The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

The Student News Site of Neshaminy High School

The Playwickian

Mealtime in America: Reconsideration needed

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By Eishna Ranganathan
Managing Editor and News Editor

Engraved in time are rules: an apple a day keeps the doctor away, breakfast is the most important meal of the day, green is good. But, as the digital era sets in, mealtime becomes increasingly more on-the-go and people often sideline food, and its status as a priority begins to diminish in the face of iPhones, working pressures and constant productivity.

Several students at Neshaminy don’t take a lunch, rather an extra elective, and have no time in their day to pause and regather; many faculty members often times also work through their break in order to grade papers or to attend meetings. Within the district, and throughout the United Sates, the value of food – of gathering together momentarily with good people to eat together – should be at the center of attention as part of the American education and workplace. Schools should require each student, each staff person to take a lunch.

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“The Europeans have it right; a large part of their culture is balance. I believe food is medicine. A school for difficult children changed its whole eating program and it resulted in lesser class disruptions. Troubled kids had the ability to concentrate better… food is medicine. Food heals,” head of the World Language Dept., Cara Delorenzo, said.

The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University, in a 2012 report, found that kids who eat at least five meals/ week with their families share higher quality, more active relationships with their parents, significantly less prone to substance abuse and decreased stress levels – exactly the effect doing important things with important people should produce.

From a psychological standpoint, whether with friends or family, sharing lunchtime with others offsets a sense of togetherness, rhythm, regularity and order. Frequent mealtimes with others leads to amplified happiness and less susceptibility to eating disorders, depression and anxiety.

“There was a family I always visited and I remember the father telling me they are proud of their meals. Food is their sense of pride. They took the time to cook but did not always buy the best clothes. They never skim on quality of food,” Delorenzo continued.

Often times people eat meals individually – wrapped, packaged or frozen. A 2014 Stanford University Study, entitled “What’s for Dinner?” found that 20 percent of American meals are consumed in the car and that “if it’s bad for us, it’s probably not food.” After researchers found such results the dining staff immediately implemented policies to “retain the culture of food.” Other schools should mimic its footsteps to further their learning environments.

“One of the big things is that when we don’t have the time to take to feed ourselves, from a nutrition of view, we over eat later. When you grab something on-the-go you are eating empty calories,” phlebotomist at St. Mary Medical Center, Pear McCall said. Such a phenomenon can also be observed when watching TV or being on a cell phone while eating, extremely similar to being in class and eating. The aftereffects are prominent. They are tremendously undisregardable.

Food, such an entity, affects everything, each aspect of life: mood, mental health, effectiveness and efficiently; thus Neshaminy, the nation as a whole, should centralize its focus on asking its students, its parents, its workers, its CEOs, to regularize the filter on food, not just through Instagram. Doing so, not in spite of, but because, it takes time out of the day to refuel, will result in a greater output overall. Eating should have no relation to the pure process of putting a certain thing in the body, but rather being present in eating the food, rather than always multitasking in a perpetual state of making sure there is time to do X, Y and Z.

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Mealtime in America: Reconsideration needed