Today in America, one in five children are obese. This figure has nearly tripled since the 1970’s, and it is only going to get worse if a solution is not found. The United States government has already attempted to control the rising rate of childhood obesity. In 2010, sponsored by the former First Lady Michelle Obama, the Obama Administration passed the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act (HHFKA) to do just that. This act allowed the government to heavily regulate the lunches being served to children in their schools. The purpose of the act was to fix one of the biggest factors that affects the rate of childhood obesity, the children’s diet. The government enforced much higher nutritional standards on the lunches being served by the schools. They had to have a lower sodium, fat, and sugar content, and they had to serve more fruits and vegetables to the children. At first glance this seems like an effective and obvious solution, improve what the children are consuming, and they will become healthier and happier. Unfortunately, it is just not that simple. There are several problems that prevented the HHFKA from being a success, namely: financial problems, increased waste, and the fact that the children just do not want to eat the food. Due to the limited success and negative biproducts of the HHFKA, the Trump Administration has decided to decrease regulations on school lunches. Nutritional lunch programs cause more problems than they solve, and are not worth implementing in public schools.

The HHFKA may have been successful if only the children ate the meals that were being provided to them. The meals being served were higher in nutritional value than they were before the introduction of the HHFKA, but they were also much less palpable. Because of this, many more children decided to bring in food from outside sources instead. To be exact, by the time that the federal government decided to relax the restrictions on school lunches, 4.5 million children in America were not eating the lunches provided to them by the schools (Purdue Interview). How are the children supposed to get the necessary nutrients that they need in their school lunches if they are not eating them? 

What about the children who cannot afford to bring in lunch from home or other outside sources, and their only source of food for lunch is from the schools? Even if this is their situation, some children can be very picky about food. If they do not like what is being served in their cafeteria, and they cannot bring in food from elsewhere, then some children have been known to just not eat lunch entirely. Not only is it terrible that a child has to go through their day without any food, there is also a major negative impact on the child’s academic performance, as it is much harder for the brain to function and for the child to learn if they are dealing with hunger while in the classroom. 

Another issue that is caused by the palpability of the regulated lunches is that there is an increase in food waste in school cafeterias. When the children do decide to participate in their school lunch program, many of them discard a large percentage of their meal because they only like the taste of a few parts of the meal. The HHFKA and nutritional meal plans greatly increase the waste output by schools, and puts a huge strain on the environment. Some schools would end up having so much excess food being discarded that they would resort to using some of that waste as compost (Guidice). Especially today, where the safety and condition of the environment is of such high importance, a solution for excess plate waste needs to be found before nutritional meals plans could ever be implemented in school cafeterias nationwide.

The areas that struggles the most with childhood obesity is those of low socio-economic status and those of a certain racial background. The obesity rate for children in low socioeconomic areas is 1.45 times higher than it is for those living in areas of high socioeconomic areas. Typically, these areas have a higher Hispanic and African American population. Therefore, it makes sense that these minority populations have very high rates of obesity in America. Both the Mexican American and African American populations in America have a child obesity rate of 20%, while the obesity rate of Caucasian children is only 14% (State of Obesity). This racial discrepancy of obesity rates is caused by a concentration of fast food restaurants and convenience stores in low socio-economic areas. This emphasized access to unhealthier foods in lower socioeconomic areas is the reason that nutritional meal plans cannot have significant success in these areas. Even if the meals are nutritious and healthy, if they are not palpable, then the children will defer to unhealthier options for food instead. For many schools in areas of low-socioeconomic status, there is a restaurant or store selling this food within a very close proximity that they children can have easy access to. A remarkable example of this is in Chicago, where at least 80 percent of schools have a fast food restaurant within a half-mile. (Hilmers) 

Even if nutritional meal plans were effective, and even if the children actually wanted to eat the food, the schools cannot financially maintain a lunch program that the HHFKA expects them to. The upkeep and fees to run a nutritional meal plan is much more expensive than for unregulated lunches. The ingredients are more expensive, the dishes take more time to prepare, and the staff needed to produce the dishes have to be more trained in culinary skills. To be able to procure the ingredients necessary for the dishes, and to have the ability to prepare the meals for the children for a significant amount of time, schools need a large amount of support financially from the federal government. The problem is, the federal government is not giving them that money. Since 2009, schools have received $200 million to fund and maintain their lunch programs. In 2014, the Pew Charitable Trusts showed that schools spend $5 billion on their lunch programs nationally. (Siegel) To put these figures into another perspective, the government provides $3 dollars for each meal served to a child. However, these $3 dollars are not given just so the schools can prepare the food, they are also expected to use this money for trash collection, electricity, accounting, and other utilities. That leaves a little over one dollar that actually goes into the ingredients and preparation that is needed to provide a child’s lunch. (Siegel)

There are many people who believe that these nutritional meal plans are necessary, and claim that they have done an adequate job in lowering the rates of childhood obesity in America. There has been data released portraying the success of nutritional meal plans to increase the consumption of fruits and vegetables and decrease the sodium, fat, and sugar intake by children in schools. While the data that is in support of this claim is not falsely reported, it is falsely interpreted. For the data that shows an increase participation by children in nutritional meal plans, it may be true that the children are taking more of the school food for lunch, however many of them are not eating that food. As discussed before, a huge problem with these nutritional meal plans is the increased plate waste that they cause. Many people think that the meal plans are working because a significant number of children are taking the food, but they are throwing out a good portion of that food. 

The rising rates of childhood obesity in America are posing a huge threat to the nation. The federal government has tried to reclaim control of the obesity rates through the passage of the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act in 2010, which granted them control over the nutritional value and serving sizes of the lunches served to children in their schools. Unfortunately, they have not been successful. Even though this plan does provide nutritious lunches for children, it also causes presents more problems, such as increased plate waste, decreased child participation, and financial challenges for the schools trying to provide the meals. It is a smart decision for the federal government to relax the regulations on school lunches nationwide. Nutritional meal plans are just not worth the myriad of problems that they cause.
