Project Summary

No Funding Requested

Team: Zero Tolerance

Team Coordinator: Kala Kirnak

Vancouver, Washington, USA

Project Mentor

Heather Fowler

Partner Organizations

• 
  Center for Civic Education

Tags:

Food Healthy Habits Obesity Teenage Fitness

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The Problem

We noticed that a lot of people at our school and in our community are overweight. As we started doing research on the issue of obesity, we discovered that teenage obesity is an epidemic in the United States. It claims millions of lives every year through diseases such as cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

The Solution

We decided to make it easier for students at our middle school to have healthier school lunches. We met with many different people from our school and our district including representatives from the school lunch program, to our principal, to our superintendent. We decided to propose a change in the school lunch program for the Evergreen School District that would require an 80% reduction in the use of trans fat in the foods served in the school cafeterias.

The Impact We Made

The school board accepted our proposal and we were able to be instrumental in developing a new nutrition policy for our entire school district.  We know that by just having a new nutrition policy for school lunch, we are not going to solve the entire obesity epidemic.  But we were able to raise a lot of awareness about the issue.  We helped educate our fellow students about making better choices that will hopefully lead all of us to live healthier lives.  Also, the adults know that we want to have a say in what we eat.  We want to have healthy choices and not just whatever they have been serving for years, especially if it is loaded with deadly trans fat.

What We Needed

We did not need any outside resources for this project.