FrontPage

School Lunches

The Challenge

In modern society, many students today buy school lunches as they are quicker to prepared and serve while "tasting" better than lunches made at home. Kids and parents do not realize the danger they face by consuming school lunches every day of the week. This poses a threat to the child's overall health and academic performance in and out of school. The challenge here is that parents and children cannot stop the urge to buy these lunches despite knowing their drawbacks as the parents view school lunches as lucrative deals while the kids enjoy eating the food the school serves. If both controlling factors in a decision support the incorrect viewpoint, it will be a challenge for them to change their opinions. 

Significance

This issue is important to me and the rest of the students at the International Academy as it is a topic pertaining to their everyday lives. Eating is necessary to every human being everyday. Even so, many students do not watch the food items they eat or maintain a healthy lifestyle. Most of them are caught up with everyday homework, sports, after school clubs, and all the other activities they do each day. They get caught up in all this action that they forget to maintain a healthy and balanced diet. At home, their parents control most nutritional food choices the student makes. On the other hand, at school, kids do not have much choice on what foods they can eat as they can only eat the lunches their parents give them or the lunches the school provides. Most kids nowadays ask their parents to give them money for the school lunches as they taste better than the healthy lunches the parents could possibly provide. The parents will allow their kids to buy these lunches as they are less of a hassle to make in the morning. This topic is important to me and the other kids at IA as we all care about our grades in school and our overall academic performance. Unhealthy foods have a negative effect on students, which not many kids would be pleased with if they realized this outcome. If we informed our school and its students about this topic, students will start making healthier food choices.

Facts

Junk food and beverages have a negative effect on students.

Solution

There are many ways to fix this problem. The most effective way today is to simply replace food choices offered with healthier alternatives. As some schools have already done, vending machines containing unhealthy carbonated beverages and fattening snacks could be removed. Healthy drinks such as all-natural organic fruit or vegetable drinks can replace these unhealthy choices. Even though the drinks won't taste as good as the carbonated beverages, the positive effects will definitely be worth the lower taste. The vending machines serving unhealthy snacks could be replaced as well. Instead of serving potato chips and candy bars, the school could serve healthier choices such as carrots and grapes. Basically, the vending machines with unhealthy beverages will be replaced with vending machines with fruit or vegetable drinks and the vending machines with unhealthy snacks will be replaced with vending machines with fruits or vegetables.

The next part of the solution is to change the food provided by the cafeteria itself. Many of the choices are unhealthy yet student continue to buy the foods. The only way to fix this problem is to change the food the school offers. Foods like pizza, french fries, bosco sticks, and coke slurpees will be replaced by healthier alternatives such as

Beyond classroom

Works Cited

http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/HWRC/hits?r=d&origSearch=true&bucket=per&rlt=2&o=&n=10&searchTerm=2NTA&l=d&index=BA&basicSearchOption=KE&tcit=0_1_0_0_0_1&c=3&docNum=A140230644&locID=lom_inac&secondary=false&t=RK&s=1&SU=effects+of+junk+food http://www.flickr.com/photos/oskay/3152681223/

http://www.thegreenparent.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/09/school-lunch21.jpg