Paige+B's+2015+OpEd+Article



Since I was a little kid, my mother always told me to eat my vegetables. They had to be off my plate by the time my mother put the last dish in the dishwasher. No matter if I liked the green spongy thing that looked like a baby tree called “Broccoli”. I still ate the small trees because it was good source of vitamins that I needed to grow and be healthy.

Now a days all you see are kids in the lunch line with greasy pizza that looks like cardboard with play dough meat, fruit snacks that say it was made with “real fruit” so it makes the kids think that they are getting some kind of nutritional value, and a bag filled with air and a couple of chips at the bottom. Where are their mothers telling them to get some nutritional food on their plate? Where are the salad bars that have vibrant colors of different veggies and fruits? Why doesn't america make it affordable and easy to eat healthy?

People wonder why they see so many americans overweight. Look around and smell the Big Mac! At every corner, on every tv and radio station, in every magazine there is some kind of fast food restaurant encouraging you to consume their delicious food. This especially goes for children. If the parents have a lot of things to do with a little amount of time, they are going to buy their kid something that will be ready once they pay for it. Not everyone has time to cook their family a well balanced meal so they just go to the nearest McDonalds, Carls Jr., Starbucks, etc. Don’t forget that it’s also super economically friendly for the buyer. Since it only costs 5 dollars for a whole meal from one of these fast food restaurants how could you not take the deal?

These companies should start switching over to natural foods rather than the chemically induced foods they have created. Make a movement towards having vitamin enriched foods on the menu at an affordable price. Allow it to be easier on the parent to feed their children the spongy looking trees without their kid throwing a fit.