Are you going to practice starving? Recent changes to the school meals have put into effect healthier options for food, but have put a cap on calories. The Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act or the HHFKA enacted these new rules. So the question we all have is, are athletes getting enough food and calories to perform to their best ability?
This act was created due to a childhood obesity crisis. However, who is able to determine what a crisis is in this situation? According to the government, the school lunch program was considered to be one of the culprits blamed for childhood obesity. This law was passed under the Obama administration to try and help the crisis.
Although this is a good thing to help try and stop childhood obesity, some people are leaving lunch hungry, such as the athletes. Every athlete is different, however to perform to our fullest ability we need to eat enough calories for our body to produce energy. On average a male athlete around 170 pounds should be eating 3,800 calories per day (or 22.7 calories per pound of body weight). The average female athlete of a 130 pounds should have an intake of 2,990 calories (or 20 to 23 calories per pound of body weight). For a three-meal day, that is an average of 1300 calories for a male and 1000 calories for females per meal every day. …show more content…
The act states that a student is only allowed to have 750 to 850 calories per meal. Those numbers are 500 calories short of what an average male athlete should intake in one meal. That leaves athletes lacking the amount of calories needed to perform. Now you can see why these calorie caps have put stress onto the food intake on many high school