Lunch hour? Many high schoolers get just a handful of lunch minutes these days, and that has some experts worried.

At Oakland (Calif.) High school, students technically get 40 minutes for lunch, but that’s taking into account time to get to and from the cafeteria, and lunch lines can be incredibly long. Even nutritionists in Oakland say kids sometimes get only 10 minutes to sit down and eat. Oakland’s far from unusual. Many schools are reporting eating times of 15 minutes or less.

“I think it’s a legitimate complaint that there’s not enough time to eat,” says Jennifer LeBarre, nutrition services director for the Oakland Unified School District. “If we are being asked to eat our lunch in 10 minutes, that’s not enough for us. So I really think we need to really work more for the 20-minute table time.”

She didn’t just pull that 20-minute figure out of a hairnet, by the way. The American Academy of Pediatrics says that students always should have 20 minutes to sit down and eat—not including time to stand in line. (National Public Radio)

Paul Asay has covered religion for The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Beliefnet.com and The (Colorado Springs) Gazette. He writes about culture for Plugged In and wrote the Batman book God on the Streets of Gotham (Tyndale). He lives in Colorado Springs with wife Wendy and his two children. Follow him on Twitter.