There has currently been new legislation introduced that will repeal previous legislation that was proposed to limit the number of calories in school lunches. The article, Proposed Bill Repeals Calorie Caps on School Lunches, states that current legislation is being proposed to remove the caps “that say children in kindergarten through fifth grade can be served meals containing up to 650 calories, while meals for sixth through eighth graders can have 700 calories, and meals for those in high school can have 850 calories.” The original legislation was put in place to help ensure that children were not over eating a meal times which can contribute to the childhood obesity epidemic in America. On the other hand are there children likely many children who are receiving their only meal per day at school. This could be contributed to a number of circumstances, the most common being that their family cannot afford to feed them a nutritious breakfast or dinner. So with this being said, is it okay for the government to control the amount of calories that children are getting at their school lunch? Some may say yes, because of the obesity epidemic in the United States, but others might say no, because there are some children that only get to eat when they are at school. Let me know what your thoughts are on this hot topic.
Calorie Caps on School Lunches
– October 1, 2012
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I might say yes to this topic because eating lunch from school is the way to increase obesity. In high school, I remembered that we always have pizza or hamburger and French fried for lunch time. It makes us feel comfortable to eat like that every single lunch time and it will become to habit later. It will make those children easy to involve obesity later in their life. Parent also need to get more knowledge about how bad obesity, so they will have a plan to change their daily diet to help their children can get enough calories per day; instead of eating at school with the way put their children’s health be risk.
I would say yes, the cap on student lunches is a good idea. It has great intentions behind it, the levels of obese children are volumes higher than the amount of malnourished children in the United States. Now with that being said I think every school should have programs in place for the children that are in low income families. Many schools have a lunch program that is a lower cost or of no cost to the parents, and the school system I came from also had a back pack program. This back pack program gave children a weeks worth of food and they had it refilled every monday. If schools put this kind of program in place then no student would be detrimented by the calorie cap.
I think it is a wonderful idea. Students if given the knowledge as well as information can process it with more understanding and decide what they should eat and prioritize their food. These will also ensure for the students who get their only healthy meal at school to get the best of the nutrients they need.
I believe that keeping this calorie plan is a good idea to help with the obesity epidemic; however, the children who are not getting fed at home because they cannot afford it should have other options. Most schools today already have special meal plans for kids who come from less wealthy families. Is this meal plan enough though? I believe that schools could come up with more to help these students by giving them slightly larger portions once in a while or giving them foods that are easy to take home at the end of the school day, something prepackaged so they are getting the proper amount of calories to keep them from becoming malnourished.
I agree with all of the comments previously posted. The caps are a good idea. Bad eating habits in childhood can definitely negatively affect a person’s adolescence. The caps can help kids regulate their intake in empty calories.
I don’t believe that children should have caps on their school lunches. At my school there was only one option to eat. If you didn’t like that you either brought your lunch or ate from the salad bar. I don’t feel like many of the meals offered weren’t nutritious. We hardly ever had hamburgers or pizza. Plus, many of the children at the school are on free and reduced lunches, because of their family’s income. Many of the children get their only two meals of the day at school, breakfast and lunch. I feel like they should be able to get a good amount of calories from these meals.
I believe that this subject could go either way. Sure there are students that only get their best meals at school, but like mentioned above in other comments, they can received a free or reduced priced lunch that usually doesn’t even come close to 500 calories for what they are given. So this bill wouldn’t effect most of them anyways. Plus I agree that this is one way to start decreasing the numbers of obesity within children. But on the other hand, some high school athletes need those extra calories to preform there best. I know at my high school, the proportion size for lunch was quite poor. This caused students to go towards all the extra sweets the kitchen made, like cookies and milk shakes which you could say were even over priced. This just caused them to start bad eating habits and eat not very nutritiously. So this bill could go either way in helping prevent obesity at a young age.
I would agree this new legislation. if the government wants to change the obesity situation, a effective way is to regulate the calories children could retake in every meal. However when schools carry out this plan, at the same time the school should locked the vending machine. though most of students have only one meas in school, i still think this is a effective way to control the teenager obesity.
Jingwen, any school that I have attended with a vending machine does lock it during school hours. With that aside, i would like to say that the calorie cap is a good thing. If we want to eat more healthily, then we look at our labels and choose to eat less. In cafeterias, students don’t have the chance to look at the label, or even make the decision for that matter, they just eat what’s put in front of them. It’s this way because that’s what we teach our kids, “don’t fuss or complain, just eat what we give you.” If we are to continue with this, which we should, we need to be putting good things in front of them.
The number of calories shouldn’t be the issue, don’t limit the number of calories I say, increase the overall healthiness of the meal. If you ate 600 calories of fruits and veggies you’d be very full. I also agree with brady instead give the students knowledge of what they’re eating. Offer the nutrition values of the school lunch.