When discussing health problems in New York City, it is easy to target unhealthy products such as fast food and tobacco because consumption of these goods is proven to be detrimental to a person’s health. However, the same can be said for alcohol even though there is not a large movement in place to reduce that (with the exception of drinking and driving). Rather than focus on these problems (which can be drastically reduced by people simply having more self control) I would like to focus on unavoidable health issues for many New Yorkers. The first being the fact that lead content is still found in paint in many old homes. The old homes that contain this harmful paint often belong to low income families who cannot afford to test the walls themselves. As a result, many families (and especially children) have suffered from lead poisoning. It is so common that personal injury attorneys often advertise on trains their success winning money for injuries caused by lead paint. I even went to middle school with a student who suffers from mental retardation because of lead paint. A second issue is food deserts. Approximately 750,000 New Yorkers live in designated food deserts while 3 million live near few or far away from affordable healthy food options. The locations of these food deserts are Central/East Harlem and North/Central Brooklyn. These locations pose a serious health risk to the people living there, removing the previously discussed will power associated with choosing healthy food over fast food; people living in food deserts are often forced to eat unhealthy fast food due to financial reasons. Thirdly, I would like to discuss the related problem of unhealthy public school lunches. As a student in the public school system since pre-kindergarten, I have seen the awful food provided to students. It sets them up for failure. The DOE preaches that students should stay healthy but do not back it up with actions. While they state “gym” class is just as important as math and science classes, shown by gym teachers making the same amount of money as any other teacher, they completely ignore the fact that nutrition is half the battle. While I was fortunate enough to bring lunch from home every day, many families at my school could not and the city forced poor nutrition on their children.
An important change to school lunches is to increase the requirements of a “healthy meal.” Currently, 30 million students nationwide are few by The National School Lunch Program. In 1946, Harry Truman signed this program into law and the guidelines appear just as old: “No more than 30 percent of the meal’s calories may come from fat,” “Less than 10 percent of the meal’s calories may come from saturated fat,” and “Meals must provide one-third of the Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDA) of protein, Vitamin A, Vitamin C, iron, calcium and calories.” Many experts have said that these requirements make school lunch not any better than fasts food and President Obama’s White House chef has stated that the meals are high in fat, preservatives and high fructose corn syrup. In order to improve the school lunches, and health, of young children, the requirements must be updated based upon our better knowledge of nutrition since 1946.
[1] http://recipes.howstuffworks.com/menus/who-decides-lunch-plans.htm
[2] http://www.schoolfoodnyc.org/public1/default.aspx?logout=1
Max, I agree with all the problems you discussed in your blog post. Lead paint, food deserts, and unhealthy public school lunches all pose a threat to New Yorker’s health, especially those residing in low-income neighborhoods. The scale is tipped unevenly, in terms of health, allowing the wealthy to have more access to recourses that promote healthy living. Being healthy requires not only dedication to that type of lifestyle, but also the funds to keep it going.
Your solution for improving public school lunches is not much of a solution. Yes, the policy needs to change, but in the meantime, how can we ensure students have a healthier lunch? Changing policy could take a lot of time. We must think of a more innovative solution that can get around the law. Perhaps supplying public schools with lunch trays that have healthy facts on them would be a good idea. In that way, students will have access to information and can choose to make healthier decisions.
It was very interesting to read about the lead paint. I knew that it was a problem that was existent in the past, but I thought that most of it had been taken care of in the past. It definitely is a huge problem for those with children and I feel that having this fixed immediately would be beneficial. I was also very surprised to hear about the food deserts being here in the city. In my mind subways made it easy for those in the city to simply travel to a market to get the healthy food that they need. The only extra cost would be the subway fare to get to a market that sold the produce one was looking for. I definitely agree that the school lunches are too unhealthy for children. There have been studies that show that adults who are obese have been like that since childhood. This is a very bad habit to build for all the kids in our school and fixing up the school lunch can help decrease the number of obese people. I really like your solution fixing these lunches. Having these requirements on the school lunches will force the school lunches to be healthy.
I agree with your point that school lunches need to be completely revamped. Like you I was fortunate to bring lunch from home but I saw that all the other kids ate was pizza, fries, sloppy joes, and mozzarella sticks; not exactly a healthy balance of food. Furthermore it is these habits that kids develop at a young age of eating unhealthy that will carry on with them for the rest of their adult lives. I didn’t know that the food standards were developed in 1946 but it seems completely outdated because times have changed and like you said, so has our understanding of nutrition. With the obesity crisis looming in the next few decades, we simply cannot afford to allow so many youth to eat unhealthy and then suffer with all the diseases that stem from obesity. Congress needs to take the responsible stance and write new standards for school lunches because current lunches are pale in comparison to what other much poorer countries receive. Another problem is the high fructose corn syrup which you mention. Only recently have we started using it in our products so doctors don’t yet know the long term effects on our bodies but initial findings don’t look promising. High fructose corn syrup is linked to obesity and diabetes so it would be best to use a safer proven alternative like sugar to sweeten our foods instead of going for whats cheapest.
The problem with healthy lunches is definitely a pressing issue in the public schools. It is difficult for people especially children to understand healthy eating habits if all they are given as a daily meal is one slice of pizza and a carton of chocolate milk. If we want to enforce healthy habits early, I agree that the public school system is a good way to start. I was also unaware that food deserts were a thing in the city because of our convenient transportation system. I feel like most of the time, people in the city are just too busy to cook for themselves since work is a prevalent part of their lives. As a result for convenience, they would just purchase ready made foods instead of cooking a healthy meal. From my search, there were approximately 8 Aldi chain stores in NYC, which are discount grocery stores, which has locations in the upper east side and the Bronx. While those stores are widespread and somewhat remote, there are subway lines that are a few blocks away and purchasing in bulk quantities will make healthy food not as expensive.