According to the Centers for Disease Control, "childhood obesity has more than doubled among children and quadrupled among adolescents over the past 30 years," meaning that American children need to start eating healthier, including healthier school lunches. The National School Lunch Act is a fairly recent addition to American society. For as the world went to war a second time, the United States began to worry about the strength and health of its soldiers. However, in the beginning, selling surplus agricultural products was more important than preparing a healthy and balanced meal for the students. Unfortunately, many children from poorer families could not afford well-balanced school meals. To compensate, the school meal program has therefore changed its focus to help these students. This program reduced school meal budgets, however, and schools struggled to keep up with the number of free meals they had to provide, so they found additional ways to increase revenue. However, in a small Massachusetts town, one chef is making a difference in the health of the school meals students eat every day and proves that hiring a trained chef to cook real, healthy meals can increase profits. Unfortunately, this is not the case in most schools across the country. The health quality of food served in school meals is extremely poor and may have deteriorated further thanks to a new set of rule changes. However, some improvements are currently being made to increase the quality of food served to students, including teaching them all about food and its nutritional information, both good and bad. For students to eat healthier lunches at school, the USDA must implement healthier foods...... middle of paper ...... and their nutritional information, good and bad . Works Cited Christie, Kathy. “Stateline: Even students are what they eat. » Phi Delta Kappan 84.5 (2003): 341-342. PDF file. Kalafa, Amy. Lunch Wars: How to start a school food revolution and win the battle for our children's health. New York: Jeremy P. Tacher/Penguin, 2011. E-Book Reader. Levine, Susan. School lunch policy: The surprising history of America's favorite welfare program. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2008. Print. “National School Lunch Act.” Poverty and Government in America: A Historical Encyclopedia. Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2009. Reference Credo. Internet. January 21, 2014. “School meals”. fns.usda.gov. Np, and Web. February 02, 2014. Wu, Sarah. Fed up with lunch: How an anonymous teacher revealed the truth about school lunches – and how to change them! San Francisco, CA: Chronicle, 2011. E