School lunch: edible or not?

At Pahrump Valley High School, students like certain aspects of lunch, but dislike others. There is a diverse range of opinions regarding this issue including the lunches themselves and the lunch times as well. This begs the question: What exactly do they dislike and what do they enjoy?

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Cristian Aldecua, Journalist

School lunch is a big controversy. Some people believe the lunch is of poor quality and that they do not have enough time to consume the meal. Others argue just the opposite. 

Samari Johnson

When speaking with students on campus, there was a variety of opinions. Student Samari Johnson stated, “the food is poor quality and tastes like cardboard, only some of the food is good, like the orange chicken.” Johnson continues, “the food is also really soggy and I would get an upset stomach all the time when I would eat the food. If I can change one thing about lunch it would be the food quality.”  There have been many complaints from other students saying that the food is lacking in quality. Many people express their dissatisfaction with the meal quality. Student Dominic Trevino also stated, “I would change the food choices but at the moment they are alright.” He also says “I would also like If there was more food diversity like soup.” Trevino goes on to say, “sometimes I do not think we have enough lunch time because sometimes we come in late to lunch because we were busy with other stuff and then we do not get enough time to eat. “Another student from Pahrump Valley Highschool, Fabian del Campo said, “Lunch is nasty.” He also said, “The best part of lunch is hanging out with friends.” This illustrates that a large portion of the student body believes that the lunch experience can be improved. 

Dominic TrevinoAfter speaking with the adults on campus warranted intriguing results. In response to the quality of the food, Mrs. Fulbright also follows up by saying that “The food here is mostly good and some food is inferior in quality but it is nutritious.” Mrs. Fulbright also says, “The main problem is kids coming in trying to get a second lunch, they try to be sneaky and try to get a second lunch.” This could be a problem especially for second lunch because the food choices would be more limited due to students taking more lunch then they are supposed to, leaving less food for the other students. After bringing up the topic of the lunch lines Mrs. Fulbright said, “I think the lunch lines are well organized when we are trying to feed a lot of kids in a short amount of time.” She goes on to say, “If I can change one thing about lunch it would be that the two lunchtimes were closer together because, at the end of the day, second lunch is so late that we are out of here at one-thirty and we are trying to clean up right after second lunch. We used to have an hour and fifteen minutes, but now we have 45 minutes to clean up.”

The feedback from these people was interesting, to say the least. A lot of the problems people had was with the food quality, but to say the least, it was nutritional. The lunch times were also a huge concern to a lot of people. People also enjoyed hanging out with friends at lunch. Overall people enjoy lunch but wish they had a bit more time and better food quality.