Bought Lunches vs. Brought Lunches
Which is more nutritionally beneficial?
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(Collaboration with teammates Kaitlin Kelly, Alicia Morales, & Jacqueline Bosworth)
Abstract:
As a group assignment, Alicia, Kait, Jackie, and I worked on a collaborative research project revolving our topic around the following research question: Bought Lunches vs. Brought Lunches - Which is more nutritionally beneficial? Our aim was to discover which style of lunch is more benefical for students to be consuming on a regular basis. Since most schools give students the option to either purchase the lunch provided for them in the cafeterias or to bring their own lunch packed from home, our group wanted to investigate which option produced a healthier and more nutritional lifestyle. To do so, we used digital cameras to record interviews with teachers and food directors that interact with the children during lunch. We also compared school lunches to the information presented on the Obama Administration's nutritional value of school meals. Our findings were collected through interviews, research on the web, surveys of nutritional groups, and recordings of the lunch rooms.
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Introduction:
After narrowing down the endless thoughts about what we should research for our Collaborative Research Project, my teammates, Kaitlin Kelly, Alicia Morales, Jackie Bosworth, and I were eventually able to meet some common grounds for our topic question: Bought Lunches vs. Brought Lunches - Which is more nutritionally beneficial? Since half of our teammates are education majors and we all had a common interest with kids and our own personal teenage experiences, we decided to revolve our research in the setting of two middle schools. As another common interest, we collaboratively decided to investigate on every kid’s favorite period of the day- LUNCH. As we reflected on this topic, we questioned whether or not students who brought their lunches versus those who bought their lunches from the cafeteria had healthier or less healthier meals. With this unknown question in mind, our team set out to answer our research question by first finding two interviewees. Michelle Kong interviewed Beth Clark, the Food Service Director for Glassboro Public Schools. Jackie Bosworth interviewed Pamela Reilly, a teacher at Durand Academy and Community Services. After about four weeks of interviews, additional research, and attempts at getting inside the actual school cafeterias, my teammates and I completed our project. Research based off of Obama's Nutrition Bill showed that our findings leaned toward bought lunches being more nutritionally beneficial.
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Abstract:
As a group assignment, Alicia, Kait, Jackie, and I worked on a collaborative research project revolving our topic around the following research question: Bought Lunches vs. Brought Lunches - Which is more nutritionally beneficial? Our aim was to discover which style of lunch is more benefical for students to be consuming on a regular basis. Since most schools give students the option to either purchase the lunch provided for them in the cafeterias or to bring their own lunch packed from home, our group wanted to investigate which option produced a healthier and more nutritional lifestyle. To do so, we used digital cameras to record interviews with teachers and food directors that interact with the children during lunch. We also compared school lunches to the information presented on the Obama Administration's nutritional value of school meals. Our findings were collected through interviews, research on the web, surveys of nutritional groups, and recordings of the lunch rooms.
_______________________________________________________________
Introduction:
After narrowing down the endless thoughts about what we should research for our Collaborative Research Project, my teammates, Kaitlin Kelly, Alicia Morales, Jackie Bosworth, and I were eventually able to meet some common grounds for our topic question: Bought Lunches vs. Brought Lunches - Which is more nutritionally beneficial? Since half of our teammates are education majors and we all had a common interest with kids and our own personal teenage experiences, we decided to revolve our research in the setting of two middle schools. As another common interest, we collaboratively decided to investigate on every kid’s favorite period of the day- LUNCH. As we reflected on this topic, we questioned whether or not students who brought their lunches versus those who bought their lunches from the cafeteria had healthier or less healthier meals. With this unknown question in mind, our team set out to answer our research question by first finding two interviewees. Michelle Kong interviewed Beth Clark, the Food Service Director for Glassboro Public Schools. Jackie Bosworth interviewed Pamela Reilly, a teacher at Durand Academy and Community Services. After about four weeks of interviews, additional research, and attempts at getting inside the actual school cafeterias, my teammates and I completed our project. Research based off of Obama's Nutrition Bill showed that our findings leaned toward bought lunches being more nutritionally beneficial.
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What Is Considered To Be Nutritionally Beneficial?
Instead of comparing our observations to the typical Food Guide Pyramid, our group found the Obama Administration's nutritional value of school meals to be a better guide for our research topic. To explain, the typical food pyramid displays suggested percentages for the daily diet of different food groups; but, that is not exactly what we are looking for. Instead of a daily diet, we are more focused on one specific meal during the day for a child which is included on Obama's Nutritional Bill. Collaboratively, we looked at his demand for an increase in the serving of four vital categories: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and low-fat milk. Using the four criterias, we decided to investigate various bought and brought lunches to see which offered more.
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Brought Lunches
We took a look at nine different brought lunches of students at Durand Academy. To investigate their meals, we made a checklist of the four criterias mentioned above: vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and low-fat milk. The table below represents our findings based off of one random lunch period.
After conducting our survey, our results showed the following: only two out of nine students brought vegetables, only two out of nine brought fruit, no students brought any whole grains, and no students brought low-fat milk. In my opinion, these findings were quite shocking.
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Bought Lunches
We then took a look at Glassboro School District Lunches online. Each day, we analyzed the food items being served, checking off whether or not they contained Obama's Nutritional criterias: vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and low-fat milk.
The table below represents the following results based off of one month's lunch menu: fourteen out of the fifteen meals contained a vegetable, fourteen out of the fifteen contained a fruit, only two of the fifteen meals had whole grains, and all fifteen meals offered low-fat milk. We were pleasantly surprised with these results.
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Video of BOUGHT LUNCHES at Glassboro Middle School
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National School Lunch Program
Initally, Kait and Alicia began researching Glassboro School district regulations for school lunches. Surprisingly, however, they ran across the Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004, which is commonly referred to as National School Lunch Program of 2004. They found that this program was designed to help qualified students and children all over the country with receiving free or reduced lunches.
The policy reads "...each participating district must have adopted a wellness policy. Such a policy must include goals for nutrition education, physical activity, and other school-based activities that are designed to promote student wellness. Additionally, the policy must contain nutrition guidelines for all foods available on each school campus during the school day with the objectives of promoting student health and reducing childhood obesity. A district must also designate a person who will be responsible for measuring implementation of the policy." (Child Nutrition and WIC Reauthorization Act of 2004) In our opinion, it is delightful to know that our country cares about our children, especially with decreasing the high rates of obesity among so many youngsters in the United States. The Obama Administration's nutritional value of school meals relates to the National School Lunch Program by making sure the children are not only fed each day during school hours, but are being fed healthy foods to better their lfestyles.
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Chicago School Bans Packed Lunches
While I was trying to research different websites that offer ideas on how to make brought lunches healthier and give parents healthy ideas, I found a website dealing with a Chicago school. Little Village Academy is a small school located in Chicago. Currently, they are battling the public per their new ban on packed lunches. "Nutrition wise, it is better for the children to eat at the school," Carmona told the Chicago Tribune. (miami herald website) Also included in this news article are the downfalls to not letting parents pack a lunch for their child. Money becomes a major controversy. What if the parents can't afford to shell out the cash that it costs to buy a lunch at Little Village? There is mention of exception to the rule if the child has food allergies. The reasoning behind the ban on packed lunches is proclaimed to be that a staff member realized that she saw more and more children bringing in things like soda and chips. It is stated that the school feels as though the children will benefit nutritionally from buying a school lunch.
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Making Brought Lunches Healthier
Considering our research, it only makes sense to offer solutions to help parents pack a healthier lunch for their children. In conducting research online, I came across several helpful websites.
The website, green living ideas, shares different ideas for what is nutritionally beneficial to chilren in their lunches. Not only does it give lists of different options under the food groups, but it also explains why each of those foods is beneficial to a person's health. Not only is this website focused on the health and nutrition benefits of packing a healthy lunch, it also describes how you can keep our Earth eco-friendly by packing these foods waste-free.
WebMD offers many different ideas of what a possible packed lunch can consist of. The website shows different way that your packed lunch can contain healthy foods and still be an easy and cheap creation to make from home.
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The website, green living ideas, shares different ideas for what is nutritionally beneficial to chilren in their lunches. Not only does it give lists of different options under the food groups, but it also explains why each of those foods is beneficial to a person's health. Not only is this website focused on the health and nutrition benefits of packing a healthy lunch, it also describes how you can keep our Earth eco-friendly by packing these foods waste-free.
WebMD offers many different ideas of what a possible packed lunch can consist of. The website shows different way that your packed lunch can contain healthy foods and still be an easy and cheap creation to make from home.
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Afterword
To conclude, our group members and I all agreed that this project was a lot more hectic than we initially thought. The idea of this collaborative research project really appealed to me at the beginning of the semester, but I later discovered the many ups and downs of getting to the finalized piece. To explain, the first complication that arose occurred right after the interviews took place with head director of food services of Glassboro Township, Beth Clark, and teacher at Durand Academy, Pamela Reilly. The interviews went extremely well as we were able to use our question-answer responses to determine how bought lunches were more nutritionally beneficial than brought lunches because cafeteria lunches had to meet certain guidelines of the Recommended Dietary Allowances; a milk, a fruit, a vegetable, a required amount of protein and fiber per meal. However, based off of minimum knowledge of what we actually remembered eating in grade school and only assuming what we thought parents packed their children for lunch, we knew we had to dig deeper into our topic question. As a result, two of my teammates, Kaitlin Kelly and Alicia Morales, headed out to investigate what schools were serving in their meals and whether or not the students were actually eating the healthy options versus the "better tasting ones." This mission, however, escalated our second problem as they were turned down at two local middle schools due to hesitant secretaries questioning their presence. Therefore, as an alternative yet frustrating route, we found that researching the web was a logical way of supporting our interview responses, because Obama's Food Bill and other controversial viewers/schools also believed school lunches were significantly more nutritious than personally packed lunches.
Likewise, the third stress factor that arose during this collaboration was organizing our project to satisfy all of our likings. As you can imagine, four people trying to come up with one plan is quite hectic. Everyone had their own ideas and no one seemed willing to budge. However, after endless edits, adds, crops, and so forth, we came together and were able to publish our finalized layout of our collaborative research project. All in all, to say the least, I think this project was definitely a memorable experience that taught me the ups and downs of working together as a team in the writing world. Despite all the stress, I think that my team members and I learned a lot and had a lot of fun investigating bought and brought lunches. I greatly enjoyed the idea of taking a somewhat controversial topic and being able to research it by interviewing real-life people and learning even more about the topic from the web. To sum up, our group ended up researching many additional topics that supported our conclusion of how bought lunches from the cafeteria are more nutritionally beneficial than brought lunches students bring from home. Hopefully, the outcome of our project represents the amount of time and work we put into making this all happen!
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Likewise, the third stress factor that arose during this collaboration was organizing our project to satisfy all of our likings. As you can imagine, four people trying to come up with one plan is quite hectic. Everyone had their own ideas and no one seemed willing to budge. However, after endless edits, adds, crops, and so forth, we came together and were able to publish our finalized layout of our collaborative research project. All in all, to say the least, I think this project was definitely a memorable experience that taught me the ups and downs of working together as a team in the writing world. Despite all the stress, I think that my team members and I learned a lot and had a lot of fun investigating bought and brought lunches. I greatly enjoyed the idea of taking a somewhat controversial topic and being able to research it by interviewing real-life people and learning even more about the topic from the web. To sum up, our group ended up researching many additional topics that supported our conclusion of how bought lunches from the cafeteria are more nutritionally beneficial than brought lunches students bring from home. Hopefully, the outcome of our project represents the amount of time and work we put into making this all happen!
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Check out more about my research project by clicking on the following links: Research Question & Annotated Bibliography