OUSD School Meals

Do you think it’s fair that students are being served Pre-pack  food and not have the choice or option for fresh cooked food? With no good school meals students are going to have a hard time being focused, and this will impact their academics, so school meals need to improve.

A lot of students depend on the school meals to stay focused in school, therefore they need to be better. Often students are too tired for breakfast and then don’t like the food for lunch. According to Health and Academic Achievement  by the CDC, they said “ Skipping breakfast is associated with decreased cognitive performance (e.g., alertness, attention, memory, processing of complex visual display, problem solving) among students” (CDC) This means that students who skip both meals morning and lunch have a hard time staying focus and a lot of students can be in a bad mood by not eating and don’t have the calories they need of the day.

However, in order for food to improve Oakland needs to put their money into this program.  The principal at Life Academy believes the food is bad because of finances. She states,“ I think it’s a question of money, if we had

all the money in the world we would do it (good food quality ) but we have to make really hard choices about where to invest money” said Ms. bowman, the principal of Life Academy high school.The district is having a hard time with the budget and that’s a reason of the food quality.In other OUSD schools they are selling their food and  that makes students not to eat because the food is expensive and bad. According to OUSD the current prices are:

2018-19 School Meal Prices:

Elementary Lunch: $2.75

Secondary Lunch $3.50

Additionally, some students receive free lunch or reduced lunch, but still they would rather not eat than eat something that tastes bad. Or they waste the little money they have on chips and things at the liquor store which is not healthy.

Some solutions I have to improve the school lunch is to provide fresh food. Students would eat something that tastes good and that is fresh. With some fresh fruit like watermelon they would eat something that is prepared that day. In the cafeterias they should have people cooking the type of food they cook at home. They should see the fresh and good food they cook at home and see that it  is not that expensive to have at school. Students would eat that and have their meals to stay healthy while they at school instead of buying bad food or trash food at the store.

WORK CITED

Health And Academic Achievements . National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion , Health And Academic Achievements , www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/health_and_academics/pdf/health-academic-achievement.pdf. The article was about nutrition on how can affect the student if they don’t eat well and don’t have their daily calories.

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