Even though there seems to be an impressive wait time in the lunch lines everyday, the students have polarizing opinions on the cafeteria food that gets served daily. Most public school students are aware of how lacking the lunches can be.
According to Christine Lam (11), a student that often gets school lunch, “The pizza and sandwiches are okay, but the burrito is very slimy and questionable. There is no other choice, I have to eat school lunch because I do not have time to pack my meals for school in the morning. It is better than nothing.” Being on a time crunch for some people means having to resort to school lunch in order to not go to class on an empty stomach.
For a large number of students, their options are limited to the few food choices provided by the school cafeteria. Since school starts early in the morning, many people do not have enough time to make and pack a meal for lunch. As a result, when lunch time rolls around, hungry students flock to the cafeteria to obtain a free lunch. The school cafeteria serves free breakfast and lunch daily, occasionally rotating their options, but nonetheless they usually stay the same.
Students have their criticisms about the selection of foods and how they taste. Jason Hansen (12) said, “the whole menu needs to be changed, all of it is just terrible.” While Biankha Stevens (12) said, “All the foods are greasy yet dry at the same time. School lunch used to be decent.”
Students have noticed the significant decline in quality of school lunches over the past few years. Due to the low budget for funding school lunches, it is not surprising at all that the quality of the food is not the best.
Gia Restrepo (12) expresses her concerns about school lunch, she said, “What I think our lunch should improve on is making lunch more nutritional. The quality of the food is neither healthy nor beneficial.”
Students are aware school lunch is not necessarily the healthiest to ingest. Another problem school lunches face is their lack of nutritional value and the food waste that is caused by this as well.
Even including the requirements for fruits and vegetables, many students end up throwing their required fruit or vegetable away in the nearest trash cans. Students throwing away fruits and vegetables that they were forced to take accumulates even more food waste than just the meals alone being thrown out.
Overall, many students have criticized the school lunches. School lunch is not perceived as the worst, but many students prefer to avoid it if possible, but still eat it as a last resort.
