School Lunch

When school teacher Mrs. Q forgot her lunch one day, she had no idea she was about to embark on an odyssey to uncover the truth about public school lunches. Shocked by what her students were served, she resolved to eat school lunch for an entire year, chronicling her experience anonymously on a blog that received thousands of hits daily, and was lauded by such food activists as Mark Bittman, Jamie Oliver, and Marion Nestle. Here, Mrs. Q reveals her identity for the first time in an eye-opening account of school lunches in America. Along the way, she provides invaluable resources for parents and health advocates who wish to help reform school lunch, making this a must-read for anyone concerned about children's health issues.

Deciding to buy lunch for the first time at school, Pinkalicious worries that she may have bitten off more than she can chew.

Bought or brought? Revisit the nostalgia of the school cafeteria with this collection of interviews, vivid portraits, and elaborately reimagined food photos. Food often unites us in unexpected ways -- especially on Taco Salad Day. Drawing on material from more than seventy voices , these stories capture all walks of life -- from celebrities and chefs to a circus family, new immigrants, a creative dad whose illustrated lunch bags went viral, plenty of unlikely cultural mashups, and one genuine cafeteria lady. Their experiences are compelling, familiar, and foreign at the same time, forming a cultural time capsule. School Lunch celebrates our diversity and our shared experience. In their words: "School lunch is one of the core reasons I became a chef." -- Marcus Sammuelson "My mom, God rest her soul, was not exactly Mom-of-the-Year on this kind of stuff. She worked full-time, that woman was not about to peel and slice fruit for me." -- Natalie Webster "I ate the same damn thing every day for six years." -- Micaela Walker "On the days when I didn't have enough food there was always a reason to start or finish a fight." -- George Foreman "We were definitely a crusts-on family." -- Daphne Oz "I used to hate that feeling of walking into the lunchroom for the first time and not knowing where to sit." -- Chinae Alexander "Every kid had some good item to trade and I had f****** applesauce." -- Sam Kass

Whether kids love or hate the food served there, the American school lunchroom is the stage for one of the most popular yet flawed social welfare programs in our nation's history. School Lunch Politics covers this complex and fascinating part of American culture, from its origins in early twentieth-century nutrition science, through the establishment of the National School Lunch Program in 1946, to the transformation of school meals into a poverty program during the 1970s and 1980s. Susan Levine investigates the politics and culture of food; most specifically, who decides what American children should be eating, what policies develop from those decisions, and how these policies might be better implemented. Even now, the school lunch program remains problematic, a juggling act between modern beliefs about food, nutrition science, and public welfare. Levine points to the program menus' dependence on agricultural surplus commodities more than on children's nutritional needs, and she discusses the political policy barriers that have limited the number of children receiving meals and which children were served. But she also shows why the school lunch program has outlasted almost every other twentieth-century federal welfare initiative. In the midst of privatization, federal budget cuts, and suspect nutritional guidelines where even ketchup might be categorized as a vegetable, the program remains popular and feeds children who would otherwise go hungry. As politicians and the media talk about a national obesity epidemic, School Lunch Politics is a timely arrival to the food policy debates shaping American health, welfare, and equality.

This publication provides three weeks worth of recipes built around one nutritious hot dish per day, with a weekly pattern of five school days.

As this book takes us on an eye-opening journey into the nation's school kitchens, the author offers an assessment of school food in the United States. She reveals the forces that determine how lunch is served, such as the financial troubles of schools, the commercialization of childhood, and the reliance on market models. The author explores the deep politics of food provision from multiple perspectives including history, policy, nutrition, environmental sustainability, taste, and more. How did our children end up eating nachos, pizza, and Tater Tots for lunch? How did we get into the absurd situation in which nutritionally regulated meals compete with fast food items and snack foods loaded with sugar, salt, and fat? What is the nutritional profile of the federal meals? How well are they reaching students who need them? Opening a window onto our culture as a whole, she concludes with a vision for change: fresh, healthy food for all children as a regular part of their school day.