Nutritional Health: A Global Challenge

Human nutritional health has been faced by several challenges such as poverty, behavioral health, working conditions, and ignorance. Poor dietary health is not only evident in the United States, but all in many other world countries. Research reveals that even after the introduction of universal health care in several developed countries like Canada, United Kingdom, Russia, Finland, and Germany among others, cases related to nutritional health has escalated threatening both the mortality rates, workforce as well as the countries' gross domestic product (Markel, 2014). The United States has been on the spot due to rampant increment of cases of obesity, heart diseases, pressure, and other health abnormalities related to unhealthy nutrition. In the documentary, "the Health of the Nation," current cases of unhealthy food have been presented showing that significant percentage of United States citizens are affected by obesity and this figure is predicted to increase further in future threatening the American nation existence.

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Additionally, among the most affected individuals by unhealthy nutrition are children from poor background how do not have a choice of food selection instead they feed on the unbalanced diet provided by either parent, donors, government or other nonprofitable entities in the the the United States. After the United State government was acknowledged on the challenges the children from low-income families were going through programs such as School Health and Nutrition programs (SHNP) were implemented catering for children's breakfast and lunch. Recently, the SHNP has been questioned by several entities on their level of provision of healthy nutrition in school due to the rampant increase of convectional food supply in the school environment. A hot debate has been triggered based on nutritional health provision for the poor children where some argues that public schools should be held responsible for safeguarding the sick children nutritional health, while others opposes the matter resulting to a scenario that needs a lot of research and analysis on both pros and cons to come up with reasonable stand.

Firstly, those who proposed that public schools should be mandated with the responsibility of safeguarding the sick children nutritional health argued that the school nutritional programs impact positively on the school enrolment. According to the research conducted by Agriculture organizations (FAO) on 2007, 923million individuals' majority of them being children were estimated to be chronically hungry, and this presented an increment of about 75million individuals identified through research in between 2003 and 2005 (Wu et al.,2014). The significant number of chronically hungry children according to study has hindered their enrolment in school; however, these figures are most dominated by developing countries, several cases of this scenario have been identified and approved in the United States and other developed countries. In response to this matter, the governments have implemented several school nutritional programs that have shown significant improvement on children enrolment in public schools reducing the school enrolment gap between children from a wealthy background and the those from poor and jargonized backgrounds.

In the 1870s, the number of school-age children who were homeless, hopeless and had no idea of school enrolment was estimated to be 12percent in New York City, and this number later escalated rampantly in 1904 to a level of been declared a child poverty disaster. In 1946, the United State government implemented the school nutritional program that addressed the children lunch and even provided milk for approximately 31 million children in all the states (Wu et al., 2014). The introduction of the school nutritional programs has been reported to have significantly impacted on the school's enrolment where the number of children enrolled from poor and marginalized backgrounds has increased as compared to earlier admission in public schools. Mandating schools with the responsibility of catering children's nutrition health has reduced the financial burden for the poor parents who could not afford to finance their children diets and fees at the same time. According to the research conducted by the National Center for Education Statistic, the number of children enrolled to public schools in the US was 50.7 million, and this figure is expected to hike in 2019 (Wu et al.,2014). The continuous increment of the number of children enrolment is majorly triggered by the reduced and free lunch that has reduced nutritional costs on parents. Eventually, with much evidence of automatic escalation of admission in public school after the introduction of the school dietary programs, it can then be confirmed that school should be mandated with the responsibility of providing the poor children with healthy nutrition.

Secondly, public school nutritional programs promote children nutritional status (Ganann et al., 2014). Schools have a mission that is not only centered on developing academic skills but also it has an obligation of promoting ethical feeding among the poor children whose parents are not in an excellent financial position cater for the same. Children spend most of their time in the school environment, and thus schools have to make sure that students consume substantial portions of food daily to enable them to improve on their health conditions. Further, schools have the authority and power of improving nutritional status since they are allowed to use the bioethical framework to provide a rationale for the school nutritional program, thus improving students' nutritional quality. Recently, public schools have adopted healthy dietary programs that educate students on feeding mechanisms as well as cautioning them on high dependence on conventional foods. Also, schools diets are based on the concept of standard justified action that conflicts with the children's freedom of choice; this is different from the freedom of choosing food that coexists in families and the community at large. The collective justified action ensures children take healthy diet, limiting them from taking high levels of sugary food, drinks, and snacks.

Additionally, the act of school focusing on health promotion through school nutritional programs and standard justified good programs reduces substantial costs related to diseases such as obesity in childhood. Most schools are ensuring ethical obligations concerning children nutritional health is fulfilled through the strong emphasis of serving the common good to the children. Research has revealed that parents are not authoritative on deciding what children should consume at home. Instead, they go with children choice of food triggering a high level of obesity that is prevailing at 18.5 % among the adolescent and 13.9% for 2-5years children (Ezeama et al., 2015). However, the levels of obesity had escalated before the introduction of school nutritional programs; these levels have been declined through the application of bioethics framework in schools leading to an improved poor children nutritional status. Basing an argument on the introduced common justified good approach and bioethics framework, it clear that public schools need to be mandated with the responsibility of promoting sick children nutritional health.

Thirdly, school nutritional health programs improve poor children academic performance and achievements (Frisvold, 2015). School nutritional programs have increased the sick children access to nutritious foods that incorporate; carbohydrates, glucose, and protein, which has, in return, improved children's concentration, cognition, and energy levels. Recent studies have indicated that nutrition affects behavior, children's thinking capacity, and health triggering high standards of academic performance. Further, public schools advocate and provide diets that are free from saturated and trans fats since these types of food impacts negatively on learning memory, resulting in poor performance. Providing unhealthy nutritional food in school might be very dangerous since the food tempers with student's health sending them out of school for treatment, which interferes with their peace of mind rendering their concentration low even after resuming classes. The act of school nutritional programs limiting the marketing of food and beverages in school environment protects the poor children from accessing calorie-rich food that possesses significant nutritional risk promoting their social justice and fairness. Children from low-income families experience incomparable psychological stresses due to their background incapability to cater for their basic need, exceptionally balanced diet (Frisvold, 2015). The aspects of school adopting the nutritional program have improved poor children access to a healthy diet that has modified cognitions excepting them from adverse stress, thinking incapability, and school absenteeism increasing their achievement in school activities and also in academic performance. Lastly, due to the above facts, it will be essential if all the public schools are mandated with the responsibility of providing needy children with nutritional health.

On the other hand, the individuals who have opposed the supposition of mandating schools with responsibility of ensuring that poor children get nutritional health argues that; school has increased marketing and selling of competitive foods and beverages that include; snacks, chips, sweets, cookies, sugary drinks, pastries and caddy that have low nutritional (Chriqui, Pickel, & Story,2014). According to the government educational officers, schools are investing in the business of selling competitive food to the kid, and this was proved through the review of several vending machines that were profoundly available in almost all public schools. Further evidence showed that school stores, fund-raisers and snack bars were rampantly introduced in the school grounds luring children in developing a durable interest in feeding on the competitive food and sweet beverage instead of the government proposed and provided nutritional food resulting to many cases of illness among the students.

The societal value requires schools to uphold a high level of children protection from unhealthy feeding mechanism; however, this has not been the case since children are left to rely on their choice of food (Chriqui, Pickel, & Story, 2014). Recently, there have been conflicts between individuals' rights and school nutritional interventions that have proved that parents school be held responsible for children nutritional health. Further parents hold great chemistry and convincing power than any other individual on their kids thus if giving the objection of addressing nutritious matter children will not be autonomous agents any more rather will have a strong understanding of the health consequences of their food choice. Despite schools denying that they highly recommend selling of competitive foods in school grounds, California government health sector investigated and found that the competitive foods and beverages were much sold in public school more than the school nutritional program food. Due to the rampant increment of marketing and selling of competitive foods and beverages in public school grounds California in 2005 developed a legislature that advocates for the uplift of nutritional standards while limiting marketing and sale of competitive drinks and foods (Chriqui, Pickel, & Story, 2014). The public school's scenario of going against the government stated nutritional standards had been identified through an evaluation...