The Public Needs to Know

The Public Needs to Know
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The Public Needs to Know
Recently, the government has made dramatic changes to the breakfast and lunch programs to improve nutrition and health. These alters in school meals include limiting calories, French fries and sodium and giving the students more vegetables and fruits. The four major issues described in this informative paper are economic situation, special needs such as health of the population being served, process of the program and its benefits.
Economic situation
Presently, schools get $2.72 from the national government for each child on the free lunch program. It is noteworthy that schools which would satisfy the new standards and abide by the directive will receive an extra 6 cents for every meal, thus adding about $1.5 billion over 5 years if every school meets the directive immediately. Schools will have to stretch limited food-service finances and they will need to trim down in other areas; all this is for the benefit of children (Hellmich, 2011). When the program takes effect fully, schools will have to meet the new standards in order for them to receive reimbursement from the federal government on school meals.
The cost of inaction is substantial. Obesity leads to diabetes, cancer, heart disease and other grave illnesses. It is of note that obesity adds roughly $150 billion annually to the federal healthcare costs, nearly half of which are paid by American tax-payers by means of Medicaid and Medicare (Wootan, 2013). The United States Department of Agriculture anticipates that the execution of this program may increase total costs by about $3.2 billion or 8% over 5 years. Over the next 5 years, implementing this program will bring an extra $7.2 billion in revenue to school service accounts and would lead to more than 850,000 additional children taking part in the school meal program (Wootan, 2013).
Special needs of the population being served
In the ...