The Effects Of School Lunch Programs On Children s Nutrition

School lunch programs supplement children’s nutrition needs and without them many children would go hungry, be malnourished and lack the fuel needed to learn. Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010, passed into law by President Barack Obama, reauthorized funding of the original Child Nutrition Act of 1966. Changes impacting not only the National School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs but also Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), Summer Food Service Program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and Child and Adult Care Food Programs. The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, for the first time in over 30 years, reformed school lunch and breakfast programs thereby improving nutrition for†¦show more content†¦The video, a parody of a well-known current song, cites the statistic that active teens require 2000-5000 calories a day to meet their growth and energy needs (You Tube, n.d.). Children in the video, undernourished from too few calories, fall down and crawl in fatigue. Limiting the lunch meal to 850 calories, required by the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, is more than sufficient. Active male teens need between 2,800 to 3,200 calories a day while sedentary teens only need 2000. Athletic male teens need the high end of calories with 2000-5000 (Coleman, n.d.). If 2000- 4000 calories a day were needed, which is likely for the majority of teens, and those calories were divided between 3 meals and 2 snacks a day, the lunch meal would only need to consist of 400-800 calories; well within the range specified in the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. Children in America are experiencing an epidemic where obesity and obesity-related disease is staggering, not only for adults, but also for children. The CDC reports, â€Å"childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents over the last 30 years. In 2012 more than one third of children and adolescents were overwei ght or obese† (CDC, 2014). This generation’s life expectancy is predicted to be the first in history to be less than their parents; they will be sicker and die younger (The New England Journal of Medicine, as cited in the New