Long School Lunches

Why wait in line when you can get your food launched towards you within seconds? This could be the spark of a new ongoing debate about whether or not launching lunches through the air is the best solution to the lunch line congestion. The thought of having a machine launch food towards you sounds almost as crazy as it did when Steve Jobs introduced the first iPhone, however, nothing is impossible. Schools all over the nation use similar methods to distribute lunch to their students and some believe it is time to start a new innovation that improves the long lines during lunch and benefits the school overall. On the contrary, opposing views feel as though this new method is going to be costly and produce safety hazards. Though this new system
Most lunch lines are not the typical single file lines as illustrated in the rule book, students crowd together and this results in an invasion of personal space. It’s a constant race to get out of the classroom and into the lunchroom, students are racing down the halls to get first to lunch and to avoid the long lunch lines. For example, in the poetry collection Stampede; the cover depicts a large group of animals bolting away from a school leaving dust clouds behind them. This is akin to how students dart through the halls to get to lunch, many pushing and shoving to others to make way for themselves. In addition, some students feel uncomfortable when their personal bubble is being invaded. With all the students gathered together, it increases the chances of one another bumping into each other which in the result, causes unfair situations. A common term used by students to justify an unfair situation is “budging”.
High school students in particular lack time to socialize, eat lunch, and go about with their busy days. According to NPR, public schools give an average of 15 minutes for students to eat their lunch. Most of this time is used to wait in line for food, once students get their lunch they feel pressured to finish it quickly before the next lunch period enters in to find seats for themselves. With this lack of time, students end up wasting a lot of food, throwing away milk cartons that haven’t been opened, or hot lunches that the individual has barely consumed. Proven by research, students with more time to eat are able to take in more nourishment than students who have less time to eat. With the time, they are able to consume more of their food, reducing food waste and allowing their bodies more time to absorb nutrition from the food. Families across the nation with low income who have struggles providing complete nutritional meals for their children, depending on the school system to provide that for their children. The lunch launching method will allow students to double their eating time by cutting the waiting time in line for lunch. Along with more eating time, this means that students have cut their lunchtime in half which allows for more time that can be invested in opportunities that high school students don’t normally get to do. Some of these opportunities include a recess,