It’s to be expected that students would be hungry after a few hours at school–but why don’t they go to the cafeteria to have school lunch?
First, is school lunch healthy? On cafeteria wall, a poster of school lunch is pasted. It says that a student needs to get a principal food, a side, a vegetable or fruit and a bottle of milk. The principal food provides energy, the side food makes lunch plentiful, the vegetable and fruit gives vitamin and the milk has lots of nutrients. Sounds good, right? However, the school lunch doesn’t appear that healthy. Usually, the principal food, a burger which contains 300 to 500 calories, is frozen chicken or beef that has been heated up.
Second, is school lunch appetizing? A Quince Orchard High School senior, Abena Amfo-Koranteng, does not eat lunch much. “The only problem I have with [school lunch] is that it usually gets sided with the same dish, [and] it gets boring sometimes eating the same food for weeks,” she said. The fruits in the cafeteria, in addition, are usually oranges, apples and bananas which are very unitary and unchanging.
Third, do students enjoy the school lunch?
“The ingredients of school pizza have changed, so it doesn’t taste good any more. And some foods like the chicken nuggets do not look [or] taste appealing to kids. It does not taste like the restaurant food you would order, it is just plain bad,” said Yaw Amfo-Koranteng of Thurgood Marshall Elementary School. In 2013, MCPS also removed strawberry milk from its menu, making some students unhappy since the flavor was arguably one of the most popular.
Some students interviewed also recommended that the school serve some foreign food for them to learn more about other cultures, and some said the ingredients and recipes should follow students’ wishes. I believe the school lunch should be changed and hope it will be one day.