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School food; worse than you think
by MARGARET B
March 25, 2010
Have you ever found yourself sick from school lunches? If you have, it's not surprising. School lunches are not good. For the price you pay, you'd expect a good quality meal, which is far from what the school actually provides.
Many students think lunchroom meals taste gross. Joie G, a 7th grade student, says, “The fries are disgusting. They don't even look like fries.” This is true, for many of the foods are either undercooked or overcooked. Much of the lettuce is wilted in the salad bar, and the chocolate milk is sometimes partially frozen. The quality should be better. A staff member from Food and Nutrition says, “The quality is okay, but we want to doctor it up to be that much better.” This could be true, but the food is still not in the best of shape, so it makes you wonder how bad the food was when shipped to the school.
The prices of school lunches are outrageous. On a study I conducted, I found that the school charges $1.50 per bottle of water, while grocery stores charge $8 for a 24 pack. When asked about the price of lunches, Megan L, an 8th grade student says, “They are ridiculously overpriced – I spent almost $8 on lunch once.”
The schools right now provide unhealthy lunches. They hold high amounts of fat and and preservatives. A professor and her colleagues investigated the food environment at two dozen middle schools in San Diego County. Their analysis revealed that cafeteria lunches contained an average of about 31 grams of fat. However, bag lunches had only an average of 21 grams of fat. Another study, conducted by Diane Schanzenback, found that children who eat school prepared lunches consume on average 40-120 more calories than that of a sack-bringing student. While these studies were not done in Dexter, they do show that we should be careful about the school lunches here.
School lunches should be taken care of. They aren't good for your body, and they aren't good to be spending you money on. We need to tell the schools to make better tasting, healthier food.
by MARGARET B
March 25, 2010
Have you ever found yourself sick from school lunches? If you have, it's not surprising. School lunches are not good. For the price you pay, you'd expect a good quality meal, which is far from what the school actually provides.
Many students think lunchroom meals taste gross. Joie G, a 7th grade student, says, “The fries are disgusting. They don't even look like fries.” This is true, for many of the foods are either undercooked or overcooked. Much of the lettuce is wilted in the salad bar, and the chocolate milk is sometimes partially frozen. The quality should be better. A staff member from Food and Nutrition says, “The quality is okay, but we want to doctor it up to be that much better.” This could be true, but the food is still not in the best of shape, so it makes you wonder how bad the food was when shipped to the school.
The prices of school lunches are outrageous. On a study I conducted, I found that the school charges $1.50 per bottle of water, while grocery stores charge $8 for a 24 pack. When asked about the price of lunches, Megan L, an 8th grade student says, “They are ridiculously overpriced – I spent almost $8 on lunch once.”
The schools right now provide unhealthy lunches. They hold high amounts of fat and and preservatives. A professor and her colleagues investigated the food environment at two dozen middle schools in San Diego County. Their analysis revealed that cafeteria lunches contained an average of about 31 grams of fat. However, bag lunches had only an average of 21 grams of fat. Another study, conducted by Diane Schanzenback, found that children who eat school prepared lunches consume on average 40-120 more calories than that of a sack-bringing student. While these studies were not done in Dexter, they do show that we should be careful about the school lunches here.
School lunches should be taken care of. They aren't good for your body, and they aren't good to be spending you money on. We need to tell the schools to make better tasting, healthier food.
