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This Week in School Lunch
They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Cafeteria directors say you can lead a child to healthy food, but you can’t make him eat it. Well, at least when he has the option of eating pizza and fries instead.
I’m on the road this week visiting cafeterias in Ohio and Massachusetts, and I’ve been continually struck by the difference between what’s offered to students and what actually ends up on their trays. All the high school cafeterias I’ve seen on this trip have offered dozens of choices, including healthy items like fresh sandwiches and salads. Yet probably 75 percent of students buy the same two or three items: pizza, chicken patty sandwiches and fries. ”It’s great that they have all that healthy stuff,” one high school student told me. “But nobody eats it. It’s a shelf-filler.”
At a high school in Massachusetts today, students could choose from sandwiches, salads, shepherd’s pie, a hot sausage and pepper sub, turkey a la king with rice or pizza and tater tots. The adults buy the shepherd’s pie and the turkey, the director told me. About 80 percent of the students would opt for pizza and tater tots, she said.
At the high school I visited in Ohio, the cafeteria dishes out about 1,100 servings of French fries each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It sells about 60 salads.
You can lead a student to healthy food, and there’s no guarantee he’ll eat it. But one thing’s for sure: you can lead a student to pizza and fries, and he’s almost certain to buy lunch.
Here are some of the meals I saw in Ohio:
Pizza, fries and ranch dressing
Pizza, fries, apples and chocolate milk
Pizza, fries and nacho cheese sauce
Salads, sandwiches, fruit and yogurt. About 60 of these sell every day compared to 1100 servings of fries and 360 slices of pizza
June 5th, 2009 at 11:34 am
This food looks awful. I understand kids and their craving for carbs and cheese. Shame on adults for serving this.