MCPS Lunch Production: "Not a nutrition educator"

School Lunch Miles 


Ten miles away from the American Society for Nutrition (ASN) office stands the Central Production Facility (CPF) for Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS). The CPF prepares and distributes all foods for MCPS. It is the largest facility of its kind on the East Coast, has 840 employees (including a full-time mechanic), and is within MCPS—the largest school district in Maryland and 16th largest in the country. I recently went on a tour of the CPF with other ‘stakeholders' (e.g. moms, environmental activists, nutritionists).

Before going on a tour, we were told why the 58,000 square foot CPF, built in 1993, exists. This boiled down to safety (e.g. the entire facility is cool to prevent bacterial growth), uniformity in preparation, and expense (e.g. keep labor costs down by not having workers in each individual school). The CPF is an abnormally large caterer for MCPS and not a nutrition educator...


.. After swimming around in cheese sauce, the noodles will get sucked down through the bottom of the vat that was in the pit itself and through a large industrial metal tube that would transfer it to plastic bags. The plastic bags would then be sent up the conveyor belt at the end of the pit to be cooled; later, contents of these bags are emptied by hand into individual portions into the prepared ‘hot-packs' delivered to schools. Here again, was more nearly obsolete machinery and plastic... continues here.