There has been a growing debate throughout the last several years over the connection of school lunches and child obesity rates. Recent federal guidelines are requiring schools to revamp their school lunch program. The new school lunches will have a vegetable or fruit choice, whole grain breads and pasta and fat free dairy products. The outlook is good, however I question whether or not it’s as simple offering specific foods.

I would like to first state that I think implementing a healthy food menu is commendable and will most likely help many students, however I believe the problem goes beyond the type of food served. If we take an honest look back in time and remember the lunches that we ate, we’ll be remembering pizza, chicken patties, cheeseburgers, meatloaf and many more similar dishes. In all honesty, we’d have to admit that our school lunches weren’t all that healthy either, yet we were smaller and healthier.

What exactly changed? One thing that I know of through my Brother is that school lunch isn’t ran the same. When we went to school we went through the line and grabbed a tray of whatever they gave us. Now children are allowed to go through and grab what they want, which is then added up at the end of the line and subtracted from each students account. At least that’s how it is at my 7 year old niece’s school, needless to say the school was constantly notifying my brother that more money had to be added to the account. To combat the cost and the possible overeating, my brother now only loads $5 on each day.

This leaves me wondering if each school is run in the same way. If so, then could it possibly be that the problem isn’t so much  what the students are eating as it is how much the students are eating. Add to this that more parents are working today than in the past and students are home alone to eat as many snacks as they want. As I said, I think food choices are great, however we may need to spend more time looking at the amount of food consumed.