A major debate facing the school system today is how to improve teens eating habits while in the school cafeteria. Many have proposed the idea to eliminate sodas and snacks like chips and candy. The problem is schools have been replacing the vending machines with sport drinks and vitamin waters containing an equaling amount of sugar.

A new website was recently introduced with the mission to “design sustainable lunchrooms that guide smarter choices www.smarterlunchrooms.org does not believe in banning certain foods, but instead guiding students to make healthier decisions. Smarter Lunchrooms reasons, that simply replacing pizza with whole wheat bread and fries with roasted sweet potatoes does not allow teens to make real world choices.

“I am actually a person who would rather eat healthy, but when schools are noticeably taking away foods in the lunchroom it makes me crave them more then I usually would,” said Kaci Garrison.

The websites main intention is for administrators, but is made accessible enough for parents to easily navigate. The main concern is that students should be encouraged to eat healthier, not forced. For example if the candy, chips, and sodas line is made cash only, while other foods are prepaid then the junk food might be less desirable. Research has also shown the farther away the lunch tables from the less healthy snack line the less likely they are to get up.

“Not having sodas in our lunchroom does not make me want to eat healthier. It makes me mad that soon I’m going to be in college and my high school is banning drinks we used to have. I wish I was given more real world decisions,” said Chloe Vogel.

Another idea Smarter Lunchrooms has offered is to put the food on smaller plates. The portions will be smaller, but look larger to the students.

A solution that has caused much controversy is to raise prices on the less healthy food items. Schools are very cautious in taking this approach due to the disadvantage to kids with less income. That is why Smarter Lunchrooms has offered winning ideas that not only guide students to healthier choices, but save money and make it more manageable for a school to participate.