More than half of our school eats school lunch each day. Milk is optional, while you must grab a fruit or vegetable and your main course. But many of us don’t even eat much of it! We usually throw away the vegetables and only eat a couple bites of our pizza. So this brings up the question: is it even worth it to have “healthy” lunch food?

First of all, there are more than 2,000 students in our school, which makes it hard to prepare perfect food for everyone. This is why most of the food that we get from the cafeteria does not taste good or seems to be unhealthy. Due to this, many students waste food or go off campus instead to buy their own lunch. Consequently, it seems useless to even have the school lunch option.

Despite the many people who don’t care for the food, some students need school lunch. Sometimes they cannot afford to bring their own food to school. In fact, 45% of students in Colorado qualify for free and reduced meals (Kids Count Data Center). This is why having free lunch available for everyone is so important.

But I can still remember the day that there was a recall on the lettuce that was provided for the school one day. While I did not experience the effects, I remember a couple of my classmates getting sick and having to go home. The quality of lunch food is not great and it seems that people have stopped eating it overall. 

Other school districts seem to have better food options, but they are more unhealthy. Charter or private schools tend to have food from fast food restaurants and will have special meals occasionally. While they are not the best for students’ health, many more people will actually take the food that was prepared for them.

I personally believe that the decrease school lunch quality is due to lunch now being free for everyone. The availability of lunch for everyone is very important and it makes sense for the district to make money for lunch off of students. But now that it is free, funds for lunch have decreased. I think it would make sense to find more funding for lunch food by having fundraisers, or by finding the extra money that is not currently being used.

All of this raises the question: Is it more important for students to have healthy food, or high-quality food? I would say that students need a mix of both of these two. It is extremely important for kids to have healthy food, but it is also important for them to eat that food too. If the school district managed to find the money for better, and healthy food, I would say that more people would eat the food that is being offered.