I recently started an internship with The Healthy Schools Campaign which focuses on healthy school lunches. Judging by the looks of that sandwich above, well, let’s just say I am not the poster child for healthy lunches. Bacon is my kryptonite. Don’t judge. Perhaps it stems from my childhood. My mom used to make me the BEST lunches in the entire school. I’m talking a sandwich (usually beef with mustard or peanut butter and honey), a juice box, a bag of chips, and the coolest wrapped lunch time sweets on the market. Twinkies, dingdongs, fruit gummy snacks in the shape of cartoon characters…if your mom wouldn’t let you have it, odds are mine would. So what if my lunch bought me a few extra friends? I was a funny-looking skinny kid. I needed all the help I could get. I can’t blame my mom for wanting to spoil to me, and frankly, it solidified my early love of food, which I have now turned into a career. So thanks, Mom! But, if I had to be more responsible and logical and crap, I know that my early overindulgence of bad food left me really unprepared for taking care of myself in college. I would eat once, maybe twice a day, and typically Pizza Hut or Taco Bell every time. I drank six sodas a day. A DAY! By the time I graduated, my stomach was a wreck and I stilled didn’t know how to properly feed myself. I did eventually learn a few healthy habits, but it is still a constant struggle. So here I am, working on getting the government to legally redefine school lunch nutrition requirements to promote a healthier childhood for America’s youth. Full circle, huh? Then I learned that some people are against having the government restrict what they or their children can eat. You read more about this here, here, here and here. On one hand, this doesn’t make sense to me in light of my own unhealthy past. I wish someone had pointed me in the right direction, like my parents, the government, heck, even a nutrition class in school would have helped me out (for the record, I was only offered a nutrition class one year in high school, and it was hardly effective). Obesity is a huge problem in America, so why shouldn’t the government help out? But on the other hand, how is it fair for the government to suddenly decide we aren’t allowed to make food choices for ourselves? What happens when that idea extends into other parts of our lives, like what we drink, where we live, where we work? So I’m curious. What do you think? Is it important to push for regulation of school lunches? Or do we want to kick the government out of the kitchen and let people figure out healthy eating on their own? (DISCLAIMER: This question does not represent the messaging for the actual campaign I am working on with the HSC, just a question that I personally have. I promise to post more about the campaign’s message at a later date!) ~LTG!
