School lunches have polarized America for decades. First they were stereotyped in popular culture as being inedible, unidentifiable scoops of mush. Then they were seen as a toilet meal in the Mean Girls sitting-in-the-bathroom-during-lunch trope, then a host of PTA moms across the country had opinions on GMOs in food, then Michelle Obama got involved. Through all of this, one thing has remained consistent: the time kids get to eat lunch. Meal plans have changed to include more fruits and vegetables and lower-income areas have gotten more federal support for their lunch each day, but these short, 20 to 25 minutes lunches deserve to be under more scrutiny than they currently are.
Administrators might argue that the length of lunches helps schools devote more time to learning, encourages students to stay on campus, and doesn’t break up class or the focus of the students too much- but researchers say otherwise. Short school lunch periods have been linked to students not only eating less of their meals, but also choosing less healthy options due to the lack of time. Students were 13% less likely to choose a fruit to go with their meal when they had under 20 minutes to eat lunch, and ate less of their food overall. Also, by the time students get through the lunch line they often only have about 10 minutes left to eat, making it nearly impossible to eat anything close to a full meal in the lunch period. Not only does this schedule leave the students unsatisfied and with a lot of food waste, but it also doesn’t offer enough nutritional value for the students to stay focused for the rest of the school day. School is taxing mentally and often physically, and if students aren’t allowed adequate time to recharge and refuel for afternoons that often include hours of sports, clubs, and homework, then they struggle to do their best in those activities. A lot of students will eat a second lunch or snack after school, but kids who maybe go on buses back to their houses, or have events right after school, can’t enjoy their afternoons because some of their most basic physiological needs aren’t being filled. Especially for lower-income communities where students rely on federally-funded, reduced-price lunch for a lot of their nutritional intake for the day, it isn’t fair to cut students off at 20 minutes when they’re supposed to be refueling for a majority of their day. This limited lunch schedule has implications for students’ eating habits outside of school as well: if kids are made to eat as fast as possible for 180 days a year, for over 12 years of their lives, it is natural that that habit will carry over into students rushing through breakfast and family dinner. Food has been a way to connect people for centuries, but the precedent that school lunches set for how students should eat doesn’t allow them to, say, check in with their families at dinner or breakfast because they are so focused on eating quickly and moving on to the next thing. Especially when students may have two hours of sports practice and four hours of homework after, nutrition becomes a casualty of a busy schedule. This is notably problematic for athletes who may need more food than a student not partaking in sports, neither of whom are getting enough mid-day nutrition to fuel their activities each day. Athletes often need a good breakfast, a nutritious lunch, and some sort of quick-carb snack before practice to get enough fuel to even concentrate throughout their day, let alone play well and keep up with all the demands of high school life- and so to have a main source of fuel each day be cut short in order to keep up with the schedule creates a less enjoyable and productive day for everyone. Lunch is a pivotal point in the day from a physically and mentally healthy standpoint, and it is a shame to see it being tolerated as an interruption to classes rather than built up for the opportunity for nutrition and recharging that it is.
Beyond just the lunch schedule, the way schools talk about nutrition can create bad habits for students later in their lives. Most people remember their elementary school teaching them about “good” and “bad” choices to make at lunch, glorifying apples and oranges while demonizing ice cream or pizza. Food is about nutrition, but it’s also about the experiences around it, and to teach kids to view such a big part of their lives in a black-and-white way sets people up for major eating issues in the future. Milk boxes have calorie counts on the back, while health classes often have entire units teaching traditional nutrition and confining students to an outdated and unsympathetic view of what people “should” be eating. When people then get out of school, and restrict “bad” foods because of what they’re always been taught, this can lead to a cycle of binging and restriction that often characterizes major eating disorders.
I challenge Needham High School students to take back their lunches by packing a mix of what they want to eat and what makes them feel good. I challenge them to stay off their phones and be in the moment with friends, and even family after school, while eating food, because nutrition is about who you’re eating with just as much as it is about what you’re eating. Students can also push for change in their schools by petitioning administrators for an additional five or ten minutes on the end of each lunch, which would not massively derail the schedule, or looking to add something like a fifteen minute snack period in between classes in the morning so students can stay fueled throughout their busy day. Regardless, it is up to us to enact change by pushing for the right to a long and effective lunch.