School Lunches

School Lunches

The reason that I choose to look at school lunches is because of my personal experience with school lunches. Growing up with an educational system that was always trying to go above and beyond in both the classroom and outside of the classroom was an extreme privilege. We had choices on what classes to take, choices on what activities to be involved in, and choices in what to eat. Among those choices were Pizza Hut, Subway, and Burger King; as they came into our schools for lunch 3 times a week.

Since graduating, the city I lived in voted on a school referendum to build a new $42 million dollar high school with an additional $10 million dollar theater and gymnasium complex. The new high school opened this fall, and with that came new options for school lunches. The new addition this year was Chef Nick, who offers everything from Italian and Caribbean food to cherry chocolate scones and frisbee-sized cookies. On top of Chef Nick, they school has build-you-own burritos; pizza; a grill station that features hamburgers, chickenburgers, barbequed pork riblets, fries Ð'- curly or regular; and the "classic cafÐ"©" that consists of the traditional school lunches.

In the articles I researched for this critical review, I discovered a few things. The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) is a program designed to nutritiously offer students the recommended daily allowances of certain items like: protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron, and calories. The NSLP also restricts total fat and saturated fat to 30% and 10% of total calories respectively. However; 65% of high school females and 54% of high school males do not participate in the NSLP program, also known to offer the traditional lunches.

I also learned the sales from snack bars, chips, crackers, ice cream Ð'- essentially junk, is not limited by the federal guidelines. I disagree very much with this because of the childhood obesity epidemic this nation faces. The Competitive Food Initiatives article shows that by decreasing the vending and soda machines is schools, that sales didn't drop as expected, but rather they doubled and profits increased by $4000 during the first year.

In the article "How can we stay healthy when you're throwing all of this in front of us," students put the blame on the administration.