Starving Students Across America

Picture this, You’re sitting in class and you realize you forgot to pack a lunch. A horrible sense of dread spreads over you because you know you only have two options: go hungry, or take your chances with the school lunch. If you’ve had a similar experience, then you’re just like almost every other student across America. In the country, students everywhere are suffering because of the poor quality of their school lunches. Although laws have been made with the purpose of “improving” school lunches, students are still given extremely short periods of time to eat their lunch, very small portions, and low quality food in terms of taste, nutritional values, and appearance.

When thinking of how to improve school lunches, most people will think of the actual food, without considering the circumstances they are eaten in. In America, students are given an average of 20 minutes to eat their lunch. This short amount of time is one of the main reasons that students often turn to throwing away most of their lunch opposed to eating it. This 20 minute period has cause students to eat 12% less

vegetables, 10% less milk, 23% less fruits, and 13% less of their overall entree than they should have. In addition, students could be eating lunch as early as 10:30, which leads to students purposely skipping breakfast, knowing they will be only have the opportunity to eat lunch in a little over an hour.

The majority of students are also athletes, meaning that they need to consume more calories than the students who are not involved in these after school sports. Kindergarten through fifth grade students have a maximum of 650 calories. Sixth through eighth grade students are given a maximum of 700 calories. High school students are given a maximum of 850 calories. These amounts just barely meet the calorie intake that student athletes need. However, given the short time period, and the poor quality of the food, most students will resort to throwing their meals away, and therefore consuming maybe half of these calories.This means the athletes will be leaving school and heading to practice with an empty stomach and therefore no energy.

The biggest issue regarding school lunches is the overall quality of the food given. In 2010, the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act was passed to help with the issue of childhood obesity. This act calls for 100% whole grain and extremely low sodium levels, among other requirements. This means that the meat is processed down to remove fats until it is almost unrecognizable, the bread is always an odd color with no flavor, and students are forced to take some sort of fruit or vegetable that they might not like.

Overall, the meals may be healthier for students, but they are certainly not appealing. This is the main reason why the lunches are immediately thrown in the trash, or not bought in the first place. Chris Burkhardt, director of child nutrition in the Lakota Local School District in southwestern Ohio, claims, “We lost 15 percent of our revenue when we started putting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act into place.” Take into account that in France, where the childhood obesity rate is lowest, gives students a two hour lunch period and a four course meal that includes salads, main pasta dishes and often a pastry of some kind for desert. This school lunch provided in France would not pass under the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act, due to the grains, fats, salt, and calories.

Considering that these problems with the school lunches are present after “improvements” have occurred, changes have to be made. Students should be given a longer lunch period and should easily have access to bigger portions without having to bring food from home. Students should also be given many options for lunch. Food can be healthy without it being so processed down that it doesn’t look edible anymore. With these issues still present, students are continuing to suffer from the dreadful school lunch.

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