School Lunch Policy: Should it Change?

As everyone knows, the lunch time at AISG is about 40 minutes long. This time may change depending on if there are events present or not but generally both middle school and high school receive 20 minutes to eat their lunch. However, in these 20 minutes, students who eat cafeteria lunch have to find a seat, line up, and pay for food before finally being able to eat. The later someone enters the cafeteria, the more time they will spend on lining up for food and they have even less time to finish their meal. Not to mention with shortened schedules, the lunch time period is reduced by 5 minutes all together. While it is possible for students to finish their lunch in the given time interval, the short time limit is a definitive factor that causes there to be a high amount of wasted food at our school.

Students who bring their own lunch have an advantage in this case. Not restricted by the turn based lunch time for middle schoolers and high schoolers, they are able to use the full 40 minutes to eat their lunch, which allows them to finish their food with a much higher efficiency.

Another problem with the current school lunch policy is that lunch is also associated with break time or time for physical activities. This is a problem because it is ill-advised to exercise right after finishing a meal. According to medical websites, when the stomach is full, exercising could lead to reflux, hiccups, nausea and vomiting. It is also suggested that exercise should not take place until 2 or 3 hours after meals. This issue is also not exclusive to our school, it is common in schools all around the world, which begs the question why the department of education even allows it in the first place.

The school is already taking action to improve its lunch system. For example, allowing high schoolers to buy take-away lunch earlier at 11:25 definitely serves to provide students with more time to finish their meal. Personally, I would advise for lunch to be set after exercising and PE, though that seems improbable. I would also urge Sodexo, the cafeteria food company, to stop using actual food to serve as samples for students to see when a picture would sufficed. It is a waste of good food and doesn’t provide much benefit considering how close the samples are to the lines.

What do you all think of the policies surrounding school lunch? Let us know in the comments!