...School lunches have changed in cost and content. In the united states we all have choices, go right to work out of high school or pursue a higher education, to participate in the political process by voting or choosing not to vote, to eat and drink without thought or live a healthy lifestyle. One choice has been made for the children of America in recent years, the choice of eating a healthy diet, trading in French fries and chicken nuggets for salad bars and organic beef. With the new menu come health benefits but come with additional costs to tax payers. With childhood obesity reaching all time highs president Barack Obama has implemented changes to what is required in the nations cafeterias. “The Healthy, hunger-free kids act, signed by President Barack Obama in 2010, requires all government-subsidized lunch programs to double the amount of fruits and vegetables they serve to children, and serve only whole grains for all grain products” (Allen, 2012) With these new requirements schools are mandated to meet comes additional cost that is not covered by the budget allocated for the school food programs. Allen (2012) found that the changes will take place in 2013-14, will increase the budget for the school program by $3.2 billion, per meal 14 cents, to the already established $11 billion school lunch program. With increased costs and no new funding the additional cost is passed on to the schools, Allen (2012) one school district Shenedehowa’s, lost $23,000 in a...
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...What is so important to change the breakfast and lunch school from what we have? It is important as parents are very concern about what their children have at school for breakfast and lunch. This topic is become sensitive and brought it up to majority by the First Lady, Michelle Obama at Parklawn Elementary School in Alexandria, Virginia as she claimed that she was worried about the food at school as she tried to prepare healthy food for her children (Nixon, 2012.) Moreover changing the breakfast and lunch program can come from many reasons: economic, population, and benefits. In this economy hard time, parents who never have any problem about putting money in pocket might find themselves struggling with financial problem. According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, unemployment has steadily risen and reaching 6.7% in November 2008 and also food and energy prices have increased dramatically throughout. As the bad economic continue the more unemployment will grow larger. Due to financial situation, parents are more apply for the breakfast and lunch program. As reported over the last five years the rates have increased annually by 2.5% to 4.1% (Siegel, 2010) and the higher the student participation rates, the higher the amounts of reimbursement the school receives. As shown in the following picture, there is an increase of free and reducing meals only paid meals are decreased. Saved by the Lunch Bell: As Economy Sinks, School Nutrition Program Participation Rises...
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...generation, to properly teach our children the rights and wrongs of life, and today, we are teaching them the wrong way to eat. Public School Lunch Programs are teaching them that processed foods, high sugar drinks and snacks, are part of a balanced diet, and this is setting up our children for a lifetime of health issues, and adding to an already elevated obesity problem in the United States. Our society, public school system, and parents themselves are setting up our children for an unhealthy lifestyle and a future of health problems by teaching them unhealthy eating habits and feeding them unhealthy food. The days are long gone of the “Farm to Table” cooking methods in our schools that our older generations depended on. Today, we rely on processed foods that are full of additives, fats and sugars. The National School Lunch Program was created by the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), when President Harry S. Truman signed the National School Lunch Act in 1946. (USDA.gov 2012) When it began, it actually gave schools recipes on how to cook their meals from scratch, the same way it was being done in homes during that time. (Oliver, L. 2012) But today, the USDA does not regulate what they are serving our children, nor do they regulate how it is cooked. They are simply just a Federal Agency that provides money to schools to help...
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... School Lunch Programs With the new and improved “heathier” lunch menu most students and teachers would rather turn down this free meal, and head over to their next period class instead. Others see this change to be remarkable and a great way to help kids balance what they eat. Since this act passed in 2010 and was sponsored by first lady Michelle Obama the disputation of a healthier menu has been a nonstop argument between schools and the NCLP (National School Lunch Program). With nothing but good intentions involved most students would rather stick to their bad eating habits. Trading in those fried potato wedges for a whole wheat sub was not so easy for some, and the controversy of a healthy school menu aroused quickly. Kids and even staff seemed uneasy about the change and thought it was a bit drastic. With unhealthy lunch and snacking taking from kids, they look at lunch to be a disadvantage to get rejuvenated for next two to three classes. Most kids are no longer waiting for the bell to dismiss for lunch anymore because of the unappetizing school menu. With nothing but good intentions involved with changing the schools menu kids feel otherwise. National School Lunch Programs thought the idea of what you do should balance out with what you eat and that idea should apply to students as well. Knowing students have no in school activities that requires major movement like running, jumping, etc. Their school lunch now reflects that. Students look at lunch as their...
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...English 101 Composition The Greatest Health Risk for America’s Children Christine Webb School of Graduate and Professional Studies Washington Adventist University, Takoma Park Maryland 04/10/2015 Childhood obesity is an important issue because of the staggering proportions that this disease has reached in the past few years. Certain genetic factors paired with changing lifestyles and culture has produced children (and adults) who are generally not as healthy as people were just a few decades ago. Widespread obesity has been the extreme result of these changes. The best wellbeing danger confronting youngsters today is not a horrible infection, for example, Ebola, or an unimaginable injury, for example, misuse; it is weight, which is characterized by the restorative group as the gathering of muscle to fat quotients levels over a quarter century in young men and thirty two percent in young ladies. The equation for keeping up solid weight has never showed signs of change — offset the quantity of calories you expend with the number you blaze. A more noteworthy bit of Americans are not able to adjust the mathematical statement. The levels of youth weight have ascended in the previous decades; in the blink of an eye a quarter century of American children are fat with 80 percent of this gathering bound to wind up stout grown-ups (Del Marco, 2014).The developing sympathy toward heftiness as a general wellbeing sympathy toward youngsters and grown-ups has prompted a...
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...Lunch school programs are trying to become healthier across our nation. This initiative is becoming more common at each school due to economic and student needs. In this paper, we will look at meeting the needs of the students with a planned process. There will be two charts to show progress of the effects the changes have done to the student’s food choices. These choices were derived from the guides given by the USDA (“National School Lunch Program”, 2013). Recent changes to the schools lunch and breakfast menus has helped in keeping students more healthy and driving school cost to more efficient levels (“National School Lunch Program”, 2013). Most schools give students choices to choose their lunch or breakfast choices. While this is a common practice in most schools, students do not always choose healthy meals. The goal is to give only healthy choices to students so that they may increase their nutrition level intake. The guidelines set forth by the USDA, on the student meal index, is what will be used to assess the changes in students nutrition levels (Kay & Condon, 2012 pg 9). The first major change that needs to be done is re-asses the snack machines in the schools. Each school more than likely has one or two snack machines that are accessed by the students. The contents of the snack machines need to be changed to more health conscious items. An example is replacing sodas, or high sugar drinks, with water and low sugar juices. Each school needs to replace candy...
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...2.1 Business 100 The School board changed the breakfast and lunch programs to help improve nutrition and health of our children. The changes so far seem to be for the best of all the children. There are four major issue dealing with the changes are, economic situations, Health of population being served, process, and the benefits of the program. One of the four major issues is economic situation. The federal government will add six more cents to each lunch to make it meet the new standards. New standards took effect in 2011 for schools breakfast and lunch programs. Also parents are in charge of what their children eat, but kids are in the care of the school a good portion of their life too. From my research on this program, children receive up to half there calories at school in form of school breakfast, lunches, and snacks.( Crawford, 2011) Also with the economic downturn we have been in advocates have proposed some changes, which makes more children eligible for free or assistants on meal prices. Meanwhile, meal providers are having issues with covering program costs. Improving the quality of meals for children is essential, but the hard part is getting the students on board with all the health good food and not all the greasy unhealthy foods. Second issue is the heath of the population being served. There are about 25 million kids that are obese and/or overweight. Obesity rates have skyrocketed by 300% over the last 30 years. (Crawford, 2011) An analysis in 2005 found...
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...TO: FROM: Sophie Lee DATE: 27 March 2014 SUBJECT: Newer Policies for New Generations Emerging New Diet On The Table Slowly. The policy acts similar to a law dealing with problems and concerns, but it is influenced by government and nonprofit organizations. Under the government and officials, the public policy is made; the nonprofit organizations advocate the policy making process. The three U.S. government branches, legislative, executive, and judicial, need to be involve and check the new policy before it is applied. The legislative are members of congress such as committee and subcommittee chairs; the bureaucracy players are mainly career bureaucrats such as agency heads and seniors; the interest groups will be the experts, such as powerful leaders in health, welfare, education and more. There are two traditional models, iron triangles and issue networks, which define how the government leaderships work together. The connection among the politicians, officials, and interest group helps how the public receives the supports. Mainly, interest groups have too much control and power on iron triangle. Starting from the electoral support from the interest group towards congress, funding and political support delivered to the bureaucracy, which provides facilities and special favors. On the other hand, the issue network uses much broader networking within the agencies, congressional committees, and interest groups. The model allows experts such as interest groups, members...
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...sensationalism as a campaign of misinformation to undermine a product used for more than ten years to supplement lean beef supplies used in ground beef. The depiction of LFTB in the media as “pink slime” raised the product’s “yuck” factor and implied that there were food safety issues with LFTB, mainly because ammonium gas is used as an antimicrobial intervention in the production of LFTB. Also, the fact that ground beef purchased for the school lunch program could contain LFTB triggered consumer calls for the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) to immediately end the practice. Ground beef is the most popularly consumed beef item among American consumers, and consumers have increasingly demanded lean ground beef. USDA approved the process that Beef Products, Inc. (BPI), the primary producer of LFTB, uses to produce LFTB, and USDA continues to affirm that LFTB is a safe, nutritious beef product. Although LFTB received negative press in previous years, the uproar starting in March 2012 has had greater impacts. USDA changed its policy on school lunches to allow schools to have a choice of whether to buy ground beef with LFTB or not. Major grocery chains announced that they were discontinuing the use of LFTB in retail ground beef. The result has been an immediate, sharp decline in 50% beef trimming prices, and expectations of higher ground beef prices. Some companies decided to voluntarily use LFTB labels on ground beef containing the product. Some food safety advocates who believe BPI was a...
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...School Breakfast and Lunch Programs The Positive Effects on Students and Families The topic of concern that I am going to address is how school breakfast and lunch programs impact the family in various ways. School meal programs, especially breakfast programs, have gotten a significant amount of attention in recent years due to the many studies that have shown the benefits of having these programs. These studies have shown that students who participate in school breakfast programs have better nutrition, less hunger, more food security, better performance in school, and the program could even improve the likelihood that students will eat breakfast on a regular basis (Bartfeld & Ryu, 2011). School breakfast and lunch programs are moving toward having a 100% participation rate, because when students who participated in the programs were analyzed and compared with the non-participation students, results showed significant differences in the categories listed above. (Moffitt, 1995). Being a Dietetics student, I am extremely aware of the importance of nutritious school meal programs because children spend most of their habit-forming years in school. Students need to develop positive breakfast and lunch choices in order to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle in the future. As I briefly stated before, there have been studies done to compare the students who participate in school breakfast and lunch programs with the students who choose not to. The findings indicated that...
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...Academic Performance of Elementary Pupils in Relation to their Nutritional Status I. What are the different factors that affect the academic performance of elementary pupils? This study deals with the factors that determine the school-related performance of elementary students; in particular to their health and nutritional status. The objectives of this article are relevant to the health and nutritional conditions of many school children, especially in public schools. In this same fashion, this is also related to the relationship between the academic performance of the school children and their nutritional health. All these aspects are vital in promoting a quality and effective education as well as providing the elementary pupils an equality of rights in learning. However, governments in various nations are constructing new class rooms, providing textbooks and other learning materials for the elementary students; as well as efficient trainings for the teachers in order to improve the quality of education among elementary levels. Still, there is a big difference between healthy school children and the non-healthy children when it comes to acquiring effective learning process in the school. (http://docs.schoolnutrition.org/newsroom/jcnm/05spring/fns.asp) According to the World Health Organization, most of the elementary children are lack if energy-protein nutritional elements that help in boosting the children’s weight and height. More than this, the most prevailing...
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...Topic This is a recommendation to start a new summer program for children with the purpose to encourage reading. The new program will be entitled “Read and Feed Crafts Program” and will be available to children ranging in age 18 months to 16 years. The children will receive a hot lunch, and a free library card. They could spend time reading, playing games, or learning different crafts. It also includes reading incentives for independent reading for reading to others. The program would run for six weeks between the hours of 12:00 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. Suggestions for funding would include securing a Title I grant (Education, 2011). There are some low income families living in this neighborhood. In addition, the library could seek the assistance of volunteers to participate in the program. B. Purpose The purpose is to encourage the library to consider the idea of setting up this new program in the community during the summer time to encourage the children to enhance their reading skills and development of relationships with their peers. Summer is a great time to encourage children to read books. Reading will help to improve literacy skills and better prepare children for the upcoming school year. One of the best ways to get a child reading is to allow them to pick books they want to read about topics that interest them. Many of the children in the area of the library are from low income families and do not readily have the opportunity to experience something that...
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...School Breakfast and Lunch Programs The Positive Effects on Students and Families The topic of concern that I am going to address is how school breakfast and lunch programs impact the family in various ways. School meal programs, especially breakfast programs, have gotten a significant amount of attention in recent years due to the many studies that have shown the benefits of having these programs. These studies have shown that students who participate in school breakfast programs have better nutrition, less hunger, more food security, better performance in school, and the program could even improve the likelihood that students will eat breakfast on a regular basis (Bartfeld & Ryu, 2011). School breakfast and lunch programs are moving toward having a 100% participation rate, because when students who participated in the programs were analyzed and compared with the non-participation students, results showed significant differences in the categories listed above. (Moffitt, 1995). Being a Dietetics student, I am extremely aware of the importance of nutritious school meal programs because children spend most of their habit-forming years in school. Students need to develop positive breakfast and lunch choices in order to develop and maintain a healthy lifestyle in the future. As I briefly stated before, there have been studies done to compare the students who participate in school breakfast and lunch programs with the students who choose not to. The findings indicated that...
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...must take is standardized by the state and is also known as the “teaching the test”. This test not only proves what each child does not know but what the teacher’s must focus on in order to make the children become successful for their further education learning’s. The national school lunch program. This is a program where it was very important for low income families. I believe this was a very good idea. “At the President's direction, the Food and Nutrition Service was created as a new agency within the Department of Agriculture exclusively to administer Federal food programs, including the school lunch program, and other agencies involved were directed to coordinate their activities with those of the Department of Agriculture” (Gunderson, 2013). Children with the proper food in their stomachs will help them live better and grasp what they learn every day in school. It keeps them away from being sick and missing days of school and this program helps them stay focused with full attention using their brain. Cons include: The no child left behind act. “We investigate not only how NCLB has influenced student achievement, but also how it has affected education spending, instructional practice, and school organization. Given the complexity of the policy and the nature of its implementation, we are skeptical that any single analysis can be definitive. For this reason we present a broad collage of evidence and look for consistent...
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...Nutrition and Health: The Recent Changes into the School Breakfast and Lunch Mercy Becky 11- 02-2013 Abstract The present and future wellbeing of children is affected by the type of food they eat. Since children get most of their calorie intake from school lunch and breakfast, schools contribute to their lifelong health and dietary patterns. Schools have to be models for healthy eating habits. Improving school meal program is very crucial in our children nutrition and health. Especially as childhood obesity is a big concern in our nation and it is a cause for many chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes, blood pressure and high cholesterol. Different studies and researches have shown that school meals are risk factors for childhood obesity. In an effort to stop obesity and the associated health risks, the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) was signed into law by President Barack Obama to change School Lunch Program (SLNP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP). The Law requires USDA to establish science based nutrition standards for all foods sold in schools during the school day. With the law signed there are different issues that come with it including the economic situation, the health of the population being served and the process and benefits of the program. Nutrition and Health: The Recent Changes into the School Lunch and Breakfast One of the issues related with the recent change in school lunch and breakfast is the economic situation. The government increased...
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