A Troubling Amount of Cavelero Students Waste Lunch Food Each Day

     The lunch bell rings. Chatty students weave around the tables, and mount their book bags onto their seats. Some carry their lunches from home in their hands, while others stand in line to buy one from the school. After a few minutes, people have already settled into their lunches; but have you ever noticed that some students just drop everything into the garbage?

     According to Feeding America, a nonprofit organization, America wastes over $408 billion on average each year due to wasted food. That leads to 108 billion pounds of wasted food annually, which is a very massive amount. If America wouldn’t waste so much food, there would be a lot of money to be put toward more important things that are needed.

     Here at Cavelero Mid-High School, students from B Lunch and C Lunch were asked if they bought lunch from the cafeteria most days, and roughly 67% of those surveyed students did. Leading from then, they were asked to raise their hands if they (honestly) ate nearly all of their food and threw none to little out most days. Then, they were asked if they threw it all out or ended up wasting a large portion of their food most days.

      In the surveys, out of the 108 people that were surveyed in both lunches, a shocking 61% of the students waste most of their lunch food on a daily basis. Several of the students explained why they would waste their food, and the reasons were mostly similar. They claimed that they would get too full quickly, and even more said that they would get the whole lunch just to get a certain item from them, such as the chips. However, these aren’t the only reasons why the food would be wasted.

      “Honestly, the school lunches, they’re okay, I mean, if they were a little bit better quality, I would like a little bit more,” says Tyler Evans, a ninth grader from Cavelero, just one amongst the others (who shared) with the idea that they would eat more food if the lunches were healthier. Tucker Turner, another student of Cavelero, claimed: “I would like some more healthier options because in my opinion, all of the cheeseburgers, teriyaki, [and] some of the stuff going around the school… I just think maybe having healthier options would be a good idea.”

      Another common idea that students had is that they would love more options and larger portion sizes. “I think [the school lunches] should be bigger portion sizes. If they would give out a larger amount of food, you know, that just sounds really appetizing. You wouldn’t want to eat a small amount of something good because it would just make you hungrier,” says Axel Rojas, a Cavelero student. Hannah Zimmer, also a Cavelero student, even specified that they would enjoy more ranch. 

     “Do your part; don’t waste food,” Claimed Emerson Cummings, a Cavelero student who is against lunch wasting. Harshita Sinha, another student who is against wasting food, shared how much she enjoys the selection of food here at Cavelero. There were even several students who shared that they love the food here and wouldn’t change a single thing about the food.

     So what could we, as Colts, do to reduce the amount of food that’s wasted during lunch? Don’t get food that you will not eat, and make sure you make healthy food choices. Be sure to eat instead of talking too much so you don’t have to throw away the rest of the food you didn’t get to eat at the end of lunch. If you only want a certain food item, you could just ask for it instead of getting a whole lunch just for that one thing, and if that fails, then you could go to the vending machines or the Cavelero Hay Shack to buy something similar. If you’re one of those who feel hungrier and wish for more food, then you can get plenty of sides, and also stop at the vending machines and the Hay Shack to get more snacks to hold you over for the rest of the day.