Schools use most of their treasury on meeting minimum government nutrition needs. Because healthy food is expensive, they have little money left over. This makes them feel compelled to offer vending machine items or a la carte. Kids are getting into habits of buying extra junk food just because it is available to them and they aren’t the ones paying for it. The government prioritizes science, math, and reading in the schools but health and nutrition are arguably more important, because they are used throughout everyone’s lives, and often are forgotten. According to Adam Bernstein, if the American diet is to change, the government must make it their priority now. The government is forcing schools to choose between healthy and debt or unhealthy and weight gain, according to Dr, Kate Wilson from the National School Nutrition Association. School lunch is the reason child obesity is a problem.

They are saying, if healthiness is your issue, then why not just bring your own lunch from home? Well, home lunch generally has more sugar in it anyways, and has more empty calorie food. Home lunch also generally costs more and some families can’t afford to pay $3-4 for one meal when school lunch is only $1 with their free and reduced lunch. Also, if everyone did use home lunch for some reason, schools would get less money meaning they would have to cancel extracurricular activities or the government would have to fund them more, meaning that taxpayers would have to pay more.

Schools are spending all of their money on school lunch and can’t make it healthy for students. They prioritize subjects that are much less useful than nutrition. And to make it worse, the government makes the school choose either unhealthy lunch, or to go into debt. School lunch is supporting poor eating habits and is the reason child obesity is a problem!