Healthy School Lunches Face Tough Taste Test

With the school year approaching fast, the debacle of school lunches being healthy yet tasty will arise again. Just a couple years ago you could walk up in the lunch line to the counter to find, yummy greasy Pizza Hut pizza at least one day a week. The menu changed in 2012 when the nutritional guidelines refined. They required more fruit and vegetables to be served and a switch to more healthy items. The main focus of this change was to target childhood obesity. In order to solve this problem, school would have to switch their lunch programs to be healthier which doesn't come at a low cost if it isn't being used.
The author of this article tackles the controversy over the expenses for these healthier lunches. Some schools are saying that the program is too expensive to run on their own since kids are not buying, therefore they are not using the healthier program. Which at first was not an option, but recently the School Nutrition Association allowed for school to have the right to opt out of the program if they couldn't afford it. Some schools loved the idea of the program and used it as long as they could afford it. Kids on the other hand didn't like the idea so once they heard about the change, they took total advantage of their school's open campus option. Many schools lost money due to this and were forced to not use the healthy program anymore because of expenses. Other schools with  lower incomes thrived with this program because they couldn't afford to drop out of the program and run on their own.
Personally, I think that the healthy lunch program is a great idea. Our generation has it too easy. We are beyond spoiled with everything in life. We need to be okay with change even if it doesn't sound good at first. Yes, everyone loves Subway and their grande java chip frappuccinos, but they are spending just as much on those items as they would be at school. We have to be open to new options and find the best in them. It's hard to eat healthy but once you start doing it daily it will become second nature. We won't even know the difference between white and whole wheat bread because we will have only been introduced to one. Even though the meals won't taste as delicious as a Big Mac they will benefit you in the end. You will actually save money from not eating out and reduce the risk of obesity. On an emotional level, this article angered me at points that students were that against eating healthy they were willing to go to crazy levels to find their way around the system. It makes me worried that people are so against eating healthy when it's a serious problem in the world today as child obesity increases.

ACL Tears In Female Athletes

If you were to ask me where and what your anterior cruciate ligament did three months ago, my response would be in your knee somewhere and I have no clue what it does? This was not the best answer since one of my favorite sports is soccer. Girls’ soccer holds the number one spot for causes of tearing ACLs. This would have been helpful to know before I tore my ACL in this last spring season of soccer.

The authors of this essay bring up a great point. Kwon and Iverson uses facts and studies to express the importance of limiting the amount of ACL tears. Iverson states that at the varsity level 1:100 females tear their ACL compared to 1:500 boys who tear their ACL. With such a high ratio, Kwon and Iverson believe that it is time to make a pre-training period before someone starts their sport to prevent the amount of ACL tears.

I agree with their main point in this essay. I had little knowledge about ACLs and how severe they really were. With the risk being so high, I think it is time to start making ACL strengthening mandatory before your sport. Just like concussion testing this short two to three week period of doing 5-6 exercises at home could prevent so many tears. It would get athletes ready for their sport even if they weren't at a high risk before. It is better to be safe than sorry when you know the recovery period for a torn ACL post-surgery is 6-9 months. 

Also, the author's of this essay wrote in a factual manner. They used facts and studies to back up their main arguments. I like to read these essay's because I can look at the supporting evidence to make my decision if I agree or disagree. Overall, I agree with the author's message that more precautions need to be taken before sports to build up athletes' strength because it really is a life changing injury. 

Will Men and Women ever be equal? Gloria Steinem and Margaret Fuller

Gloria Steinem and Margaret Fuller may have two different personalities but both address a serious topic that not only the United States, but the whole world has been battling: will men and women ever be equal? As we learned in history class, men were the chiefs in the household and hold more authority over women everyday. Women were looked at as the care takers and men provided safety and money. In the 1900s I believe this perception of women had changed. Women started realizing they were just as strong as men and they too could get jobs and provide for their family in different ways. 

Margaret Fuller wrote a very detailed article on this topic. It was quite difficult to understand at times, but it set the scene of how women and men were ranked back in 1840s. She explains that women were looked at as the "weaker party" and should even be given "legal protection" even. She also brings up the point that "all men are privately influenced by women". I agree with this statement. If men didn't have women the household would fall apart the children would be raised differently and not have as much attention from their parents. Lastly, Fuller states "her circle, if the duller, is not the quieter". This implies that even though their efforts may be ignored and not appreciated, they are more important and will help more in the end. Overall, Fuller isn't fighting for women to have men's jobs, but instead have their jobs be more appreciated since men really couldn't survive without the help of them. 

After reading Gloria Steinem's article "If Men Could Menstruate", I can truly say I had never thought about this idea. Her point was given in a creative and funny way. She brought up the point that if men could menstruate "menstruation would become an enviable, worthy, masculine event". Women are still looked at as the "weaker" or "less valuable" role in society. No matter what struggles women face, they always fly under the radar. Men on the other hand, make it known to all the struggles they are facing which isn't bad just a different take on life.

Is Google Making Us Stupid?

I find myself on Google everyday, sometimes even more than once. I love the easy access to tons of information and the ability to have any kind of question answered in a heartbeat. I never once thought how getting information that fast would ever be at a disadvantage to me. This article by Nicholas Carr made me question if getting tons of information quickly without lifting a finger was really the best way to learn and expand my knowledge of topics. Clive Thompson explains this by saying, " The perfect recall of silicon memory can be enormous boon to thinking.... but that boon comes at a price". "They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought. Clive Thompson believes that "the Net is chipping away his capacity for concentration and contemplation". I can relate to both of these, when I read articles on the internet, I tend to lose focus a lot faster since I am just reading random information and didn't have to spend any time finding it. Compared to reading a book, I have to find the right chapter to lead me to the best information which may not directly answer my question but give some background to the topic.  

Though Google gives extraordinary amounts of information in a matter of seconds, I would have to agree that Google is making us stupid. Looking back at all my research projects from fourth grade and below, I used books and hardly any internet sources. I can remember spending so much time flipping pages through numerous books to find a small piece of information for my papers. The research process was much longer, but the positive was that I could trust that the information I was gathering was true. I could site the source easily and see all the sources that were involved in the making of the book. Also, by using a book, I gained other learning skills. I could navigate through chapters by looking at the table of contents. I could use clues from certain pieces of information to lead me to other ideas for my papers as well. At times when I would use Google, I would get more than 50,000 results. How is it possible to trust all those results and find the best one? Also, some of those online articles would be more than 20 pages long without any guidance of a table of contents to find the information I wanted. Many times I would find myself just skimming the pages until something jumped out at me. Bruce Friedman had this same problem, "I've lost the ability to do that. Even blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it". 

Overall, Google does provide a great amount of information in a short period, but that information is just given to you after a simple sentence in the search bar. I think it's time to bring back the totally reliable books and encyclopedias for research. Not only will knowledge on subjects broaden but the skill of navigation too.