You woke up at five o’clock in the morning to finish up your English reading from the night before. Time passes and suddenly you are rushing down the steps, swiping your bag, and running to the bus. You’ve missed it, again. Now your parents have to drive you before they go to work. You get to school, barely on time, but late for breakfast. Three periods slide by and now you are sitting at your desk staring at the trigonometry questions you have no clue how to answer. Your stomach screams at you. Embarrassing as it is, you wish instead of rumbling, your stomach could tell you the answers to the test. Fifty percent of your grade, that is how much your test is worth. After using all of your energy completing that test the period before, you walk down to the cafeteria, Chicken Tenders! You remember, excited to devour the meal you have so very much been longing for, only to be greeted with three chicken fingers and a roll.

This is a problem many students go through. Using all of their energy during the school day and not being satisfied with the portions they are given for lunch. A problem that is usually taken out on the cafeteria staff. 

Instead of criticizing North Penn’s cafeteria faculty about food portions, students should take a look at a bigger force: The USDA.

“The USDA funds our national school lunch programs. They set up the guidelines in terms of how much sodium, carbs, or fat there can be, everything like that. They send out those regulations and they provide us recipes and menu ideas that fall within those guidelines,” North Penn cafeteria manager Julie Barnes explained.

The USDA is the United States Department of Agriculture. The Department of Agriculture funds the National School Lunch Program, which is a program dedicated to providing public schools, daycare programs, and non-profit private schools with low-cost or free lunches. The program itself has existed for seventy-eight years now and requires all establishments to follow its guidelines to be reimbursed for food costs.

It is not the job of the cafeteria staff to create meal guidelines, it is to follow them which can sometimes be hard.

“I love to cook! My cooks love to cook at home. I will be honest, sometimes it can be tempting. You’ll be like, ‘Ugh it needs a tiny bit more salt!’ It’s tempting but we really have to be careful,” Barnes confessed.

A popular complaint found amongst students here at North Penn is that the lunches are not well-seasoned and taste bland. There is a weekly allowance of how much of a nutrient a student can have in their meals. If a school is found seasoning food to the point where it goes over the NSLP allowance they can get kicked out of the program and left to cover the costs of food themselves.

“We could get fined, or we could get completely dropped from the National School Lunch Program, which would be a terrible thing because they essentially fund us. If we don’t have funding, lunch prices would go through the roof. There is no way we could work that way. It is super important and that is why PDE (Pennsylvania Department of Education) comes out and does reviews on how well we are following the guidelines,” Barnes further elaborated.

The popular “Cookie Corner” here at North Penn is another healthier source of food for students who have more of a sweet tooth.

“The snacks that we sell at the cookie corner are what we call ‘smart snacks’. They fit the USDA guidelines on what is considered a la carte or extras (things that aren’t included as part of a meal, but they are not included in the overall weekly amount of nutrients). They are considered a healthier snack. The cookies themselves are whole grain. We even recently with our holiday turkey dinner included a cookie along with the meal that counted towards our whole grain allowance for this week,” Barnes reasoned.

North Penn cafeteria staff understands student complaints.

“I don’t necessarily agree but I definitely understand it, only because that would not be enough for me. One slice of pizza and a juice would not be enough for me. Students work hard and are using their brains which takes energy along with just walking around our big school which uses more energy, you need nutrition after all of that so I personally feel that sometimes maybe it is not enough but we are restricted due to our funding guidelines,” Barnes stated understandingly.

Although certain school lunches may seem to have small portions there are ways to compensate for that.

“What I do is I try to encourage the students to understand that there is a lot more they can take. You are allowed to have a full cup of vegetables, a full cup of fruit, a juice, and a milk. When you pair it up that way the portions seem more reasonable,” Barnes revealed.

For students with different medical conditions that might require a higher sugar intake at times, such as diabetes, there are different systems in place. In the nurse’s office, there are snack packs for students with diabetes who feel they are going light-headed, which are constantly replenished.

For our school lunches to stay at a lower rate, North Penn must comply with USDA and NSLP guidelines. These programs are dedicated to keeping students healthy while they are at school so that poor diets outside of school are not as detrimental. Although the change could be hard at first, students should try to pick up more fruits or vegetables for free to fill their appetites while at school.