Small School Lunches

Blake Longhenry

Small Lunches

Teenagers go to school for nine months out of the year. Throughout those days, kids go through a lot and the one thing most kids look forward to… be lunch. Nowadays lunch isn’t filling anyone up.

In elementary school the lunches tasted good and filled up almost everyone. Now it seems the lunches have not changed size but instead have gotten healthier which too many kids mean the lunches taste worse. Six mini corndogs might have been enough to get an elementary school student through the day in but in high school it feels like a snack that never seems to fill anyone up.

Anita Frydenlund a lunch lady at Red Pine Elementary said “The lunches are too small for high school students”. Morgan Longhenry a student at Rosemount High School had a similar statement saying “They are too small and don’t fill me up at all”. When the lunches don’t fill you up then most students go and spend more money on either a double lunch or an a la cart item. The a la cart items are the more “satisfying items” but they are way overpriced. Some kids do not have a la cart which seems crazy because after lunch they won’t be any fuller than they were before.

When you go to school the only thing a kid may eat all day is from the school lunch. A family may not be able to put food on the table or buy a la cart. That kid would not be provided with the proper nutrition and would be hungry almost every day. The lunches have become smaller because of the health issue of obesity in America. They also have become less edible with the addition of whole grain which most people don’t like too much. If a kid doesn’t like the choice of the two lunches, the sandwich/salad bar, doesn’t have a la cart and has a family that doesn’t put enough food on the table then what is

that kid supposed to eat?