Longer Lunch Essay

Madison Carreiro

Mrs. Doklan

AP Language and Composition

27 March 2023

The Need for Longer Lunches at Emmaus High School

Students rush to lunch on a daily basis to get the first spot in the lunch line, find a table as fast as possible, and shovel their food into their mouths at an unhealthy rate, all due to the limited and unhealthy time constraint put on students in this school for eating lunch. Whether packing or buying lunch, every student in this school at one point or another faced the mad dash to the cafeteria, practically sprinting to their seat, before eating lunch in record time, and being rushed out by the urging of the cafeteria aids five minutes before the allotted lunch time had ended. However, this was not always the case.

A shortened lunch schedule can leave students “...‘standing in line 10 to 15 minutes to get [their] lunch and then [they] have six or seven minutes to eat’”, which is “...‘more stressful’”(Brissette qtd. in Pappano). This stress caused to students by something as simple as consuming lunch leads to dire mental health ramifications for the rest of the day if not weeks, months, or years after. An act as simple as getting and eating food in a school cafeteria leads to high levels of stress in a situation where stress and pressure should be the last thing on students’ minds. Lunch is a time for students to get a break and recharge during the school day, but has instead been turned into a race to get lunch and eat at a record speed each and every day. With this heightened stress students face from getting lunch in a short period of time, comes the overall diminished mental state of students at Emmaus High School. Students need enough time to get and eat their lunch without becoming stressed, displaying a need for longer lunch periods. Shortened lunch periods can not only cause great stress, but result in students consuming less food as a result of this stress. When an adult experienced the shortened lunch period that has now become so popular, they

For students to have an adequate time to recharge, they “...need a longer mental break in the middle of the school day”(Crews). With the shortened break, which is closely related to shorter lunch periods, students are not given adequate time to mentally recharge and prepare for the rest of the school day, leading to exhaustion by the end of the day. Without this break, students’ mental facilities are drained by the end of the day, which leads to poorer performance in school that day or the days after. This mental exhaustion compounded with the stress already provided by the shortened lunch break, students face mental drain in multiple ways. Students are not only stressed from their lunch break, but also exhausted from the school day in general. For many students, lunch comes as one of the only breaks in their schedule, other than Hornet Homeroom, and shortening this break drains students mentally and physically. Students need an adequate break during the school day to be mentally prepared for the rest of the day. School lunches should be lengthened to accommodate the need of students for an adequate break. Students themselves feel that shortened lunches do not provide enough time to socialize. Students themselves “...are asking for…more