Every school day students depend on school lunch to give their bodies the necessary nourishment. 

According to the website “Have a Plant,” only 40% of students in America bring their lunch to school from home. That leaves 60% of those students to depend on their school cafeteria lunches each day.

Today, schools around the nation struggle with the issue of wasting food. Around 530,000 tons of school lunches are wasted each year. 

Personally, I have seen many accounts of students wasting their lunches. For example many students will go through the lunch line for a simple order of french fries, but they are instructed to get a full course meal, although they don’t plan to eat it. Students end up wasting the main course and the drink just so they can get the fries. 

The cafeteria workers are simply following the mandate that students get a full tray of food. But in my opinion so much food is wasted because of this.

Instead of being required to have a full course meal when you go through the lunch line, I believe that it should be changed so that students can just get what they feel like eating so that they don’t end up wasting a meal that another student needs.

Many days throughout the week students go through the line, and end up in this situation of wasting food. At times, this can leave students in the later lunches who depend on the school lunch without food because it has been wasted. 

It is my firm belief that students should be given permission to go through the lunch line and only get what they need, not to receive a full tray, and in turn, unnecessarily wasting food.