Is it time we make healthy lunches mandatory for overweight children?

[Bathory]

How bout for ALL kids.

People lose their shit as if healthy = only salad or something. It's about nutrition, and yeah sure, why NOT allow make schools have legit meals as the default? Ohh no, someone might catch the healthy! Sounds much better than the pizza/french fries served every day at my HS.

[Veyne]

As someone who went to a school that offered somewhat healthy options but also had a separate line for fucking pizza and frenchfries every single day (that a vast majority of students chose, including me), and as someone who had reached 361 pounds by the time he was 23 (now down to 245 at 26, and it hasn't been easy), it boggles my mind in retrospect that a school would serve pizza and french fries. Especially every single day. Honestly, healthy lunches should be the ONLY thing the school itself offers its students (if a child brings their own unhealthy meal from home, that's not a fault of the school's).

An earlier post said something about schools being there to educate children not raise them. Teaching healthy should be part of that education, and it's a bit reckless to dangle two options, such as a healthy lunch and pizza and french fries, and expect most children to choose responsibly.

[Grimbold21]

Have healthy.menus only served at schools? You be responsible if your kids eat junk.

[Deleted]

school lunches should be healthy by default.
And they maybe should educate children (and parents as well) about tasty healthy food.
I mean, it's weird. You can eat tasty food without reducing your life expectation by days, weeks, months, years, one burger at a time.

Also, I wonder how the kids manage not to get fed up with junk food when they eat it that often. I was forced to eat cup ramen or delivered stuff while I was waiting for my new kitchen and the novelty of having pizza delivered every other day went old VERY fast. Now, I'm not a big fan of pizza anymore, and the burgers I can get from shops or ordered just don't have the right bang for their buck.

[MatthewOU2015]

I thought this was a serious post until I realized jay lock is the OP

[Theodarzna]

One step in the right direction to curb obesity is a step in the right direction. Should public schools make healthy lunches mandatory for obese children?

Would society have less problems if good habits are built early on in a child's life?

If you have seen the movie: The Island, that is the type of regulation I am talking about for what fat children can and cannot eat.

Good food needs to be cheaper.

Also PE and recess should return to the fold.

[The Glitch]

I definitely think healthy meals should be a given at school, for all children. It's a lesson to be taught, that is just as valuable as learning to read and write etc.

But it shouldn't be solely the schools responsibility, parents should be teaching their kids these things too, and I think alot of parents need educated on healthier eating, though it is also quite hard for some families to eat healthy on a tight budget when feeding a family, there are a lot of factors that make this topic a difficult one to solve.

But I will say that back in the 80's when i was growing up, I don;t remember seeing so many issues with children being obese, we went outside to play, were active, but a lot of my friends kids etc , I see today, spend so much time in front a TV, or a pc, or a gaming console of some sort or with their phones or ipads glued to their faces, I see this as part of the problem too.

[OneSent]

LOL.

Overweight children are overweight, not because of the one single meal they eat at school, but because of the tons of food they eat at home.

Do people honestly believe that making healthy lunches mandatory is going to have any affect whatsoever on the overall diet of overweight children?

Also, being overweight has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the food you eat, but how much you eat. Overweight kids could buy two or three "healthy" lunches and still gain weight.

[The Glitch]

Already healthy children should be able to eat pizza if they want. It is the obese children and people who pose very serious economic risks to society (because of increased doctor / hospital / medication costs to keep these people alive longer)

You do realise everyones bodies work differently, so even that person that is thin, and eats all the junk food, can still be unhealthy and have health problems because of their eating of the junk foods?

Weight doesn't always give a clear cut picture of someones health situation, maybe you need to rethink and be less judgmental towards things you clearly do not understand.

We should be teaching our kids about eating healthy, everything in moderation, keeping active etc. So they can then pass this on to the next generation, and hopefully things will start to change.

[Queen of Hamsters]

How about healthy lunches being mandatory for ALL children...?

Watch the documentary Fed Up and learn just how fucked up the situation is when it comes to what is put into our food and as such our children...and no, not just in America. A bag of taco spice that most families buy here in Sweden on Fridays contain 51% sugar!

In that documentary, they scanned the bodies of 3 children within the same family. 1 boy was visibly overweight (and desperate to lose it), but the visibly SKINNY children in the family had fatty insides.

[Jester Joe]

School lunch? That's just one meal during the week (not weekend) that isn't even like, year round.

I highly doubt school lunches are making anyone fat, it's not like they're extremely unhealthy as is.

[stumpy]

No, we should make liposuction mandatory for overweight children. And make them keep wearing the excess skin as a mark of shame.

[Kujako]

You will never see healthy lunches in schools, so long as Congress gets to decide that pizza is a vegetable.

[Drusyn]

Uh, if any fat fucking school cafeteria worker tried to tell me I couldn't have pizza for lunch I'd be suspended from school lol. Stop getting in other peoples business and let people do what they want (within the confines of the law of course).

[The Glitch]

LOL.

Overweight children are overweight, not because of the one single meal they eat at school, but because of the tons of food they eat at home.

Do people honestly believe that making healthy lunches mandatory is going to have any affect whatsoever on the overall diet of overweight children?

I think it's more of a we need to educate our kids and people in general about healthier eating, and perhaps starting that with school meals is a first step.
But parents should be responsible for doing the same at home, however it is quite surprising how many parents/people don't really think or understand about eating healthier.

Some families don't have a high income, and do the best with the budget they have, which sometimes means a lot of processed frozen cheap foods, to keep food on the table. I don't think there really is a simple answer to the problem, there are many contributing factors, that need to be addressed separately in order to fix the whole.

[theostrichsays]

I come from a really poor area. I would gladly pay more taxes if it meant the school having healthier food in general for the kids, not just due to being overweight. A lot of kids in my area eat absolute bunk all day at home, because frozen pizza and hotdogs are easier then steaming some damn vegetables.

I do think we should make school lunches healthier absolutely, not exactly for the same reason though.

[Queen of Hamsters]

it is quite surprising how many parents/people don't really think or understand about eating healthier.

.

Must say I was surprised to see people that were sitting and crying about how they "just don't understand how he's gaining weight!" when it came to their child would then go off and buy cookies, soda, Nutella, ready-made foods (with tons of sugar added) and shit like that to store at home.

[Drusyn]

I think it's more of a we need to educate our kids and people in general about healthier eating, and perhaps starting that with school meals is a first step.

I was taught this in school, I remember learning healthy eating in my health/P.E class did they stop teaching it? Just because I'm taught something doesn't mean I'm going to do it. I know smoking is bad for me and I do that, I know drinking is bad for me and I do that. I know my ramen noodles I put a pound of salt in (I like salt) is bad for me but it tastes better than brocoli

[Fugus]

No clue about now, but when I went to school in the 90's, our school food was horrible. I remember having rolls hard enough I could hit them against the lunch table and shake the whole table without the roll even deforming, we have burgers where I bit into one and it was GREEN on the inside and even the normal ones tasted off and the list kept going on. The food was garbage and the drinks weren't much better with milk not even in cartons but looking like colored breast implants.

If they want the kids to eat healthy. Here is what they do.

1) Have healthy food in school that actually tastes decent with some quality to it. The stuff they had back when I went shouldn't have been legal for either a school or a prison and it was what they gave to both. No one wants food that tastes like crap.

2) Make the healthy food cheaper, as it stands now, the healthy food is too expensive while the junk food is cheap unless you have the time and motivation to do a lot of prep work to make the healthy food from scratch which many are lacking in one or both of those.

3) Ban ingredients that are unhealthy substitutes for other items. I remember them mentioning one sweetener that doubled as a suppressor to the chemical signal sent to our brain to signal we were full so people were more willing to eat more and to the point they got sick before they actually felt full. Can't remember what it was though anymore.

So long as kids choices are summed up as the choice of healthy food that takes 10 times longer to prepare than to eat, healthy food that is too expensive to buy, or junk food that is cheap and easily available, the junk food will be the one chosen almost every single time.

[Random010203]

One step in the right direction to curb obesity is a step in the right direction. Should public schools make healthy lunches mandatory for obese children?

Would society have less problems if good habits are built early on in a child's life?

If you have seen the movie: The Island, that is the type of regulation I am talking about for what fat children can and cannot eat.

Public schools should offer meals that are generally more healthy than they are unhealthy; for all children regardless of weight.

- - - Updated - - -

2) Make the healthy food cheaper, as it stands now, the healthy food is too expensive while the junk food is cheap unless you have the time and motivation to do a lot of prep work to make the healthy food from scratch which many are lacking in one or both of those.

Could you elaborate on this for me? Fruit and vegetables are remarkably cheap all around, especially when buying in bulk quantity. If anything junk food is way more expensive per portion (note this has nothing to do with caloric content, simply serving size). Berries tend to be buy one get one free (BOGO) almost anywhere on alternating weeks and cabbage, peppers, lettuce, broccoli, is a dollar or less per unit lb or individual. Very inexpensive stuff, at least in the US. Granted not everyone lives in the US but generally the prices shouldn't fluctuate much more than this.

Source: 10 years stocker at three major grocery retail stores.