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I agree with what the article was stating about how our priority should include the kids are eating. We need to conclude with a good in between!

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Initially I had always thought that nutrition in school lunches seemed pointless however this article did prove to me that it is in fact necessary to provide children with healthy options.

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I think this article is very important because healthier eating habits will benefit children for their whole lives. They may reject the healthier options and first but having the food there is a great step to changing the way school lunch is made.

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This article was very well written and I do agree that it is very important to remember nutrition when it comes to school lunches.

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I honestly couldn’t agree more, this was super well said/written

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I agree with all of this and I think that it is so important, especially in these modern days to remember the importance of nutrition and the correlating effects on children.

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There's been so many debates about whether or not having healthy lunches served in schools is a lost cause. Throughout the years there have been several attempts to try to incorporate healthy alternatives to the lunch served in these schools. Some have worked, and some have failed. More needs to be done for students to be served with the food that they not only enjoy but are also healthy for them. Even though no one really wants to serve kids food that kids won't eat they should still try to encourage a healthier food program. How far should the school board and administrations go to create a healthier program? Should the law require it? Would it help reduce the calories and weight of students?

Childhood Obesity Trends

The national childhood obesity rate is 18.5 percent. It varies depending on the age: 13.9 percent with 2-5-year-olds, 18.4 percent with 6-11-year-olds, and is the highest with 20.6 percent in 12-19-year-olds. The older the child is, the higher the rate of obesity. It also increases in different ethnicities such as 25.8 percent in Hispanic children and 22 percent in Black children. These trends could change if children were educated on the best ways to eat a healthier diet.

How Should A Healthier School Program Be Introduced?

The first step in introducing a healthier school program is to talk to the children about it. Teach them about the benefits of healthier eating and why having a healthy school lunch is important. The next thing is to start slowly creating healthy alternatives. Instead of sugary sodas and juices try serving reduced fat milk and nutritious smoothies. Try serving little cutie oranges and other fruit instead of cookies and other sweets. Serving baked fries and thin crust pizza would be another healthy and tasty alternative. Making small and settle healthier choices in schools is the beginning of making bigger and better choices.

The Benefits Of Schools Having A Healthy Food Program

The obvious benefits of schools serving a healthier lunch is reducing childhood obesity, food insecurity, and poor health. It also increases energy and good grades. Research proves that food high in sugar and calories gives children less energy and isn't motivational when it comes to grades. It's harder for children to concentrate on school work when they don't eat a healthy lunch. They are more likely to reach for unhealthy junk food and snacks. When children eat foods that are high in nutrition and low in calories, it gives them more energy. They can be more active and feel more motivated to learn. Students don't feel so sluggish when eating healthy, and it also increases their self-esteem. Research has proven that children that ate more fruits, vegetables, and protein performed better on literacy tests.

Why The School Board Struggles To Incorporate Healthy Lunch Programs

The main reasons why schools districts struggle to provide healthier lunch choices is because they don't have the budget. Some school districts have even lost as much as $30,000 in just the three months of starting the program. They lose money due to children complaining about small portion sizes and throwing away the fruits and vegetables. Although understandable schools still need to find ways to incorporate a healthy lunch program. Congress has increased the amount of money it gives the National School Lunch Program. When Obama was in office, his administration asked for more than $10 million to improve the program in the next ten years. Hopefully, this will improve the process of having healthier school lunches.

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Do You Think a Healthier School Lunch Program Is a Lost Cause?

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There's been so many debates about whether or not having healthy lunches served in schools is a lost cause. Throughout the years there have been several attempts to try to incorporate healthy alternatives to the lunch served in these schools. Some have worked, and some have failed.

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With a hint of a hyperbole, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue moved this week to "make school meals great again," somewhat relaxing dietary regulations imposed by the Obama administration and Congress in 2010.

"This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting the final regulations for school meals," Perdue said in a release.

"If kids aren't eating the food, and it's ending up in the trash, they aren't getting any nutrition-thus undermining the intent of the program" he added.

Some 30 million children eat the lunches sponsored by the federal National School Lunch Program. The federal government spends some $13 billion a year, parents get charged another $6 billion, and states chip in hundreds of millions more.

The trouble is, children throw a lot of the food away.

How much? Nobody knows for sure. Several studies, each limited to a handful of schools, found waste of roughly 25-45 percent, with vegetable waste up to 90 percent.

There are at least five reasons for this and a couple of solutions attempted by individual schools.

Time to Eat

Some students don't finish their meals simply because the school doesn't give them enough time. One in seven students has less than 15 minutes to eat, a 2013 parents survey showed.

Some experts urge schools to expand lunch breaks to give students more time to not only eat, but to socialize.

Eating Habits

Studies consistently show children often throw fruit and vegetables away without even touching them. More than half the apples and two-thirds of the broccoli ended up in trash at 12 Connecticut schools, a study showed.

Experts look for the reason in eating habits. If children don't eat apples and broccoli at home, they're less likely to eat them at school.

But that's only part of the story, since many children likely do eat apples at home, but may still trash them at school. And many wouldn't eat broccoli even if served at home.

Mediocre Quality

Since the government pays for a lunch served, not eaten, schools don't have a financial incentive to ensure children actually eat their food. That may lead schools to settle for mediocre meals.

It's not that there's necessarily something wrong with the food. But there's not much right with it either. That's especially so for schools serving a lot of students from low-income families, where the taxpayer picks up the whole tab. As long as the food is preferable to hunger, the schools don't have to worry too much about students quitting on lunches altogether-and thus stripping the school of the federal funding.

Regulation

To be sure, the government won't pay for just any meal. It imposes dietary standards. That should ensure schools serve good quality food of sufficient nutrition.

In 2010, the Democrat-led Congress and the Obama administration imposed a new set of school food regulations. The idea was to make the food more healthy.

The resulting regulation set minimum levels of vegetables and fruit served, calorie limits on how much children can put on their trays, it banned 2 percent and whole milk, banned non-whole grains, set maximum fat levels, and set a schedule for lowering the sodium content of meals.

There's more, like a rule that children always have to take fruit or vegetable side with their meals.

The results have been mixed based on several studies, each limited to a handful of schools.

When given more fruit on the menu, children picked it up more often, studies show with some consistency. Yet when forced to pick it up, many children threw the fruit away, one study showed.

Some studies showed that serving more vegetables made children eat more of them. Other studies showed children actually ate less vegetables after the new regulations were put in place.

Some studies and surveys showed the new regulations caused children to throw more food away. Other studies showed same levels of food trashing as before.

The total food cost for schools went up by some $1.2 billion in extra spending in 2015.

Despite the extra spending, the new rules didn't guarantee better quality. In some cases, quite the opposite. Scores of students post pictures of unappealing school lunches on social media and complain the food is bland and portions are too small.

#thanksmichelleobama . @realDonaldTrump fix this pic.twitter.com/oAdzEV1AKZ

- Dylan Simpson (@TheDsimp) November 30, 2016

The regulations limit a high schooler's lunch to 850 calories-an equivalent of one Five Guys cheeseburger with no toppings. Nutrition experts say that should be enough. But some decry the one-size-fits-all approach.

"As far as meal guidelines, you can't say that a 300-pound football player and a 90-pound cheerleader have the same needs on a daily basis," said Brett Lago, business manager at Penn-Trafford School District in Pennsylvania, according to TribLive.

Regulators have trouble adjusting for such individual preferences. They can't quantifying how appealing or appetizing a meal must be. And so schools with passive staff and leadership figure out a way to do an absolute minimum, while enthusiastic teams are constrained in their creativity by the rules.

Respect

Apart from a lack of respect for food in general, children may have more respect for food prepared by their families than for food made by an anonymous government employee. Some schools try to promote respect for the work that goes into school lunches. For example, by introducing "lunchlady appreciation" days.

Solutions

Penn-Trafford High School ditched the federal lunch program this year and instead focused on food quality and variation. Stronger lunch sales made up for the lost federal funding.

"The participation has gone from about 25 to 45 percent, and we're still providing free lunches to all those students who would have been eligible under the [federal] school lunch program," Lago said.

Yet schools in poorer areas likely wouldn't be able to follow suit. Only 14 percent of Penn-Trafford students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. In many inner-city schools that percentage easily surpasses 50 percent or even closes in on 100 percent. In absence of federal funding, they would need another sponsor.

Birmingham Public Schools district in Michigan took a different route. It contracted with a food service provider and tries to be creative within the limits of the regulations. For example, children often dislike the taste of whole-grain bakery. And so the schools try to hide them in more appealing forms like whole-grain pizzas or tortillas.

The schools also hunt for trendy recipes and offer fancier meals for a small surcharge. They try to reduce cost by meticulous attention to reducing waste during preparation. Still, even there, food waste among students prevails.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue thinks schools will benefit from a bit more flexibility.

Here are the changes he made:

Rule under Obama:

100% of grains must be whole grain

24% additional cut to salt content starting next school year

Flavored milk must be non-fat

Rule under Trump:

50% of grains can be non-whole grain

No additional cut to salt content

1% flavored milk allowed

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Why Are Children Throwing Away School Lunches?

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With a hint of a hyperbole, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue moved this week to "make school meals great again," somewhat relaxing dietary regulations imposed by the Obama administration and Congress in 2010. "This announcement is the result of years of feedback from students, schools, and food service experts about the challenges they are facing in meeting ...

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There is a lot of debating going on about the new healthy school lunch program in education buildings and if it is a lost cause or successful. With this new change of food for students, there has been a lot of students that decide to skip eating overall. Was this change beneficial or a lost cause?

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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older.
The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires school lunch programs to serve healthier food: fewer calories and starches, more fruits and vegetables. At some high schools students have protested the changes using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. Do you think a healthier school lunch program is a lost cause - or can school lunches be both healthy and tasty?

In "No Appetite for Good-for-You School Lunches," Vivian Yee writes:

Outside Pittsburgh, they are proclaiming a strike, taking to Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. In a village near Milwaukee, hundreds staged a boycott. In a small farming and ranching community in western Kansas, they have produced a parody video. And in Parsippany, N.J., the protest is six days old and counting.

They are high school students, and their complaint is about lunch - healthier, smaller and more expensive than ever.

The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, which required public schools to follow new nutritional guidelines this academic year to receive extra federal lunch aid, has created a nationwide version of the age-old parental challenge: persuading children to eat what is good for them.

Because the lunches must now include fruits and vegetables, those who clamor for more cheese-laden nachos may find string beans and a peach cup instead. Because of limits on fat and sodium, some of those who crave French fries get baked sweet-potato wedges. Because of calorie restrictions, meat and carbohydrate portions are smaller. Gone is 2-percent chocolate milk, replaced by skim.

Students: Do you think a healthier school lunch program is a lost cause - or can school lunches be both healthy and tasty?

What kinds of foods does your school cafeteria serve for lunch?

Do you eat your school lunch? Do you eat some foods, but not others?

Have you noticed a change in the school lunch offerings recently, in response to the new policy?

What recommendations do you have to improve your school lunches, so they are more nutritious and tasty?

Students 13 and older are invited to comment below. Please use only your first name. For privacy policy reasons, we will not publish student comments that include a last name.

Teachers: We ask a new Student Opinion question each weekday, and leave most open to comment indefinitely. Here is a list of the 163 questions we asked during the 2011-12 school year.

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Do You Think a Healthier School Lunch Program Is a Lost Cause?

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Questions about issues in the news for students 13 and older. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 requires school lunch programs to serve healthier food: fewer calories and starches, more fruits and vegetables. At some high schools students have protested the changes using Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.

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Is a Healthier School Lunch Program a Lost Cause?

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Is a Healthier School Lunch Program a Lost Cause?