Blog: Lunch

School lunches. I can see the the grimace on your face from here. Nobody likes them. So here’s a thought. Why don’t we change them?

Today I walked through the lunch line and bought my barely-chicken nuggets, my more-like-cardboard cinnamon roll and a water bottle. I get to the register, and she spat “You don’t have enough fruit–Here,” and she shoved an orange juice at me.

An orange juice? That’s not going to make me any healthier. If you want me to eat better, take away my cinnamon roll, don’t load me up with more sugar.

According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. My guess is that school lunches have something to do with that.

When you walk through the lunch-line, you don’t choose the grilled chicken and asparagus, do you? No, because they don’t have that, they have a carb-filled chicken sandwich and a pack of cookies. Pile on the chips, they could count as a vegetable.

Now imagine a world where your lunch-line is filled with fruits and vegetables. Garden salads and grilled chicken galore. No fake cheese or cardboard bread, everything is real.

We can come up with a better way to feed kids at school. Load up cafeterias with vegetables and fresh fruit. Nix the fried chicken and pizza and make kids eat healthy foods. Then maybe America won’t have 12 million children between 2 and 19 that are obese.