The cafeteria menu went through quite a change this year, but is it for better or for worse?

The food tastes good and, more importantly, it tastes like real food. La Cucina, Great American Sandwich Co. and Coyote Grill are a few of the restaurant-like stations that have been adopted at FHS lunches. You can get a panini, a fresh deli sandwich, a salad, nachos, pizza, calzones, and more!

While these choices are great, the trays are sometimes the size of netbooks and we miss our beloved chicken nuggets. The company supplying our food court-style lunches is Whitsons School Nutrition.

It turns out that this new food was picked to keep us healthy. Yes, that’s right folks, they do care.

A lot of our choices are fresh and made daily. Whole wheat and whole grains are used in the pizza and pastas that they provide.

Chicken nuggets i.e. parts of a chicken drowned in flours, starches, oils, saturated fats, trans fats, and sodium, apparently did not make the cut.

So what does everyone think and is this modern take on school lunch here to stay?

According to Halle Young, the food is better this year “and there are more options”. On the other hand, sophomore Brian Barker claims “they serve the same thing every day”. Although not completely true, this comment has some validity in the sandwich and pizza lines.

Travis Boornazian says that the “amount of food isn’t enough”. Teenage boys do have a tendency to eat in abundance so is it fair that they have to pay $5.50 just because a 6 inch sandwich doesn’t fill them up? No way.

Erin McGinley asks for “more vegetarian options and shorter lines”. Vegetarian options are lacking since they really only have a cheese sandwich, salad, pizza, and plain nachos to offer. That is not fair to some of our peers and should be improved.

In addition, for those of you who haven’t noticed, the salad bar is now split into two stations and crammed into the same room as the other 4 lunch lines. You have to go to one salad station to get salad, another one to get croutons, and a third one for dressing. That area was already condensed and crazy before the salad situation was changed.

More people do seem to be buying this year so chances are this lunch style is here to say. The only big problem is the lack of space and efficiency in the salad and panini/sandwich lines, which is something that can be fixed easily if they are moved out of the kitchen and into the cafeteria.

These sophisticated and nutritious options are a blessing compared to what we’ve had in the past.

Just as long as our trays don’t look like we got take-out from a tapas place, we’ll be happy.