School Lunch: A Primer

I spent some time searching around the internet looking for variety and differences in elementary school lunches across the US. I have to tell you, there wasn’t much. A non-statistical but random sample of six May/June 2010 lunch menus (not much, I know, I would encourage you to do the same), including Montgomery County, Maryland Public Schools, showed lots of cheese pizza; from this I conclude the US has an abundance of cheese. And, public school nutritionists, or the federal government, strongly believe that every food item should be breaded.


So, here we go ‘round the horn… On most of the menus, one day of the week is pizza day. Including of course, cheese pizza.

The Oakland Unified School District, in California, instituted ‘Meatless Mondays’ which they replaced with, from what I can tell, cheese, including, cheese quesadillas; bean and cheese burritos; and grilled cheese sandwiches.

On the other hand, Oakland stood out in that vegetables and fruit were served with every meal, ranging from ‘Beautiful Baby Carrots’ to ‘Kind-hearted Kiwi’ Oakland also offered stir fry vegetables and a ‘chicken vegetable medley’ to their children. Kudos!


In the Portland, Oregon public schools, Thursday is pizza day. Portland also offers 1% or non-fat milk, and offers teriyaki, and vegetarian chili and to its monthly menu. Portland offers unlimited fresh fruit and vegetables, too, from their fruit and veggie bar. And…Portland works to bring in local produce to the school cafeterias. According to their website, twice a month they feature local produce grown by local farmers.

At the Berkeley Unified School District, in California, all I can say is wow! Unlike Montgomery County, Berkeley made a decision to move “from pre-packed “heat and serve food” to freshly prepared buffet-style service.” I could not find a monthly menu, but the website did state that almost all their food is made from scratch; there are salad bars in all the schools; all the hamburgers and hot dogs are natural and from grass-fed animals; and more. Much, much more.

In the Scarsdale Public Schools, in New York, the Edgewood ES PTA sponsors a fund-raiser, the Bento Box Japanese Lunch, on Mondays, which costs either $3.85 for the regular size chicken bento box; $4.45 for the chicken bento box; and $3.75 for the sushi. This is PTA sponsored, compared to the $2.50 that MCPS charges for each lunch in our elementary schools.

For the chicken plan, we offer three different meals in rotation; Teriyaki Chicken on rice, Chicken cutlets & rice, Fried chicken & noodles. For the sushi, you’ll have 8 pieces of California Rolls which have avocados, fish cakes and cucumbers.

St. Paul, Minnesota Public Schools really offered something different. Their May lunch menu includes Thai chicken; hamburgers with sweet potato fries; and a chicken rice bowl with broccoli and orange wedges as sides. Wow!  And interestingly for Minnesota, cheese did not feature.

Here in Montgomery County, Maryland the profile is similar to most of the menus. Pizza day (choice of cheese or pepperoni) appears to be Tuesday. MCPS offers teriyaki, and from what I could tell, all the poultry is breaded, except for ‘roast turkey.’ The variety includes ‘baked turkey corn dog nuggets,’ ‘baked chicken nuggets,’ and ‘whole grain chicken drumstick’ although why chicken is labeled as ‘whole grain’ is beyond me, but I assume that the drumstick is breaded instead of baked or roasted. Given that the ethnic diversity in our county is a point of great pride to us, it is disappointing to see that our schools don’t offer the foods we enjoy in our homes. Instead the County is teaching our children that pizza, chicken ‘Mcnugget’ look-alikes, and take-out food are the norm.

The MCPS website states that our children’s lunches ‘meet USDA standards’ for nutrition. But these nutrition standards are now the subject of much scrutiny and debate. The USDA recently requested that the Institute of Medicine review these standards. These reports are being published now and you can find them here.  And, the comparison between the current requirements and the new recommendations can be found here.

How Did we get to this Point?
Lynn Olver has posted a brief history of school lunches on her website, Food Timeline, which you can access here. The Children’s Aid Society established the first free school lunch, to provide for urban children over 100 years ago.


More recently, according to Wikipedia, the National School Lunch Act was signed by President Truman in 1946, and its purpose was two-fold, first to feed children; and second, to “prop up food prices by absorbing farm surpluses” And here on Wikipedia is where we get the first glimmer of why our Montgomery County children are being fed breaded and fried food. According to Wikipedia,

...the cheapest way to satisfy the nutritional standards is with something breaded and fried. For example, a corndog plus a fruit cup and milk would meet the current meal plan requirements.

This law, and the federal nutrition standards, married with our autocratic dysfunctional county government explains why our children are fed fast food in a place of learning. So, what are they learning about nutrition and food? And what are we, their parents, learning about Montgomery County government?