Waiting in school lunch lines is like waiting in rush hour traffic in Denver. It is just terrible. Once we get through the line we hardly have enough time to eat all of our food and get to class on time. Students need to get through lunch lines faster so we have enough time to eat and digest all of our food.

According to Peter Torado, a health expert formerly working at QLDhealth, it takes 20 to 60 minutes to digest typical lunch foods. If we have this time (which most of us do not), then we cannot healthily digest lunch and be alert and productive during our next class. Fruits and raw vegetables take 20-40 minutes to digest, meat and boiled vegetables take 50-60 minutes.  

A recent A-West student poll shows that 23% of students say that food quality was the worst part of hot lunch.  Thirty percent of students said that the worst part of lunch was not having enough time to eat. A whopping 46% of A-West students said the worst part of lunch was the slow-moving lunch lines.  Eating lunch at school is just not worth it.

A-West senior Windsor Beal comment about his wait in lunch lines. “The lines are just too long. By the time I am able to walk down to the cafeteria, the lines are even longer. I might be standing in line for 30 minutes. [And] by the time I get my food, there is not enough time to eat.” 

Beal also says, “If you’re the first person down there you can be through the line in 5 minutes, but if you have to talk to a teacher or use the bathroom it can take you anywhere from 20 to 30 minutes to get to the through the line.” 

Since digestion is also important, Beal explains his dilemma,  “I mean some days, but if you have to go to the bathroom or talk to a teacher, then you’ve got about 5 minutes to scrunch down your food and head to class, and that do not feel good on my tummy.”

Lunch lines need to start moving faster so students can eat, digest and get to their next class period. So there are some solutions to this problem. Solution #1: Change the lunch schedule. Freshman and seniors could have first lunch together. Then, sophomores and juniors could have a second lunch together. This solution would work because most of the upperclassmen go off campus for lunch. As long as freshman and sophomores do not have lunch together the lunch lines should move faster. Freshman and sophomores having lunch together really bogs down the lunch line since they are not allowed off-campus. Solution #2: If A-West has enough money they could hire more lunch staff and make a third lunch line. Right now A-West only has 2 lunch lines, so adding one more would make the wait times much less. The workers wages would be paid for because more kids would be able to buy hot lunch.  These solutions could make our lunch lines faster and the students lunch period more enjoyable and less of a drag, not to mention we would be so much more alert and productive in our next class periods.