In 2010, Congress passed legislation that required schools
to limit the calorie counts of school lunches to 650 for Kindergarten through
fifth grade, 700 from sixth grade to eighth, and 850 for high school students.
These rules pertain to the federally subsidized lunch program. The changes also
required schools to serve more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and low-fat
and fat free milk. The goal of the legislation was to create a situation where
the children would get a more healthy and nutritious lunch while reducing
childhood obesity. However, the problem is that due to the calorie limits, many
children are not getting enough to eat during lunch and go through the rest of
the day being hungry. In order to make sure that the children are given the
chance to eat the amount of food that they need, new legislation called “No
Hungry Kids Act”, has been introduced to change this old law.
Of course, both the old and the new legislation affected
only children in the United States, but this issue relates to the global
problem of childhood obesity and the desire to raise healthy children.
Childhood obesity has been a growing problem around the world for a while now.
The causes of the problem are many including children overeating, which relate
to larger portion sizes, children eating the wrong types of food, and the fact
that children are not as active today as they should be. It is easy to
understand the reason and intention for the old law but it’s also easy to see
how setting a limit that applies to all of the children in specific groups
could cause problems as well. Each child is different and has different needs.
Setting limits that apply to everyone in one category ignores the individual child.
While obesity is clearly a problem and something that should be addressed, so
is allowing children to go hungry because the amount of food that they are
allowed to be given is regulated by the government. It is good that the
government is trying to look after the health of the children, but there also
needs to be a balance so that no child is prevented from getting what they need
in order to not be hungry.
No comments:
Post a Comment