Final Speech

The topic of childhood obesity in the United States should not only be decreasing but however is only increasing as we speak. The percentage of children with obesity in the United States has more than tripled since the 1970's. Today, about one in five school-aged children (ages 6–19) has obesity. A normal child goes to school 5 days a week and develops many habits through their actions at school because they are there so frequently throughout their childhood. However, the problem with this is that the eating habits that these young children develop in school is very malnutritional. For example, "The Agriculture Department doesn’t track spending to process the food, but school authorities do. The Michigan Department of Education, for example, gets free raw chicken worth $11.40 a case and sends it for processing into nuggets at $33.45 a case. The schools in San Bernardino, Calif., spend $14.75 to make French fries out of $5.95 worth of potatoes." The problem here is that these schools are buying products like chicken and potatoes which has their health benefits to them but are processing and turning them into things like fried chicken nuggets or french fries, etc. This not only hurts the children's health but limits their choices when eating lunch provided by the school because this happens to a lot of the products sold at school lunches. Which is a major cause to why these children are becoming obese at a young age. For example, from a personal experience of attending Glastonbury Public High School in Glastonbury, CT for 3 years, I was served products like fried mozzarella sticks, fried onion rings, boxed pizza, etc. All these things are included into the main course for the "hot lunch" provided at school for these kids which means they are pretty much forced to eat it or else they don't eat. On top of this the school's fruit and vegetable products are not always up to par either. As well as the hot lunches at GHS I also had to deal with the hardship of eating a mushy apple or things like very hard cooked broccoli that was not at all appealing to me, nor my classmates that were at school with me. This limits the student's in getting their nutritional value in the lunch because if the fruits and vegetables are bad than most likely a lot of the kids are not going to take them which means all they are consuming is the horrific nutritioned "hot lunch." These students are consuming the processed food which is only gonna contribute to becoming obese more and more each and every day. To build off this idea, student's need the nutrients in their lunches to be able to focus and succeed in class throughout the rest of the school day. How is this going to happen when they are consuming an awful nutritioned lunch? The answer is it's not. These student's need the right amount of nutrients within their lunch to get them through the day as well as being able to think and analyze problems within the concepts taught in class and to be able to perform in all types of afternoon activities after school whether it is a sport like hockey or even something like ultimate frisbee. In order to burn calories while exercising you have to be able to move frequently and consistently at a specific pace but without the right nutrients in your body while doing this, it's going to be extra hard to burn calories and lose weight. Which can also be a major reason to the cause of obesity. However, all these problems are caused by the poorly adjusted fixings school's have made to their school lunches which is the reason why there is a increase in obese children across America day by day. The school lunches need to be able to change their food products to less fried and processed food to more fruits and vegetables so that these obese children can become a lot more healthy as well as be able to perform well in class and during any after school activity. However, these fruits and vegetables need to be served up to their full potential and in the best shape as possible. It's bad enough when you give a kid an option of choosing a chocolate chip cookie or an apple, he or she is most likely going to choose the cookie. Well to decrease the likeliness of this happening, schools need to cut down on providing the sweets but also need to make sure the fruits and veggies are in tip top shape because it's hard enough to get young students to eat enough fruits and veggies let alone serve them fruits that are bruised or mushy or veggies that are cooked too much or too little. The whole view on the menu served for the students at schools across America needs to be upgraded to foods with the right nutrition to help contribute to a students success as well as the right foods that help contribute to these children in making sure they aren't gaining a ton of weight. As well as becoming obese over sweets which are only going to make the likely hood of becoming obese as a child more likely to occur.