Unhealthy food, banning from schools

Obesity is the condition of being very overweight, to the point where your health suffers. Doctors usually say that someone with a body mass index above 30 is obese. There is an increasing problem with obesity in the developed world, and this often starts in childhood. Some people have argued that unhealthy school meals and vending machines are partly to blame and that they should be banned. In the UK the TV chef Jamie Oliver ran a high profile campaign to rid schools of unhealthy (junk) food, and the British government has started to take action as well. Local and national groups are also lobbying for change in America and a number of other countries. However, many people argue that schools are the wrong places to target and that it does not solve the problem.

Arguments
Pros
Obesity is on the increase in the developed world, and that includes rising childhood obesity. In the UK it is predicted that over 20% of 2-15 year olds will be obese by 2010. It is important to fight obesity as it causes many health problems and can lead to early death through heart diease, diabetes and strokes.
Schools can play an important role in combating obesity as people tend to get into habits about how they eat when they are young. Schools can help to make those habits healthy ones. If you don’t eat fresh food and vegetables at home, you might not get to try them and then you are unlikely to cook them for yourself later. Schools can introduce young people to healthy food.
Bad diet can lead to childhood obesity, and other problems caused by unhealthy eating such as poor concentration, tooth decay and vitamin deficiencies. Schools can play a part in fighting these problems by providing healthy lunches in their canteens. Even if this is only one of the meals in a child’s day, schools can have a good effect on the overall diet of their students. If children are eating grilled chicken, vegetables and fruit at lunch rather than fried chicken, chips and cakes, that will have a positive effect on their health, and their schoolwork will improve too.

There is a good past example for schools getting involved in diet. Traditionally schools have given out free milk and fruit to try and make sure that children get enough calcium and vitamins, in case they are not getting enough at home. In the UK school meals were first made available by a reforming Liberal government a hundred years ago as a way of improving the health of the nation.

Schools teach healthy eating in Food Science and then undermine that by having vending machines full of chocolate and crisps outside the classrooms. We wouldn’t let schools have cigarette machines, so why let them sell food which is bad for your health?
If children try healthy food at school, they can take their knowledge home and introduce new food to their family. If a family always has frozen pizzas, they could suggest that they have other Italian food too, such as pasta and tomato sauce.
Cons
Obesity is a growing problem that we should take seriously. But the way to solve it is not to limit the choice of food in schools as children will just fill up on unhealthy food outside of schools. Instead we need to increase the amount of sport and exercise in schools and educate children about eating healthily. At the same time we should encourage parents to provide a balanced diet for their children.

Schools need to teach pupils about how to make healthy choices and what makes a balanced diet. They need education on what’s good for you but then need to be given the chance to choose for themselves between an apple and a chocolate bar. Otherwise as soon as they’re out of school, they’ll still eat three chocolate bars because you haven’t changed their mindset. They may even eat more junk food on purpose as an act of rebellion. So schools should serve a range of food, not just salads and other “health foods”, in order to provide such a choice.
A balanced diet includes small amounts of sugar, fat and salt – how do you decide what is healthy and what is not? Portions are key to a healthy diet. If pupils are very active and involved in sport, they may need to eat a lot of calories. You have to teach children and their parents to make responsible choices for themselves. The upbringing of children is mostly down to parents – the state shouldn’t take the job on through its schools.

There is a difference between providing something healthy as a free extra and limiting children’s access to food at lunchtime. You won’t make a difference with school meals if a child can just have an extra Macdonald’s burger or three more chocolate bars on the way home if they are hungry. If a school wants to make a difference, they should have more compulsory PE lessons to improve children’s fitness levels.

The difference between cigarettes and unhealthy foods is that even smoking occasionally is bad for your health, whereas eating fat, sugar and salt in moderation is not bad for you. It’s important to learn about how to make choices for a balanced diet.
If children don’t eat healthily at home they are more likely to avoid healthy school dinners. Instead they will bring an unhealthy packed lunch or go out of school for junk food in the lunchhour. Figures show that since the Jamie Oliver campaign in the UK, demand for school dinners has gone down by 20%. So there is no quick fix to encourage healthy eating and school meal campaigns may even be unhelpful. Tackling obesity properly will mean changing our food culture and that will involve the media, advertisers, food retailers and educators all playing a part.