After hours of tedious work and drawn out lectures you hear the unmistakable ringing of the school bell. You realize it’s lunch time, quickly exit your class, and rush to refuel; but when you see what’s on your plate, you’re just as disappointed as you were with the schoolwork on your table.

This has become the problem with CUSD lunch, as food quality and proportions have been on a steady decrease in previous years.

The increasing disapproval for school lunch began with the removal of highly coveted Chick-Fil-A and Church’s Chicken from the schools weekly menu. While controversial, this decision was understandable, as changes stemmed from new standards aiming to improve the healthiness of school lunch. However, the most recent changes to the school lunch have left students unhappy to say the least.

“I used to eat lunch here [Perry] but i started packing my lunch a lot this year just because everything taste fake now”, stated junior Jalen Williams. This opinion is definitely not a rare occurrence, with students around campus becoming increasingly synonymous with their criticism of subpar meals.

In the the districts defense, certain aspects of change have been in attempt to promote a more healthy meal for students. However, healthy food shouldn’t equate to nasty food.

To make matters worse, the cost of these items have failed to follow suit with prices staying the same and even rising a dollar in certain cases. Students are stuck with dwindling proportions and continue to be duped everytime they wait in the lunch line. “Meals” are far from satisfying and force students into undesired purchases.

For instance, students are required fruit or natural juice with every meal. However, these additions often find their home in the nearest trash can, untouched by students who were forced to take an item they never wanted.

The solution isn’t to stockpile unwanted foods but to use valued, nutritional ingredients in meals students enjoy.

While some may question why the content of lunch deserves attention, the reason for this is behind the understated value of nutritious meals. Research done by the Nutritional Policy Institute showed that nutritional meals could increase students test scores by a 4% average, a significant boost that can’t go unnoticed.

And although the food isn’t inexplicably bad, the district is yet to publicly explain why these changes occurred. For instance, students who take a trip to the school lunch menu on the CUSD nutrition website page will be surprised to find a monthly meal schedule that the cite claims to have.

The reason for this is because it doesn’t exist.

The lack of transparency from the district only contributes to student rage:and when you pair this with the steadily decreasing quality of the food they eat everyday, it’s not too hard to see why.