Students are not eating at the cafeteria

School lunch has significantly improved over the past few years, but it seems like they still have a long way to go to appeal to all of the students of SMIC. Skipping lunch might not be a concern to the people who believe it is perfectly fine to skip a meal once in a while. The only problem is that this phenomenon has become consistent. Some may scoff at the matter for being overly exaggerated, but skipping lunch has various adverse effects on the human body.

Meals act like fuel to the body and being depleted of fuel affects everything from our mood to digestive tracts. According to teenhealthcare.org, “The brain’s biggest source of fuel is glucose, which your body gets when it breaks down food.” Not having lunch depletes our brain from glucose which in turn makes us sluggish. Not only does it give you mood swings, but it also gives your brain “a much harder time storing new information and retrieving old information.” It is a scientific fact, therefore, that skipping lunch can deteriorate school performance for teenagers.

If school lunch is such a crucial part in school performance, why do some SMIC-I students refuse to go to the cafeteria to eat? “I’m too lazy to walk all the way to the cafeteria to eat lunch. Also, it’s more convenient for me to eat lunch in the locker area since I bring my own lunch,” Brian Kim (10B) replied when asked why he eats at the locker area and not at the cafeteria. It seems like students who prepare their own lunch neglect the idea of walking over to the cafeteria; however, that is not always the case. There are students like Brian Chen (12A) who prepares lunch at home but continues to eat at the cafeteria. Brian Chen has been eating lunch at home for a few years and claims, “The quality of school lunch here fails compared to lunch prepared by my mother who brings it to school on a daily basis.”  When asked why he goes to the cafeteria instead of staying at the locker area he answered, “Because all my friends are there.”  Not everyone refuses to eat school lunch at the cafeteria. Students like Jason Qiu (12C) eat at the cafeteria but complains, “I don’t have the luxury to prepare my own lunch. It’s more convenient to eat school lunch, but I’d be eating my own lunch if I had any.”

Although preparing personal lunches might be more delicious to the students, I worry that students are missing out on a life time memory they would look back on when they leave high school. It has been three weeks since the beginning of the 2018-2019 school year, and already we can see students hanging out in the locker area rather than going to the cafeteria to eat school lunch.

Featured Image– Students eating at the locker area Courtesy of Jason Lee