The lack of good, healthy food in schools causes a list of bad outcomes, including low academics and unhealthy kids. Although there are things being done to improve the food, we’ll start with the negatives. Its not only schools in the Minneapolis and St. Paul school districts, this problem is national. Even critics of food programs believe that schools serve ”low-quality, cheap, processed food.” Students agree to this statement.
From personal experience, some the chicken sandwiches don’t get cooked all the way through. Everyone knows you can get sick from uncooked food ,so that’s definitely not healthy. I only eat it because there aren’t any other options for me. My opinions are supported by other’s comments on the food.
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I did a survey with my school to see how other kids at Roosevelt High School feel about the food in my school. My question was, “Is food served in the Roosevelt High School lunch room accepted by the students?” When I got back the results, only one student thought the food was good. Nine students thought it was moderate and 36 said it’s bad and needs to be changed. This shows that the kids are speaking out on the food and want better quality.
Some kids even went a step further to announce it publicly. Tom Weber of the Minnesota Public Radio interviewed Robin Pillman. Pillman said, “It’s pretty much ground beef in barbeque sauce, stamped into a patty to make it look like there’s rib in it.” She goes on to say that she finds the food so detestable that she feels gross when she eat it. She even wrote a blog on Facebook on how she dos not like the school food called: ”School food sucks.”
All the complaints of the food are not going unheard. Schools are now taking action to better the food served in schools. For one, special associations called MSNA (Minneapolis school Nutrition Association) and IATP (Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy) both partnered up to take on good food for schools through a program called Farm to Schools. They now serve over 100 districts in the Minnesota district giving healthier choices and better quality food. Local farmers are also getting service to schools. During the 1st six weeks of local farmers selling to the schools, over 110,000 pounds of locally grown produce was bought from the farms of Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Farm to school is taking off very good in Minnesota districts. The participants in the programs have doubled in the past 15 months so the change is happening.
They even started doing this thing called “sneaky cooking” when you think your eating one thing, but actually eating another. For instance, the crust of the pizza served is not dough, its actual all whole grain crust.
Eventually, I believe the food in schools will be healthier. It’ll be a long process but better food is in the future for kids in schools. As you can see the changes are happening and the effort is being made and therefore in due time school food will have a higher standard and the students will have better grades. Better food= better brain food= better focus in classrooms. If improvement like this continues, its obvious the future of kids achieving better grades and concentration will increase.
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