About the Let’s Move healthy food campaign– We’re sorry Mrs. Obama. We know you had good intentions.

For years, Hollywood directors have loved portraying school lunch food as something nasty, gushy, or smelly. However, most students were always able to laugh it off knowing their school lunch food was neither smelly nor gushy… That is until the “Let’s Move” campaign enforced strict nutritional food in all schools.

Since then, students all over campus have been dodging cafeteria food even if the cost means staying on an empty stomach. What would be the solution? Students would greatly appreciate a change in the food we’re given! Or at least- some variety.

The students who do choose to eat lunch already have to wait around 20 of their 30 minute lunch period to get some food. “It doesn’t make sense to wait so long to get my food and deal with people who carelessly cut in line, all for food that gets picked through and thrown away,” Ashley Vazquez, senior, said.

Despite the good intentions of the nutritional guidelines, instead of helping students make good food choices, it is causing students to make worse ones by not eating the food they are given. If we really wanted to help students, the school could try to provide a greater variety in the food or perhaps open the possibility of off campus lunch once again. In this way, we actually help the students by making sure they have options in what to eat rather than pretend we are doing good by enforcing the food while watching it be thrown away.

Of course it has been argued that providing a greater variety of food or supplying off campus lunch passes could easily be taken advantage of by Chavez students. However, that can easily be avoided.

If we provide off campus passes or tokens with special food as an incentive for being part of the Renaissance program or our “Caught Being Good” cards, students would have motivation not only to do good but to get their food and come back on time. This way we can ensure students are actually eating, and less food is going to waste.

So, cafeteria employees and school nutritionists, we don’t blame you!

But the bottom line is, we want a better choice in our lunch food!