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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

Food for thought

The food police are getting more and more tiresome, but once in a while they make a good point:

School districts across the country are revamping their menus to serve healthier fare, but most schools give students so little time to eat that they could be contributing unwittingly to the childhood obesity problem.

Healthy food can take longer to eat, and research shows that wolfing down a meal in a hurry often means people eat more.

 

A new national survey by the School Nutrition Association shows elementary kids have about 25 minutes for lunch; middle school and high school students about 30 minutes. That includes the time students need to go to the restroom, wash their hands, walk to the cafeteria and stand in line for their meals.

 

Many students may have only about 10 to 15 minutes left to eat their meals, school nutrition directors say. But students should have at least 20 minutes to eat their lunch, the government recommends.

[. . .]

The typical length of the lunch has been about the same since 2009, but it's shorter than in 2003 when kids got up to five more minutes. Children in some countries, such as France, get as long as one to two hours to eat lunch.

 

U.S. research shows that when people eat quickly, they consume more calories, enjoy the meal less and feel hungrier an hour later.

I know I've written before here about my lunch periods in high scool, which were an hour long and open, meaning I could leave school and eat at Murphys or the bus station. That break in the middle of the day was a big help in getting through the second-half periods, and I can imagine how rushed and frazzled kids might feel today having to gobble everything down in a few minutes.

That was in a different time when we still took meals a little more seriously, when families were more likely to make a point of spending the dinner hour with each other around the table instead of eating on the run or grabbing a sandwich during the commercial break. Unfortunately, the lunch experience in school today is the perfect preparation for the way thes

Comments

Tim Zank
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 10:12am

If only the schools had more funding......this vexing problem could be addressed, no?

/sarc

William Larsen
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 10:53am

Has K-12 changed at all over the past 100 years? By this I mean, has the subject matter changed at all? Looking at the courses available, Math up to Calculus is still being taught. Students can still take physics, chemistry and the basic science courses I had to choose from. Languages are not the same, German is gone and now French from NWAC. English is the same, but they have subdivided it into many more classes. Shop classes have all be disappeared.

I think the school day is shorter today than when I went to school. My lunch break was a full period, 55 minutes. This was done so that schedules worked out.

The more administrators tinker with schedules, start dates and mechanics the more test scores drop. Schools are now issuing computers to middle school students. Have you seen how hand writing is so poor? What happens when they get to the ISTEP and have to actually write (no cut and paste, spell checker) an essay?

I have seen first hand how my children are rushed through lunch. It is not relaxing, but rushed, regimented and no release of frustration. It is like sitting in a detention camp.

Doug
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 11:26am

I hadn't realized they shortened them up. But, my son claims to run out of time. I figure that's because he tends to dilly-dally at meal time. (He's 7 - a little dilly-dallying seems appropriate.) He tends to eat the stuff he likes first (unlike Dad, who saves the best for last); meaning that chips get eaten first and sandwiches and fruit jockey for last.

Tim Zank
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 11:34am

Being a little closer to Leo's age bracket, I fondly remember riding my bike home from Croninger Elementary to eat luch every day, must have been almost an hour I guess. It was a nice break in the day.

Keep in mind, this was the late 60's, long before the Dept Of Education came along and saved us....

Leo Morris
Thu, 08/18/2011 - 11:35am

I'm with you on this one, Dad. Getting the peas out of the way first makes for a much more enjoyable meal than dreading them all the way through it.

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