December 30, 2025
School Lunch in NYC: Does Healthier Mean Happier?
By John Myers
By Sanaii Coke
School lunch is a topic that has been long discussed.. Whether it’s people disliking it, liking it, or eating it simply because they have nothing else to eat. At Brooklyn College Academy, upperclassmen take classes on a college campus where they’re not allotted a warm school lunch. They don’t have access to a regular public school cafeteria so they are offered cold bagged lunches every day between the hours of 8AM and 10AM.
Ever since the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act was enacted in 2010, school lunch has been much healthier with increased vegetables, more whole grains, less sodium, fat, and sugar, but is a healthier meal the same as a tastier and more cost-effective one? There have been numerous critiques of the act including decreased portion sizes and higher costs. For example, according to The Center for American Progress, it has been very difficult for schools to implement the nutrition standards due to limiting budgets and the fact that public schools already have small budgets to work with.
School lunch in general looks very different at Brooklyn College Academy because students don’t have a public school cafeteria, they have to eat lunches that are cold, but also bagged. Kylee Bonner, an 11th grade student who attends Brooklyn College expressed, “Eating school lunch is usually discouraged socially, people would tease you if you ate the school lunch and it honestly impacted my willingness to eat it.” Not only is the school lunch difficult for schools to implement after the Act was passed, but it’s also frowned upon by other students, making them feel ashamed to eat it.
Zoey Jamerson, an 11th grade student who also attends Brooklyn College Academy, stated, “A lot of the time when I go to lunch I usually go to Boylan because they serve hot food.” On the campus there is a cafeteria but it’s a college cafeteria and it’s very expensive. A full meal ranges from $10-$20. Students that go to a typical public high school in NYC don’t have to pay for their meals, nor do they have to worry about cold lunches.
