Food+Revolution+Essay

Brennen Hasty Period 4 15 February 2012 The Food Revolution

Have you ever stopped to consider exactly what is in the food you are eating? Statistically, the United States is the most obese country in the world. This is largely because of an excess of processed junk food, and a lack of natural, non-processed foods. These poor quality garbage foods have worked their way into our society, invading markets, fast food restaurants, and even school. If this invasion continues, then obesity and death rates will continue to incline. One of the biggest contributors to obesity and general lack of good health in the U.S. is processed food. A lack of education about what this food does to the human body is another big issue. As stated by Jamie Oliver himself, “…how can we expect these kids-our future-to know what it’s [the food] doing to their bodies? They are likely to live a shorter life than their parents and die from an obesity-related disease.” The fact that this food is served in public schools doesn’t make the problem any easier to fix. “We need to address the food situation at school,” and “if we don’t, we are failing our kids” are both statements made by the chair of MLA Partner Schools, Megan Chernin, in reference to the lack of effort being made by the district to rid the schools of processed food.

Thankfully, to many of these problems there are many potential solutions. “They soaked up the knowledge and told me how it shifted their perspective-in only one hour.” Here, Jamie Oliver is describing just how effective educating the students of LA Unified School District was. According to the article, he also stressed that it isn’t very hard to provide this education, and therefore that this education should be provided to as many kids as possible. “About 100 parents gathered on Valentine’s Day in downtown Los Angeles with gallon milk jugs filled with sugar to protest the districts serving of flavored milk.” This portrays an example of how unhealthy food can be eliminated from schools. Of course, there are quite a few other possible solutions as well.

Unfortunately, even if healthy lunches are implemented instead of junk food, new problems may persist. According to the article, many kids in the Los Angeles Unified School district found the food to be unappetizing and preferred the better tasting unhealthy food to the healthy food. “We, the students of Roosevelt High Scholl, would like to be served food that we can enjoy eating, rather than the ‘healthier’ food that we just throw away.” This is the statement made on the petition circulated around at the 3,200-student school. The conversion to healthier food caused a 12 percent drop in the amount of students buying lunch in the LA Unified School District. Although it has since slightly recovered, there is still a five percent drop as compared to the amount prior to the menu makeover. Students have found other ways to fight the new food as well. These ways include eating snacks, not eating lunch at all, and bringing lunch from home. This is problematic, as, according to Brian Wansink, the co-director of Cornell University’s Smarter Lunch program, “Three quarters of lunches from home are nutritionally worse.” Students aren’t the only ones disapproving of these new lunch systems. Some parents are as unsatisfied with the poor-tasting food as the kids. “He just complains the food doesn’t taste good,” stated Sally Pea in reference to her son’s opinion of the food. Of course, even to all of these obstacles there are some conceivable solutions. For example, according to the article, when kids are given the ability to choose what to eat, as with a salad bar, the food tends to better appeal to them. Another, more obvious solution is to implement foods which are healthy but which do not sacrifice taste for nutritional value. Finally, patience will be key in successfully converting public school food in to good quality, healthy food, and in getting students to appreciate it.

There are multiple things that I have to say about the effort to convert cafeteria menus to healthier foods. For example, many people such as Jamie Oliver and many school districts such as LA USD are trying hard to start a healthy “food revolution” in order to stop such issues as obesity, diabetes, and several other major health problems linked to poor eating. I feel that these organizations all have good intentions, and it is nice to see that so many people are putting a lot of effort into bringing health issues to a halt. I agree that schools are a great place to start when altering menus, as school cafeterias provide food to a large portion of kids, and beyond that, young kids are typically more willing to try new things than adults. There is, however, one major fault that I find with this “food revolution” that I cannot overlook. If this healthy new food were to be restaurant quality, then there would be little reason at all to resist change. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In my opinion, much of this new food is bland, unappetizing, and overall of very cheap quality. If this were to change, everyone’s efforts would undoubtedly be more successful.

Currently, obesity related diseases are the second highest cause of preventable death in the United States, and the U.S. has the most obese population in the world. Processed and unhealthy foods are largely to blame, and yet they are dominating the food industry and are served in school cafeterias nationwide. Lack of an education about healthy and unhealthy eating only worsens the situation, as does heavy opposition to change. Thankfully, there are things that can be done to solve these problems, such as providing detailed information and an education to students. Changing the menus of all of America’s cafeterias is another solution that has been taken up by many people and organizations, but this has been met by much opposition. Providing high quality and great tasting foods would most likely solve this problem. If we are patient and open minded about these menu changes, we could save our country from this nightmarish future of obesity.