Making School Lunch Healthier

A group of students at a Chicago public high school on the city's northwest side is calling for higher quality, healthier food to be served at their cafeteria -- inspiring real change that could be felt citywide. "We want our school to be better," Jacquez Conwell, a junior at Roosevelt High School participating in the student protest of the "crap" meals, told HuffPost.

As the first few weeks of the school year and fall are upon us, it's important to make sure our kids are getting the fuel they need to make it through a full day in the classroom and beyond.

The new school year has begun and even if you prepared for weeks, the daily routine can get hectic very quickly. In the midst of all the tasks, sometimes lunches are the first thing to fall to the wayside.

Back to school season is a time for new experiences. Beginning a new school year brings excitement, anxiety, and new opportunities. As a parent, each school year brings new joys and concerns. It is important for parents to know who their child chooses as friends because we, as parents, cannot choose friends for them.

Let's face it: it's not always positive stories we hear in the news about school foods and physical education, our kids' health and how our academic achievements stack up against those of our global competitors.

There are now 2.1 billion people who are overweight in the world. China and India are number one and two in the world in sheer number of type 2 diabetics. In the Middle East and North Africa, rates of diabetes are rapidly increasing.

Many children consume at least half of their meals at school, and for many children, food served at school may be the only food they regularly eat. With more than 32 million children participating in the National School Lunch Program and more than 12 million participating in the School Breakfast Program, good nutrition at school is more important than ever.

From the school board to the statehouse, the food served at school is the focus of debate. The statistics that started the food fights are familiar: One in five U.S. children is overweight, and increasing numbers of them are developing type 2 diabetes, an illness that used to be limited to adults.

Beyond making us laugh -- and providing Chris Farley an opportunity to dance his aproned heart out -- it seems Sandler was on to something. More than 30 million students eat school meals every day, and many of them rely on school foods for up to half of their daily calories.

Lunch is a great part of the school day. Find out why what you eat can rev you up - or slow you down - for the afternoon ahead.

How are our children supposed to learn when their school lunches fill them with junk? In 2009, the School Nutrition Dietary Assessment Study, published in The Journal of the American Dietetic Association, evaluated the school meal program based on nearly 400 public schools.

If you need help in the lunch-packing department, you are in the right place! Helping others pack fresh lunches is all I do! If you need a few ideas to help you get started, sign up for our newsletter, and you'll get a free week of ideas.

healthy and easy lunches for back to school and please tell me if you try them because i would love to know!

Thanks to the Healthy, Hunger Free Kids Act, major improvements are being made across the country to transform school food to promote better nutrition and reduce obesity. With that in mind, we have created two toolkits: offers topic-specific policy and resource materials to assist schools in meeting the new nutrition standards.

Good nutrition is essential to student health. That means replacing junk food with more fruits, vegetables and meals prepared with nutritious ingredients. Each year, more than 31 million students receive lunch from the USDA's National School Lunch Program. It's critical that the meals students receive from this program are as healthy and wholesome as possible.

WASHINGTON - The humble school lunch, that staple of most every American child's diet, has become healthier. That was the conclusion of a federal report released Thursday that showed that the nutritional profile of school meals in the United States had improved substantially since higher government standards went into effect in 2012.

School lunches are not always healthy. According to the School Health Policies and Programs Study in 2006, 11.7 percent of elementary schools, 19 percent of middle schools, and 23.5 percent of high schools included meals from fast food restaurants, such as Taco Bell and Pizza Hut, among their lunchtime offerings.

Did you know that the percentage of overweight children and adolescents in the US has nearly tripled since the early 1970's? More than one in five children between the ages of 6 and 17 are now considered overweight. Childhood obesity has been linked to diabetes, high blood pressure, depression

Make lunch-planning easy with these 30 easy, healthy school lunch ideas for everything from soups and sandwiches to sweets and salads. Taste-test our traditional lunches or put a spin on a classic recipe!

Striding past samples of Pop Tarts and pizza and cookies, Jessica Shelly made a beeline for a booth selling individually packaged sliced fruits and veggies. She picked up a pouch of sliced peaches and let out a yelp of delight. "This could be really fabulous," she said. "I'm thinking yogurt.

Since 1971, the Center for Science in the Public Interest has been a strong advocate for nutrition and health, food safety, alcohol policy, and sound science. Its award-winning newsletter, Nutrition Action Healthletter, is the largest-circulation health newsletter in North America, providing reliable information on nutrition and health.

For some reason that I'll probably never understand, First Lady Michelle Obama has repeatedly been criticized by the press and blocked by lawmakers in her efforts to make school lunches healthier in this country.

In the war to get America's children to eat healthier, things are not going well. Student E114 is a case in point. E114 -- the identification code she was assigned by researchers studying eating habits at her public elementary school somewhere in the Northeast -- left the lunch line one day carrying a tray full of what looked like a balanced meal: chicken nuggets, some sort of mushy starch, green beans and milk.