Background Research
I began my background research by searching “school lunches”, “problems with school lunches”, and “school lunch studies” on <https://www.google.com/>. I found that there is a federally funded program called The National School Lunch Program that is operating in public and nonprofit private schools in the United States that provides nutritionally balanced, low-cost lunches for children each school day. Whoever is the leader or president of this program can effect my study because whatever foods he or she chooses to serve at school lunches will have an effect on whether kids pack their own lunches or buy from the lunch line. This might also cause for more people to get from the lunch line due to low-cost lunches for students. I also found that school lunches are a big topic being discussed right now in America. People have been pushing for healthier and healthier foods in school lunches around the country because the increasing amount of childhood obesity. Kids may not like the new, healthier school which could cause then not to eat the school lunch. I also found that Michelle Obama pushed for healthier school lunches in 2012 and changes were made in school lunches nationwide.
From the the phrases above that I searched in google I found some sites that may be relevant to my study.
<https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/sunday-review/why-students-hate-school-lunches.html?_r=0>
<http://www.cnn.com/2016/01/04/health/healthier-school-lunch-study/>
The first link is an article titled “Why Students Hate School Lunches”. This stated that more than 30 million students eat at least one meal provided by school lunches everyday. This says that many students do not like the new health regulations which ban “salty french fries, greasy pizza, and sauced up chicken wings.” They say that this often calls students to either throw away their lunch or choose to brown bag.
The second link is to an article titled “School Food Problems Are American Food Problems.” This does talks about food being too healthy that kids will not like to eat it or that they are not given enough food, but that the industry is feeding them and people are letting it happen.
The third link talks about how when the new school lunch policy with more healthy servings had expected a large drop off in amount of people who purchased a school lunch. However, at 3 middle schools and 3 high schools they examined amount of people who got lunch for 16 months before the chance and 15 months after and there was relatively no drop off from before to after the change.
Overall I found some good information that influences whether someone packs their own lunch of buys from the line, but neither side looks as if they have more people than the other.