The amount of times I have seen children of many ages shove school lunches in their own mouths like it will help them genuinely makes me despise the entirety of school-provided lunches. The first time I saw school lunches, it made me visibly uncomfortable, and as I grew older, I learned about human health and how you should always take care of your body. School always tells you to avoid dangerous actions like smoking, drugs, drinking, and even what you eat day to day. And yet they are still ignorant to this day because of the costs of getting quality food for the kids as they house 180 days a year.
The first main reason I have is because of my first-hand experience with these foods every day. I sit next to my friends every day at my lunch table, and each day I am horrified by what they think is acceptable to feed themselves. I have seen cheeseburgers with beef that look like barnacle prints all over them. The cheese on top of them resembles melted plastic. Day-old hot dogs that look like skinned human fingers. I once had a great friend in elementary school who had gotten food poisoning after eating a school-provided lunch. I am only one of the fifty million people who have seen the recent horrors of school lunches. Surely the schools care about the kids, right?
In an article written by Anglee Herman about United States school lunches, she mentions a disgusting and yet sad fact about American lunch funding.
“Because of low budgets, rolled-back standards, and forced ingredients with longer shelf lives, school cafeterias often opt for processed foods that are high in preservatives. Public school lunches may be to lower quality criteria than FAST FOOD, which is typically thought to be the worst of the worst.” School lunches shouldn’t be giving kids setbacks but rather helping them. It is proven from multiple studies that poor food intake directly affects mental and physical health. The article also talks about the poor funding per student, stating
“Each school only gets about $1.30 to feed each child, and that doesn’t only cover the cost of the food. It also covers the cost of labor, equipment, and electricity.” This is why schools are forced to provide horrible food. It’s due to the government’s horrible funding choices.
So, if you care about our kids’ health and future, then there are only two options left. Either push for the ban on school-provided lunches or protest for higher-quality school-provided lunches.
