When it comes to eating school food, there’s often no doubt that students won’t be enthusiastic about what’s being served in the school cafeteria, whether it’s chicken patties or chunky peanut butter with gooey jelly sandwiches. Though it is questionable whether school food provides nutrition to students, it seems like eating healthy isn’t something many students care about, so why should schools promote nutrition? There are several answers to that question. Dietitians in Ontario explain, on their web site designed to help teachers teach nutrition to young students, that it’s complex for children to distinguish and describe what they do not know. As a result, they cannot speak on what they need to know about nutrition or how to improve their eating habits.

A solution to that issue could be schools implementing nutrition programs for students to learn about the basics of healthy eating. It can help limit students consumption of fatty foods, portion their food servings, and encourage them to eat a healthy breakfast. Those are some of the few major objectives taught in these school nutrition programs.

In one elementary/middle school in the Bronx, PS/MS 315 Lab School, an after school program was built to teach students how to practice healthy eating habits. Amy Duncan, a kindergarten teacher at the Lab School, created this program for students to be able to understand nutrition’s value in a more creative way.

Amy Duncan explained some of the aspects of her Health and Nutrition Enrichment program and her thoughts on school nutrition in general. She said that teaching nutrition to students benefited them. “It gave them insight into healthy eating habits, easy to do exercise in the comfort of their own homes, and kid friendly snacks made inexpensively,” she said.

In the program, she had students create food and exercise journals, learn about and make healthy snacks exercise in class each week, and learn generally about the food pyramid. “They made recipe cards for each snack so that they could emulate the snack at home. The culminating activity was that groups created and presented healthy snacks to the class,” she explained. She said she believed that school cafeteria food was, in general, healthy, but that snacks and bake sales “need to be kept to a minimum.”

Kristen Wade, a high school science teacher at another New York City public school, said that most lunches served in schools are not healthy. “The federal government has cut funding for lunch programs in school, which forces schools to feed each child for less than a dollar a day,” she said. “The food is often processed and filled with fat, sugar and preservatives.” She mentioned how some programs like, Wellness in Schools inspire students who attend public schools to eat healthy and are also trying to make lunch programs serve fresh and healthy food.

Wade also believes it is important to teach health and nutrition to students. “When students are exposed to healthy food choices at a young age, they are more likely to choose healthier options later in life… Also, it is important to teach [students] about the dangers associated with eating processed food”, she said.

She created a project-based module course at the iSchool, Food Revolution, to help students analyze issues relating to food, particularly why healthy food is so expensive. “Our government is subsidizing crops, such as corn and soybeans, that are used in processed foods and causing the price of food to be skewed towards the cheap unhealthy foods that are causing the obesity epidemic,” she said. Therefore, Wade said, “parents who only have $8 a day for food for a family of four find it hard to buy the healthy, more expensive options.” With her class, Wade develops a healthy food plan on a food stamp budget to help illustrate the challenge of family’s ability to afford nutritious foods.


Programs to teach nutrition are not the only way to promote nutrition in schools. The Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010 has caused schools to alter nutrition choices in the cafeteria by adding more whole grain pizza, pastas and rice, more vegetables by adding a salad bar, and of course fruit. However, most students still say school lunches are unappealing to eat.

iSchool Senior Jonathan said he believed schools have a responsibility to promote good nutrition but he dislikes the “limited options and quantity” of school lunch, as well as its low “taste and nutrition value.”

A freshman female who responded to an anonymous survey said of school lunch, “it doesn't look or taste appealing, the taste and environment the food is in is unappealing.”

What’s Next?
What are some possibilities to improve school lunches ? Most would agree that providing a variety of options to eat in the school cafeteria is one way to improve school lunches.

A student who attends the NYC public high school, Central Park East, Jennifer Martinez, agreed with school cafeterias providing more nutritional options. She suggested offering “snacks with more nutritional value like Sun Chips and Chobani Greek yogurt.”

Gerra, a sophomore at Townsend Harris another NYC public high school, said adding more varied fruits and vegetables is another way schools could improve their lunches.

What's your solution to improving the school lunches and ways for schools to promote health?