Healthy Food for Students

As our children grow older and begin the passage to adulthood we supply them with knowledge about the way the world works so that they can be productive citizens of society. We teach them how to reason, how to articulate, and how to be responsible for their actions. Math, science, reading, grammar, and history are the order of the day at many schools. Some schools excel at teaching their students these subjects but many schools fall short when it comes to teaching the value of good nutrition.

Nutrition a fundamental aspect of living, in fact throughout the course of the average lifespan the number times a person will have to make nutritional decisions is mind boggling. It is something so basic to the very essence of life but it is so often overlooked. While the responsibility for teaching current and future generations rests with the parents primarily, schools have done a lamentable job at imparting the importance of nutrition, especially in the school cafeteria. We all know that children learn by example and instead of providing healthy food for students what children often have to contend with are foods that are highly processed, overly fatty, and nutritionally bankrupt. Junk food reigns supreme to the detriment of young children who will grow up and often play out a lifetime of bad nutritional habits learned at an early age.

Good or bad nutritional habits often begin at a tender age. The impact of such often has far reaching effects on the individual and society as a whole. Currently America spends a whopping TWO TRILLION DOLLARS on health care costs every year yet we are not even ranked in the top 10 countries in terms of overall health. The countless dollars being spent are to address issues that could very well be prevented by proper nutrition - lessons that can be taught at a fraction of the cost to society for the benefit of the child and the country collectively. It is no surprise that the top two killers of Americans, Cardiovascular Disease and Cancer respectively, can largely be prevented by proper nutrition.

However healthy food for students can often result in more parochial if underappreciated benefits. Healthy food for students has been documented to increase academic performance as well as mediate aberrant behavior and violent crimes, including suicides, among student populations.

If schools are supposed to feed the mind, they should also do a better job at feeding the body. If a good education is a right, a healthy diet at school should be also.