America is fat; there is no doubt about it. Just listen to the research done on the health of Americans by doctors and the results will blow your mind. 119 million Americans are either overweight or obese. That means 64.5 percent of the American adult population is overweight! With more products out there to lose weight than I can even count, it seems like there should be an answer to the growing weight crisis. But still, year after year, waistlines keep expanding and the number of overweight people in the United States keeps rising.

Children are now estimated to have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. Between 16 and 30 percent of children are overweight. This scary statistic was enough to get the government to take action and institute a healthy eating program in most schools across the U.S. My school became a part of this growing program. Cookies and sweets were no longer allowed to be sold in our school. Instead, snack machines carrying healthier alternatives were brought in.

As time went on though, our healthier snack machines were becoming more and more unhealthful again, even though our school was still supposed to be on this eating well program. Candies and chips were now rampant in the cafeteria and I grew confused when I saw that Pop Tarts and Reese’s candy were being sold in the “healthy” snack machine. Our school’s famous chocolate chip cookies were one of the items that were considered unhealthy at the beginning of this new change, so they had been removed from the menu and were then replaced. With what you ask? Well, Pop Tarts of course. Now these sweet treats have about four hundred calories and thirteen grams of fat in just one, more than the number of calories in two of my school’s homemade cookies. This new change was not beginning to make sense at all. Soda had also been banned from our vending machines and instead, these carbonated drinks had been replaced with fruit juices. Most of these drinks contain ninety percent sugar!

I am not in total agreement with the healthy food program, mostly because it is not that healthy at all. In my opinion, schools should have a variety of different foods to choose from so students can make their own decisions, since high school is the training ground for the rest of our lives. Healthy eating has been taught to teenagers my age since we were born and should never cease to be taught, even as we grow older. Good nutrition is a vital part of a person’s well-being and can also help a student focus better in class. Schools should put more emphasis on eating healthy, because in the end, good nutrition will not only benefit the student, it will better the entire learning environment.