Why School Lunches are a Waste of Money

Why Healthy School Lunches are a Waste Of Money

Hello everyone! This article was very interesting and hit some key points on why and how school lunches are wasting money that the government can use in other areas that our country may need. Free school lunches may be beneficial to some but the majority of students starting in elementary schools all the way to high school waste more food than they actually consume. Leading into the fact that many students toss healthy foods such as fruits and veggies out instead of eating them because they would much rather eat better tasting food such as chips and candy; another reason is they may have no time to eat. This goes for most elementary schools, because most of the children don’t have much time to eat according to Christopher Wanjeck, and they focus on the more time they will get to play at recess. Considering if they had a longer time to eat they would most likely finish the meal that they received at lunch. High school is a bit different, due to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act that was passed in 2010, food that is served to students must be more nutritional and because of this students either toss the healthy school lunch or they tend to wait until after school to eat their bag of chips and soda which causes a higher chance of gaining unhealthy weight and risking health problems. This nutritional act started because of kids eating unhealthy but that doesn’t stop them from consuming junk foods it just increases the amount of food they waste that is healthier for their daily diet.

http://www.livescience.com/52408-healthy-school-lunch-food-waste.html

Correlation or Causation: Food Advertising

     Generally, the youth is targeted when it comes to showcasing the high caloric snacks that we all love and know. This article explores the effect that the advertising has on our youth by offering some statistics about childhood obesity. I believe that the article is exploring not only a correlation of advertisements to child hood obesity but also a causation. There isn't a coincidence of child hood obesity being associated with our exposure to the internet and other media outlets, but a direct relationship between the two. Food advertisements make up fifty percent of the advertisements on child programming, with this being said, the advertisement companies are specifically targeting the young. This may be because they're the most impressionable, not only because that is who is usually using the television. Another facet of advertising is using websites to traffic more attention to the unhealthy goods. Knowing that the majority of internet users are in their teens, companies look to sidebar advertisements on big name websites such as a social media outlet. And last but not least, even in our schools unhealthy snacks are being advertised in the vending machines and offered to kids for a short fuel to get through their eight hour day of learning. Because the youth has already been exposed to the effects, it is our job to expose ourselves to the effects of unhealthful food advertising. You may utilize this article to identify the parasitic relationship that advertisements have on children, and educate yourself on how to prevent this propaganda.
http://www.apa.org/topics/kids-media/food.aspx

Vegetarian life style

This article covers the basics of what a vegetarian life style is and how it can benefit you. The article is split into five different sections in order to organize all of its information. It goes into detail about the different types of vegetarians, including lacto-ovo vegetarians, vegans, lacto- vegetarians, ovo-vegetarians, and partial vegetarians (also known as pescatarians or peso-vegetarians). My research paper is about the health benefits and side affects or nutritional deficiencies that come with being a vegetarian. This article includes many examples of how being vegetarian can help improve your health, and prevent you from being prone to illnesses and diseases such as heart disease, cancer, and type two diabetes. It is also full of helpful information and data that has been collected to prove the benefits of a healthy vegetarian diet. It goes on to explain what healthy and unhealthy vegetarian diets are because you will not get the full benefits of your eating habits if you do not eat healthy and filling foods. Finally it includes data about what side affects may happen if a vegetarian does not meet their healthy food requirements. These affects include nutritional deficiencies in protein, vitamin B12, iron, zinc, and omega-3 fatty acids.



www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/becoming-a-vegetarian

Healthcare And Obesity

This article briefly discusses the amount of money that obesity costs the United States annually. It states how out of all the money spent in the medical area, the U.S. spends 21% of it on obesity related illnesses and treatments which is approximately $190 billion. It also explains how obesity causes problems with job growth in the united states and hinders potential income of the U.S. that could be benefiting businesses and people. If we were to eliminate obesity we could be saving around $500 million each year. Including this is the costs we will bear as a nation on unemployment and disability. Because of obesity people don't or can't go to work and this causes issues for businesses and the economy of this country because we have to pay for the incapability of obese being able to work. This accounts for $4.3 billion annually, this money can be going to those who are truly disabled not by decisions made as a majority of obese people, it is crippling our economy to some extent and is causing stunts in jobs and growth in our economy.

http://www.healthycommunitieshealthyfuture.org/learn-the-facts/economic-costs-of-obesity/

OBESITY

This article is about the effects of obesity on our society today. They also state the many types of weight gains or loses throughout this article. Many people gain or lose weight from the sight of our food. They either never want it or want it too much. This article also states many statistics of what the average weight should be the percentages of the average weight gain per year. Especially in woman food is a major problem. An example in this text was that in 1999, there was sixty one percent of Americans were obese. People or toddlers of a young age are on the charts on being obese starting a very young age. Once they get older the percentages rise up to thirty one percent for teenage girls and twenty eight percent for adolescent boys. Eating fatty foods like sugars and breads has became a lifestyle for the average American, to just sit in from the TV and eat away. Many people tend to eat because of maybe conditions they have like depression or eating disorders in general. I do not believe this is true but the article states that people to be more poor than others are more likely to turn out overweight and children will turn out over weight if they have parents who are overweight as well. There is also many negatives to being overweight and turning out to have more health conditions than what you would already have. For example, diabetes, hypertension and cancer can occur.

https://www.anred.com/obese.html

No Meat or Dairy?

Some of the other posts about meat got me thinking, what would the world be like if we substantially reduced meat consumption? Would we survive economically? Environmentally? With good health? This article tests the idea on a much smaller scale, producing very interesting results.

An elementary school in the Oakland Unified School District did a two-year experiment where they reduced meat and dairy distribution in the school cafeteria as an environmental test of the "Friends of Earth" advocacy. They increased purchase of vegetables and fruits, and decreased purchased of meats, only buying from companies that humanely treat animals.

The results to the experiment ended up being extremely beneficial. Economically, the school definitely benefited, as they saved $42,000 in food costs; moreover the town benefited economically as well because the school was buying from local farms. Environmentally, the school reduced their carbon footprint. And surprisingly, the majority of the kids were more satisfied with their new meat-free, organic meals than they were with hot dogs and hamburgers.

Not only was it benefiting the environment and the economical status of the school, but it also positively affected the health of the students. By decreasing consumption of processed red meat, the risk of health problems such as heart disease and diabetes were greatly decreased as well. Apparently, Americans eat more meat and not enough plant-based foods than what is needed. I'm not sure how the rest of the world would react to a change like this, but it's good to know that the effects would be positive on multiple levels, and hopefully this source could help anyone who's researching meat consumption or the carbon footprint of the food industry.

http://www.treehugger.com/green-food/when-schools-reduce-meat-and-dairy-consumption-everyone-benefits.html

Eat Healthy for a Safe Living

The article posted below explains about reducing the amount of greenhouse gas effects just by eating healthy nutrients on a normal diet.  The number of greenhouse emissions have greatly increased over the past years, because farmers have been growing crops that have proved to have many calories or so, causing a great effect on the airborne environment.  For this reason, Americans have been slightly changing or even substituting the food that we eat, such as adding more fruits and vegetables in stores to add to our diet more often, and also adding more peas and beans, substituting meat.  Not only is the environment an issue, but also people's health.  Americans spend trillions of dollars on health care, and if they aren't taking responsible care to their own selves, then they are just simply wasting their own time and money.  The article also states that eating healthier will reduce diseases, such as diabetes or heart disease.   People want us to be educated on how we should live our lives correctly.  People don't know it now, but when they do, it won't be easy at the start.  They need to get used to getting on a much healthier diet, and to balance their intake on meals, in order to save the world from finance, health, and the atmosphere.  It is hard to wrap our minds around a healthy diet for a safe environment because we the people don't really care about what is happening to our globe.  We don't realize that we need to change ourselves until the last minute, when the media breaks out the news.  Sometimes it can be too late to change, but fortunately for this situation, we can make a difference starting now.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/03/170308154423.htm