Famous chef and activist Alice Waters, recently wrote for Time on the topic of the National School Lunch Program. Her main point, that the foods we choose to provide to children through school lunch is an issue central to confronting America's obesity epidemic.
Data compiled by the USDA's Economic Research Service illustrates just how high the stakes are in terms of the nutrition content of meals we provide at our nation's schools. in 2013, Nearly 50 million children were eligible to receive breakfast and lunch under the National School Lunch Program.
Providing meals to children should be recognized as a huge success in terms of feeding hungry children. With the increasing role of the National School Lunch Program in children's lives, however, it is important to also observe that this means that school lunch provides two out of three meals (or all meals for some children) for millions of children each day--much of it fast food.
As Waters notes: "[b]y allowing fast food culture into the cafeteria, we have effectively endorsed that industry’s values [and] helped facilitate the obesity epidemic."
Neil Pederson, J.D. Expected 2015, William Mitchell College of Law.
Photo: http://www.morguefile.com/archive/display/835470
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