Healthy & Unhealthy Food Choices @ JSEC

-By Genesis Rivas

JSEC has a variety of healthy options they offer the students. For starters, they try to serve multi-grain food during lunch and breakfast. With this, students can eat their favorite foods but have a healthy source of nutrition at the same time. They serve pizza with multi-grain bread and also serve salad and a variety of fruits that us students can choose from.  This  serves a good purpose because students have the chance to see the fruit and decide about eating it rather than not having a healthy alternative.  The cafeteria also serves fresh vegetables that students can take advantage of, they’re delicious.

As there is a wide variety of healthy foods available, there’s also a wide variety of unhealthy foods at JSEC. We have a school store that sells a lot of fatty foods and they’re sold for a low price which attracts more students. Seniors also sell pastelitos,  which are very greasy, and sold pretty quickly during both lunches. Students also often buy more than one which doubles the unhealthiness of the food choice they just made.    In addition to some poor food selections there the timing of breakfast doesn’t seem to work in the students favor.   School starts at 7:50 AM and the breakfast is served at 7:30 AM, which is not enough time for a lot of students to eat breakfast–the most important meal of the day.  If JSEC would start school at 8:00 AM it could make the biggest difference, more students would be able to eat and others wouldn’t have to rush or eat so quickly as they eat fast to make it to their first period on time.

In my opinion, the school store should sell healthier foods to students, at some point, if they do I feel students will respond positively and make purchases.  Also breakfast should be longer so more students have the opportunity to eat and can go into class feeling fresh and ready to learn.    The lunch food is pretty good, they offer wide variety of healthy foods so hopefully  they can keep up the good work.  Lastly, JSEC Goods, a new program where students can take backpacks of food home,  includes healthy foods so students can also take healthy foods into their homes, which is very important.   The work they do is amazing and we hope they keep up the good work as well.