Question

How can we make our school less wasteful? One way is to cut down on food waste. In my opinion, the best way to get our students to waste less food is by changing our lunch schedules dramatically.


2
Most importantly, we should have lunch after recess. When we play before lunch, we burn off calories and feel hungrier. Therefore, we will eat more at lunchtime. The National Food Service Management Institute at the University of Mississippi shows that when lunch followed recess, plate waste was sliced from 40 percent to 27 percent.


3
In addition, we should have a longer lunch period. Ours is only twenty minutes. This doesn't give us enough time to finish our lunches. According to one school cook in Ohio, the lunch period should be lengthened to thirty minutes. She believes students won't throw away so much food if they have more time to talk with their friends and eat. According to a 2003 study by the National Food Service Management Institute, schools with thirty-minute lunch periods have less food waste than schools with twenty-minute lunch periods do. The study looked at 1,119 students in grades 3 to 5 who had a twenty-minute lunch and 758 students who had a 30-minute lunch.




4
Also, lunch lines are too long and too slow. When students have to wait, they have even less time to eat. In some schools, students only have 10 to 15 minutes to gobble their food! In order to be on time to class, they end up throwing out food because there's no time to eat it. A longer lunch period, along with quicker food service, is the answer.


5
Finally, we should eat lunch at a more reasonable time. One reason for food waste is that some students are forced to eat lunch not long after they arrive at school. If lunch is served at 10:45 a.m., students aren't hungry enough to eat the whole meal. Another reason for food waste is that some students have lunch late in the school day. They are forced to fill up on snacks they buy from vending machines or bring from home. In either case, food waste is the result.

How does the authors’ inclusion of the bar graph and the data table contribute to their purposes in the articles?

Both text features add emotional appeal by describing how students feel about cafeteria food.

Both text features use quantitative evidence to make each author’s argument about reducing food waste more convincing to readers.

The text features provide background information unrelated to the authors’ main arguments.

The graph and table both distract from the argument by focusing on numbers rather than real-life examples.

Answer 1

Both text features use quantitative evidence to make each author’s argument about reducing food waste more convincing to readers.

Explanation: the bar graph and table display the studies and numbers (like percent plate waste and sample sizes) that back up the claims about lunch-after-recess and longer lunch periods, improving credibility and helping readers quickly see the effect.