Writing Feature Articles - Step 1 - Lesson 1 | Page 36

Writing Feature Articles - Lesson a
Writing Feature Articles - Handout .. a

Beginner

Name: ______________________________________ Date: ____________________

. a: Feature Articles Packet

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of

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Teens Take on the School Cafeteria. The Result
– a Healthier Student Body!
Fed up with high-calorie low-nutrient food, students take the lead on reforming their school cafeterias.
By KC
Alison walked around school after lunch every day with
a stomach ache. She felt sick from cafeteria food and
knew she had enough! It was time to make a change for
the better.
Growing teenagers like Alison, an 11th grader at
Spring?eld High School, rely on the school cafeteria
to give them a healthy lunch. It seems wrong that a
place where students go to get smart only offers greasy
mystery food and junk from vending machines. “When
you consider good food is proven to help students
learn,” Alison said, “what are adults thinking when they
stock our cafeterias?”
Alison decided that after all these years of suffering, she
had to do something about the school cafeteria. Her
plan was to help students become healthier, happier and smarter by improving what they ate.
What are School Cafeterias Dishing Up?
Schools are serving food that parents do not allow at home. If anyone
looks around the school cafeteria at MS 421, they will see every parent’s
nightmare. This cafeteria, like the ones in many middle and high schools,
has vending machines ?lled with soda, chips and other snacks, all missing
the vitamins and minerals young people need to grow. Kids need at least
?ve servings of fruit and vegetables a day and vending machine food does
not help.
That’s only part of what is wrong. School lunches are also bad. When
asked what is on the menu in a typical week, Mrs. Grody, a school lunch
aide at MS 421 said, “On Monday, we’re serving spaghetti, corn-arino, and
Italian bread. On Tuesday, we will have hot dogs with bean-arinos and
fries and on Wednesday, we have beef jerky-arino. Our students are hungry and this food ?lls them up.”
This does not sound like a sensible lunch.
How School Food Hurts Teens
Cafeteria food actually hurts teenagers. Ms. Miller, school nurse at MS 421 reported, “School lunches
like these have too many calories and too much sugar, starch and fat. Eating this way can make them
overweight and undernourished at the same time.” The US Department of Health and Human Services
Medline Plus website says that even though there is a lot of food in our country, two out of three people
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