity in Schools
Did you know that obesity is a widespread epidemic, ravaging schools in the US? Due to the convenience and ease, public schools have been forced to serve food such as pizza and fried chicken, almost daily. In some schools, they even serve “breakfast pizza” and sugary cereals drenched with chocolate and neon pink strawberry flavored milk. If conditions don’t improve, diabetes and a wide array of food related illnesses can become a lot more common. However activists such as celebrity chef Jamie Oliver have taken up this cause, and are working hard to stop and undo the effects of this serious issue.

The problem is unhealthy foods in schools. Fried chicken nuggets and frozen pizza soaked in oil are everyday meals for most kids who buy lunch from the school system. To put it simply, kids would rather eat unhealthy garbage, than eat a semi nutritious meal with a great taste. Usually this is the case, because the students haven’t tried it and don’t intend on doing so. This opens up a wide range of lifestyle diseases such as heart disease as they age. As the article “Inside Jamie’s Food Fight with LA” said, “Anybody can eat healthy with just some thought”. Another issue is the lack of education regarding healthy eating children get at schools. Often times, the parents of the children aren’t able to educate their children about making healthy choices, so they must rely on public schools to do so. As the article also said “… others in education need to be more focused, both in terms of what schools serve as well as how they educate their students about eating more nutritionally…”

The remedies to both these problems are simple, as the answer is the same. Education is crucial to resolve these issues. If students were properly educated, then they would think twice about sugary cereal for breakfast, pizza for lunch, and fried chicken for dinner. However that’s only part of the solution. Schools need to step up their game and offer more options that are both nutritious and great-tasting. Perhaps even take away the unhealthy foods. For examples, celebrity chef Jamie Oliver on his show often suggests that school lunches should be made from scratch, without hazardous preservatives. Also, if fresh food were more widely available most people accept the concept, communities would have a great source of nutritious food. In the article “Why US students are flunking lunch, “within a few miles of the Hollywood sign, there are entire communities without access to fresh food.” This is an aspect that has to change for people to become healthier.

In the article “LA schools’ healthful lunch menu planned by students”, lunch menus have been completely revamped. New healthy options such as black bean burgers and tostada salad have been added to the menu, and students couldn’t be more displeased with this. Students call the new cuisine “nasty, rotten stuff”, as many complain about the tastes and quality, and rather than succumb to purchasing it, they bring junk food instead. High school juniors sit down and unload their backpacks, unveiling 3 large bags of flaming hot Cheetos. According to a high school junior at the table, “this is our daily lunch…we are eating more junk food now than ever”. This happened because the LA unified school district has ridden itself of the unhealthy food, kids are accustomed too ,and replaced them with different foods they simply weren’t used too, such as chicken pozole and vegetarian tamales, causing lunch sales to plummet. Since then however, sales began to recover and students are beginning to get used to the new lunch program, but is nowhere near as popular as it previously has been. As Andre, a member of the InnerCity Struggle organization, a group working to improve school lunches said, “No matter how healthy it is, if it’s not appetizing, people won’t eat it.

I think that the problem isn’t the kind of food school cafeterias serve, but what’s in the food they serve. The breakfast they serve is often filled with sugar, as is the flavored milk served with it. The lunch is almost always unhealthy, that being the same burgers and pizza served daily. I don’t think that these foods should disappear completely, because that would just cause misery among students. Instead, I think it would be a better to keep the same food students know and love, and make them healthier. Who knows, people might actually like the healthier food better. However, unhealthy food isn’t the only problem. I can’t help but think that personal responsibility is tied to this. After all, isn’t it common knowledge that sugary sodas and Flaming Hot Cheetos aren’t healthy? The kids who consume this trash daily know how bad it is for them, yet they still continue to eat it anyway. This is why I also think health and physical education classes shouldn’t be cast off to the side, like many schools are doing nowadays, included in which, should be more so extensive and encouraging. If this issue is addressed, not only will they not have to worry so much about lifestyle diseases, or deal with mid-day energy crashes, but they will truly be healthier people.

To summarize, many students eat lunch provided by various meal programs at schools. Unfortunately, the food being fed to them is making kids overweight and unhealthy. Since some of these students haven’t had the opportunity to try anything different, they have become used to, and in severe cases addicted to unhealthy food. Due to the efforts of activists such as celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, schools have been forced to serve healthier options. However, some students buying lunch simply don’t want to try these new, healthy options, causing schools to lose funding and in some cases, revert to serving the old meals again. Even if there is no unhealthy food available, students always find ways to obtain such; by bringing it from home or buying it off other students, junk food has found its way into many schools. The cure to this serious health problem is education. If students are properly educated by the schools, about nutrition and food in general, they will be less likely to make poor nutritional choices. In conclusion, I think that even though, students have a right to eat whatever they want, schools should be obligated to regulate and revamp the meals they serve to meet the health and nutritional demands of the new generation.