Speach on "should elementary schools serve junk food?"

Essay by BenzarA, July 2006

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Hello! And thank you for your warm welcome. I'm honored to be here among many distinguished guests this morning.

We are seeing a whole generation of children grow up to be junk food junkies. This habit is firmly established in childhood, although parents often do not see that their child is really affected. Junk food is an North American way of life. Food manufacturers tantalize us with a new snack food each day. These foods are fun, tasty, and intriguing. Sometimes, they are a desired change from the normal wholesome foods we need to eat to stay healthy. Unfortunately for many children, they are also addictive and can be found at their home school. We all are aware about the consequences that the unhealthy food brings to our kids. Across the Canada, about 2.8 million Canadian kids ages 4 to 15 are overweight, and an additional 3.5 million are obese.

Children are getting taller and wider because they are getting more than enough calories for their growth. But they are not getting healthier, because, while junk foods provide plenty of calories, these calories are depleted of the nutrients needed for basic good health. At stake is not just the wellbeing of these kids as they reach adulthood, but hundreds of billions of dollars of health expenditure on adults with heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, and other disabilities they'll incur. The cause of this enormous crisis is the unhealthy food that is provided in schools. It targets our kids with products such as: donuts, cakes, muffins, snack foods and fried foods in their youth years when they can't make positive decisions for them self. These products contain a large amount of trance fat. Trans fats causes significant and serious lowering of HDL (High-density lipoproteins) cholesterol and a significant and...