Cafeteria Food on Campus Lacks In Quality and Variety

Alde Nguyen

Online Manager

Students at Mira Costa High School often find themselves eating the same monotonous meals during lunch everyday due to the lack of quality and variety in the food selection. The menu offered in the cafeteria and at food stands consists of the same entrees and snacks throughout the year, making it unappetizing and tiresome.

Students have the option of purchasing food from the regular, weekly entree list or from the panini bar in the cafeteria. The entree list follows a weekly cycle. The schedule offers pizza, chicken bites, cheeseburgers, burritos, salads and Pick Up Stix on Tuesdays and Fridays. During nutrition, several different types of beverages, treats, and fruits are available for students to consume.

The regularity and schedule of the entrees offered in the cafeteria prove why the food doesn’t satisfy students’ palates because of how repetitive it is. In order to increase variety in their catalog, Costa should offer a number of entrees based on monthly or seasonal patterns. This would lead to an increase in the variety of food options, allowing for students to try and consume new meals.

In combination with the dullness of the food selection, the quality of the entrees prove to be at best mediocre. The chicken bites, which lack in taste and texture, resemble hard-breaded chicken and are unexciting to eat. The only entree which excels at being appetizing is the house rice and beef from Pick Up Stix. A cost efficient alternative that MBUSD could implement in order to provide new quality entrees would be to offer popular packaged meals that meet the federal standards of a balance in nutrition.

Costa’s food menu also falls inadequate in providing a catalogue of healthy meals for students to choose from. Other than the salads and fruits, the food selection focuses its variety within the fast food-like meals such as the burgers and chicken bites. Constantly eating these non-nutritious meals for five days throughout the week, comes with its downsides to student health and can increase obesity. Costa does attempt to make their snacks more nutritious by providing low-fat chips and whole grain pop tarts.

It is arguable that the food selection in our school’s cafeteria remains the same in order to meet our school’s budget, but instead Costa should invest in alternative meal plans and a different inventory of snacks and entrees. Costa could also improve its catalogue by introducing new food items and testing its popularity in student consumption.

Costa’s food selection at its cafeteria and snack bars meets the standards of providing students with food on a daily basis, but falls short in offering savory and healthy meals; proving to be bland in diversity and quality.