Longer lunches

Students want more time to be able to finish their lunches

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School lunches often are not appealing to students and many complain about the amount of time they have to eat.

Noah Walls, Staff Reporter

Across the nation, school lunch periods vary in different lengths. Some students would argue that they don’t have enough time to enjoy their lunch and some would argue that they have too much time for lunch and it just wastes their time. I think that you could never have too much time to eat. Enjoying my food and not being rushed is pretty nice.

High school lunch periods are usually never more than 30 minutes. According to Plan4Health American Association “For elementary school students, the average lunch is 25 minutes and for middle and high school students, the average lunch is 30 minutes,” Students across America have started to complain about not having enough time to eat and enjoy their lunches.  Schools want shorter lunch periods so that more time can be added to classes and there is more time to learn. 

Why are they called lunch hours when it is only twenty minutes, students who buy their lunch from school have to wait in a long line that could take up to 10 minutes to even get their food. Leaving the students with even less time to eat, and wasting food because they must go to class.

Some students believe in shorter lunch periods but in my opinion that’s kinda selfish because some kids take longer to eat and it’s also unhealthy. According to the America Heart Association “A faster eating speed was also associated with gaining more weight, higher blood glucose levels and a larger waistline.” Giving students more time to eat could possibly reduce health risks.

School lunch options aren’t always the best either, soggy chicken nuggets and burnt fries are no fun to eat. Some students take time to pick out what they want but often take a while to find something that looks appetizing. According to the Chicago Public School website, “Lunch is supposed to be the place where students get the best lunches like salads, sandwiches, fresh fruits, etc. Instead they give some gross, unhealthy food.” I believe if we had better options to eat the process of selecting our food would be faster and the 30 minutes would be enough time because kids would be able to select their healthier choices over the 

Personally, I believe that we should do anything we can to possibly extend our time to eat, so students don’t have to stress about eating fast enough. Studies do show that students perform better on a full stomach. An opposition to my argument is that the amount of time kids have to eat is a waste of learning time in the classroom, but our students health is much more important than our education. This problem could be fixed if parents possibly pushed for longer lunch periods, more lunch lines or anything else for students to have more time to eat their food.