According to the various posts my friends throw up on Facebook, we Americans are fat because
–we are too stupid to understand the concept of “nutrition”
–there is a conspiracy helmed by someone called Big Soda, who is an even larger, scarier bogeyman than Big Tobacco
–Corn has transplanted “love of money” as the actual Root Of All Evil
–We just have no willpower
But it wasn’t until today that I saw anyone mention one of what I believe to be the biggest problems with American nutritional conditioning: School lunches.
No, I’m not talking about the same old “Ketchup is not a vegetable” argument, because I think it’s a given that mass-produced low-cost food is not going to provide optimum nutrition until Soylent Green. I’m talking about the length of time that kids have to eat.
For twelve (or thirteen or fourteen) years, Americans educated in the school system–public, private or Christian–are trained to eat their food in twenty minutes or less. Lunch periods in schools range from 20-40minutes. The schools that have the longer lunch periods are generally high-schools, where book-gathering and travel time is built into the “lunch” span.
We know that brains take about 20 minutes to register the Full Signal from the stomach. But for the bulk of our developing lives, as we are establishing our life habits we are also training our bodies to eat as much as they can as fast as they can.
Maybe along with “Ketchup is Not A Vegetable” we ought to also start saying “a meal takes more than ten minutes to eat.”
Just Another Pretty Farce 
And no recess. Don’t forget that. You eat to fast, and then you don’t do anything physical for the rest of the day except walk between classes.
You make a really great point.
I get what you’re saying and mostly I agree that we Americans tend to eat too quickly. However, I’ve also spent a whole lot of time as a substitute teacher in my kids’ elementary school over the past 10 years, and I can tell you that with a few exceptions, most kids are done with their lunches in about 10 minutes, and will happily spend whatever time remains figuring out how to do things they shouldn’t be doing. You simply can’t ask a five year-old to sit quietly with his hands folded until lunchtime is over and his classmates are done eating.
Older kids are a different story, however. They could benefit from some downtime mid-day and a more leisurely lunch.
I agree with you 100%! In my school, kids get 20 minutes. That includes going through the line to get the food and cleaning up and lining up to leave. So they essentially get 10 minutes to eat. Also, this is one of the only times that they get the freedom to socialize so they usually spend more time chatting than eating. We have gotten numerous complaints from parents, and we would like to give them more time, too. Unfortunately, there is just not enough time in the day. With over 800 students, we can only seat one grade level at a time. Lunch goes from 11:20-1:30. They can’t make it any longer because they can’t afford to pay the hourly workers more. All this being said, it’s very frustrating for the “childhood obesity epidemic” people to be putting all the blame on schools. We provide healthy lunches and snacks, but we can’t make the kids eat what is healthy. They get junk food, watch too much tv, and play too many video games at home. Kids need to read and play outside more at home, and parents need to develop healthy eating habits from birth to help their bodies and brains be healthier. Schools are only one part of kids’ lives, but we get blamed for everything. Also, we are continually being told to do more and more with less and less.
Yup. During one session of high school, I had a 25 minute lunch immediately after gym class, which consisted for a long duration of running. Although I probably needed the calories, it was just impossible for me to do much more than chug a drink of some sort because I just could not spend 5-10 minutes in line then eat in 15-20 minutes right after running a few miles.
Remind me to give you my “I Hate P.E.” rant in person, Kat. ;o)