An Illinois schoolteacher has committed to eating the same school lunches served to students in her school every day in 2010–and blogging about it, including pictures of each day’s tasty treat. Here’s the anonymous “Mrs. Q” on Day 4:

Today’s menu: Chicken patty with peas, two slices of bread, fruit cup, and chocolate milk.

There was some strange sauce on the patty. I guess it was tomato sauce, but it was tasteless and of course you can see that it was burnt. The fruit cup was partially frozen. In fact I stabbed it with my spork.

I ate up the chicken, the bread, and the peas. Sometimes they offer butter with the bread, but I didn’t see it there this time. Of course the kids don’t get knifes so spreading the butter on the bread is a challenge. Basically you have to smear it.

The blog, Fed Up: School Lunch Project, has quickly become a cult item, leaving Mrs. Q feeling a bit vulnerable. She confessed earlier this week that “if you lined up all the teachers and staff in my school in a search for who might possibly write a blog like this, I would be one of the last chosen.”

Now I’m feeling majorly exposed. I could absolutely lose my job over this. In just the first ten days of school lunches I’ve gotten a bigger response than I expected. It makes me nervous….I’m not a hero, but I am a whistleblower. But instead of calling a “tip line,” I’ve shouted it to thousands of people. Oops.

She’s right about one thing: schools do not take kindly to whistleblowers. Enjoy Fed Up while you can.

10 Comments »

I once wrote a blog on school lunches and went looking for a free illustration. There are an incredible number of pictures of school lunches on Flickr’s Creative Commons site, and most of them are genuinely nauseating.

I found by piece by Caitlin Flanagan (no relation) equally disturbing, one of the “any excuse for a good bashing” screeds that seem to have gained in popularity over the last decade. We don’t want children to experience the process of growing nutritious food, because phonics are more important? Perhaps the worry is that in growing their own food, students will become aware of the corporate entities that now control “manufactured food” production in America–a powerful economics lesson?

http://teacherleaders.typepad.com/teacher_in_a_strange_land/2009/07/whats-for-lunch-.html

Comment by Nancy Flanagan — January 22, 2010 @ 11:31 am
What is the matter with bag lunches? I had them and my kids had them, as did most of their friends. School lunches have been awful as far back as I can remember, with a few exceptions. That being said, lots of kids won’t eat the healthy stuff if they’ve been brought up on junk. I remember one school started a salad bar (a good one, according to my kids) and it lasted only a few months because so few kids would eat salad. I’ve read that was an issue at the Alice Waters garden school – garbage cans full of uneaten produce. BTW, healthy eating is a good by-product of serious sports. It’s the rare kid that hasn’t learned that eating junk hurts performance.

Comment by momof4 — January 22, 2010 @ 11:34 am
I think the problem with bag lunches is that many families can’t afford them and rely on free/reduced lunch prices at school. That’s the point of the gardening program and the salad bar; to introduce kids who otherwise wouldn’t be to the goodness of fresh vegetables/food.

If we could put actual cooks in schools the food would be better. But no, we have to have mass-produced, pre-made lunches delivered. They are so gross. Eat the salad!

Comment by TFT — January 22, 2010 @ 4:44 pm
Having lived(recently) in a low-SES neighborhood and seeing what was going on at the local grocery store, I don’t think the percentage who really cannot afford a simple bag lunch is that high. Wholegrain bread, either PB or cheese and an apple and/or carrot (or quick-cooking oatmeal for breakfast) are much cheaper than the cereals, salty/sugary snacks and frozen ready-to-eat stuff that was being bought in huge quantities. Ciagrettes, beer and lottery tickets were also bought in quantity. I’ll grant a knowledge issue but there is often a priority issue. If logo shoes etc, cell phones/mp3 players (even young kids had) cable/satellite TV (every apt had a dish or cable box) are a higher priority than their kids’ food, I’m not sure the taxpayer should make up that difference. It’s the same people who passed, and ignored, the library on the way to the store. For the really needy, the same breakfast/lunch could be provided at school, but at some point, parents need to assume responsibility for their kids.

Comment by momof4 — January 22, 2010 @ 7:44 pm
momof4,

I am a big advocate of parents taking responsibility for their children. But I can’t make them send a bag lunch, stop smoking (which is legal) and drinking (also legal), and give up cable as well as know which bread is best for them and that they should pack an apple. We could maybe teach their kids this stuff?

I am not sure I would even want these people you describe to give up these things. Have you given them up? I know I haven’t, nor do I plan to anytime soon (except the smoking).

Poverty is a condition that exists not just because of lazy, no-good freeloaders, but because our system is set up to reward rich, white people and demonize everyone else.

Why don’t you go to the library, check out some books, and then take them to these “people” who can’t seem to get to the library on their own? And pack them a good lunch!

Some folks have even gone so far as to try to implement programs in schools where kids can be exposed to all the goodness you describe (edible gardens, salad bars, school libraries, field trips, visitors, etc).

Comment by TFT — January 22, 2010 @ 8:31 pm
I once had lunch at a French school. A team of French women in aprons doled out ratatouille made from scratch, along with slices of fresh baguette. I agree with TFT that we should train and hire real cooks. Of course we can’t afford it. We can’t afford anything these days.

I sympathize with kids’ avoidance of the salad bar. Though salad is viewed as the epitome of healthy eating, it’s not. More and more research shows that our short digestive systems are designed to process COOKED food. We do not have four stomachs like cows. Cooking helps makes nutrients available. A cooked Indian veggie dish makes me feel much more robust than a crunchy salad.

Comment by Ben F — January 23, 2010 @ 12:05 am
Ben, I went to a school where the food was cooked from scratch and I ate it once a year, for the Thanksgiving meal. I also attended a summer camp where the food was likewise awful. That was also true in college, to the point that my new-to-the-school housemother made an appointment with the food service manager to inspect the raw materials.

The ES my kids attended made lunches for a cluster of schools, so that school had freshly-made items, as opposed to the frozen versions that were shipped out. It didn’t improve the quality. My kids didn’t eat college food (other than Subway-style grilled chicken subs) beyond the first semester, either.

Institution food just isn’t that good. Beyond Subway-style subs, I wouldn’t eat anything from the cafeteria at my workplace, and it has the reputation of being significantly better than average.

Comment by momof4 — January 23, 2010 @ 11:02 am
Mom of Four,

I beg to differ. The French cafeteria was good. My college cafeteria, staffed by native New Mexican ladies, dished up excellent New Mexican cuisine. The hospital cafeteria at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in NYC has delicious (and healthy) food. I think one major problem is that most Americans, unlike the French and New Mexican ladies, are not part of a high-quality cooking tradition. They haven’t developed the sensibilities and *knowledge* needed to prepare good meals. The African-American men and women cooks at my old school in NJ did a fantastic job cooking soul food; less well at items outside their tradition. Corporations have accelerated the destruction of traditional American cultures by selling us on Kraft cheese slices and Jello instead of real food. My female colleagues at work rarely cook anything that demands chopping onions or other vegetables; they marvel at the concoctions I bring in and want to know more. I’m like a missionary to a primitive culture. I learned about good food –not from my Irish-Catholic mom, a bad cook –but from Jewish foodies like Mollie Katzen (Moosewood Cookbook) and fellow members of a vegetarian dining cooperative (one of the good byproducts of hippiedom, in my view, is the sprouting of a good food movement in America).

Comment by Ben F — January 23, 2010 @ 1:15 pm
Nancy Flanagan: Perhaps the worry is that in growing their own food, students will become aware of the corporate entities that now control “manufactured food” production in America–a powerful economics lesson?

And perhaps not. Have you considered any evidence that might conflict with this hypothesis of yours? Have you considered the possibility that someone might genuinely have a difference of opinion from you, *without* being the puppet of corporate entities? Have you considered the strong empirical evidence that corporate entities can’t control other markets in America, for example the number of mega-movies that are flops, the inability of publishers to create another substitue for the Harry Potter phenomenon, and thus that it seems unlikely that corporate entities do control “manufactured food” production?

This is what I dislike about the idea that we should look for the “hidden curriculum”, it discourages actually engaging with differences of opinions, instead they can be neatly attributed to evil corporate entities with very little mental effort. It also appears to encourage a sloppy attitude towards economics.

Comment by Tracy W — January 25, 2010 @ 12:47 pm
Corporations did bring us Jello and Velveeta, but corporations have also brought us a staggering variety of high-quality produce, meats, poultry, fish, seafood, deli/charcuterie, groceries of all kinds, artisan cheeses, wines, beers and spirits. If my kids could see the grocery stores of my childhood, they would think there was a famine. However, my experiences with my own relatives and their friends suggest that kids raised on fast food, frozen pizza and other entrees, Twinkies, and Doritos are not too likely to appreciate (even IF they eat) a healthy, produce-heavy menu. Picturing the reaction of my neices and nephews to a serving of ratatouille was good for a real laugh and they do get real cooking at home.

Comment by momof4 — January 25, 2010 @ 1:10 pm