This New Post Assignment About My Passion or Something

So today I read this article from the Washington Post called Montgomery County students adjusting to healthier school lunches.  This article sort of inspired this post, but their only real connection is the main topic of nutrition and the role schools play in it.

I'm into the whole healthy eating thing.  I've read some books on different nutritional philosophies and how the human body was made to eat (small amounts of food throughout the day) and what it was made to eat (grains, with all their nutritional values still packed in there, and less than 3 ounces of meat and animal products in general a day, according to Mark Bittman).

Anyways, the point of this post is not to give some lecture on what you should be eating.  I just want state a sort of opinion on the issue revolving around child obesity.

This is where the article I read plays in.  The article talks about how some Montgomery County schools have been introducing healthier school lunches.  I am a big supporter of this, especially because I believe what kids eat at school is a factor in child obesity.

At my school, and at my past schools, the lunches have all been the same.  Greasy pizza (wet cardboard with stiff cheese), nachos (stale chips with oil), slurpees (wonder where those are made...) and so on.  None of these include essential nutrients, or seem particularly appetizing.  These foods, which kids consume once a day for 5 days a week, some more than that if they buy breakfast at school, make up a good percentage of kids' food intake.  These foods are not particularly healthy and they send the impression that these are the foods that one should regularly be eating.

I know this has been kinda disjointed and all so I'll try to sum it all up real quick: I think that if people really want to do something about the child obesity issue it needs to start in the schools, with the schools only offering healthy and nutritional foods, not just some "alternative" that kids are encouraged to take (or required to take but just throw away).

                                     Is this really the best they can do... really, what is that????

Image Source: Gross School Lunch