Hacker News Reader

Comment by Balgair | Hacker News Reader

This study was done on college students, not elementary and HS students, college students at Cal. There are a lot of caveats here and trying to apply them to elementary education is good, but outside the scope.

Aside: If you really want test scores to improve, give the kids food. My SO is an educator and she's had kids come in that only get food at school. All weekend they may only eat a bag of Cheetos, sometimes up to 2/3 kids on Monday mronings. School breakfast and lunch are sometime the only food they get.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/brown-center-chalkboard/2017/...

View on HN

Agreed. Many schools (my kid's school) also provide 'weekend packs'. It's hard to know how much of that gets to the kids, but poverty is a hell of a problem.

So are these children who qualify for free lunch, but come from families that can't qualify for SNAP benefits?

Their parents are negligent. It's not just a money problem.

Yes, feeding low-income students is critical. However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos? I worked in the top 3 worst middle school in my state in the poorest city in my state, and I found their school lunches to largely be processed carbs like pizza, burger+fries with no veggies. The veggies that were on offer were in tiny sauce-containers that hardly any of the kids grabbed. Furthermore, those veggies were usually carrots or cucumbers, the former of which is high in glycemic index, and the latter of which contains hardly any micronutrients. So, from a nutritional perspective, yes the calories are good for the low income students, but the food was still terrible for them overall.

> However, we have to ask if the school-lunches provided are indeed better than a bag of Cheetos?

I think that we can answer that question with a fairly emphatic 'yes'.

Well the protein is good for them. Also they probably got milk as well.

"Is a burger actually less nutritious that a Cheeto? The answer may surprise you."

Reply on news.ycombinator.com