I am so excited to be including a fellow blogger (and now author) in today’s post. Sarah Wu, the woman behind the persona “Mrs. Q,” went undercover as a teacher so she could eat school lunch for a year and blog about it! Her project has been widely recognized, including a nod from Jamie Oliver, and last year she revealed her true identity with the launch of her book bearing the same name as her blog, Fed up with Lunch. I started following “Mrs. Q” early on and was thrilled to be able to meet her in person at a food blogging conference (yes, those things exist) because she is clearly bringing some much-needed attention to an extremely important issue.
I asked Sarah to share with us how her project got started, as well as what each of us can do to take action in our own schools. But before we dive right in I have to share some of the more startling facts from her book, which was a great read by the way. The way the book is written it flows more like a novel, but at the same time you take away some critical information like the following…
- Sarah always assumed that the school “chicken nuggets were fried pieces of plain chicken breast meat … [but] chicken nuggets are only about 50 percent chicken.” She says places like McDonald’s boast about using “all white meat chicken, but they don’t say what else is in those nuggets.”
– - “Some school pizzas have 62 ingredients.” (pictured below)
– - According to USDA regulations “a small container of fries counted as a vegetable.”
– - “Studies have shown that children who suffer from poor nutrition during the brain’s most formative years score much lower on tests … [yet] the school lunch program has no ties with the Department of Education.”
About Fed Up with Lunch
Guest Post by Sarah Wu
It all started when I forgot my lunch in the fall of 2009. As a speech-language pathologist for Chicago public schools, I rarely spent time with kids in the cafeteria. I really hadn’t paid attention to what was happening in the cafeteria. But on that fateful day I wandered down to the cafeteria and paid three dollars for a “bagel dog” meal. It was a weird hot dog/bagel combination – kind of like you might see in a mall, but the school food version, which was soggy and bizarre. It came with a cup of processed fruit and six little tater tots, the USDA-approved fruit and vegetable respectively. I was truly appalled. Where had I been this whole time while my students had been eating this stuff?
I tried to move on after eating that meal, but it was hard for me to shake it. After a couple months, I ended up deciding to do something bold: to eat school lunch for a year (the calendar year of 2010) and chronicle the experience on my blog (fedupwithlunch.com) with pictures. But I didn’t want to risk my job so I blogged anonymously. So I ate 162 school lunches – and then I wrote a book about it, Fed Up with Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches –And How We Can Change Them!
Even though now it feels like school lunch reform has always been a part of my life, it hasn’t always. In fact, back then I really didn’t know anything about the food at all. I ate healthy food, but I believed that it didn’t really matter what you ate as long as you didn’t eat too much junk food or fast food. Looking back I believe that kind of outlook was necessary for me to eat a full year of school lunches. Now I know that food is not “just” food. It’s essential to health, learning, and even how you feel day-to-day.
If you are feeling inspired by my school food journey, here are some of my suggestions to get involved in school lunch reform in your community:
- Fact Find about Your School’s School Lunch Program – Is school lunch managed by school staff members or a company? Are meals made on site or trucked in and warmed up? How are the lunch lines set up? How much time do kids get to eat? What percentage of the school’s population participate?
– - Get Involved at Your Child’s School – Join the PTA/PTO or if you are already a member, do more. There’s no substitute for being there and seeing what is happening with school food. Is there a School Wellness Committee at your child’s school? School Wellness Committees focus not only on nutrition at school but fitness activities like recess. If a school’s lunch service is offering fresh, healthy food, maybe candy fundraisers have gotten out of hand and the wellness committee can start there.
– - Investigate the School’s Community Partners – What partnerships does the school already have with the community? Any restaurants, organizations, or hospitals? Are there ways to increase healthy influences on the students? One of my former schools had a relationship with McDonald’s. Suggest a partnership with a locally-owned restaurant or one that offers healthier options to kids.
– - Fight for Recess Before Lunch – Numerous studies have shown that a simple schedule change of moving recess to immediately before lunch makes a difference. Nurse visits in the afternoon decrease (playing hard after eating is tough on the tummy) and so does food waste at lunch (many kids throw away their lunches so that they can get more time running around). Many schools I have worked in have no recess (take a breath, that’s true!) so making sure that your child’s school doesn’t scrimp on playtime might be a great place to start.
– - Push for Salad Bars – Let’s empower kids to make their own veggie choices. Instead of having limp, overcooked broccoli plopped on their trays, kids do better when they get a chance to choose their own veggies and even check out what their more adventurous peers sample at the salad bar. Many kids don’t get exposure to fresh veggies at home.
Sarah Wu blogs at http://fedupwithlunch.com. She spent a year as the anonymous “Mrs. Q” eating school lunch and documented what she saw at school using her cell phone. Her 2011 book is Fed Up with Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches –And How We Can Change Them! She can be reached at [email protected].
School Lunch Roundup II
I’m just reading some back posts (found your blog via a school lunch pin on Pinterest!). I teach in a 4th-6th grade building and the thing that really angers me is the “breakfast” served in my building. Our lunches have been overhauled to make them healthy, and they now offer a salad bar and all kinds of different veggies, plus lots of whole grains each day. It’s a huge improvement!
But breakfast? It makes me mad every day. Today, for example, I had several students eat this for breakfast: a carton of chocolate milk, a honey bun, juice. SERIOUSLY? There’s more sugar in the chocolate milk alone than they should have ALL DAY. There are offerings of chocolate chip muffins, and even FUNNEL CAKE for breakfast. Yes, funnel cake…with powdered sugar.
How can I expect a kid who came from a house where they didn’t sleep well because their bed is also the bed for their 4 siblings, to function on a chocolate chip muffin, chocolate milk, and grape juice all day? Ridiculous.
Also – thanks for the fun lunch ideas! As a teacher, I often get bored with my same old stuff!
Hi Jess. Thank you for your post! So nice to hear that your school is making improvements. That must be commended. But, speak up about breakfast, too. Sugar should not be a part of it if we expect out kids to learn. ~Amy
A couple of years ago I was a substitute teacher for the preschool program in our local elementary school. I was there quite a lot. Teachers were asked to purchase and eat the school lunch in order to be a positive example for the young children. The children also had breakfast at school, although the teachers did not eat that. Breakfast was usually colored, sweetened cereal and milk or greasy sausage and biscuits. Lunch was very high carb and greasy. For the school’s Thanksgiving meal, I noticed that the preschoolers were given the starches and sugared foods, but not the turkey that the elementary students received. I was feeling ill every day after eating that food, so I had to buck the system and bring my lunch. I never understood why they gave the worst of the food to the youngest children. The elementary and high school students faired slightly better, as they had a little bit of choice. I also noted, when I subbed elementary, that the children who brought their lunches usually had lunchables or little pre-packed containers of junk foods. Loved Jamie Oliver’s series, by the way. Thank you, also, for making people aware of what is going on.
A really good resource is http://www.school-lunch.org
I work at a school that uses Revolution Foods for all of our school food needs. The food is organic, non-GMO, non-processed, and local when possible. You can actually identify the food they are eating! We only do fresh fruits or vegetables 2x a day, and there is not a single vending machine on campus. Out of the 400 students, there are only a few that are overweight. At my previous school, where students were served school district slop, at least 50% of the elementary students were overweight. It really makes a difference with behaviors as well!
I feel very lucky to have gone to a small k-12 school. In all there may have been 150 students. Looking back now i realize how amazing my school lunches were. I hardly every brought a packed lunch to school. Our cooks made a lot of things from scratch and all of our meals were delicious. We still got the standard canned fruit a couple times every week but when the majority of the meal is homemade it didnt seem to matter.
My child’s school follows most of the things you said they should be doing .Except they have story time after lunch then they have recess. I think she needs more time to eat. When I visit most the kids are still eating when they are told to clean up.
I have worked in a school kitchen for 7 years. I have to say this is the best year for school lunches as we no longer serve French fries, fake mashed potatoes or canned fruit. Everything is whole wheat and low fat. We have fresh fruit galore, and a fantastic salad bar. I agree in years passed we served fatty government meat. It is touh on the budget as we want to keep the cost down for the students but since the government is not providing much nutritional offerings that might change in the future. The problem I saw with this blog is it didn’t mention the kids who are raised with fast food. Our meal counts have dropped substantially because a lot of kids think whole wheat is gross and don’t like all the new healthy menu
After reading the article and posts I feel pretty lucky. My son just started high school and it is the first time he will not have homemade lunches for most of the time. The school posts the menu for the whole month so we can see what he wants to eat there or take from home. I still need to find out ingredients on all of the food but they offer a wide variety of fresh vegies and fruit and whole grains in their breads (I know, whole grains doesn’t always mean anything). The students are required to take at three things on their trays and are required to take a vegie and fruit. My sons says he loads up on salad and fruit along with the main offered course.
Unfortunately, nursing homes and hospitals are often in the same category. I worked in the kitchen of a nursing home as a teen, and I remember thinking every day how disgusting the food was. It had no nutritional value at all. Everything was frozen or came in a can. Most of the hospital cafeterias I’ve seen are no better. You’d think schools, hospitals, and nursing homes would have state-of-the-art nutrition programs, but I have yet to see one. Health is obviously not a priority to whoever is running these agencies.
This post makes me feel privileged, even given my situation. I went to school in a very low-income inner city middle school and we actually had a salad bar. I use to eat salad every single day, it was never rotten, wet or gross, it was your typical salad bar (egg, cheese, sunflower seeds, jalapenos, etc). We had actual veggie sides (green beans & carrots) but the rest of the food was still awful. We had dominos pizza AND wendys, which I thought was weird, given how poor the actual school was (we didn’t have walls for each class-room, we used an actual curtain for walls, no joke).
I was just glad I had the option of a salad bar so early on in my life.
Thinking about to when I was a kid, I couldn’t imagine eating school lunch for a whole year.
I can’t believe she ate school lunches for a year. (I couldn’t do it for a week). I’m thankful one of my kids has no interest in school lunch (one has a little curiousity). I’ve heard of public schools where they don’t serve lunch – 100% of kids bring their lunch. I love that idea.
Really glad she included concern about how much time children get to eat. For 25 years i’ve been hearing my mother, also has taught, say how awful it is that kids get only 20 minutes to get their food, find a seat, eat and clean up. Now that my kids will be starting school, it is just one more reason i will probably end up sending their lunches – two or three more minutes to be aware of and enjoy what they eat.
Just a question? Is it governments job to feed the children? I was a teacher and I saw what was served. It hasnt changed now that my kids are in school. I get it that parents struggle or don’t have time to pack lunch. I grew up in a poor district outside of NYC. The cafe only sold milk and ice cream sandwiches. No lunches! Only the high school had that. My single mom would have qualified me for free or reduced lunch but my mom being the way she was would not let me eat that crap! Needless to yes I street my kiddos away from school lunches and pack them a homemade meal with love!
Hi Janine. I understand your question and concern but the simple fact is that lunch being served by schools is a reality so, as long as that is happening, whether it’s their “job” to feed children or not, they still are, so, the debate over school lunch reform will still stand as well. I feel fortunate that I can send a healthy lunch with my children but, as you know, that’s not the case for all. Thank you for your thoughts and for keeping the discussion on this topic going. Jill
It’s unfortunately not just our public schools. Our 2 year old son’s daycare has a menu that I find to be extremely lacking. Our daycare has the Illinois CACFP and receives other subsides, I believe. They serve breakfast, lunch and snack. So many choices on the menu have us cringing, as we are trying to eat more and more organic/unprocessed/real foods. We have some food intolerances/sensitivities in our family including my own and our son does show some signs, so luckily our doctor has written us a note that essentially allows us to substitute almond milk for the cow’s milk they are required to serve, as well as gives us a bit of a “carte blanche” to substitute food as we see fit, thankfully. You’re pretty much otherwise required to have your kid eat their food, no exceptions. Some details on their menu/our changes:
Breakfast: Very carb-heavy – waffles, pancakes, biscuits/croissants – plus a fruit (sometimes fresh, sometimes canned) and milk. Every now and then they have maybe egg or sausage with like a croissant/biscuit, but otherwise some bread/carb product plus fruit plus milk. At least once a week they usually have either donuts or pre-packaged/pre-made muffins, which make me cringe all the more. Sometimes you see cereal, juice and milk as the “complete” breakfast – they count the juice as a “fruit”. We send either scrambled eggs and gluten-free waffles with blueberry whole fruit jelly or raw honey, or the breakfast casserole muffins (meat-free, add spinach) from the recipe on this site, if I’ve made those ahead. We then have him eat their fruit, drink his almond milk, but skip their carb.
Lunch: Usually a protein, bread, fruit, veggie, and milk. Most of their menu offerings are normally not something we usually feel is too bad, but we try to send substitutes on the days they have chicken nuggets/patties or fish sticks, as those seem the more highly processed of the offerings. We’ll also see days when a potato product (tater tots, for example) is counted as the “vegetable” – never very impressed with that selection.
Snack: Each day’s offering largely consists of crackers or cookies with juice, sometimes milk. Once in a blue moon they’ll offer fresh fruit, and this week they’re actually going to have hummus and pita bread one day – a surprising change. We almost never have him eat their snack; we send organic fruit pouches and gluten-free, lower sugar/better grain quality crackers or bars for him to eat. We also specify that he is never to have juice, only his (almond) milk or water.
We really try to help him build good eating habits here at home. It just seems so wrong for our toddler son to start his day on a breakfast of a muffin, applesauce, and milk – what a sugar/carb rush. We hope to be able to continue our substitutions while he’s in daycare and plan to send packed lunches when he is school-aged. And continue to work towards and hope for better quality food offerings in our schools and daycares…
I remember working in the cafeteria for extra credit as a kid and even then I thought the lunch was bad. There was a huge warmer that they just pulled all of these metal trays from who knows where and pushed them on the counter. The only milk available is fat free chocolate or low fat and the salad bar consisted of partially rotted fruit and bags of graham bears. The vegetable was considered to be pizza sauce.
I work at a school where almost all of our nearly 900 students eat free breakfast and lunch each day. The meals are not healthy or appetizing. However, I don’t understand why people are pointing their fingers at the schools. We don’t want to serve children unhealthy over processed food. The real problem is budget. Budget restraints limit not only the ability to buy quality ingredients but also the number of food service staff members employed. It’s difficult for five ti six poorly supplied staffers to serve 1800 meals in a six hour period. Hence, cheap and fast frozen entrees and canned veggies and fruit. This is another glaring example of how this country does not invest in our public schools. It is a problem that requires stricter guidelines AND funding that makes it possible for schools to follow those guidelines.
We need to change the foods children are eating and teaching them the schools do not offer whole foods they are packed with sugar and other artificial foods that bring students out of balance this is the root cause of emotional problems. We need to go back to the basics whole foods and teach what this concept is and teach people in the schools what foods need to be thrown out and the new one that we all need to eat real food with nothing added fresh veges brown rice fish and other whole foods if we don do this and continue on the same path we will be creating out of balanced people for ever and i would love to see a stop to to this.
I hope this does not offend anyone i just get hurt when we don’t address the real problem.
Peace
bill klar
It’s difficult to make changes at the school level. Currently I work in an elementary school cafeteria. If the school accepts federal funding, for example, the free and reduced lunch prgram, then they MUST follow a boatload of rules. The lunches are broken into components such as protein, veggie, fruit, and grains. Every lunch has to meet the strict guidelines while also coming in under budget so the company or school making the lunches also makes a profit.
This year the guidelines have changed dramatically thanks to Michelle Obama. However, the company I work for is skirting the issue as much as possible for the sake of profit. For example, their “fresh fruit” salad is simply a can of mixed fruit with a few fresh sliced strawberries thrown in.
We do have a salad bar which is pretty awesome. However, we get several complaints that it’s slowing the kids down too much and they don’t have enough time to eat. We also have the problem with kids eating before recess. We’ve tried to get it changed, but the teachers were the ones that said no because it would be too much trouble. Especially during the winter.
Also when you are considering the lunch menu, you have to take into consideration delivery schedules and minimums. You also have to consider how well fresh fruit and veggies keep or don’t keep. Deliveries always have a minimum dollar amount. Smaller more frequent deliveries cost more. However, larger deliveries produce too much waste.
Sadly enough the cheep food is the unhealthy food. But it should be opposite. To make whole wheat flour, you just grind it. To make white flour, there is an entire process to remove the bran and germ, and then the added expence of “enriching” it. Same with brown vs white rice, etc. But it is a matter of supply and demand. Processed stuff is so much more in demand so the costs of producing it is relatively less. Hopefully as more and more school lunches are reforming, and families are eating healthier, the real food will begin to go down in price, making budgeting less of an issue.