We Want Organized Salad Bars

     Does your school have a disgusting lunch salad bar? Our school does and it’s becoming worse and worse. From my experience, salad bars are supposed to consist of several different items, each put into a small plastic bowl for each student to take one serving. But at our school, the salad bar items are put in large square containers for students to serve themselves. Most of the older kids can easily serve themselves, but the younger Kindergartners, and first and second graders, still haven’t really gotten the hang of scooping food onto their trays. So, we upper graders only get the items that the lower graders messed up.

     Since the food is messed up, it destroys our appetite, and we usually  don’t take anything from the salad bar. But the aids notice and tell us we have to get at least two items from the salad bar to be fit and get nutrition. We agree, but most of us just nibble a bit off the corners and throw the huge amounts of leftovers away. By doing this, it is wasting food, so this is something I would like to change, not only at our school but at all the other schools that have disorganized salad bars.

    There are two ways that I think will work out the best. These two ways both have advantages and disadvantages. The choice depends on what the school prefers. One option is for the lunch person to fill reusable individual trays with fresh vegetables, fruits, and the main dish for the students. This way it will be cleaner, save the students the extra line for the salad bar, and let them start eating directly. If all the students finish their portion, then the nutrition will be enough. One disadvantage is this option requires more labor. The school will need at least three people serving the lunch or the line will become terribly slow and many children won’t have time to finish their meals. Also, some picky kids might waste food and throw everything they don’t like away.

    The second way, in my opinion, is the better way. The school can have one or two lunch servers start preparing small servings of different items into reusable, small, square bowls about ten minutes before lunch and lay them out onto a table. This way, the students won’t touch anyone else’s food serving and the younger children don’t have to worry about the serving spoons. This organized way doesn’t require a lot of workers and the salad bar isn’t likely to be messed up. By doing this, more students will start to take the salad, seeing that it’s very clean. It might be more tiring for the workers in the lunchroom after the children are finished eating because they need to wash the dishes. But, I have thought of a way to deal with that problem. A layer  of cling wrap could be put on every tray and the students can rip it off when they are finished eating.

    I think that many children and young teenagers will be glad by this change, no matter
 which option the school chooses!