School Lunch

 

After reading about fast food, I began to look into the whole 'school lunch dilemma'. It's interesting to read about the problems and proposed solutions because people have such strong feelings toward different sides. I've been reading recent newspaper articles and other people's blogs about the school lunch system, and it has definitely shown me how diverse this topic is. For the most part, the main idea is that our schools need to provide healthier meals to help solve the childhood obesity problems we are faced with. However, there seem to be multiple methods being put into action to improve the lunch programs in the United States.


An article in Yahoo News discussed the methods of a school in Chicago: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110411/us_yblog_thelookout/chicago-school-bans-homemade-lunches-the-latest-in-national-food-fight

At Chicago's Little Village Academy, homemade lunches are actually being banned. Unless you have a special dietary need (which I think a lot of people will suddenly mysteriously develop...), you are only allowed to eat school lunch. This has created a huge uproar for a variety of reasons: (1) families feel they can provide better food for their children, (2) eating the school lunch can cost more than families can afford to pay, and (3) the school lunches are still not healthy!

Chicago School Lunch

The article included a link to a Chicago teacher's blog that had been started to protest the school's lunches: Fed Up With Lunch- The School Lunch Project. (http://fedupwithschoollunch.blogspot.com/) She ate school lunches EVERY day for a full year, and kept a blog going the entire time. The descriptions and pictures she posts are great! Scary of course, but very insightful. I highly recommend checking out her blog so you can see for yourself. I've never been at a school where those kinds of lunches were served (thankfully), so it really made this school lunch problem clear to me.

At the beginning of the year, another article was published: http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/food/diet-nutrition/2011-01-12-schoollunch13_ST_N.htm

This article is also worth checking out because it shows the new rules the USDA wants to put on school lunch programs. And again, all these changes are attempts to fix the childhood obesity problems.

Although I think that school lunches need some major improvements, I couldn't help wondering how some of the rules would be enforced. For example, in the Yahoo News article about banning homemade lunches, it mentions that a school in Arizona allows homemade lunches- but only if nothing in them contains white flour, refined sugar, or other "processed foods". I just don't understand how that kind of rule can be regulated... Sure, it would be great if everyone brought lunches that followed those rules, but how realistic is that? Going back to one of my previous posts, I think the solution is to have a closer relationship with your food. If kids could be a part of making their food, growing their food, or even purchasing their food, much more awareness would be brought into the school lunch scene.