When I first started researching about the healthy school lunches, I really wanted to know more about the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act because this act that was passed on 2010 by President Barack Obama started this concern of changing how schools serve a healthier lunch for students.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the Hunger-Free Kids Act might not as be successful as it expected to be. Michelle Obama was stated being an advocate for the law for years to prevent childhood obesity and one way to actually prevent it is serving healthier options in lunches across the country.
The problem that the article points out is about Congress as it states, “…Congress prepares to reauthorize the program, which expire s in September, lawmakers are sharpening their knives to address complaints of inedible meals, food waste and misspent funds.” This statement is very alarming because there is a possibility that Congress will cut back funding to the funding and the budget of having fresh and less processed food will be hard for schools to actually buy. Cutting back funding can also mean going back to the old methods of how school lunches are.
Money is a big factor to make the Act to be successful. About $12 billion is spent to the National School Lunch Program, the program itself served 32 million students nationwide. This shows how fascinating that just serving healthier food can really be expensive with only the possibility that children will not eat their foods and throw it away.
The article points out something similar in my experience when I was still in high school, “The students go hungry most of the day, until after school when enterprising vendors sell items like pork rinds, hot chips, or fresh corn mixed with cheese and mayonnaise from food carts outside of the school.” I am able to relate to this type of scenario because I am one of those students that are hungry by the end of the day either because the serving of the school lunch was just not enough for me or I did not have time to eat it and throw my lunch away. I remembered that after school hours, I would go to the nearest fast food chain that was near at my high school almost every week because I am too hungry too walk home. I now realized that I spend a lot of money on my school lunches (I myself did not get did not get free or reduced lunch so I need to pay the full price of the lunch) and at the end I was still hungry.
Not only buying the fresher goods affect or the “free” lunch affect the Act but also other factors like buying food trucks and possibly labor are also needed to be funded so the lunch system can able to function properly.
An interesting fact about the article is about the school lunches helping fight obesity. The article points out many factors that doesn’t seem to give a good word towards the Act. The article shows, “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, five states had childhood obesity rates from 15%-19% in 2009. In 2013 eight states had rates that high.” This is a serious information because one of the Act’s main purpose is decrease the childhood obesity but the Act is already in its fifth year being implemented yet the statistics showed no improvement.
Healthier School Lunches 