Is school lunch really that bad for students? The answer to that is both yes and no. The type of school lunch that kids are getting depends on the type of school a student is going to. Many schools don’t have the money for getting healthy and nutritious food. While it may be sad, the fact of the matter is that junk food is cheaper and saves a lot of money. 

Even here at Silverado HS, most of the food is junk food like pizza, Doritos, and whatnot. Although there are healthier options for food like salads or fruit, most students don’t choose these for lunch.  

“Honestly, the food we have here isn’t horrible,” said sophomore Marlee Olivas.  “There just could be better choices.”  

Despite the weak choices, many kids who do get food from schools at least have that option and many times, don’t have to pay for it. Generations before ours, students who went to public schools didn’t even have the option for getting lunch at school. And while private schools sometimes did, it was definitely not hot food. So we should be grateful for what we do have. 

In the past, students were obligated to either go out of school to buy lunch or bring lunch from their homes themselves. Sometimes, parents had to bring their kids the food just for them to be able to get hot food. And while food may have been cheap, it wasn’t like many kids had money on them to bring. 

“The first school lunch program in the United States was launched in vocational schools in 1853 by the Children’s Aid Society of New York,” according to the website food-studies.net.

School lunch programs in the U.S. started later than some other countries. The first one that started wasn’t supported by the public much. It wasn’t until 1970 that the Children’s Aid community implemented free breakfast programs. 

The Children’s Aid community first started off as just moms trying to feed their kids, and now it’s almost all schools in the world that have food for every child. So, while schools may not have the best lunch, it’s still a great improvement from where it used to be.