Cafeteria Food

School lunches have always been a topic of discussion among students, recently me and my friend were having a conversation about the lack of flavor in our hot lunches. A few quick google searches revealed heavy government regulations on the amount of sugar and salt in the food they provide us. We then decided to go and talk to a few of the lunch staff members. They reinforced what we read about not being allowed to add additional salt to our meals, but they encouraged us to look at the ingredients of the non-hot options. 

Shockingly, the prepackaged chips and cookies had tons of salt and sugar, this led us to be confused. Why would they have such strict regulations about the hot food but allow us to freely eat the snacks with just the thing they were avoiding? The only answer we found is that they mean to allow us to just have healthier versions of popular snacks, hence the low-fat, low-carb options. 

This stirred up another question: "If there are so many regulations about sodium, what about caffeine?” As we all know, tons of the drinks they offer are highly caffeinated, and we even have a coffee shop in our school. However, there appear to be zero regulations on school caffeine because it is not viewed as an additive by the Food and Drug Administration. We decided this was strange. Why would they care so much about things like sodium while also allowing students to drink upward of 300mg of caffeine per day.

In our conversation’s conclusion, we decided that it was ridiculous to expect students to eat bland, unflavored hot meals while having zero limits on caffeine consumption.