Schools Need to Serve Healthier Lunches

The Pro started us off by raising the prominent issue of obesity. The main argument the Pro has for schools serving healthier lunches is that by serving unhealthy foods, it increases the probability of unhealthy children. As the Con, we accept the definition, but we also believe that school lunches are not the key factor in resolving this problem. Instead, we believe that changing the health factor included in foods available at school canteens is not the way to go to curb obesity. So first, some rebuttal. -The Pro has evidently displayed confusion regarding why schools provide food that is deemed to be unhealthy. School cafeterias, especially those in state schools, are run by either 1) Cafeteria workers from a private company(*) or 2) Some parents that volunteer. In the first case, the main motivation is profit. These private companies want to make profit. In order to make profit, they commonly neglect values that are embedded within healthy food. Healthy foods are going to be less likely to sell and so they resort to junk food. But this is not necessarily a bad thing and it doesn't create that much of an impact on the individual if they are exposed to a sufficient source of education as we will elaborate later in this speech. If they are run by parents, parents want to see joyful faces on children when they have their lunch break, they want children to be able to have a source of enjoyment during lunch periods, not the often sad faces that correspond to school in general. So, onto my substantive 1) The key method of combating obesity is not restriction, but education. School systems aren't doing enough to educate these children on the negative hazards of obesity. However, if they do, what this can lead to is a reduction of unhealthy foods in the cafeteria. This flow on effect occurs because, firstly, cafeteria companies want to make more money. If no one purchases the foods they are providing, they will adapt in order to continue their flow of income. Through educating children about the consequences of consuming too much junk food, they will start to make changes to their own lifestyles. It is perfectly fine to have a cheat meal once in a while from the cafeteria if they have a balanced lifestyle. Furthermore, we believe that restricting the food choices in the cafeteria will not deter the children from consuming junk food, leading onto my next point. 2) Restriction does not necessarily deter, but rather it can inflame the situation. By restricting the food choices, this can very well lead to children bringing junk food from home. If we do not educate these children, they will then turn into uneducated adults through a natural progression of events. These partially ignorant, due to no fault of their own, adults will then allow their children to consume large amounts of junk food. Obesity is partially due to genes (**) as proven from an Oxford study. By actively restricting the food choices in school cafeterias, we are actually promoting children to smuggle in food because they don't realise the negative aspects of bad food choices, rather they believe that the school is just being mean to them, reflecting negatively on the school as well. As the Con, we do not believe that the issue of obesity is significantly linked towards healthy/unhealthy food choices in school cafeterias. Rather, we believe that this issue is more closely linked towards better food choices and lifestyle choices in everyday living. (*)http://www.families.com... (**)http://hmg.oxfordjournals.org...