Cafeteria+Review

**media type="custom" key="2405147"Cafeteria food overpriced and low in quality? //Yes. By: Kendra Shaw //**

The Leo Hayes High School cafeteria is a common place for students to buy their food at lunch time, but instead of being a healthy alternative to the fast food restaurants available just down the street, it is over priced and just as unhealthy as grabbing a burger at Dairy Queen. By buying a slice of pizza dripping with grease from the cafeteria, students are not only wasting their money but ruining their health. There is, in fact, a "healthy meal", available some days at the cafeteria: this meal costs more than the french fries and more than the pizza: more than most unhealthy alternatives in the cafeteria. As for any vegetarians or vegans that attend Leo Hayes, you're out of luck, unless you're planning on eating undercooked and greasy fries everyday for lunch. The "healthy meal" always includes meat or dairy of some sort and the cafeteria employees refuse to customize plates for students with different eating habits, such as vegetarians or vegans. Because of the cafeteria food, prices and the availability of fast food, students at Leo Hayes High School are rarely getting a well balanced lunch unless they happen to have enough time to pack their lunch. Even though obesity of North American teenagers has sky rocketed over the past century, Leo Hayes, along with many other high schools across Canada, has done little to change the unhealthy eating habits of teens attending their school. Yes, pop, chips, and candy bars have been, for the most part, removed, but the few healthy items in the cafeterias have been priced much higher than the quick and easy fast food that has become the everyday meal to many students. Is it enough to remove what is unhealthy, or should there be easy access to fairly priced and fresh, healthy food too? I don't think that is too much to ask.