I teach at our local high school. Our population is such that all students recieve a free breakfast and most students recieve a free or reduced lunch. Those that don’t bring their own food.
It’s not that our urban population dislikes healthy food; on the contrary, healthier food is not being served. The issue is portion sizes. Each meal is only 200-300 calories. Here is an example from yesterday’s breakfast: one cinnamon bun (soy, partially hydrogenated oil, artificial flavors, HFCS, whole wheat); choice of low-fat milk, low-fat chocolate milk, or juice (10% real juice, HFCS, artificial flavors, artificial colors).
A lunch last week consisted of a cup of soup and a very small graham cracker pb&j sandwich. I’ve also learned that anything chicken (nuggets, patties, etc.) is pink slime. I love telling the complaining students how much Michelle wants them to be healthy, with sarcasm dripping on every word.
I’m also in a high school. Typical school lunches are frozen/nuked chicken fingers, green beans, salad and a tiny third-rate piece of fruit, with a little carton of milk. Of course, there’s the snack machine over there in the corner of the cafeteria doing a brisk business. The first 2 lunch periods get better food, the third lunch period, they’ve run out of mini-meatball subs or turkey wraps or apparently even PB&J sandwiches and break out the frozen pizza. The left over frozen pizza is served to the first and second lunch periods the next day. Relatively few kids opt for the tossed salad portion. I also seen a compartment on the divided plates filled with shredded cheese as an “entree”, alongside a helping of beans or rice or frozen/nuked fish or chicken sticks. Repulsive food, at least half of which ends up untouched in the garbage cans.