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
