Give me good food or give me death
Michelle Obama’s healthier school lunch campaign has shown to be unpopular amongst students.
December 10, 2014
America continues to struggle with a major issue: childhood obesity. It’s not the deadly Ebola virus that Americans should be fighting against, it’s the troublesome choices between healthy salads and greasy burgers that’s killing America.
“Believe it or not, right now, nearly 27 percent of 17 to 24-year-olds are too overweight to serve in our military,” Michelle Obama said.
In 2010, the First Lady decided to take a big step in changing the daily eating habits of Americans. Her supposed solution was to change school lunches. Michelle Obama started the Let’s Move! campaign with the initiative to have children of our generation achieve a healthy weight as an adult. It would support healthier school lunches, more physical activity and an overall change in our sedentary lifestyle.
Changing school lunches may have seemed like a brilliant idea at first. A simple switch of having more whole grains and fruits and vegetables could have been the ultimate solution in achieving a healthy body. I too thought that the healthier options and limited calories would help people in shedding some of their extra fat.
Unfortunately, for Obama, students across the nation responded in disgust to the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act, resulting in rebellion against the new school lunches. Protests and boycotts by children filled online media as they tried anything possible to abolish the new act. Photos of students posing in front of “healthy” vending machines and pictures of tiny, bland school lunches covered most of social media’s posts, captioned “#ThanksMichelle.” Limits on trans-fats, sodium, and even portion sizes led cafeterias to serve “taste-reduced foods” in order to meet the new standards. If I were to be in that position, I would definitely ask my mom to pack me a lunch every day, so I wouldn’t have to worry about my stomach grumbling in class.
I feel that Obama’s goals could have been achieved if the children were able to have a greater variety of food choices to choose from. As I saw tweets by students of tiny meals including watery chicken broth, pieces of crackers with ham, weird ground beef mashed potatoes and stale cheese sticks, it immediately occurred to me that these meals weren’t thought out. It seemed as though the foods were just measured in quantities by robots in order to meet the new “healthy” requirements.
Obama has gone too far in trying to keep our youth in good shape. Skimpy burgers filled with mystery meat are being served, while all the fruits and vegetables are being thrown away. Obama would probably want her country to be physically fit and robust, not malnourished from lack of food. The restrictions set are too strict, and they aren’t satisfying the children at school.
Students cannot study to their fullest potential and athletes cannot perform their best on empty stomachs. Although I admire Obama’s concern and efforts to keep us healthy, the standards should be more flexible to keep both our bodies and minds satisfied.
