As I was searching through sources about healthier school lunches, I encountered a NPR article that actually was surprising to me and made me re-think of the idea that children won’t eat lunch just because they don’t like vegetables or fruits. Time of their school lunches also affect how much they eat.
The article states that many students in school doesn’t have enough time to finish their food during their recess time. A factor of this is that kids would need to fall in line for food and many students would have less time eating if they were in the back of the line because they spent their whole recess waiting to get their food.
Eric Rimm, from Harvard School of Public Health and his fellow researchers conducted observations in Massachusetts schools of how well the students are eating. Rimm told the NPR, “Kids who had less than 20 minutes to eat were consuming, across the board, less of everything”. To my perspective, I do remember that if I bought lunch when I was in high school and I was at the back of the line, I would only have about 10 minutes to eat my entire meal before the bell rings for the next class to begin. In some days, I would most likely just throw away the food because I can’t finish it which is a waste money to me because I lined up for food but in the end it will be ending up in the waste.
Another interesting fact was a report from the NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Harvard School of Public Health about how many minutes students get to eat lunches, “…20 percent of parents of students from kindergarten through fifth grade told us that their child gets 15 minute or less to eat”. This was very interesting to me because children should have more time to enjoy their foods because it is their recess time. Making children eat faster because the time is short can really affect how children eat because children are aware that if they use more time to eat they would most likely cannot do other things they do during their recess (playing in the playground or talking with other classmates).
The article also states about the National School Lunch program’s free meals increased because many children were qualified for it. Which is a big factor of the longer lines to getting lunches and less eating time for the students. This should be positive, because children are getting free meals but at the same time if they don’t have time to eat the lunch it could just end up to waste. This can be a potential reason why that the government is keeping a low budget to spend on school lunches because they know that not every food served is eaten.
Overall, this made me think more of the factors of children not eating school lunches. Before reading this article, the only fact that I can come up with of children not eating is because children are picky eater I never expected that time for their recess is affecting how they eat. This is helpful for me for my research if there could be also changes adding more time in school lunches so students can eat and actually enjoy fresher healthier school lunches.
Healthier School Lunches 