school cafeteria food essay

How the quality of school lunch affects students’ academic performance

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, michael l. anderson , mla michael l. anderson associate professor of agricultural and resource economics - university of california, berkeley justin gallagher , and jg justin gallagher assistant professor of economics - case western reserve university elizabeth ramirez ritchie err elizabeth ramirez ritchie ph.d. graduate student - university of california-berkeley, department of agricultural and resource economics.

May 3, 2017

In 2010, President Barack Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. The main goal of the law was to raise the minimum nutritional standards for public school lunches served as part of the National School Lunch Program. The policy discussion surrounding the new law centered on the underlying health reasons for offering more nutritious school lunches, in particular, concern over the number of children who are overweight. The Centers for Disease Control estimates that one in five children in the United States is obese.

Surprisingly, the debate over the new law involved very little discussion as to whether providing a more nutritious school lunch could improve student learning. A lengthy medical literature examines the link between diet and cognitive development, and diet and cognitive function. The medical literature focuses on the biological and chemical mechanisms regarding how specific nutrients and compounds are thought to affect physical development (e.g., sight), cognition (e.g., concentration, memory), and behavior (e.g., hyperactivity). Nevertheless, what is lacking in the medical literature is direct evidence on how nutrition impacts educational achievement.

We attempt to fill this gap in a new study that measures the effect of offering healthier public school lunches on end of year academic test scores for public school students in California. The study period covers five academic years (2008-2009 to 2012-2013) and includes all public schools in the state that report test scores (about 9,700 schools, mostly elementary and middle schools). Rather than focus on changes in national nutrition standards, we instead focus on school-specific differences in lunch quality over time. Specifically, we take advantage of the fact that schools can choose to contract with private companies of varying nutritional quality to prepare the school lunches. About 12 percent of California public schools contract with a private lunch company during our study period. School employees completely prepare the meals in-house for 88 percent of the schools.

To determine the quality of different private companies, nutritionists at the Nutrition Policy Institute analyzed the school lunch menus offered by each company. The nutritional quality of the menus was scored using the Healthy Eating Index (HEI). The HEI is a continuous score ranging from zero to 100 that uses a well-established food component analysis to determine how well food offerings (or diets) match the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The HEI is the Department of Agriculture’s preferred measure of diet quality, and the agency uses it to “examine relationships between diet and health-related outcomes, and to assess the quality of food assistance packages, menus, and the US food supply.” The average HEI score for the U.S. population is 63.8, while the median HEI score in our study is 59.9. In other words, the typical private company providing public school lunch in CA is a bit less healthy than the average American diet.

We measure the relationship between having a lunch prepared by a standard (below median HEI) or healthy (above median HEI) company relative to in-house preparation by school staff. Our model estimates the effect of lunch quality on student achievement using year-to-year changes between in-house preparation of school meals and outside vendors of varying menu quality, within a given school . We control for grade, school, and year factors, as well as specific student and school characteristics including race, English learner, low family income, school budget, and student-to-teacher ratios.

We find that in years when a school contracts with a healthy lunch company, students at the school score better on end-of-year academic tests. On average, student test scores are 0.03 to 0.04 standard deviations higher (about 4 percentile points). Not only that, the test score increases are about 40 percent larger for students who qualify for reduced-price or free school lunches. These students are also the ones who are most likely to eat the school lunches.

Moreover, we find no evidence that contracting with a private company to provide healthier meals changes the number of school lunches sold. This is important for two reasons. First, it reinforces our conclusion that the test score improvements we measure are being driven by differences in food quality, and not food quantity. A number of recent studies have shown that providing (potentially) hungry kids with greater access to food through the National School Lunch Program can lead to improved test scores. We are among the very few studies to focus on quality, rather than food quantity (i.e., calories). Second, some critics of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act worried that by raising the nutritional standards of school lunches that fewer children would eat the food, thereby unintentionally harming the students that the law was designed to help. Our results provide some reassurance that this is not likely to be the case.

Finally, we also examine whether healthier school lunches lead to a reduction in the number of overweight students. We follow previous literature and use whether a student’s body composition (i.e. body fat) is measured to be outside the healthy zone on the Presidential Fitness Test . We find no evidence that having a healthier school lunch reduces the number of overweight students. There are a few possible interpretations of this finding, including that a longer time period may be necessary to observe improvements in health, the measure of overweight is too imprecise, or that students are eating the same amount of calories due to National School Lunch Program calorie meal targets.

Education researchers have emphasized the need and opportunity for cost-effective education policies . While the test score improvements are modest in size, providing healthier school lunches is potentially a very cost-effective way for a school to improve student learning. Using actual meal contract bid information we estimate that it costs approximately an additional $80 per student per year to contract with one of the healthy school lunch providers relative to preparing the meals completely in-house.

While this may seem expensive at first, compare the cost-effectiveness of our estimated test score changes with other policies. A common benchmark is the Tennessee Star experiment , which found a large reduction in the class size of grades K-3 by one-third correlated with a 0.22 standard deviation test score increase. This reduction cost over $2,000 when the study was published in 1999, and would be even more today. It is (rightfully) expensive to hire more teachers, but scaling this benefit-cost ratio to achieve a bump in student learning gains equal to our estimates, we find class-size increases would be at least five times more expensive than healthier lunches.

Thus, increasing the nutritional quality of school meals appears to be a promising, cost-effective way to improve student learning. The value of providing healthier public school lunches is true even without accounting for the potential short- and long-term health benefits, such as a reduction in childhood obesity and the development of healthier lifelong eating habits. Our results cast doubt on the wisdom of the recently announced proposal by Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue to roll back some of the school lunch health requirements implemented as part of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.

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What Are School Cafeterias Really Like? We Asked 400+ Kids and Grown-Ups.

Our Reimagining School Cafeterias report illustrates what’s happening in cafeterias nationwide—both the shared challenges and the exciting opportunities.

“If you had a magic wand, what would you change about your school cafeteria?”

That’s one of the questions we asked students, teachers, school nutrition staff, and other people you’d find in the cafeteria on a school day.

For six months, FoodCorps’ program innovation team immersed ourselves in school cafeterias and communities across the country. These insights are the foundation of Reimagining School Cafeterias , a FoodCorps initiative in partnership with sweetgreen to give kids more choices in the cafeteria—from the way the space looks and feels to the food they eat.

Today, we’re proud to share the findings of our Reimagining School Cafeterias report —and what’s coming next. 

What We Asked

The school lunchroom is a place where kids can take a break from their lessons, build relationships, and leave feeling wholly nourished. At FoodCorps, we believe cafeterias contain a world of potential—and deserve our attention.

That’s why, from December 2017 to May 2018, we set out to hear from school communities on how we might reimagine the cafeteria experience together. We used a human-centered design approach, which means we prioritized the input of those who would be most impacted by the project: students, cafeteria staff, teachers, and administrators.

How might we provide students with a greater diversity of tasty, culturally appropriate meal options without adding to the workload of school nutrition staff?

To achieve this goal, we spoke to more than 300 students and 100 adults in nine school communities across the country. Schools were selected based on a number of factors, from the size of the student population to the characteristics of the cafeteria. We gathered insights in one-on-one conversations, small group discussions, and by observing mealtimes. 

We also sought additional research to supplement the conversations. To give our findings more context, we looked to existing academic research, behavioral science insights, restaurant professionals, and national experts in school nutrition. 

What We Learned

After visiting lunchrooms from Arkansas to the District of Columbia to the Navajo Nation, we have come to understand that kids see cafeterias not just as places for eating, but for building community, connection, identity, agency, values, and culture. 

FoodCorps synthesized what we heard into more than 40 opportunity areas for improving the cafeteria experience. The report reviews the 13 most frequently discussed topics in order of how often they were mentioned.

The most talked-about issues we heard from school community stakeholders: 

• Lunch as social time. For students, lunchtime is a break from the classroom and a chance to catch up with friends. But cafeterias can get loud—“decibel levels over the OSHA limit” loud—and adults sometimes turn to strict rules to keep order. 
• The menu. Students want tasty food that reminds them of what they eat at home, but menus have to comply with policies guiding what schools can serve. The result: The same few approved meals, over and over. “We meet federal standards and give them calories—but it’s not something I celebrate,” said one principal.
• The cafeteria environment. Cafeterias should be inviting, joyful spaces, but many of them are not designed for pleasing aesthetics or comfortable student seating. Instead, some school community members described cafeterias as “crowded,” “dirty,” and in need of “more color” and “better lighting.” 

The report shares findings from 10 other major opportunity areas, including food waste, home culture, the length of lunchtime, and more. These findings paint a picture of what’s happening in cafeterias nationwide—both the shared challenges and the exciting chance to reimagine school cafeterias as places of inclusivity. 

What’s Next

Kids want to be heard, and their perspective is clear. Students need—and value—the break from academic learning that lunchtime provides. They also want a cafeteria experience that gives them agency and choice and that reflects where they come from. That’s why we’re turning their insights into action. 

How might we cultivate a cafeteria environment where students can socialize and relax without it feeling out of control for them or adults?

This fall, in partnership with sweetgreen, FoodCorps will pilot three concepts in 15 schools across the country based on the feedback we heard during the research process. They include:

• Tasty Challenge: A taste-testing model that includes preparing vegetables in different ways and encouraging students to try them all and choose a favorite;
• Flavor Bar: A self-serve station in the cafeteria where students can customize their meal with toppings like spices and sauces; and 
• Our Cafeteria Project: A program elevating student voice and choice, where students lead discussions around how they want the cafeteria to feel and sound, and schools work with kids to make it happen. 

The learnings from this pilot year will inform the expansion of these initiatives into 50 schools in the 2020-2021 school year. 

Changing school cafeterias for the better requires a collective effort. How can you get involved? 

If you’re a student: Your voice matters! If you have thoughts on how to improve your cafeteria, share them with your student council, principal, cafeteria manager, or school nutrition director. 

If you’re a parent: Have lunch with your child(ren) in the cafeteria to better understand their experience. Then, meet with school cafeteria staff to learn how you can support them. 

If you work in a school: Find ways for school nutrition staff to collaborate with other school staff on a shared vision for the cafeteria! Celebrate National School Lunch Week and National School Breakfast Week as a school community, host welcome meals for teacher trainings, or involve cafeteria staff in school spirit days. 

If you’re a FoodCorps supporter: Sign up for our mailing list to get the latest updates about Reimagining School Cafeterias. You can also learn more about the world of school nutrition at the FoodCorps blog . 

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Getting a Better School Lunch

By working with schools, parents can make their kids’ cafeteria lunches healthier and more planet-friendly.

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Picture a school cafeteria lunch. What comes to mind? Pizza, Tater Tots, chicken nuggets? The quality of school food has improved in the last 20 years­—thanks in large part to 2010’s Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act , which mandates that schools serve a fruit and vegetable every day, increase the number of whole-grain foods, and limit trans fats and sodium. Of course, there’s still work to be done. “Many schools are still hard at work increasing fruits and veggies and phasing out more processed foods,” says Margaret Brown , an NRDC staff attorney who spearheads NRDC’s regional food efforts and is working closely with the Urban School Food Alliance, a nonprofit coalition of six of the largest school districts in the United States.

And the potential health impact of improving school meals is enormous. Some 32 million kids eat school meals every day, and for many low-income students, those meals supply more than half their daily calories. And the waste created by all-too-common polystyrene trays is adding to the already-astronomical pollution in our waterways.

It’s great to get excited about making change in your child’s school, but before you march into the principal’s office or a PTA meeting, do your homework. “Talk to the administrators who are involved in food-related decision-making—often the school food director—and ask how the process works and what they’re up against,” Brown says. With an average of $1.30 to spend per child, most public schools face significant challenges. So build relationships first. Then ask, How can I help? “Most schools want to make healthy changes and would welcome parents’ assistance,” Brown says. Here’s where to start.

Strive for a salad bar.

“Getting kids to eat more vegetables and fruits is something we can all get behind,” Brown says. “Salad bars are usually a huge hit because kids like to choose what they eat,” (To reduce waste, suggest posting a sign saying ‘Take What You Want, But Eat What You Take.’) Because the equipment for a salad bar can cost $3,000 or more, you may need to get creative on funding. “I did a lot of grant writing and talked to any business owner who would listen. A lot of them donated funds,” says Jessica Shelly, food services director for Cincinnati Public Schools, which installed salad bars in every one of its schools in less than a year. Let’s Move Salad Bars to Schools, an alliance among chef Ann Cooper and produce associations and grocers whose goal is to have a salad bar in every school in the country, offers additional suggestions .

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Check out new vendors.

To improve the quality of cafeteria food in general, visit Focus on the Plate , which lists 50 healthy food products, like poultry free of unnecessary antibiotics and vegetarian burritos as well as the suppliers that offer them. “More and more companies are offering healthier options,” says Kathy Lawrence, cofounder of Focus on the Plate’s parent organization, School Food Focus , which links school districts with healthy food producers and suppliers. “Parents can make a big impact by researching local or regional proprietors who are willing to work within the school’s budget.” Or encourage your school to offer one plant-based entrée every day by sharing recipes and testing them with the staff, suggests Amie Hamlin, executive director of the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food, which has 13 plant-based, kid-approved recipes of its own.

Get fresh and (really) local.

Building a garden has significant upfront costs—as much as $40,000—but a surprising number of companies have made a practice of contributing funding to schools willing to take on the challenge, including Whole Foods and Lowe’s, says Lisa Ely, a mother and TV producer in Valencia, California, who consults with schools on how to build gardens. “I’ve found that the best way to sell schools on the idea is to help them see it as a learning tool for kids, as well as a potential resource for the cafeteria,” she says. “You can get PTAs interested by telling them about research showing that kids who spend 20 minutes outside are better able to focus.” Also, she says, when kids plant and harvest the produce themselves, they’re more likely to eat it.

Lengthen lunchtime.

Fitting lunch into the school day can be a struggle for many schools—kids may get only 20 minutes for lunch or eat as early as 10:45 a.m. “It’s hard to get kids excited about eating their fruits and vegetables when they aren’t hungry yet or simply don’t have the time,” says Brown. One way to ensure that kids are hungry when they hit the cafeteria: Ask your school district to schedule recess before lunch, Lawrence suggests. ( Peaceful Playgrounds offers helpful guidance.) In 2014, researchers at Cornell University found that students who had recess first ate 54 percent more fruits and vegetables compared with those who had lunch first. If your school has 20 minutes or fewer for lunch, convince the principal, school board, and other parents that it should be extended by at least 10 minutes; studies also show that kids eat more—and healthier—food when they have more time.

Slash waste.

The first step is a messy one: Sort the cafeteria’s garbage and do a waste audit, so you know what’s being thrown away, suggests Debby Lee Cohen, founder of Cafeteria Culture , an organization aiming to achieve zero-waste school cafeterias. What you’re likely to find: lots of polystyrene trays. “There are 30 million or so daily meals served in U.S. schools—many of those trays end up contributing to the 270 million metric tons of plastic floating in our oceans,” Cohen says. Replacing trays with reusable dishes is the ideal solution, but Cohen points out that many schools no longer have dishwashers. Push for compostable paper food boats (imagine what ballpark hot dogs are served in), even for just one day a week. “When we started Trayless Tuesdays in New York City, we reduced the waste by 20 percent,” she says. "Paper boats cost 3 to 4 cents a piece, about the same as polystyrene." Compostable trays that look more like regular lunch trays are about twice as expensive, so you may need to fund-raise to pay for it, or band together with other districts to lower the price by increasing your purchasing power. The success of Trayless Tuesdays in 2010 led the city to completely eliminate polystyrene foam from schools and other restaurants citywide in 2015. And with NRDC’s assistance, all of the Urban School Food Alliance cities have also committed to ditching polystyrene trays for compostable plates . (For ideas and inspiration, check out Cafeteria Culture’s Sort2Save program.)

Focus on flavor.

Back to that garbage audit. You’ll also likely find lots of uneaten food. And this raises an important point: Serving healthy meals is only half the battle. It needs to taste good, too. Revamping the menu with input from a talented local chef can significantly increase students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables, according to 2015 research at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Wellness in the Schools has chefs that will come to schools in New York, New Jersey, Florida, and California and teach the existing kitchen staff how to create nutritious fare that kids will gobble up.

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Why School Meals Matter

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), childhood obesity has more than doubled in children and quadrupled in adolescents in the past 30 years. Weight statistics for children are approaching that of adults: 1 in 3 children is now overweight or obese. Studies have also shown a rising prevalence of type 1 and 2 diabetes in adolescents ages 10 through 19 years, with increasing obesity cited as a key contributor. [1]

On a positive note, the CDC showed a significant 40% decline in obesity rates from 2003 to 2012 in younger children ages 2 to 5 years. [2] Another CDC report revealed a decline in obesity rates among low-income children ages 2 to 4 years participating in federal nutrition programs. [3] Authors from both studies discussed the likely impact of early education programs focusing on improved nutrition and exercise standards, as guided by the HHFKA.

Despite some anecdotal reports in the media that fruits and vegetables from these new updated school meals were ending up in the trash, two studies discovered the opposite. In 2014, Cohen at al. found that children were eating more of their entrees and selecting and eating more fruit. [4] In 2015, Schwartz et al. followed more than 500 children in urban schools in grades 5 through 7, comparing before and after pictures and weights of their school lunches. [5] They found that after two years there was a 19% increase in vegetable intake. Though the amount of fruit eaten did not change, 12% more children were selecting fruits as part of their lunch tray. The authors noted that a greater variety of fruits had been made available, which may have encouraged the children to choose fruit.

Healthier choices throughout the school day

According to standards that went into effect in 2016, a Smart Snack must be one of the following:

• A grain product that contains 50 percent or more whole grains by weight (i.e., lists a whole grain as the first ingredient)
• Have as the first ingredient a fruit, a vegetable, a dairy product, or a protein food
• A combination food that contains at least ¼ cup of fruit and/or vegetable

The snack must also meet specific  nutrient standards for calories, sodium, sugar, and fats per serving.

When it comes to drinks, allowed beverages include the following:

• Plain water (with or without carbonation)
• Unflavored low fat milk
• Unflavored or flavored fat-free milk and milk alternatives
• 100% fruit or vegetable juice
• Calorie-free, flavored water (with or without carbonation)
• Flavored and/or carbonated beverages that contain less than 5 calories per 8 fluid ounces or ≤10 calories per 20 fluid ounces.

Further modifications beyond these school food standards might include eliminating flavored, sweetened milks and offering only plain milk; limiting fruit juice; providing entrees of poultry, fish, and beans more often than red meat and processed meats; and replacing solid fats with healthful oils such as canola, sunflower, and olive oil when preparing food, salad dressings and sauces.

Parent Tip: How do I know my child is eating their school lunch?

• An important step is to involve your child with meal decisions and maintain an encouraging and non-judgmental attitude to foster open dialogue.
• Most schools provide monthly calendars of their school lunch offerings that include the main meal and alternatives. Discuss each of the choices with your child and highlight the specific foods in the meal they like, dislike, or aren’t sure of. After school, ask what foods they ate and didn’t eat and why. This can help to plan their future meals and snacks.
• Pack nutritious snacks of string cheese, sunflower or pumpkin seeds, whole or chopped fruit, and cut up vegetables that your child enjoys in case they don’t finish the school lunch offering one day. As children respond positively to variety [5], periodically change up the types of fruits and vegetables in their snack bag.

• If your child does not consume foods offered at school, here are some tips and inspiration for preparing healthy lunchboxes and snack ideas.
• Dabelea, D., et al. Prevalence of Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes Among Children and Adolescents From 2001 to 2009. JAMA , 2014. 311(17): p. 1778-86.
• Ogden, C.L., et al. Prevalence of Childhood and Adult Obesity in the United States, 2011-2012. JAMA, 2014;311(8):806-14.
• Vital Signs: Obesity Among Low-Income, Preschool-Aged Children—United States, 2008–2011. MMWR, 2013;62(31);629-34.
• Cohen, J., et al. Impact of the New U.S. Department of Agriculture School Meal Standards on Food Selection, Consumption, and Waste.  Am J Prev Med, 2014;46(4):388-94.
• Schwartz Marlene B., et al. New School Meal Regulations Increase Fruit Consumption and Do Not Increase Total Plate Waste. Childhood Obesity, 2015;11(3): 242-7.

ARTS & CULTURE

Inviting writing: mastering the school cafeteria.

Over the course of 12 years of eating with fellow classmates, any student can learn a set of new life skills

For this month’s Inviting Writing series, we asked you for personal stories about cafeteria culture : the sights, smells, rituals and survival tactics of shared mealtime. Our first essay comes from Katherine Krein of Sterling, Virginia, who works in a middle school in the special education department, helping students in math and science classes. She charts the skills one learns to master over time as the cafeteria poses new and more elaborate challenges.

Learning Cafeteria Culture, Grade by Grade

By Katherine Krein

School cafeterias from my youth are first remembered by their artifacts. I can visualize several things: the hard and heavy rectangular trays, the substantial metal silverware, the breakable plates filled with food, the little milk cartons, and the thin plastic straws. Lunch was paid for with change in our pockets or purses. Learning how to carry the heavy tray in order to balance the plate of food, silverware, and milk was a proud accomplishment for me as a young girl.

Social navigation was the next thing that had to be learned. You had to make friends and form a pact that you would sit together day after day. This could be hard at first if you were the new kid in town. My family moved about every two years throughout my elementary schooling, so I had to be brave and friendly. Trying to fit in would sometimes put me in a morally uncomfortable position. I have a recollection of making friends with a group of girls whose leader was a little mean. I remember one day she put potato chips in the seat of an overweight girl. When the girl sat down and flattened the chips everyone, including me, giggled. This memory still haunts me and fills me with shame.

By junior high school everything became smoother. I had grown, and carrying the full heavy tray became easy. My father’s job no longer required us to move, and we settled into our social surroundings. Knowing where to sit in the cafeteria became routine, and it no longer filled me with uncertainty. But social faux pas were still rather common. I remember sitting across the table from my friend Lisa when somehow milk came shooting out from my straw and ended up in Lisa’s face and hair. I’m not sure how this all transpired, but I am sure that I must have been doing something unladylike. Lisa did not speak to me for the rest of the day, and later in the week she got revenge by flinging peas in my hair and face. We remained friends through it all.

In high school, manners and appearances became more important as I began to view boys in a new way, and I began to notice them noticing me in a different way. Keith was a boy my age who I thought was very cute, and we were sitting across the table from one another. He was playing with his ketchup packet as we talked and flirted, and in an instant the packet burst. Ketchup squirted in my hair and on my face. Shock and surprise turned into laughter. What else could I do? We did end up dating for a while until my interest moved on.

I can barely remember specific foods from my K-12 cafeteria days. In California I loved the cafeteria burritos. Fish was frequently served on Fridays. Pizza is remembered from high school because my sister, two years older than me, could count on me to give her half of mine. Last but not least are memories of the mouth-watering, gooey, sugary and aromatic cinnamon buns. Eating them was such a sensory and sensuous experience.

I have a theory about why I don’t remember more about the food. As a student my brain was bombarded with numerous new and nervous social situations, and I was busy trying to analyze and remember new and complex ideas. Eating was a response to being in the cafeteria, and my primary consciousness was busy with socialization and academic learning. Eating did not require much of my thought.

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School Cafeteria Report

Updated 26 July 2023

Subject Learning

Downloads 25

Category Education ,  Food

Topic University ,  Student ,  Healthy Food

This report has been created to illustrate the current state of the USD Campus canteen as well as any required recommendations for the change that may be implemented. The canteen is in poor shape and does not have enough food to satisfy the needs of those who frequent it.Therefore, the state of the canteen is a significant issue for the entire college, and in recent months, everyone has been concerned about raising its quality to the maximum. In order to prevent the consumption of unhealthy food, the atmosphere in the canteen must be improved immediately. The students might suffer long-term health issues due to eating poorly prepared or cooked food. For example, the amount of money students have at their disposal for spending while on campus is limited and cannot guarantee them food from hotels. Learning institutions are the source of the chefs and health officers. When a working environment within the place of study is maintained clean and the required standards applied, the students will aim to become the same when they complete the courses. Despite students being seasonal clients to the cafeteria owners, the quality of food must be maintained and observed as required.

Table of Contents

Cafeteria Food 1

Introduction 1

The Issues and Problems of Cafeteria Food 1

Unhealthy Food 2

Cause and Effects 2

Less Variety of Food 3

Prison Food Vender 4

The Cost of Incarceration 4

Prison Privatization 5

The Quality of the Food 6

Food Presentation 6

Existing Condition 7

Complains 7

Prison Industries and Inmate Labor 8

Recommendations 9

Conclusions 9

Appendix A: Title of Appendix A 10

Appendix B: Title of Appendix B 10

References 12

Cafeteria Food

Introduction

Implementation of health has the objective to achieve the ability of healthy life for every human being. Their ability to live a healthy life is a major requirement for achieving optimal health status, which in turn produce quality human resources. On campus, a person that includes a group of people who was eighteen to twenty-one years is a particularly vulnerable group that is in its infancy. A study towards the establishment of a healthy lifestyle is an important. First, the health coaching needs to be implemented by us who preparing or serving the food. The growth and development of learners are influenced by the presentation of a healthy diet. Presentation of healthy foods needs to be considered well that people are not enabled to do that. However, in our schools still do not pay attention to healthy foods for students. It can be seen from unhealthy foods that we have in the school. Students can only judge and like the food from the outside shape such as colors are so tempting and large sizes at the same cost. As a result, the student becomes susceptible to disease because these foods. Furthermore, is not just a cause of disease, it caused ineffective for students to focus on study (Shannon, Story, Fulkerson, & French, 2002). Second, the variety of MUC food is not much choice. Students get tired of eating the same food every day. The reality of the need for taking action from the school. One of them serves the functioning of the teacher's role in a healthy diet. With that growth and development of learners is not neglected.

The Issues and Problems of Cafeteria Food

Cafeteria food is cooked in recipes that are followed by the type of food listed on the menu. However, the whole process does not favor everyone who orders the food. Some of the spices and other ingredients used are not used by all the people. The effects of the spices used are the causes of some diseases like cancer (Cohen, Richardson, Parker, Catalano, & Rimm, 2014). Also, the major problem with cafeteria food in cleanliness of the utensils and the hygiene of the cooks. The water used for rinsing utensil can be recycled hence the cause of germs.

Unhealthy Food

Edible substances can turn to be unhealthy when the process of preparation is not good or the additives used are harmful. For example, most of the fast foods are prepared with less time, the ingredients contain a lot of cooing oil, and the effect in the body is the increase in weight. However, obesity attacks the people who like junk food (Niebylski, Redburn, Duhaney, & Campbell, 2015). Unhealthy food is the result of cutting shortcuts into the preparation of food or the use of food in the wrong state. For example, some of the ingredients need to be cooked for specific temperatures and at regulating heat. However, if a person cooks food that requires a certain quantity of heat using the wrong heat quantity and the wrong temperatures, the food served will not be up to the standards hence may cause problems with the health of the consumer.

Cause and Effects

The causes of unhealthy food include:

Poor handling procedures

Poor storage facilities and storage in poor conditions

Incorrect cooking procedure

The use of too much of certain ingredients due to lack of knowledge or desire to get a desired taste

Lack of knowledge in the preparation of food that result to wrong results of the food

The effects of unhealthy food

Unhealthy food results into many complications to the body of the consumer. Many students supper from stomach upsets, diarrhea, headache, and allergies. Students suffer from rashes due to the consumption of the food served at the cafeteria. The chefs ignore the rules that should be followed while preparing the meals. For example, utensils are rinsed using dirty water. The dirty water is due to the use while in a packet or basin that has set water rather than using water from a running tap. The measures of minimizing the cost of water results in the spread of disease causing germs to students through using utensils those are not clean.

Unhealthy food causes restlessness to the students, hence lowers concentration in lessons. For example, a student with a stomachache or headache cannot pay attention in class due to the feeling. However, the unhealthy food causes a lack of concentration that leads to failure in exams. The failure is the result of not paying attention due to health issues caused by the food consumed.

Less Variety of Food

The variety of food served at campus cafeteria is of less variety. The variety is chosen according to the cooking time it takes and the cost of the ingredients. However, diet is not very much considered due to the people running the cafes are profit oriented. In fact, some of the people who own the cafeteria do not eat the food they sell, some carry packed food while they sell food. The reason for doing so is because the food served is not in line with the dietary regulations and most of it is junk food. For example, crisps and fried chicken everyday leads to people becoming obese.

Some of the beverages served in the cafeteria are soda and blended juice that is not fully processed to make it smooth. The students have to buy regardless of the quality due to the bargaining power of the less money. Apart from the less cash, the students have at their disposal for buying food; most of them do prefer eating from the cafes to cooking. The facilities are provided that accommodate cooking in the hostels, but the time taken to prepare meals and wash utensils makes students lazy hence opting for read food.

Prison Food Vender

Prison food vendors are contracted agencies that offer food services to prisons. However, the services have encouraged to the privatization of prisons to incorporate shelter and clothing services. The major aim of contracting agencies to offer the services is the congestion in public prisons. For example, Aramark Corporation is one of the best companies contracted by the government to offer the services to prisoners. The food vendors have opened the way to privatizing prisons and helping the government to cut the incarceration costs.

The Cost of Incarceration

The cost of operating and running prisons was on a steady rise in the year 1988 – 2008. In many states, over 10% of the tax revenue was spent on confinement. Much of the money was used in the daily operations of the prisons. As a result, the wages of the staff working in the prisons was not factored in the 10% tax dollars spent to the prisons. In evaluating the cost of running the prisons and maintaining the required standards, the United States government decided to lease cheap labor that can work in the prisons. The sourced labor is poorly remunerated, and the working conditions are not considered much as they would have treated the White prison waders.

According to statistics, only sixteen states spent an average of 5% or less in the maintenance of prisons, the rest of the other states were spending 5-7% of the tax dollars to the prisons. As much as the tax money was used in running the operations in the prisons, the consideration of inflation was not calculated hence the revenue collected ended up not being enough for the government running needs. In curbing the high cost of the prisons, the people convicted of crimes are expected to work under the rules and requirements of the set prison. The participation of community work and other in house chores are meant to reduce the wages cost as the inmates will need not to be paid in return for the work done. The work, the prisoners, are required to do is assumed part of the punishment.

Basing on research that was done in 2007 in comparison with the figures obtained from the year 2004, the cost of ensuring that the incarcerated individuals are up to date was $23 billion compared to a lower expense on catering for the younger inmates who cost $10 billion. When a government spends a lot on projects that d not pay back, the economy is expected to decline and experience deficits in the national budget as a whole. Calls by citizens and other leaders have been to release the elderly inmates because of the long served terms or the age limit (Watts, 1990). For example, a person that has been imprisoned for more than 20 years and the person is aged above 50 years should be released and checked upon to ensure that the crime mentality evaded from the individual. The idea of not retaining elderly inmates is to decongest the prisons and lower the maintenance costs that are taking a large portion of the state and government revenues that could be used to finance development projects. The idea of privatizing prison is to cut the cost and ensure that the required basics are met.

Prison Privatization

Many companies are involved in privatizing of prisons in the United States of America, but only two are the major contributors that are well known. The two corporations are CCA and Geo Group. Business entities are established with the objective of making a profit. The two companies, CCA and Geo Group, realized a gross profit of approximately $3 billion in the year 2009. In the past years of the 1990s, the cost of maintaining prison operations was estimated to be $8 billion per financial year. However, over the years, the cost has risen to over $70 billion by the research done in the year 2007. Handling prison services has turned to be a great business opportunity that people are venturing into as they help state governments in the operations and control of the inmates (Morris, & Price, (n.d.). The management of food, shelter, and clothing to the prisons has opened a way for business people to get access to billions f dollars that are budgeted for the incarceration.

The Quality of the Food

The food served to prisoners has raised concern over time. The food served does not meet the standards hence audits have had to be done by private companies to establish the quality of the food. On a recent survey, a larva was found on a tray that was facilitated a maggot found in a turkey roll that was served to prisoners. Despite the maggot served food, the issue was resolved and more precautionary measures put in place to ensure the quality of the food is met based on the dietary standards (Chen, 2014).

Most kitchens contain mice, fruit flies, and spoiled food on the shelves that is used to serve inmate in prison. The clearance of such mess is recommended by Aramark Corporation and teaching the employees on better way of serving food and avoiding spoiled food stored on the shelves. Despite many strategies laid down for improving the prison sector on food and other services, the process has shown no positive progress as the inmates continue being served poor quality food that does not meet dietary standards.

Food Presentation

The settings in cafeteria and prisons are poorly managed as the utensils and other serving facilities are of poor quality. For example, campus cafeteria uses disposable utensils that turn to dirt the environment as well as causing pollution to the dumping sites as the material used to make the utensils does not decompose. However, some of the prisons serve meals on very old items that drip soup and the cups are very small that the prisoners cannot get enough food.

Generally, the food presentation is poor. To manage the issue, a set of rules should be implemented that can describe the kind of tools and equipment to be used by the people to help make the service delivery of high quality. The cooking oil/fat used in the cafeteria is recycled (Davis, Lockwood, Pantelidis, & Alcott, 2013). The recycling process contributes to contamination with disease causing germs and lead to food poisoning when the food is consumed.

Existing Condition

The existing conditions in prisons and schools are not well managed. The services provided are poor and the quality of the food is not up to standards. Some of the cafeteria managers have no cooking knowledge; they do open the cafes as they could open shops and run them locally. The people running such kind of business should be required to produce cooking classes certifications before granted the opportunity to open such businesses (Levy, Riis, Sonnenberg, Barraclough, & Thorndike, 2012). People with relevant knowledge in a certain field can help to offer quality services and correct diet.

Most of the inmates complain of less food served and poorly cooked. The food does not only make them survive but the energy required to perform assigned tasks is not enabled through the diet served. The people contracted to offer services to prisoners privately make use of free labor from the inmates and at times, the pay made to them is minimal compared to the work (Chriqui, Pickel, & Story, 2014). The complains raise the issue of prison labor and industries.

Prison Industries and Inmate Labor

Entities, companies, and corporations have ventured into the system of using cheap labor offered by the inmates in the prisons. The incarceration of inmates made people running private prisons to benefit from the high profits realized from the products made and services provided by the inmates (Price, 2002). During the 1980s, only one private prison was in operation. The inmates from the prisons were delegated duties t perform and produce products that were supplied to the market. Since the inmates were being kept waiting for the time of release or the time of their cases were heard in court, the services they provide were not well remunerated because they are commanded to do as they are required by the officials in charge (Wallis, January 01, 1999).

When the federal government realized that the cheap labor in the prisons was benefiting a few people, an agreement was made between the private sector of prisons and the state prison industry. After the agreement, the private prisons sector was allowed to access cheap labor from the prison patricians and release the products to the open market in the United States of America (Million, 2000). The expansion of prisons to the hands of private investors was a way to get access to labor that could be used to produce more products to the market and increase revenue through the sales. So much was offered by the inmates apart from the provision of cheap labor. Also, professional help was offered through the prisons. “In addition, NCIA Administers the Training and Technical Assistance Project of The Private Sector/Prison Industry Enhancement Certification Program (PIECP) for the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance. Activities under the PIECP grant program include: conducting reviews of PIECP programs and cost accounting center; providing technical support to PIECP applicants and programs via electronic means and our website.”

Recommendations

Incarcerated people and students need to be served meals of specific types. As a measure to ensure that the standards are met, the responsible authorities should follow some of the recommendations in improving the sector of cafeteria food and incarcerated people (Hanks, Just, Smith, & Wansink, 2012). The recommendations include:

Access to the food facility systems to be improved and set according to the current standards to incorporate the formal and informal systems. The environment should be kept clean and equipped with professionals.

The food choices in prisons should be selected based on gender and ethnicity. Some of the food served is best for certain gender. For example, fast food is best recommended for women where as main meals are for male.

Staff members should be rained on the recommended standards and the quality of meals to be served to the inmates and students. The learning institutions for example require food that will improve the mental activity of students.

Conclusions

The process of making change to the kind of food served in prison and cafeteria is through questioning the people served on what they eat. The nutritional landscape should be understood among the people and the hygiene standards improved to enable serving of food from clean places and cooking the right diet for the people (Cluss, Fee, Culyba, Bhat, & Owen, 2014). The people that need to be given the information regarding the quality of food served are the staff, inmates, and correctional staff in all the regions where such services are offered. The recovery plans to the sector of correctional facilities and prisons should be monitored closely to avoid poor quality meals and maintain a healthy diet structure.

School cafeterias food presentation

Appendix B: Title of Appendix B

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Prison records

Chen, Y. (2014). Research on food health problems in sports school from the perspective of food safety. BioTechnology: An Indian Journal, 10(9).

Chriqui, J. F., Pickel, M., & Story, M. (2014). Influence of school competitive food and beverage policies on obesity, consumption, and availability: a systematic review. JAMA pediatrics, 168(3), 279-286.

Cluss, P. A., Fee, L., Culyba, R. J., Bhat, K. B., & Owen, K. (2014). Effect of food service nutrition improvements on elementary school cafeteria lunch purchase patterns. Journal of School Health, 84(6), 355-362.

Cohen, J. F., Richardson, S., Parker, E., Catalano, P. J., & Rimm, E. B. (2014). Impact of the new US Department of Agriculture school meal standards on food selection, consumption, and waste. American journal of preventive medicine, 46(4), 388-394.

Davis, B., Lockwood, A., Pantelidis, I., & Alcott, P. (2013). Food and beverage management. R

Hanks, A. S., Just, D. R., Smith, L. E., & Wansink, B. (2012). Healthy convenience: nudging students toward healthier choices in the lunchroom. Journal of Public Health, fds003.

Levy, D. E., Riis, J., Sonnenberg, L. M., Barraclough, S. J., & Thorndike, A. N. (2012). Food choices of minority and low-income employees: a cafeteria intervention. American journal of preventive medicine, 43(3), 240-248.

Million, K. L. (2000). Prison privatization.

Morris, J. C., & Price, B. E. (n.d.). Prison Privatization. Praeger.

Niebylski, M. L., Redburn, K. A., Duhaney, T., & Campbell, N. R. (2015). Healthy food subsidies and unhealthy food taxation: A systematic review of the evidence. Nutrition, 31(6), 787-795.

Price, B. E. (2002). Economics, ideology, politics, and profits: What drives prison privatization?

Shannon, C., Story, M., Fulkerson, J. A., & French, S. A. (2002). Factors in the school cafeteria influencing food choices by high school students. Journal of School Health, 72(6), 229-234.

Wallis, V. (January 01, 1999). The US left since 1968: Decline or growth?. New Political Science, 21, 3, 365-376.

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The Surprising Connection Between Universal School Meals and Student Discipline

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For Raniya Fisher, a senior at Ridgeland High School in Mississippi, lunchtime is about more than eating, it’s a time to recharge and build relationships.

Raniya, who plays basketball, eats in the gym with her teammates as way to build team cohesion. But she still goes to the cafeteria for a free meal, where she looks forward to her daily chats with the lunch ladies.

Raniya qualifies for free- and reduced-priced lunch, but she knows people at her school who don’t and struggle to afford lunch. She thinks school meals should be free for everyone.

“If you don’t eat at lunch you are just starving, and little things like that are a distraction,” she said. “The teacher could ask you one simple question, and you get mad, and you could get in it with the teacher because you didn’t eat lunch! You might be a little sleepy, but [when] you’re full, you’re in a positive attitude and ready to do your work.”

Now, a body of research supports the idea that giving free school meals to all students can be an important ingredient to nurturing a healthy school climate. Among new significant findings: The policy is linked to lower discipline rates among students because it reduces the stigma around receiving subsidized meals.

Whether it’s from the sustenance or the sense of community they provide, universal lunch appears to support many of the factors that make for a positive school climate, such as reducing discipline rates, tamping down on bullying, improving attendance, and alleviating the stigma for students from low-income families.

“There is a very important social dimension, which is when you are in the lunchroom, [universal meals] take away this mechanism of pointing out who is poor,” said Amy Schwartz, a professor in Joseph R. Biden School of Public Policy and Administration at the University of Delaware. “Instead, you say, ‘we’re at school, we eat together, and this is what we eat.”

Students who are hungry have a harder time paying attention, and are more likely to act up in class, which affects both their ability to learn and behave, said Schwartz, who has studied the effects of universal free school meal programs in New York City. And there are a lot of students whose families make too much money to qualify for free- and reduced-priced meals but still struggle to afford food.

Taking away that stigma of qualifying for free and reduced priced meals may also drive down discipline rates.

Students—and teachers—can usually figure out who is getting subsidized meals from school, said Thurston Domina, a professor at the University of North Carolina’s school of education.

“We’ve got good research to suggest that students see that and that they associate school meals with poverty,” Domina said. “And we’ve got good research to suggest that stigma associated with poverty carries with students throughout the school day.”

Changing behavior—and perceptions

To isolate whether the stigma of receiving free and reduced priced meals played a role in discipline rates , Domina and researchers from the U.S. Census Bureau examined schools in Oregon, comparing those that started offering universal free school meals through the federal school meals program’s community eligibility provision to those that did not. By linking school data on free and reduced-price lunch enrollment and discipline referrals to data from the census and tax records, they were able to get a granular look at how the policy affected different students.

Complicating matters, students who do qualify for free or subsidized meals may not be receiving them, and, conversely, sometimes students whose families are too wealthy to qualify still end up enrolled in the federal meal program.

Providing universal free meals had the biggest effect on discipline rates, lowering them among kids who had received free- and reduced-priced meals prior to the adoption of the policy, and regardless of whether they were actually low-income or not, Domina said. That means it’s likely that removing the stigma of being labeled a poor kid is what drove down suspensions among those kids.

Removing that label may affect students’ behavior, he said, but it can also change teachers’ perceptions of their students leading to fewer suspensions.

In Domina’s view, “I think our findings are really encouraging for efforts to get free meals to more students,” he said. “I think getting nutrition into kids’ bodies is just a good thing for a society to do. And I think that our research suggests that doing so can help create happier and healthier and more egalitarian social environments in schools.”

Universal free school meals can also help improve attendance rates, said Schwartz, for a couple of different reasons: Attending and eating at school means families spend less money on groceries at home. A positive lunchroom experience free of stigma contributes to a better social experience overall, which means they might be more likely to be engaged in school and show up, Schwartz said.

“This isn’t the solution to our attendance problem, this isn’t the silver bullet, but you expect that it would help. Free school meals are the gift that keeps on giving in a bunch of different dimensions,” she said.

Additional research has found that universal free lunches may reduce bullying. And all of that contributes to a positive school climate, Schwartz said.

Chris Young, the principal of North Country Union High School in rural Vermont, can’t think of a particular instance of a student getting bullied for eating school meals, but his sense is that students internalized the label that they were poor.

“It would be hard to connect what a student is feeling to any behaviors—it could go either way,” he said. “They might act out, but they might be much more likely to be withdrawn and go into their shell.”

Kids who don’t qualify for free school meals often brought leftovers from home or go out for fast food, while students from low-income families sat in the lunchroom with cafeteria trays, Young said.

But now his school provides free breakfast and lunch to all students regardless of income. Vermont is among a small number of states, including California, Minnesota, and Massachusetts, that adopted universal free school meals following the pandemic .

Now that meals are free for all students, even those kids who can afford to eat out usually opt for the free meal, Young said.

“Kids are like, oh, well, if the meal is free, I’m just doing [that],” he said, and it’s improving the school’s culture. “It’s much more of a community when more kids are taking advantage of the school lunch program.”

Using the lunchroom to improve school climate

Young has leveraged the lunchroom in other ways to bolster his schools’ climate. When students returned to full-time in-person learning following the pandemic, Young replaced the long lunch tables with circular ones to encourage more conversation and connection among students as they made the transition from remote and hybrid learning.

Finally, the universal policies can catch students who fall through the cracks of the current system, said Schwartz. That’s the case for Kearston May, another high school student at Ridgeland High School in Mississippi, who said she skips lunch when the balance on her school meal account is getting too high.

“Sometimes I have to pick and choose my battles based on what I have in my lunch account and what I have to do that day,” said Kearston, who is in 11th grade and plays on the school’s volleyball team.

“On my athletic days, I try my best to eat. We are doing running and weightlifting, and knowing from past experiences not having something in your stomach can be very challenging,” she said.

On the days she doesn’t eat lunch, Kearston said she is drained by the end of the school day. She is thankful that the lunch ladies give her food even when she is in debt and give her a heads-up when the balance is getting so high it might be a problem. Students in her situation, Kearston said, are going to struggle in school.

“They are not thinking about school, they are not willing to learn,” Kearston said. “I think a free meal is one less thing to worry about.”

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Another Red-Blue Divide: Money to Feed Kids in the Summer

Congress passed bipartisan legislation to provide families that rely on subsidized school meals with help buying food over the summer. Nearly half of Republican-led states have yet to sign on.

The rejection of federal aid for the Summer EBT program has parallels to the bitter fights over the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Credit... Madeline Cass for The New York Times

Supported by

By Jason DeParle

Reporting from Washington

• April 9, 2024

The governor was firm: Nebraska would reject the new federal money for summer meals. The state already fed a small number of children when schools closed. He would not sign on to a program to provide all families that received free or cut-rate school meals with cards to buy groceries during the summer.

“I don’t believe in welfare,” the governor, Jim Pillen, a Republican, said in December.

A group of low-income youths, in a face-to-face meeting, urged him to reconsider. One told him she had eaten less when schools were out. Another criticized the meals at the existing feeding sites and held a crustless prepackaged sandwich to argue that electronic benefit cards from the new federal program would offer better food and more choice.

“Sometimes money isn’t the solution,” the governor replied.

A week later, Mr. Pillen made a U-turn the size of a Nebraska cornfield, approving the cards and praising the young people for speaking out.

“This isn’t about me winning,” he said. “This is about coming to the conclusion of what is best for our kids.”

Mr. Pillen’s extraordinary reversal shows the conflicts shaping red-state views of federal aid: needs beckon, but suspicions run high of the Biden administration and programs that critics call handouts.

The new $2.5 billion program, known as Summer EBT, passed Congress with bipartisan support, and every Democratic governor will distribute the grocery cards this summer. But Republican governors are split, with 14 in, 13 out and no consensus on what constitutes conservative principle.

One red-state governor (Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas) hailed the cards as an answer to a disturbing problem. Another (Kim Reynolds of Iowa) warned that they might increase obesity. Some Republicans dismissed the program as obsolete pandemic aid. Some balked at the modest state matching costs. Others hinted they might join after taking more time to prepare.

The program will provide families about $40 a month for every child who receives free or reduced-price meals at school —$120 for the summer. The red-state refusals will keep aid from about 10 million children, about a third of those potentially eligible nationwide.

The rejection of federal aid has parallels to the bitter fights over the 2010 Affordable Care Act. Ten states, mostly Southern and low income, decline to run an expanded Medicaid program largely financed by Washington.

Still, some analysts find the rejection of the grocery cards surprising. Summer EBT is much cheaper for states than Medicaid, it passed Congress with Republican support and it grew from a pilot program widely deemed successful. Plus, it targets children.

“It should be less controversial than it’s been,” said Elaine Waxman, a hunger expert at the Urban Institute, a Washington research group.

The outcome illuminates the arbitrary nature of the American safety net, which prioritizes local control. North Dakota and North Carolina are in; South Dakota and South Carolina are out . Children can get aid in Tulsa but not in Oklahoma City, as state and tribal governments clash. In the impoverished Mississippi Delta, eligibility depends on which side of the Mississippi River a child lives.

As with Medicaid, poor states are especially resistant, though the federal government bears most of the cost. Of the 10 states with the highest levels of children’s food insecurity , five rejected Summer EBT: Louisiana, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

Like the school lunch program, it serves families up to 185 percent of the poverty line, meaning a family of three would qualify with an income of about $45,500 or less.

The initial school meal program faced resistance, too. Congress created it in 1946, partly from fear that poor nutrition weakened military recruits. But opponents saw free meals as socialism, and Southern states demanded assurance that federal aid would not undermine segregation.

More than a decade later, only half of schools ran the program, Susan Levine, a historian at the University of Illinois Chicago, noted in her 2008 book “School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program.”

A separate Summer Food Service Program followed in 1968. But it offers meals at limited sites, which some families cannot reach, and serves only about 15 percent of children fed during the school year.

Some critics see the new program as an extension of pandemic aid. (A similar effort, Pandemic EBT, distributed grocery cards when the coronavirus closed schools.) But Summer EBT, having started experimentally in 2011, long predates the pandemic. Evaluators found that even benefits as low as $30 a month cut “the most severe food insecurity among children by one-third.”

Drawing on those results, Congress in 2022 established the program nationwide. In exchange for the federal benefits, states pay half the administrative costs. Perhaps sensing some might resist, a Republican backer, Senator John Boozman of Arkansas, said in a promotional video , “We’re counting on you to put these new tools into action.”

His home-state governor, Ms. Sanders, did. As a White House press secretary under President Donald J. Trump, Ms. Sanders does not want for conservative credentials, but she celebrated the federal aid.

“Making sure no Arkansan goes hungry, especially children, is a top concern for my administration,” she said in a news release . Arkansas officials estimate the program will cost the state about $3 million and deliver $45 million in benefits.

Iowa rejected the program with equal verve. In forgoing about $29 million in federal benefits , Governor Reynolds called the program “not sustainable” and criticized the lack of constraints on which food parents can buy. “An EBT card does nothing to promote nutrition at a time when childhood obesity has become an epidemic,” she said.

The pilot program found the opposite: EBT cards “increased consumption of fruits and vegetables,” evaluators wrote , and lowered the consumption of soft drinks.

More than half of the children whom Republican governors have excluded from aid live in Texas and Florida. Both states have noted the program’s administrative complexity: Schools often lack current student addresses or the technology to share data easily with agencies that issue EBT cards. But neither has ruled out future participation.

The Biden administration, seeking to protect the program from a partisan gloss, has generally not criticized states that refused the aid.

“A number of the nonparticipating states have told us they were challenged by the timeline and hope to implement the program next year,” said Stacy Dean, the deputy under secretary of agriculture.

Some Republicans, in rejecting the aid, found critics in their own ranks. After Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina dismissed Summer EBT as a duplicative “entitlement,” State Senator Katrina Shealy, a fellow Republican, wrote a column with a Democratic colleague warning that “hunger does not stop during summer break.”

In an interview, Ms. Shealy said the state should not reject $65 million “just because Biden is president,” and perhaps just partly tongue-in-cheek wrapped her plea in Trumpian bunting: “Everyone wants to say, ‘America First’ — well, let’s feed our children first.”

Oklahoma initially said it rejected the program because federal officials had not finalized the rules. But responding to critics, Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, sharpened his attack, calling Summer EBT a duplicative “Biden administration program” that would “cause more bureaucracy for families.”

Tribal governments, which have influence over large parts of the state, stepped in. Already feuding with Mr. Stitt , they promised to distribute cards to all eligible families on their land, regardless of tribal status, while bearing the $3 million administrative cost. The five participating tribes will cover nearly 40 percent of Oklahoma’s eligible children, most of them not Native American.

“I remain dumbfounded that the governor of Oklahoma would turn down federal tax dollars to help feed low-income children,” said Chuck Hoskin Jr., the principal chief of the Cherokee Nation.

In Nebraska, Governor Pillen was an unlikely candidate to support a new poverty program. A wealthy pork processor, he ran on vows to fight critical race theory, resist “the federal government’s invasion” and “keep the socialist agenda out of our state.”

The existing meal sites were preferable to Summer EBT, he said, because they let children socialize and allowed staff members to check their well being. But many families lack the time and transportation to get children to the sites, especially in rural areas.

Historically, the number of children Nebraska feeds during the summer is only about 7 percent of those fed in school , one of the lowest ratios in the country, according to the Food Research & Action Center, a Washington advocacy group. By contrast, Summer EBT would reach nearly every family eligible for a subsidized school meal.

After the governor rejected the program, thousands of Nebraskans signed a protest petition, and 19 members of the unicameral legislature backed a bill to force the state’s participation. They included Senator Ray Aguilar, a senior Republican, who said in an interview that the program reflected conservative values because “kids need to eat.”

The state’s fiscal analysts estimated that the program would cost about $360,000 a year and bring $18 million in benefits.

Megan Young, 25, does not follow politics but heard about the dispute. Relying on school meals growing up, she ate less in the summer and watched her mother go hungry. Food insecurity, she said, deepened her mother’s depression, which sent her into foster care. “I was shocked,” she said, to hear the governor call EBT cards “welfare.”

Ms. Young was in a program that let disadvantaged teenagers and young adults lobby the governor on an issue of their choice. Her group chose Summer EBT.

Standing before Mr. Pillen in the State Supreme Court, Matthew Floyd, 18, said federal cash would help the economy. Lexie Simonsen, 18, brought a brown-bag lunch to argue that the meal-site fare was meager and unappealing.

Ms. Young spoke in the most personal terms, explaining that “my mother would go without or very little so that we could eat.” She did not tell the governor about her journey into foster care and homelessness, for fear he might find such hardship implausible.

The presentation lasted eight minutes. The governor seemed unpersuaded. He doubted the group’s estimate of how many children would benefit from the cards. He insisted that the summer sites met children’s needs. “I’m not asking you to agree with me,” he said.

The group left dejected.

Ms. Simonsen was in study hall a week later when she learned that the governor had reversed himself and announced Nebraska would send out the EBT cards. He cited several youth groups, including hers, for altering his view.

It was unusual, she said, for powerful men to change their minds, and she credited Mr. Pillen, a former college football star, for not making the issue a contest he had to win.

“The fact that he listened and said Nebraska can do better — that blows my mind,” she said.

Jason DeParle , a reporter in the Washington bureau, has written extensively about poverty, class, and immigration. He is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the author of “A Good Provider is One Who Leaves: One Family and Migration in the 21st Century.” More about Jason DeParle

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Lunchables under fire after reports of concerning lead, sodium levels

Consumer Reports is calling for the removal of Lunchables from school trays across the country after discovering concerning levels of lead and sodium and a potentially harmful chemical in their packaging in products sold in stores.

A petition lobbying the U.S. Department of Agriculture to get rid of the Kraft Heinz products from the National School Lunch Program has more than 14,000 signatures.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said the nonprofit watchdog found concerning levels of lead when it tested store-bought Lunchables. Elevated lead levels have been linked for decades to developmental problems in children.

Concerns about weak government oversight of heavy metals in children’s food are growing after more than 500 cases of lead poisoning were linked to applesauce pouch products . Ronholm also noted that high sodium levels such as those found in Lunchables have the potential to increase children’s risk of developing high blood pressure. Consumer Reports found phthalates — chemicals used in plastics — in the packaging of some of the Kraft Heinz store-bought items they tested. Phthalates are linked to health concerns involving hormone disruption.

“It’s disconcerting to have something that’s unhealthy be included as part of the lunch program,” Ronholm said. “You’re really putting kids at risk and putting them at a disadvantage.”

Kraft Heinz spokeswoman Lynsey Elve said Lunchables have been “parent-approved” for 35 years, with more than half of U.S. parents “proudly buying the brand.”

Podcast episode

“All our foods meet strict safety standards that we happily feed to our own families,” Elve said. “Lead and cadmium occur naturally in the environment and may be present in low levels in food products. We are proud of Lunchables and stand by the quality and integrity that goes into making them.”

Consumer Reports’ findings follow a Washington Post investigation last year that showed how powerful food companies get ultra-processed foods such as Lunchables to qualify for the National School Lunch Program through years of extensive lobbying to lower government nutrition standards.

Big food companies argued that pizza sauce and french fries should count as vegetables — which is now the case — and beat back almost all regulation of children’s food advertising.

“Lunchables is an example of ‘big’ business looking to capitalize on the 30 million school lunches served every day, by marketing their unhealthy products to our nation’s children who deserve healthy nutritious food in schools,” said Ann Cooper, a chef who is a renowned evangelist for cooking whole foods for children at school.

“It’s a travesty that what we feed our children isn’t held up to a higher standard. They are our future and deserve better,” Cooper said.

Two versions of Lunchables custom-made for schools were added to the National School Lunch Program last year, despite outcry from many nutrition experts. As The Post found , Kraft Heinz added more protein and whole grain to the reformulated Turkey and Cheddar Cracker Stacker Lunchables — but also increased sodium. Kraft Heinz previously declined to disclose how many school systems are serving its products.

The Post found that in Chile, the school version of the turkey-and-cheddar Lunchable would qualify for labels warning about high sodium, calorie and saturated fat levels, reflecting how other nations have adopted stricter labeling, advertising and nutrition standards in reaction to the world’s obesity crisis. Elve had previously characterized applying Chilean labeling standards to Lunchables as “reaching.”

“Lunchables are ultra-processed junk foods for kids,” said Marion Nestle, a retired professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University. “Why anyone would think these are appropriate for school lunches is beyond me. Yes, they are cheap, and yes, kids like them. But schools need to do better than that.”

Elve said that “processed foods arbitrarily classified as ‘ultra-processed’ are not necessarily less nutritious.”

Ronholm said Consumer Reports’ findings reinforced the necessity of strong school lunch standards making sure children have access to healthy foods while their brains are developing.

“We really need to reexamine and reevaluate the types of policies that are in place now and how they can be modified to give our kids a chance,” he said.

2018 Primetime Emmy & James Beard Award Winner

A History of Moscow in 13 Dishes

Jun 06 2018.

War, hunger, and some of the world’s great doomed social experiments all changed the way that Moscow eats.

Moscow, the European metropolis on Asia’s western flank, has always been a canvas for competing cultures. Its cuisine is no different. The ancient baselines of winter grains, root vegetables, and cabbage acquired scaffolding from both directions: eastern horsemen brought meat on sticks, western craftsmen brought pastries, and courtly French chefs came and drowned it all in cream.

History has a place on the plate here, as well: war, hunger, and some of the world’s great doomed social experiments from Serfdom to Communism to Bandit Capitalism all changed the way that Moscow eats. So in the spirit of all of those grand failures, we—a Russian chef and an American writer—will attempt here to reduce the towering history of this unknowable city to 13 dishes, with some Imperial past but a special emphasis on the more recent decades of culinary paroxysms as Moscow emerged from its Soviet slumber.

Olivier Salad

To visualize the long marriage between French and Russian cuisines, picture Peter the Great, on a diplomatic sojourn to Paris in 1717, a “ stranger to etiquette ”, meeting the 7-year-old boy-king Louis XV and lifting him in the air out of sheer elán. These things were simply not done, and yet, there they were. Peter’s joyful (and often envious) fascination with all things French took hold, among other places, in the kitchen. He brought French chefs back to his palaces, and then the lesser nobility followed suit, and when the first restaurants emerged in Moscow, they also spoke French. The Hermitage Restaurant, which was open from 1864 until history intervened in 1917, had a Francophone Belgian named Lucien Olivier as a chef, and he made a salad that was a perfectly unrestrained combination of French flavors and Russian ingredients: grouse! Veal tongue! Proto-mayonnaise! The ingredients now tend toward the pedestrian—boiled beef, dill pickles, various vegetables all bound with mayonnaise—and it has become a staple of Russian cuisine, especially on New Year’s. And yes, if you’ve ever seen the lonely Ensalada Rusa wilting behind the sneezeguard of a Spanish tapas bar, that is supposed to be a successor to the Olivier. But in Moscow, you should eat Matryoshka ’s version, which is not the original recipe but has some of that imperial richness: crayfish, quail, sturgeon caviar, and remoulade, all under a translucent aspic skirt, for 990₽ ($16).

There’s a type of expression around bottling things—bottled lightning, summer in a jar, etc.—that feels very apt here. What exactly is bottled with vareniye (jam)? A lot more than just fruit. These jams, which tend to be thinner than western varieties—with whole berries or fruit chunks in syrup—are bottled with a lot of Russian identity. There’s the Russian love of countryside. Deep dacha culture of summer cottages and personal orchards. Traditional naturopathy (raspberry vareniye taken with tea will fight fever). And above all, friendship is bottled here— vareniye made from the overabundance of fruit at one’s dacha is the most typical Russian gift, real sharing from real nature, even in the often-cynical heart of Europe’s largest megacity. Visitors who are short on lifelong friendships in Moscow can pick some up fine vareniye at any Lavka Lavka shop (we recommend the delicate young pine cone jam) or, curiously enough, at many Armenian stores.

Borodinsky Bread

The clinical-sounding title of Lev Auerman’s 1935 classic Tekhnologiya Khlebopecheniya ( Bread Baking Technology) doesn’t promise scintillation. But Auerman’s recipe for rye bread changed Russian bread forever. An older legend had it that the bread was baked dark for mourning by a woman widowed in the battle of Borodino in 1812, but the real birth of the bread came from Auerman’s recipes. A modification on sweet, malted Baltic breads, Auerman’s Borodinsky bread was 100% rye and used caraway or anise. The recipe has evolved a bit—today it is 80% rye and 20% wheat high extraction flour and leans more on coriander than caraway. But its flavor profile (sweet, chewy) as well as its characteristic L7 mold —a deep brick of bread—has made it easily identifiable as the traditional, ubiquitous, every-occasion bread of Moscow. You can buy it everywhere, but the Azbuka Vkusa high-end markets have a reliably good sliced version.

Buckwheat Grechka

Look closely at those Russians who have followed their money to live in London, or are vacationing in Cyprus or Antalya. See the slight melancholy that not even cappuccinos or sunshine can erase. It’s not because Russians are gloomy by nature; it’s probably because there is no real grechka outside of Russia and Ukraine, and that is devastating. Buckwheat grain and groats— grechka (or grecha in Saint Petersburg)—are deep in the culture. It’s a wartime memory: May 9 Victory Day celebrations feature military kitchens serving buckwheat like they did at the front. It’s a little slice of Russian history that lies somewhere between oatmeal and couscous. In Moscow, eat it at Dr. Zhivago with milk (180₽/US$2.90) or mushrooms (590₽/US$9.50), and rejoice.

Mimoza Salad

This fantastically expressive egg-and-canned-fish salad is a testament to Soviet ingenuity—it’s the ultimate puzzle to make a drastically limited food chain sparkle—and the universal human thrill of layering foods. The geological creation starts with a base layer of fish, then layers of grated cooked potato, mayonnaise, shredded cheese, grated carrots, sweet onion, diced egg whites and then capped with a brilliant yellow crumble of boiled egg yolk. It sits there on the plate, dazzling like the flowering mimosa tree it is named after. The taste? Well, it’s comfort food. Pick some up to go at any Karavaev Brothers location —the excellent deli chain sells it for 650₽ (US$10.40) a kilo.

It seems odd, almost impossible, to imagine a time in Russia before shashlik. It’s meat on a stick, something that all humans should have had on the menu since at least the time of Prometheus. But shashlik as we know it know—cubes of marinated meat cooked with vegetables over a mangal grill—didn’t really take off in Russia until the early 1900s. And due to a lack of suitable meat in much of the Soviet era (there were no meat cattle herds, only dairy), we’re starting the clock on shashlik in the late Soviet period. Despite its relatively recent (re)appearance, it is now the ubiquitous grill phenomenon of Russia, a welcome ritual of summer.

Much of Russian cuisine has borrowed heavily from Central Asia and further east over the millennia ( pelmeni anyone?), but plov is a striking example of an entire eastern dish making its way directly into Russian households. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and upheaval in many Central Asian Soviet Republics, mass economic migration to Moscow took off in the late 80s and early 90s. Central Asians today are the lifeblood of the Moscow labor force (part of up to 10-12 million Central Asian migrants living in Russia), and plov—rice steamed in stock with meat and vegetables—has jumped from the migrant communities to the homes of Muscovites everywhere. It has developed an unfortunate reputation for being a food that even finicky kids will eat, so there is a lot of harried domestic plov being made. But you can get a fully expressed Uzbek version at Danilovsky Market, online at plov.com , or at Food City—the surf-and-turf Tsukiji of Moscow.

The Big Mac

So many of the difficulties in American-Russian relations come down to one foundational attitude problem: The Americans (that’s half of this writing duo) were incredibly, distressingly smug through the entire fall of the Soviet Union. We mistook Soviet failure for an American victory, and that made all the difference. What does that have to do with a Big Mac? Well, when Russia’s first McDonald’s opened on Pushkinskaya in 1990 and 5000 people turned out to wait in line for the first taste of America, we back home in the states mistook it for culinary and commercial superiority. But there was something more complicated happening: Russians had been denied Western goods for so long and with such force that any outside identity was much-needed oxygen. And the long-term victory, as McDonald’s has continued to thrive in post-Soviet Russia, really belongs to the local franchise, which used higher-quality ingredients than in the U.S. and created a chain that was successful not because of its American identity but because of its Russian modifications. We wouldn’t recommend eating at any McDonald’s, especially not when there is Teremok for your fast-food needs, but having a soda in the original location is one way to sit and ponder the sin of hubris. And to use the free toilet and Wi-Fi.

The crown jewel of Levantine meat preparations, perhaps the single greatest street meat in the world: Shawarma. It first came to Moscow with a shawarma joint across from the Passazh mall, opened in the early 90s by Syrian cooks who dazzled masses with their sizzling, spinning, spiced meat emporium. Lines that stretched into the hundreds of people weren’t uncommon in those heady early days. And even though the original spot closed many years ago, Moscow shawarma only grew from there, mutating into the beast it is today, where you’re likely to find chicken, cabbage, mayo and a thin tomato sauce all combining to make the Levant a distant memory.

Fish Tartare aka Sashimi

One result of the aforementioned American smugness is that the West seemed surprised at how rapidly 1990s Russia assimilated some of the most hardcore capitalist traits, including but not limited to conspicuous consumerism. Moscow’s new elite was very, very good at that. What could be more conspicuous that recreating a restrained, exclusive seafood cuisine from Japan in the chaotic, landlocked megacity of Moscow? The very improbability of high-end sushi and sashimi in Moscow fueled much of its allure, and even though the trends have moved on from sushi, you can still tell the emotional attachment that the oligarch class has to those formative wastes of money. Sumosan restaurant started in Moscow back in 1997 and has since expanded to Monte Carlo and Londongrad , where they serve a dish that they call Fish Tartare, among others, in their restaurants and through their private jet catering service.

Blue Cheese roll

If the early elite sushi restaurants in Moscow were the frivolous edge of a food phenomenon, then Yakitoriya , a chain which started in the late 1990s, democratized it with affordable sushi rolls geared to local tastes. The Blue Cheese Roll, available now on their menu, seems like the apex (or nadir) of the Russianized roll: salmon, smoked eel, cucumber, cream cheese, Blue Cheese sauce. It might not be Jiro’s dream, but a true Russian middle class, one that can work honestly, earn meaningful salaries, and have a freaky sushi roll at the end of the week just like the rest of us—that’s something worthing dreaming for. Blue Cheese Roll, Yakitoriya, 417₽ (US$6.70)

If you’re American, have you ever wondered why tacos took over middle America but sopes remain virtually unknown? It’s curious how a country can assimilate some foods from their neighbors and but remain blissfully ignorant of others. That may explain what took place two years ago in Moscow, when the city seemingly discovered, as if for the first time, the bagged awesomeness that is khinkali , a soup dumpling from Russia’s southern neighbor Georgia. It became very trendy very quickly, and khinkali joints sprouted across Moscow like griby after a rain. But it wasn’t just that dish: what they were serving was a bit of the imagined southern, sybaritic lifestyle of the Caucasus, as promised in restaurant names like Est’ Khinkali Pit Vino ( Eat Khinkali Drink Wine ). Your best bets are at the stately Sakhli , around 100₽ (US$1.60) per soft, fulsome dumpling, or the more modernized Kafe Khinkalnaya on Neglinnaya Street , 100₽ (US$0.80) a dumpling.

We have named burrata—yes, that Italian alchemy of cheese and cream—the Perfect Dish of Moscow 2018, if only because it is the Dish of the Moment, ready to be enjoyed at the height of its faddishness now, and equally ready to be replaced when the city decides to move on. Read Anna Maslovskaya’s masterful breakdown of why—and where—to eat burrata in Moscow.

Top image: Olivier salad with chicken. Photo by: Kvector /Shutterstock

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The Perfect Dish: The Moscow Burrata

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Lunchables shouldn’t be on school menus due to lead, sodium, Consumer Reports tells USDA

Turns out, the popular snack beloved by children for decades may not be the healthiest option, consumer reports has found..

What kid doesn't love Lunchables ?

For decades, the prepackaged assortment of snacks – from deli meats and crackers, to pizza – have become a childhood staple for generation after generation. Lunchables have also in recent years become a menu item at many schools across the United States, thanks to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

But Consumer Reports is hoping that changes.

Turns out, the popular snack may not be the healthiest option for growing kids. Lunchables contain a troublingly high level of lead and sodium, the consumer watchdog group warned Tuesday in a new report.

“We don’t think anybody should regularly eat these products, and they definitely shouldn’t be considered a healthy school lunch,” Eric Boring, a chemist at Consumer Reports who lead the testing, said in a statement .

Is there lead in Lunchables? What to know after Consumer Reports released guidance to USDA

Consumer Reports finds high levels of lead, sodium in Lunchables

The advocacy group said it tested 12 store-bought Lunchables products, made by Kraft Heinz and compared them to similar lunch and snack kits from other manufacturers.

Although none of the kits exceeded any legal or regulatory limit, the tests uncovered “relatively high levels of lead , cadmium and sodium” in the Lunchables kits, said Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports.

Classified as a human carcinogen, cadmium has been linked to kidney and bone disease, as well as cancer, according to the World Health Organization.   However, because cadmium is a natural element present in the soil, it can't be altogether avoided.

As for lead , no safe level exists for children to consume, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention notes.

“There’s a lot to be concerned about in these kits,” Amy Keating, a registered dietitian at Consumer Reports, said in a statement. “They’re highly processed, and regularly eating processed meat, a main ingredient in many of these products, has been linked to increased risk of some cancers.”

The sodium levels in the store-bought kits ranged from 460 to 740 milligrams per serving, "nearly a quarter to half of a child’s daily recommended limit for sodium," Consumer Reports' testing found.

All but one of the kits, Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza, contained harmful phthalates – dubbed “ everywhere chemicals ” for their prevalence in plastic that can be linked to reproductive issues, diabetes and some cancers.

School lunch policies

Consumer Reports also analyzed two Lunchables kits made specifically for schools that are eligible to be served to children under the National School Lunch Program.

While the group didn’t test the school kits for heavy metals or phthalates, chemists did review nutritional information and ingredients lists in the two products – Turkey & Cheddar Cracker Stackers and Extra Cheesy Pizza – to find higher levels of sodium than store-bought versions.

To meet the requirements of the  federally assisted school meal program overseen by the USDA, Kraft Heinz added more whole grains to the crackers and more protein to the school Lunchable kits, Consumer Reports said.

“Lunchables are not a healthy option for kids and shouldn’t be allowed on the menu as part of the National School Lunch Program,” Ronholm said in a statement.

Kraft Heinz told USA TODAY in a statement Wednesday the company has taken steps to make Lunchables more nutritious by, for instance, adding fresh fruits to certain kits and reducing the overall sodium by as much as 26%.

"Many of our Lunchables products are a good source of protein, offering nutrients through meats and cheeses," according to the statement. "All our foods meet strict safety standards that we happily feed to our own families ... We are proud of Lunchables and stand by the quality and integrity that goes into making them. 

CR petitions USDA to remove Lunchables from school lunch menus

As a result of its findings, the non-profit consumer group said it has petitioned the USDA to remove Lunchables from school cafeterias.

The petition had more than 14,100 signatures as of Wednesday morning.

A USDA spokesperson said in a Wednesday statement to USA TODAY that the agency "takes very seriously our responsibility to ensure school meals are of the highest nutritional quality.”

While the USDA doesn't specifically allow or prohibit individual food items, the agency has requirements in place to "address the overall content of meals," whether on a daily or weekly basis, the statement read. That means, Lunchables would need to be paired with fruit, vegetables and milk, and schools would have to balance how often they serve high-sodium meals, the agency said.

"This is why we have a new proposed rule which aims to align our programs with the latest nutrition science and modernize our services to best serve kids," the statement read. "Strengthening the nutrition of school meals comes from a common goal we all share: to help kids be healthy."

Eric Lagatta covers breaking and trending news for USA TODAY. Reach him at [email protected]

School districts in California are worried about cafeteria workers fleeing to fast-food chains to get $20-an-hour wages

• California school districts are worried about workers could leave for $20 jobs in fast food.
• "Persistent staffing issues" are leading to more use of pre-packaged food and longer lines for lunch, a report says.
• The state put the minimum wage for fast-food workers up to $20 an hour on April 1.

School districts in California are worried about food and cafeteria workers leaving for higher-paying jobs at fast-food restaurants after the state boosted the sector's minimum wage to $20 an hour.

School districts "are all very worried about it," Carrie Bogdanovich, president of the California School Nutrition Association, told The Associated Press . "Most are saying they anticipate it will be harder and harder to hire employees."

The new minimum wage for fast-food workers, which went into effect on April 1, is expected to push up wages in other industries , too, so that they can compete for labor.

School districts have chronic problems with recruiting and retaining staff, partly because of low wages, a January report  from the California School Nutrition Association and the Chef Ann Foundation details. The report says that "persistent staffing issues" lead to more use of pre-packaged food and longer lines for lunch, with students sometimes resorting to skipping meals.

In 2022, California became the first state to offer free school meals — both breakfast and lunch — to all roughly 6 million public-school pupils.

"In our school cafeterias and food preparation centers, we play a critical role in the educational process by providing nutritious meals for children," the California School Employees Association says on its website . "For many students, the meal they receive at school is the best or only meal they will get each day."

Some school districts are boosting pay to attract more workers.

Related stories

For example, the Sacramento City Unified School District reached an agreement in November with Service Employees International Union Local 1021 to boost pay to at least $20 an hour from July 1. As well as food-service workers, the new wages cover workers in other low-paying roles like custodians, bus drivers, and instructional aides.

Increasing pay isn't an option for all school districts though. "We just don't have the increase in revenue to be able to provide additional funding for staff," Gretchen Janson, the assistant superintendent of business services at the Lynwood Unified School District in Los Angeles County, told the AP.

She said that the district's food-service workers had a starting salary of $17.70 an hour, which maxed out at $21.51, and that they're not eligible for health benefits because the district's food-service staff only work three hours a day.

"It is difficult when large companies like McDonald's offer a lot more money per hour," an unidentified school food service director in California said in a survey included in the California School Nutrition Association and Chef Ann Foundation report. "We cannot afford to pay at those rates. Thus, it makes getting qualified and reliable staff difficult."

Current vacancies for nutrition services worker roles at the Long Beach Unified School District list their pay as between $17.09 and $21.18 an hour, with staff generally working between two and three hours a week. Another vacancy , for a food-services worker role in Riverside County, is for 36 hours a week at between $18.30 and $19.42 per hour.

But, pay aside, jobs at school districts have some benefits that make them attractive compared to working in fast food, the AP reported. These include health insurance, paid vacations, pensions, and regular shifts that don't include night or weekend work.

According to data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, about 327,000 people worked in food preparation and serving-related occupations at elementary and secondary schools across the US in May 2023, with a mean hourly wage of $16.78.

Other employers will have to boost wages

Only limited-service restaurant chains with at least 60 restaurants nationwide are covered by California's minimum wage. But it will have knock-on impacts for various other employers, including full-service restaurants and retail stores.

"The repercussions will extend beyond just limited-service restaurants to really include any business that's competing for a similar level of labor," Brian Vaccaro, an analyst at Raymond James, previously told Business Insider.

Sal Vitalie, who owns the Garden Club restaurant in South San Francisco, told BI that he would "absolutely" have to raise his wages to compete with fast-food chains for workers .

"Why wash dishes for $15 or $17 if I can go get $20 flipping burgers at McDonald's?" he said.

Are you a worker in California considering moving to a fast-food chain for the $20 wage? Or a business owner concerned your employees may jump ship? Email this reporter at [email protected].

Watch: How 2 million children are fed daily by the world's biggest free school meal provider

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Consumer Reports asks USDA to remove Lunchables from schools' lunch menus

Ayana Archie

Joe Hernandez

In this photo illustration, a pack of Lunchables is displayed on Wednesday in San Anselmo, Calif. Consumer Reports is asking for the Department of Agriculture to eliminate Lunchables food kits from the National School Lunch Program after finding high levels of lead, sodium and cadmium in tested kits. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

In this photo illustration, a pack of Lunchables is displayed on Wednesday in San Anselmo, Calif. Consumer Reports is asking for the Department of Agriculture to eliminate Lunchables food kits from the National School Lunch Program after finding high levels of lead, sodium and cadmium in tested kits.

The advocacy group Consumer Reports is urging the federal government to remove Lunchables from the national free and reduced-price school lunch program after an analysis found high amounts of sodium and elevated levels of heavy metals.

Brian Ronholm, director of food policy at Consumer Reports, said the meal kits aren't healthy for children and called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to toss the brand from its National School Lunch Program.

"The Lunchables and similar lunch kits we tested contain concerning levels of sodium and harmful chemicals that can lead to serious health problems over time," Ronholm said in a statement. "The USDA should remove Lunchables from the National School Lunch Program and ensure that kids in schools have healthier options."

Shots - Health News

Schools ended universal free lunch. now meal debt is soaring.

Consumer Reports said it found high levels of sodium in Lunchables, detected lead and cadmium in tests and also observed the presence of phthalates, which can impact reproductive health and the human hormonal system.

A USDA spokesperson said the department doesn't allow or disallow individual food items, but rather sets requirements for the overall nutritional content of meals on a daily or weekly basis.

"So, the Lunchables described in the article would need to be paired with fruit, vegetables and milk," the spokesperson said. "In addition, a school who wanted to serve a higher sodium product one day has to balance that with lower sodium items on others."

EPA puts limits on 'forever chemicals' in drinking water

They added that the USDA "takes very seriously our responsibility to ensure school meals are of the highest nutritional quality" and that it has been helping more schools use local ingredients and cook additional meals from scratch.

Kraft Heinz says it stands by the quality of Lunchables

In a statement, a spokesperson for Kraft Heinz, which makes Lunchables, said all of its products meet strict safety standards and that lead and cadmium occur naturally in the environment and may show up in food at low levels.

"We are proud of Lunchables and stand by the quality and integrity that goes into making them," they said.

Kraft Heinz has also improved the nutritional benefits of Lunchables recently by adding fresh fruit and reducing the sodium found in its crackers, the spokesperson added.

Consumer Reports says two varieties of Lunchables are currently served as part of the school lunch program: Turkey and Cheddar Cracker Stackers and Extra Cheesy Pizza.

Children's Health

A new study offers hints that healthier school lunches may help reduce obesity.

The group tested store-bought versions of those varieties and found that they had 74% and 69% of the California lead maximum, respectively. Consumer Reports said it used California's threshold for lead as a benchmark for testing rather than the federal limit, because California's standard is "currently the most protective."

The group tested 12 meal kits in total, including Lunchables and other brands, and found at least one type of phthalate in every kit except the Extra Cheesy Pizza variety.

Consumer Reports says Lunchables for schools have higher sodium levels

Consumer Reports also found that Lunchables made to be distributed in schools, which have whole grains in the crackers and additional protein, contain more sodium than those found in stores.

The turkey-and-cheese variety in schools has 930 mg of sodium, compared to the 740 mg found in commercially available kits. For schools, the pizza variety has 700 mg of sodium, while the option sold in stores had 510 mg.

Goats and Soda

School lunches are brazil's secret — and delicious — weapon in halting hunger.

That means the turkey-and-cheese option has nearly half the sodium of the federal daily suggested amount, while the pizza selection has 34% of the recommended daily sodium amount and more than 50% of California's limit for cadmium, the group found.

A petition created by Consumer Reports to push the USDA to remove Lunchables from schools had more than 14,000 signatures Wednesday afternoon.

• school lunches

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California Schools Are in Crisis as Cafeteria Workers Leave After New $20 Minimum Wage Increase

Posted: April 18, 2024 | Last updated: April 18, 2024

In California, a groundbreaking move to set the minimum wage for fast food workers at $20 an hour has introduced a unique challenge. Public schools now find themselves in a tug-of-war with giant fast-food corporations for the same pool of employees.   

Fast food giants like McDonald's, Wendy's, and Pizza Hut are now direct competitors for the staff who keep school cafeterias running.  

California's New Wage Law Doesn't Apply to School Food Service Workers

California raised the minimum wage for fast food workers in the state, guaranteeing that employees working at chains with at least 60 locations nationwide would receive $20 an hour.

Unfortunately, this law does not apply to school food service workers, who are historically some of the lowest-paid workers in public education.

The Challenges At School Cafeterias

Cafeteria shortages are not uncommon in the U.S. A recent report for the School Nutrition Association found that a majority of surveyed districts were facing “significant challenges” when it came to staffing cafeterias.

“There’s a shortage every day because it doesn’t pay well,” says Roxanne Beissel, who earns $15 an hour cooking in Hastings, Minnesota, schools. The combination of high stress and low wages, cook Roxanne Beissel explains, “is definitely not appealing to a lot of people.” 

Low Wages Deter People from These Jobs

A report from the California School Nutrition Association and the Chef Ann Foundation reveals that school districts have chronic problems with recruiting and retaining staff because of low wages. 

The report says that "persistent staffing issues" lead to more use of pre-packaged food and longer lines for lunch, with students sometimes resorting to skipping meals.

The Biggest Challenges

Mary Dotsey, a food service specialist in Indian River County public schools in Florida, told Jacobin , “When we’re short-staffed, that means not all the food is getting cooked. So we’re running out by third lunch, and we’re scrambling.”  

States offering free meals fail to realize that the spike in meal participation has affected staff shortages. 

California Free School Meals

The state's commitment to provide free meals to every student has led to a dramatic increase in the demand for cafeteria staff.  

With an expected delivery of 70 million more meals this year compared to five years ago, the need for a dedicated cafeteria workforce has never been more critical in California schools.    

The Staffing Crunch in School Cafeterias

Schools have always grappled with high turnover and staffing troubles in their cafeterias. Now, with the wage increase, these issues are predicted to intensify.     

"They are all very worried about it. Most are saying they anticipate it will be harder and harder to hire employees," shared Carrie Bogdanovich, president of the California School Nutrition Association. 

Renaming the Job

Some districts are trying to entice people to become service workers by limiting the number of entry-level positions and seeking higher-skilled workers.  

Complex roles like “culinary lead” and “central kitchen supervisor” require more skills and hours. This was done to make jobs more attractive to applicants. 

Being a Full-Time Cafeteria Worker Isn't Enough

Many cafeteria service workers classify themselves as part-time, even "full-time" cooks. While they work an average of six and a half hours a day for nine to ten months a year, many of these workers need another job to survive.    

Others require public assistance, especially during the summer months when school is out and jobs are scarce.

The Wage Gap Widens

The difference in pay between school cafeteria workers and fast food employees is becoming starkly evident.      

For example, in Fresno, a school district cafeteria worker might earn as little as $15 an hour, a figure that significantly lags behind the new fast food minimum wage, The New York Post reports.  

Schools Making Moves Ahead of Time

In response to potential staffing crises, some school districts have proactively raised wages for their cafeteria staff. 

Notably, the Sacramento Unified School District has already instituted a 10% pay rise last year, with plans for an additional 6% soon, aiming to match fast food industry wages.  

Sacramento’s Strategy to Stay Competitive

The Sacramento Unified School District is adopting a broader approach to tackle this wage war.  

“We are looking not only at competing with districts and comparing with districts, we’re also looking at fast food places,” Cancy McArn, the district's chief human resources officer, said to AP , of the district’s efforts to keep pace with the evolving job market.

Doubling Down on Staff

Fortune reports that the San Luis Coastal Unified School District responded to a 52% surge in school meal participation by doubling its food service staff.

Now preparing 8,500 meals daily across various schools, the district is prioritizing roles that are more appealing to job seekers.

A Closer Look at Lynwood’s Dilemma

In the Lynwood Unified School District, starting wages for food service workers hover around $17.70 per hour, peaking at $21.51.   

However, given that these employees only work 3 hours per day, they miss out on health benefits.   

The Benefits Don't Outweigh the Paycheck

While health care coverage and other benefits are available at some schools, the overwhelmingly female and older workforce serving school children across the U.S. don’t receive any benefits.  

Unfortunately, if schools do offer benefits, they often do not help limit the expenses of care.

The Consequences Facing California Schools

With all of these challenges facing service workers at cafeterias, $20 an hour to do less work gives the hope of something better.     

But without the service workers, there is no one there to serve the children, causing California’s plan to feed every student to backfire.   

Boosting Support for School Kitchens and Staff

California is stepping up with significant investments to enhance school meal programs, including $720 million for kitchen upgrades and $45 million for an apprenticeship program to professionalize the field.

Yet, a proposal offering a $25,000 bonus to school food workers completing such programs was left out of Governor Newsom’s budget. 

Schools Can't Increase Pay

Increasing pay could help service workers, but it is not an option that most school districts have. 

"We just don't have the increase in revenue to be able to provide additional funding for staff," Gretchen Janson, the assistant superintendent of business services at the Lynwood Unified School District in Los Angeles County, told the AP. 

The Mean Pay for Service Workers

About 327,000 people reported to work in food preparation and serving-related occupations at elementary and secondary schools across the U.S. in May 2023, according to data collected by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

These workers have a mean hourly wage of $16.78, which is barely enough to survive in California.  

Wages Need to Survive in California

The Bureau of Economic Analysis reported in 2021 that California's average cost of living is $53,082 annually (via Unbiased ). For people in heavily populated areas like Los Angeles, people need around $70,000 annually.   

Making $15 an hour is not enough to meet that average cost of living despite these jobs being essential to people’s everyday lives.   

California's Next Crisis

"The repercussions will extend beyond just limited-service restaurants to really include any business that's competing for a similar level of labor," Brian Vaccaro, an analyst at Raymond James, told Business Insider .     

Challenges facing California’s school districts will soon become too big to ignore.  

The Appeal of Fast Food Paycheck

"It is difficult when large companies like McDonald's offer a lot more money per hour," an unidentified school food service director in California said in a survey included in the California School Nutrition Association and Chef Ann Foundation report.  

The food service director continued: "We cannot afford to pay at those rates. Thus, it makes getting qualified and reliable staff difficult."  

Beyond the Paycheck: The Appeal of School Jobs

School districts may not always compete on salary alone but offer a package of benefits that can be equally compelling.    

Fortune notes that health insurance, paid vacation, and retirement pensions are part of the mix, along with stable hours that fast food jobs often can't match, making these positions attractive for their job security and work-life balance.  

The Stability Factor

The stability and predictability offered by school cafeteria jobs stands out, especially compared to the fluctuations of the fast food industry.

"Restaurants are laying off employees. They’re cutting hours," noted Eric Span. 

Insights from a Labor Economics Expert

Michael Reich, a labor economics professor, also points out that stability could give schools the edge over fast food restaurants when competing for workers.   

He said , "Working in a school cafeteria gives you more stability, job security and maybe less stress than in a profit making institution. So there’s a lot of advantages from a community standpoint. But that’s not to say they don’t also want to get more money."

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What to eat in Moscow? Where to eat in Moscow? 33 Traditional Foods You Have To Try in Moscow

Olivier Salad

MAIN INGREDIENTS

Olivier salad is a Russian salad with variable ingredients, but it is typically made with chopped vegetables, meat, and mayonnaise. The key ingredients include diced potatoes, vegetables, eggs, chicken, or ham. This salad is one of the most important appetizers at the New Year's salad buffets in Russia, as well as in some of the other countries of the former USSR. The original was invented in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, a chef in the popular Moscow restaurant called L'Hermitage . Olivier guarded the recipe until he died, but it is believed that the recipe was stolen by an employee who watched the chef at work, so the salad is still made today. Another theory says that the recipe for the new Olivier salad was developed by one of the restaurant's customers who wanted to keep the salad alive after the chef passed away. Olivier salad as we know it today is nothing like the original version, because it was called game bird mayonnaise , made with gourmet ingredients such as black caviar, capers, hen, and crayfish tails. Over time, the salad evolved and most of the gourmet ingredients have been replaced with more common ones such as peas, chicken, ham, and pickles. Today, the variations are endless, but most Russian chefs agree on one thing: adding carrots to the Olivier is a heresy. Interestingly, Olivier salad is also sometimes called Russian salad, while the meatless version is called French salad or francuska salata , probably due to the French name of its creator. The Spanish version is known as ensaladilla rusa. It is so popular in Spain that it's an important part of the Spanish gastronomy as well as being a staple in schools and summer camps all over the country. Ensaladilla rusa is also one of Spain's most popular tapas – in some cases, it's even served free of charge if you order a beer. There's also the Piedmontese insalata russa, typically consumed as an appetizer, and with many variations, so the salad might also include ingredients such as pickled cauliflower, anchovies, and tuna. Interestingly, in the Italian municipality of Carrù, tuna is an obligatory element of the salad.

Olivier salad is a Russian salad with variable ingredients, but it is typically made with chopped vegetables, meat, and mayonnaise. The key ingredients include diced potatoes, vegetables, eggs, chicken, or ham. This salad is one of the most important appetizers at the New Year's salad buffets in Russia, as well as in some of the other countries of the former USSR.

MOST ICONIC Olivier Salad

Mari Vanna Moscow

Grand Cafe Dr. Zhivago

Café Pushkin

Pelmeni is one of Russia's national dishes, a small dumpling with a delicately thin dough, filled with anything from ground meat or fish to mushrooms. The fillings can be mild or very spicy, depending on the amount of seasonings such as various fresh herbs, black pepper, and onions. Pelmeni dumplings are served in almost every Russian restaurant, as well as in numerous Russian homes where each family has their own recipe for the dish.

Pelmeni is one of Russia's national dishes, a small dumpling with a delicately thin dough, filled with anything from ground meat or fish to mushrooms. The fillings can be mild or very spicy, depending on the amount of seasonings such as various fresh herbs, black pepper, and onions.

VARIATIONS OF Pelmeni

MOST ICONIC Pelmeni

Lepim i Varim

Varenichnaya №1

Beef Stroganoff

When it first appeared in the mid-19th-century Russia, beef Stroganoff was a dish made out of lightly floured beef cubes that have been sautéed and cooked in a simple sauce made from stock and mustard with only a small amount of sour cream. The origin of the dish is unclear, but it is most likely linked to a French chef—or a French-trained chef—working for the Stroganoff family. Although Russian in origin, the dish is strongly influenced by the French style of cooking—this is most obviously seen in the way the beef is cut, in either cubes or strips. The first known recipe appeared in Elena Molokhovets’s A Gift to Young Housewives, published in 1871. Since then, the dish has had major alterations. The beef is still cut in strips, but the sauce is much richer; with sliced mushrooms and onions that are cooked with beef stock and thickened a bit with sour cream that is only stirred in at the end. The dish is traditionally served with potato straws, but is often served with either rice pilav, egg noodles, or mashed potatoes.

When it first appeared in the mid-19th-century Russia, beef Stroganoff was a dish made out of lightly floured beef cubes that have been sautéed and cooked in a simple sauce made from stock and mustard with only a small amount of sour cream.

The origin of the dish is unclear, but it is most likely linked to a French chef—or a French-trained chef—working for the Stroganoff family. Although Russian in origin, the dish is strongly influenced by the French style of cooking—this is most obviously seen in the way the beef is cut, in either cubes or strips.

MOST ICONIC Beef Stroganoff

Yolki-Palki

Russian Pub

These traditional Russian pancakes are prepared with flour, eggs, milk, yeast, and a pinch of salt. What distinguishes them from other pancakes is the addition of yeast, since similar equivalents mostly do not add any leavening agents. The batter is poured over a hot pan, shaped into a circle, and fried for a couple of minutes on both sides. The tradition of preparing this traditional Russian dish originates from ancient times: it was a ceremonial dish, served during the pagan holiday called Maslenitsa – a week-long festivity praising the end of winter and the celebration of spring. With their shape and color, blini symbolized the long-awaited Sun. However, blini are not consumed exclusively during Maslenitsa, as they have become one of the most popular dishes in Russia, and are also commonly eaten around the world. Blini are extremely versatile and can be served with sweet or savory fillings. Some of the Russian favorites include various jams, condensed milk, while the most famous savory version is topped with fish roe or caviar.

These traditional Russian pancakes are prepared with flour, eggs, milk, yeast, and a pinch of salt. What distinguishes them from other pancakes is the addition of yeast, since similar equivalents mostly do not add any leavening agents. The batter is poured over a hot pan, shaped into a circle, and fried for a couple of minutes on both sides.

MOST ICONIC Blini

Buloshnaya Cafe

Ukha is a rustic Russian soup consisting of a broth filled with herbs, seasonings, root vegetables, and fish such as salmon, cod, perch, and trout. A bit of vodka is often added into the pot while the soup is simmering. Although it originated as a simple broth, it evolved into an elaborate dish during the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was served in Russian courts. Apparently, the soup is so good that it was even a favorite of Ivan the Terrible.

Ukha is a rustic Russian soup consisting of a broth filled with herbs, seasonings, root vegetables, and fish such as salmon, cod, perch, and trout. A bit of vodka is often added into the pot while the soup is simmering. Although it originated as a simple broth, it evolved into an elaborate dish during the 16th and 17th centuries, when it was served in Russian courts.

MOST ICONIC Ukha

Gusyatnikoff

Savory pastry.

Pirozhki is one of the most popular Russian dishes, often sold as street food, although it can also be made at home. The pocket-sized, oval-shaped pirozhki are yeast dough buns stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as fresh fruits, jams, and cottage cheese for the sweet varieties, or meat, eggs, vegetables, fish, and rice for the savory versions. They can be either baked or fried. The name pirozhki can be literally translated to little pies . Pirozhki are commonly consumed as a snack, and today, they are prepared in numerous versions throughout the world.

Pirozhki is one of the most popular Russian dishes, often sold as street food, although it can also be made at home. The pocket-sized, oval-shaped pirozhki are yeast dough buns stuffed with a variety of ingredients such as fresh fruits, jams, and cottage cheese for the sweet varieties, or meat, eggs, vegetables, fish, and rice for the savory versions.

MOST ICONIC Pirozhki

Solyanka is a traditional Russian soup made with meat, fish, or mushrooms, and vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, olives, and cabbage. The soup is usually served with lemon wedges on the side, but it is also flavored with lemon juice during the cooking process. If meat is used, it is typically beef, pork, or chicken. Solyanka is also well-known as a hangover cure and it is traditionally served with sour cream.

Solyanka is a traditional Russian soup made with meat, fish, or mushrooms, and vegetables such as tomatoes, onions, olives, and cabbage. The soup is usually served with lemon wedges on the side, but it is also flavored with lemon juice during the cooking process.

MOST ICONIC Solyanka

Stolovaya No 57

The fundamental dish of Russian cuisine is known as kasha , a porridge that has represented an essential Russian meal for centuries. Russian kasha refers to various dishes which are created with cereals, most commonly rice, wheat, or millet, and pseudocereals like buckwheat and quinoa. The dish is usually boiled in water and milk, and ranges from sweet to savory in flavor. It can be modified by numerous additions such as fresh or dried fruit, preserves, cheese, butter, vegetables, nuts, or honey. In the past, the porridge was traditionally prepared in cast iron pots and slowly baked in the oven during the night. This authentic Russian dish holds a strong symbolic meaning–it is the first solid meal served to children, and is typically served during funerals, thus symbolizing the circle of life. Varieties of the dish, prepared with different cereals, are often found in other Slavic countries such as Ukraine, Poland, and Belarus.

The fundamental dish of Russian cuisine is known as kasha , a porridge that has represented an essential Russian meal for centuries. Russian kasha refers to various dishes which are created with cereals, most commonly rice, wheat, or millet, and pseudocereals like buckwheat and quinoa.

MOST ICONIC Kasha

Medovik is a popular Russian layered honey cake consisting of honey-infused, almost biscuit-like sponges that are coated with thin layers of cream. Although there are numerous variations of the cake, the custard is usually prepared with whipped cream or various combinations of condensed milk and butter. It is believed that the cake first appeared in the 1820s and was initially created for the wife of Alexander I of Russia. The addition of condensed milk probably originates from the Soviet era, while modern variations may include berries or even chocolate. Medovik is traditionally decorated with ground walnuts and is commonly served on various special occasions.

Medovik is a popular Russian layered honey cake consisting of honey-infused, almost biscuit-like sponges that are coated with thin layers of cream. Although there are numerous variations of the cake, the custard is usually prepared with whipped cream or various combinations of condensed milk and butter.

MOST ICONIC Medovik

Carne grill+wine

Herring under a fur coat (shuba).

Shuba or herring under a fur coat is a unique Russian salad consisting of three distinctive layers: salted herring, potatoes, and beets. The salad often has more than three layers, mostly consisting of apples, onions, or hard-boiled eggs. Most people believe that it was invented by a tavern owner named Anastas Bogomilov at the beginning of the 20th century. The red color of the beets symbolizes the red flag, and potatoes symbolize the staple food of peasants and workers. Today, the salad is a well-known staple at Russian New Year celebrations.

Shuba or herring under a fur coat is a unique Russian salad consisting of three distinctive layers: salted herring, potatoes, and beets. The salad often has more than three layers, mostly consisting of apples, onions, or hard-boiled eggs.

MOST ICONIC Shuba

Guriev kasha

Ptichye moloko

Pozharsky cutlet (Pozharskaya kotleta)

Mushroom Julienne

Mimoza Salad