School Processed Foods

America is known for having a large population of overweight individuals including children. Fast food restaurants are located practically everywhere you turn and there are countless of food commercials that advertise unhealthy meals in every channel. This unhealthy weight epidemic, however, can be reversed by focusing on influencing students to make healthier choices and adopt better eating habits both in school and at home. A way to teach students how to live a healthier life is by offering school lunches that are freshly cooked in kitchens with organic ingredients rather than by heating and serving processed, frozen meals.
Processed food is significantly served in school lunches: food that has been chemically processed and made from “refined …show more content…
The National School Lunch Program (NSLP) costs approximately $11.6 billion as of 2012 and funds school lunch meals across the nation (NSLP 1). Many schools barely have enough “cooking and fire-suppression equipment” for cooks to “actually saute, brown, and boil” over open flame (Severson 10). This leads to the inability to cook in kitchens and therefore resort to reheating processed food since it is “cheaper” to cut “skilled kitchen labor, eliminate raw ingredients, and stop maintaining kitchens” (Severson 13). Despite the financial convenience of serving processed food, it is not the best option for children’s health; therefore, contributing a small grant to schools for kitchen infrastructure should be considered. In a 2013 report by The Kids’ Safe and Healthful Foods Project, the “top five needed pieces of equipment” are under $2000 and most school districts have budgets for these expenses (Healthy Schools 12-13). Without school kitchens running properly, schools cannot meet the nutritional standards for students: an issue that cannot continue to be ignored when “one in three American children are considered overweight” (Healthy Schools