Let's feed our kids real food

In order to prevent all the poor eating habits we have in this country we need to teach kids at a young age how to eat healthy. The best place to start teaching them is in the school cafeteria.

To have better school lunches we will need to change how we are funding our schools. We don’t provide the funding the schools need to hire real chefs and cook nutritious meals. By having the type of lunches that most schools provide, such as pizza, chicken nuggets, and nachos, kids learn that it’s okay to have this food all the time. For some students, school lunch is the main meal that they get all day. They need a nutritionally balanced meal to have enough energy to be ready to learn.

Childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. Obese kids are at risk of many diseases later in life.

Other countries are doing a much better job at providing real meals to their students. For example France provides salads, meat, baked and fresh veggies, fish and much more. American students could learn to love these if they got it all the time for lunches. The one main difference between the United States and France is France’s culture values healthy eating and teaches their kids this from a young age. If we start to value healthy food in our schools, big changes can happen.

This story was originally published December 25, 2016 at 6:50 PM with the headline "Let's feed our kids real food."