Want to keep tabs on what your kid is buying for lunch at school? More and more parents can, thanks to online lunch payment systems, which I wrote about in this article. Here’s some food (excuse the pun) for thought that I didn’t have room to include in the published story:

• * Karen Jason, a Katonah-Lewisboro mom and a former member of the school district’s food committee, said that new government regulations (which encourage healthier cafeteria offerings) have eased her concerns about the snacks available to her son dring lunchtime. But Jason is still glad that she can track what he eats online because she wants to be sure that he is purchasing whole meals. “Even if the snacks are healthy, you still don’t want your child buying a bag of soy chips and drink for lunch,” she said.


• * Thanks to automated payment systems, students from low-income families can avoid any stigma associated with getting free or reduced lunches, said Alexis Steines, a spokesperson for the School Nutrition Association. Students “enter a pin or swipe a card and there’s no change of money, so other students don’t see that these kids are not paying,” Steines said.


• * Another benefit of automated payment systems, school officials say, is that they make lunch lines move faster. But for Susan Rubin, the founder of the Westchester Coalition for Better School Food, faster doesn’t automatically mean better.

“Digestion is optimal when you are relaxed, so when you are in a rush, you are not digesting your food optimally and you don’t feel satisfied which causes you to want more food later on,” said Rubin, a proponent of longer lunch periods. “There are real physiological reasons why we need to slow down and relax while we’re eating.”

Robert Priess, the director of food service at the Clarkstown school district, said he saw speedier lunch lines as beneficial to students’ lunch experience. “Getting (students) through the line quicker,” he said, “will allow them to sit and enjoy the lunch period.”