A teacher and mother, anonymously named Mrs. Q from Illinois wrote a book entitled “Fed Up With Lunch“. It documents every day of her life during one year where she subjected herself to eating the lunches prepared by the school she teaches at.
Mrs Q describes some of her encounters with the school lunches as follows [1]:
- Bagel dogs
- Yellowish meatloaf
- Chicken tenders, which were likened to “squirts of chicken foam”
- Mystery meat
- Puddles of beans
Taken of a high school serving line
She did this because she was fed up with what was provided for the kids. She said that some foods would be so processed that the coloring of the food would get all over the kids mouths and on their other food. She said that often times, the lunches would make them drowsy and out of it. Here is an excerpt from her blog:
It’s very challenging to teach students when they are eating school lunches that don’t give them the nutrition they need and deserve. Oftentimes what is served barely passes muster as something edible. And after a meal high in sugar and fat and low in fiber, they then must pay attention in a classroom.
Mrs Q. said that the kids never complained about the lunches, although Mrs. Q would in her blog. Here is an example post about a TexMex offering.
When I was in school, I remember eating those salted cardboard strips (french fries), rubber slabs (hamburgers), and drinking Coca cola (coca cola). I usually took a brown bagged lunch prepared by my mom which would include a healthy sandwich on whole wheat bread, an apple, a boiled egg, carrot sticks or some other health option. But there were times she would fall ill, or be too busy to make us lunch, and dad would slip each of us kids a few bucks for lunch and I would drool in the lunch line for those salty, processed and fatty foods…why did they taste so good? Why did I crave them? They are microwaveable, deep friable, highly preservable and highly processed. Through her book, Mrs Q. provides a window into the world of school lunches, and offers some solutions schools can take to improve nutrition and quality of the lunches that are offered.
The book is scheduled for release in October.
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