Health and Nutrition in Schools - Essay Example

Breakfast and lunch programs raise the average cost of production and serving school breakfast and lunches by approximately 37 cents and 7 cents respectively. This is a challenge to many schools, but cost changes do not affect all schools. Schools with menus that emphasize whole grains, non-starchy vegetables, and fruits made fewer changes; thus, the cost of implementation in the schools were lower than average. The overall cost of implementation is also higher in schools that offer more breakfasts relative to lunches than in schools that do not offer breakfast. School Food Authorities cover for the increase in preparing and serving school meals. This is because they have a variety of funding sources. Most schools also have a number of flexibilities and options within available, operational approaches and revenue streams that help balance resources and costs. Some of the recovery channels of increased costs in breakfast and lunch programs are student payments of la carte foods, and local and state government sources.In the new breakfast and lunch program, the state board took into consideration the unique needs of the children. Not all people take the same diet mainly because of medical reasons. This program caters for children roughly between five years and eighteen years. The program puts this into consideration and takes care of all special needs of the children. Children are divided into different age groups to cater for their different nutritional requirements. This is critical because their bodies are at different growing and development stages and interference or inadequate feeding compromises growth and development of children. The program also caters for children with medical conditions who are on a special diet. This implies that the program introduced a wide variety of a balanced diet for children because of their particular nutritional and development needs. Children choose from a wide variety of foodstuff provided and this caters for the diverse needs of children. Dietary salt has also been reduced in school meals. Therefore, the program takes into consideration children with cardiovascular diseases and hypertension (Bartfeld, 2010). Figure 1: Table Showing Different Age groups with different Menus GRADE AGE K-5 5-10 years 6-8 11-13 years 9-12 14-18 years Process Involved in the Program Implementation of breakfast and lunch program involved different steps and decisions. Before finalization of changes, many considerations were put into perspective. For example, schools had to take a survey of the children's needs, age, health and medicinal requirements before implementation. Parents were to provide medical records for children who needed individual attendance. Nutritional experts formulated a food menu and advised schools on the best economic food choices as outlined by the requirement in the program. Schools also introduced certain hygiene checks that would ensure children get better services. This facilitated the introduction of an entirely new procedure to cater for diverse nutritional needs in schools. The implementation process was an essential because every change ...Show more