Healthier Meals for a Healthier Future

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Healthier Meals for a Healthier Future Every year, thousands of children are diagnosed with diabetes. This not only affects the child’s health, but their eating habits and personal lives. On average, public school students are required to attend school 170 days out of the year, which means that child nutritionists should be able to provide healthier alternatives to children instead of fatty foods, and sugary drinks. Although many school lunches do not meet the requirements of the USDA standards for students, child nutritionist should collaborate with the school to provide more of a variety of healthier foods to give students more energy throughout the rest of the day and also influence smarter, healthier decisions. According to lunchthefilm.com, 80% of schools do not meet the USDA standards for fat compositions (lunchthefilm). Studies also show that, children who consume school lunches are about 2% more likely to be obese then those who “brown bag” their lunch (lunchthefilm). Another factor to the growing number of children diagnosed with diabetes is the vending machines that schools allow that contain cookies, sugary “sports” drinks, and other unhealthy snacks. These vending machines lure students into choosing unhealthy foods which can lead to obesity and diabetes. A healthier easier alternative that may replace the unhealthy snacks in vending machines can be real fruit juices, granola bars, and low sodium, baked chips. Allowing new and improved vending machines can give students more energy and influence smarter decisions when eating out. Many students today eat while they are studying, or doing homework which allows them to stay focused. Since most teenagers do not care about eating healthy or having a nutritious diet, they eat what tastes good to them and will continue to eat it. If only the school would somehow advertise how to prepare nutritious fast and

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