Obesity Prevention through School Lunch Reform

“There’s nothing but snack-type stuff. There are hardly any vegetables, and I can’t work up an appetite.”

When my daughter first came to the U.S., she was shocked at her school’s lunches. As a parent who wants to raise a healthy child, I make her take a homemade lunch, or else she would do the unthinkable and skip lunch altogether.

At first, I thought this was just a cultural difference. However, I then discovered that there are quite a few Americans involved with the situation who also feel that there is a school lunch crisis. The U.S. government announced in January that they would overhaul school lunches for the first time in 15 years.

The person spearheading school lunch reform is First Lady Michelle Obama, who is doing so in an effort to deal with obesity. Instilling good eating habits in childhood is essential in preventing obesity. Thus, the government will require school lunches to include fruits and vegetables every day and switch from regular white bread to nutrition-rich wholegrain bread. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has stressed that “improving the quality of the school meals is a critical step in building a healthy future for our kids.”

However, these school lunch reforms have also aroused criticism. People in the frozen foods industry and elsewhere have opposed reforms by claiming that healthier food costs money, which puts extra burden on taxpayers. Pressure from such industries has led to a host of mind-numbing results, such as pizza counting as a “vegetable” because it uses tomato sauce.

In any case, a journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Here’s hoping that the U.S. ceases being an obesity superpower and that these reforms will someday bear fruit.