Eating in school

In My Humble Opinion
1

Inspired by an argument I had with my mother today, as she continues to immerse herself in PTA stuff where I grew up. There’s a big movement to get vending machines and stuff out of the schools, and rumbles of forcing students to have a lunch period.

At my school, lunch was an option. If you wanted to take an extra class, which many people did, you could take the class and not lunch. You’d be allowed (with the teacher’s permission, of course) to eat your lunch during one of your classes instead. That’s what I did for all four years of high school - mostly because I was in a program that meant I had to take certain classes, leaving me with one free period per day for an elective, and I flat-out refused to waste that on lunch.

Apparently, a lot of people think that giving people this choice is a terrible idea. I’m not clear on why - according to my mother, it’s not “emotionally healthy”. She used my first-semester schedule from 12th grade as an example of “horrid”: I had a class that met before school, at 7, which is when I realized I had absolutely no need to eat breakfast. I’d usually gulp down a sandwich and juicebox during the day, either during or between classes, usually around 11. I’d usually get home at about 4, after whatever after-school meeting/rehersal/etc., and have a small snack (small bag of chips, half a sandwhich, whatever). Most days I’d have a martial arts class around 6-8, and would eat “dinner” (generally, pasta) around 9. Sometimes I’d have a homework snack after that, around 11pm.

According to my mother*, this is not healthy physically or emotionally. I say I turned out absolutely fine. I doubt I’d have gotten into college if I’d been forced to waste an extra period every day, and honestly cannot see how sitting in a high school cafeteria is supposed to be beneficial.

Then again, I also had half a can of Spaghetti-O’s straight from the can and some Gatorade for dinner tonight, while sitting at my desk doing homework, so I could have already had irreperable damage done to me.

Thoughts? Did you do the cafeteria thing in school? Should it be mandatory? Or is it this just another “well, they’re young therefore completely incapable of making decisions for themselves” case of meddling?

2

I thought schools had to give you time to eat, like a scheduled lunch time. But maybe since you were allowed to eat in class (we were not) that counts.

I remember the power went out one day at school. They wouldn’t let us go home, but they did feed us PB&J for lunch, because they still had to feed us even though we were all just sitting in the hallway or in darkened classrooms.

3

Are you talking high school? What state are you in-where I came from, a lunch period was MANDITORY.

4

Lunch was mandatory for me too. Well, you could just leave and do whatever you wanted, but you couldn’t take a class during that time or anything. Also, people eating in class is really annoying. I’d certainly back any proposal to end it.

5

Lunch is a period? Wow, that’s really strange. How are you supposed to see your friends if they’re off taking classes? I don’t think not having a lunch period is “emotionally unhealthy”, I just think it would majorly suck. Our school gives us a 15-minute recess and a 40-minute lunch every day. It’s a good way to recharge and it breaks up the day. And I still think it’s a good idea to have a proper breakfast and lunch every day, otherwise you’re basically running on 1 meal per day. Going to school and working flat out for 6 1/2 hours doesn’t sound like my idea of fun.

6

Oh and in case it matters, our school doesn’t have a cafeteria, we have lawns. There are different lawns for different years. We sit on the grass and eat. This is pretty typical of Australian public high schools (but apparently the private schools mostly have more formal arrangements).

7

We always had a lunch period in my high school. There was a cafeteria, but it was always busy and people would eat in the halls or go to the fast food joints up the road. If it was nice a lot of people would sit out on the grass.

Later when I went to a transitional high school, you couldn’t have more than 3 periods per day of classes unless you had special dispensation from the principal. I had lunch breaks or I got out of school before lunch, and later I did have class during lunch hour but could get food at some point before or after class.

8

Interesting school.

I wouldn’t want to end the program, but I think a big portion of high school are the social aspects of it. Ditto college.

9

I do not believe that all high school kids are completely incapable of making healthy decisions for themselves; sometimes experience is a better teacher than school regulations.
I’ve never considered eating a waste of time, but my diet is certainly different now from back in the 70’s.

I do not live to eat, but I do not merely eat to live.
Everybody needs to refuel, especially younger people.

Most people want to socialize, too. At this point in time, the agony of the high school cafeteria has almost become a cliche, but most of us survive intact.
Eating in class, to me, is a distraction, and a waste of both instruction time as well as meal time.

I had an open campus at high school and we went out for lunch every day.
We’d eat out or, in good weather, bring it back to the south lawn.
Until this month, my 16 year old went to the same high school as I, and the parking lot looked just the same: asphalt covered with fast food trash. Yes, they also have junk food vending machines, they even have vending machines with designer water. But nothing beats driving six blocks to go buy your lunch.

Now we are living in a very different town and the high school has a closed campus and a clean parking lot. The kid chafed at this at first, but after a week, he’s let it go, they are all in the same boat.

10

Should high school kids be forced to take a non-class lunch period? I don’t know.

I do believe, however, that kids should be trained in healthy eating habits and your eating habits are definitely ones I think kids should be strongly discouraged from.

You wouldn’t have gotten into college without skipping meals and taking extra classes before school and during lunch? Really? I’m astounded.

11

I got into college just fine, and it didn’t involve having to miss lunch every day. In fact, during MY senior year, I had a free period at the end of the day, and pretty much got to go home an hour early.

When I was in college, I had a full class load, along with working three part-time jobs. When I tell people this, they give me a :eek: look, but it actually wasn’t that hard, because each particular class/job/etc usually had 20-90 minutes of downtime between it, allowing me to eat at leisure.

12

I agree with ascenray. Anecdote, even plural anecdote, do not equal data. Many studies have been done (and if I get time late this afternoon, I may try to look one up) that state that overall, children perform better when properly “fueled”. That means they eat a somewhat healthy breakfast and lunch. The energy the food gives allows them to stay more alert and to process and remember their work better. Now, several decades removed from high school (where I usually ate breakfast prior to school), I still find that true. I’m more capable late morning if I eat something early morning. I’m more capable late afternoon if I have lunch (except pasta or another carb-rich lunch, which is good for nothing more than a 3:30p nap). Coffee alone does not have the same effect; coffee coupled with proper fueling keeps me on top of my game.

(Just to reiterate, anecdote does not equal data, even when it’s my anecdote) :wink:

13

NinjaChick’s from Philly. So now I’m confused, unless you moved to Pittsburgh as an adult and went to school in another state.

14

I actually grew up in a suburb of Philly on the Jersey side of the river - I just tend to say I’m from Philly.

Out of honest curiosity, how are my eating habits not healthy? I don’t exist solely on fast food, I eat when I’m hungry, and I stop when I’m no longer hungry. I’ve never had any sort of weight problem, unlike a substantial number of my peers in high school, whould could have stood to lost a few pounds.

I think I probably would have gotten accepted into the college where I’m now a student had I had an easier schedule. I don’t think I’d have gotten into all the schools I applied to, though, if I hadn’t had those couple extra grades on my transcript. My case was mostly that a lot of my grades sucked but I did really well in the electives I took, plus one year it let me add more community service to my resume, as I was an office aid in that extra period. Quite honestly, I think that a lot of adults, even parents of students, grossly underestimate how hard it is to get into name-brand schools, get scholarships, get internships, and so on.

15

For the most part aren’t school schedules on a County/City basis anyhow?

16

The Board of Regents (or equivalent) will usually come up with general policies. Sometimes they’ll issue specific policies. Anything they don’t specifically adress is determned by the school disctrict.

17

Well, you said yourself you think you could have gotten into your school without that extra class, so in hindsight, was it really needed? And as others have said, eating a lunch while in calss can be distracting to the teacher and other students, and possibly divert your attention from your work. Obviously, it worked fine for you, but can the same be said of everyone?

As you said, it seems like colleges are getting more and more selective, almost forcing kids who want to get in to have outrageous schedules where from 6 AM to 11 PM everyday they are doing something, be it sports, class, volunteer work, part-time job, marching band, etc…But no college would DENY you from getting in because your school FORCED you to have a lunch period.

“Hey Bob, should we accept Student 123? from school ABC?”

“No, Jim. You see, this school MADE him have a lunch period everyday, so he wasn’t able to decide to take an extra class instead, so therefore he must be a stupid idiot.”

Not quite how it works. And even with an optional lunch, I don’t see many places having that one little thing be the deciding factor between acceptance and rejection. It’s common knowledge that people need food, and it’s easiest to eat food if you have no other distractions (or at least, no other distractions other than Greg stuffing straws up his nose.)

I’m also suprised you people have either a) such long lunch periods or b) such short classes. My school had four classes a day (block scheduling, so four classes one day, four different ones the next), a fifteen minute break after the first class, and a twenty minute lunch. Even if they went back to having eight classes a day, the classes would still be twice as long as a lunch period.

And I’m also not a big fan of open campus during lunch (my school had this ONLY for seniors on the honor roll, a reward of srots…needless to say, the senior class had more students on the honor roll than any other grade :stuck_out_tongue: ). I think it helps fuel student obesity by letting them get fast food. Sure, some might go downtown to the alfalfa and tofu hut to get a sprout and bean curd wrap, but most won’t. School lunch might not be great or the healthiest, but it’s still loads better than McD’s. Besides, you can always bring your own lunch, can’t you?

18

At my high school we didn’t have a “lunch” period as a discrete time period, you were assigned one of your scheduled periods as lunch. It could be 3rd, 4th, 5th or 6th periods as a I recall. I had 1800 students in my high school, we couldn’t all be assigned lunch at once. So Lunch would be the same amount of time as any other class, 50 minutes.

We were allowed to skip lunch, but more frequently people chose either 9th period (3:00pm-3:50) or “Zero Period” (8:00am-8:50) for their extra classes. “Zero to 9th with no lunch” was a sterotype of a hyperachieving student (we were all overacheiving, I went to a selective public high school for the sciences). Due to scheduling foibles, sometimes we also had “study periods” which were basically dead periods without scheduled classes. We’d usually hang out and chat, or go to the park and play catch for an hour, or whatever.

19

Well, for starters, it looks like the only possible fruit or vegetable is the juicebox (was that actual fruit juice, or just a juice-like liquid?) and maybe a lettuce leaf or tomato on the sandwich. I also don’t see any source of calcium, unless there was cheese on the sandwich. Other than that it’s a lot of carbs and salt (most sandwich contents are high in salt.)

You may be able to get away with this for now since you are physically active and youthful, but it looks to me as if you were depriving your growing body of a lot of needed nutrients. As well as you say you did, you would have been better if properly fed. It may not bother you now, but in time it will. Especially the calcium – if you don’t get enough in your youth while you can still build bones, you will be in sad shape later when age starts to take calcium away.

Good for you that you don’t have weight problems now. You still don’t sound well-nourished to me. It’s all about balance.

I am adamantly opposed to the junk food vending machines in schools. Not only permitting, but tacitly condoning the consumption of sugary and salty snacks by people in their formative years is IMHO criminal. And bad for the teeth.

20

Illinois public high school, 1998-2002.

Six periods, fourth period was divided into A, B and C. The class you happened to be in during fourth period was assigned to A, B or C lunch. No skipping lunch, although there were a few clubs then and some teachers ran optional study groups. We had a regular cafeteria, in which everyone ate. Campus was closed, meaning we couldn’t leave to eat somewhere else.

A lunch was cool because you got first pick of the food (sometimes they would run short on things by C lunch).

B lunch was cool because the class seemed so short, breaking in the middle.

C lunch was cool because sometimes they would make too much and so give stuff out cheap or free, and also because you ate and then had just two more classes before going home.