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I have always found it puzzling that so many American children qualify for school lunch subsidies. It seems that in the richest country of the world at a time where the world was never this rich, no children should go hungry. Yet many apparently are. And it seems that these school lunch programs are doing them good, both in terms of putting something in their stomach and something healthy in their regimen. Which is important in the context of the obesity "epidemic."
This is what I understand from the paper by Larry Howard and Nishith Prakash. In particular, they observe that pure fruit juice, fruit and salad intake increases for those who are subsidized. This implies in particular that parents are not substituting away from these foods when they are supplied in school. Encouraging. Now, what about removing hamburgers, pizza and fries from school cafeteria menus for everyone?
Thursday, November 12, 2009
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1 comment:
I spend a lot of time with impoverished people. Several of my peers are in their houses on a daily basis.
The fruit juices are there simply because the children drink them and they are essentially free to the poverty stricken person as the government buys them and other suppliers give these things away.
However, there is still the question of how the parent spends their own cash - this usually means junk food. Seriously, go to the slum and look in the pantry and refrigerator. You might not find much food (then again, you might be surprised). What you do find will be poor quality high fat and sugar stuff.
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