Dear President,

A healthier lifestyle should not have to be a hardship for low-income families. Today it is much cheaper and more convenient for someone to buy a fast food meal than to buy fruits and vegetables and make a home cooked meal. This is why the obesity rates in our country are shooting up faster than ever before. I’d love to see our country find ways to encourage and enable low-income families to be able to purchase healthy food.

I have thought out some ideas that our government can implement. First, we can give significant discounts to those who purchase fresh produce with food stamps. This will then make it easier for those who want to feed their families healthier food, but do not have the money to do so. To help encourage those with food stamps to purchase fresh produce, a simple informational pamphlet could be given out when they pick up their food stamps. My other idea is that we fix the school food programs. We could offer schools additional funding to create salad bars and provide all natural snacks. The salad bar should be the same price or cheaper than any other entree item. This enables everyone, including low income families, to have the opportunity to eat healthier. I remember when my brother’s school offered a free salad bar for a week only, and they loved it! Students would go get seconds and even thirds! Once it was gone, they wanted it back! Schools could be penalized for offering sugary and non-nutritional value items. Many students do not like the healthiest menu option (usually the hot food choice of the day) and go straight for the pizza, hamburgers or breaded chicken sandwiches. The salad bar is a much healthier option and might become just as popular.

As you can see, finding ways to enable low-income families to be able to eat healthier is not that difficult. I’m sure the government, filled with our best and brightest, will be able to come up with even more! I sincerely hope that you take these suggestions into consideration, for the future of our country.

Sincerely,

Kyleigh B.