It’s a half day and you and your friends are talking about where to go out for lunch after school. “Chipotle! Five Guys! Cars! Smashburger!” Here we go again.

The shrill sound of these greasy, fattening food places make you feel nervous and annoyed. You’ve been eating healthy and you want to keep it that way, but you don’t want to sound like “that guy,” so you keep your mouth shut and think about which of those menus has a slim chance of having a salad on it.

Growing up in the oversized world, eating healthy is harder than it has ever been before. There are more overweight people than fit people, it seems. Sure, there are ways to prevent being overweight, but is it really so easy?

If it’s not around, you can’t eat it – simple concept, but easier said than done. Being healthy starts in the kitchen, but if it’s not your own kitchen, it’s impossible to control what the cabinets and fridge hold. Parents have a huge impact on the health of their children. If the kitchen is full of junk food and there are not many healthy choices, that’s what you’ll end up eating.

You may try to tell your parents to buy healthy food, but if they aren’t willing to eat healthy themselves, they will likely keep buying the foods they want for themselves. That forces will power on your part, which is necessary, but very hard. But until you’re able to move out though, you can’t dictate what’s in the kitchen.

According to Red Orbit, parents feeding their kids healthy meals and snacks when they are preschoolers shape the child’s healthy eating habits for the rest of their lives.

“Growing up, I didn’t really know what junk food was,” says VHS junior Sam Bass.  “My parents brought me up on organic foods; I like to call myself a ‘Whole Foods’ baby. As financial situations toughened, my parents were more willing to bring home cheap snacks. It’s hard for me to eat those things though because I’m so used to the healthy food. I have my parents to thank.”

It’s not just parents that make eating healthy a struggle. Your surroundings have a huge impact as well. If the things your friends consume are caloric and cheap, it’s very likely that you will eat as unhealthy as them. First of all it’s tempting, second, it’s frustrating, and third, it makes you, the “healthy one” look like a freak. There is peer pressure, and many people want to break your healthy eating habits.

“Eating healthy is hard for me, especially at lunch. All my friends eat crap, and when I go up to buy lunch, the choices suck. The one time I tried a salad, it was old and gross at the cafeteria,” said VHS junior James Hill.

One look around the cafeteria will show you a huge number of kids shoving fries, pizza, and Snapples – all available all the time in the VHS cafeteria, down their throats. So it can be tough to eat healthy, even in your school cafeteria.

The last thing that makes eating healthy difficult is how expensive it is. If you’re on a tight budget, it’s near impossible to maintain a clean, healthy diet. Fresh grown food costs more than packaged, processed food. Although the price you pay for eating cheap junk is worse in the end, it’s hard to avoid with little money. Studies show that poorer families raise fatter children while middle class and more wealthy people are more likely to maintain a healthy body weight.