Sophomore Steven Thai gradually makes his way through the lunch lines, trying to get through the crowd and find his friend, freshman Joshua Nguyen. After an oldies’ pop song blares through the speakers telling students that they have a minute left, the cafeteria area clears more and Thai can finally stand in line for lunch.

Beginning this year, portion sizes of the Mexican, American, and Italian lunch lines have been significantly reduced from their previous size, especially the burritos and hamburgers. In addition, the milk brand has been switched from TruMoo to Borden and bread has been changed to whole grain.

Thai feels conflicted towards the smaller portions, because although it means less calories are being consumed, he says people could starve.

“I can’t handle that,” Thai said. “It’s like you’re going on a diet.”

However, Thai says that he supports this decision if it benefits the education system and programs within school, such as AVID, or if the extra money goes into funding extracurricular activities.

“If it will help the school benefit, that will be amazing, but if they’re just doing that to keep more money or something, then it’s just complete crap,” Thai said.

Thai says that he hears people say that the lunch lines inside the cafeteria aren’t as good as the lines behind the cafeteria doors, but thinks that the food is edible though.

“If they try to balance out the [options] and actually make it edible for everyone, then I think a lot of people would eat out here and in there and there won’t be as much crowding in here, ” Thai said. “[If] you can eat it, that’s fine. It’s not like a buffet, where you go and want everything, you know.”

Thai suggests that the school should try to serve fresh food instead of frozen food, for health benefits, and says that more nutrients would stay in the food than if it had to be thawed.

“Try not to buy it frozen, because you know, you don’t know what happened to that earlier on,” Thai said. “If you buy it frozen, you don’t know what they’ve done to make it, it could’ve been tampered with. If they try to get it fresh, then that’d be great.”

Thai says that the cost of school food is decent compared to other places outside the school and that it’s decent for a high school student. However, he thinks that the way the food is prepared could be improved and that the heating of food with plastic around it could possibly cause illness in students.

“More sick kids means less attendance and less attendance means less money,” Thai said.