Revenge of the Lunch Lady Recap

Making School Lunches Great Again

By Nell Jones - daughter, writer, student, contributor

I recently came across an article written by Jane Black, titled Revenge of the Lunch Lady, about the lunches offered in public schools. The article, originally published in the Huffington Post, highlights a public school cafeteria in a small town and a woman working to improve it in a way that could improve the entire system.

This exposé, you might call it, on the system responsible for feeding the children of America seems so important that I wanted to summarize it for our reader base. Consider it somewhat of an aperitif to the full article.

Ms. Black starts by discussing the role of the successful celebrity chef James Oliver in restoring public school cafeterias in America, specifically in a school in Huntington, West Virginia, the setting of the article. Oliver introduced fresh, made-from-scratch meals that barely followed the government standards that most schools fail to conform to.

The problem with this shiny, foreign chef coming in and saving the day was that the students were unhappy with the taste of the new food and began boycotting lunch and wasting it. This is problematic when students rely on school meals for most of their daily intake.

This was when Rhonda McCoy stepped in to save Huntington's cafeteria system.

The stereotype of school lunches being a spoonful of slop scooped onto a tray while looking unhealthy is the least of the worries when not all students can even afford a lunch from the cafeteria. Ms. Black suggests that the nutritional concerns may have started in 1981 when America had a surplus in dairy, leading the USDA to purchase dairy for the schools and continuing the surplus.

The government bought the cows and sold the meat for school lunches to solve this. This much dairy or beef was not compliant with the new dietary guidelines regarding the maximum amount of fat allowed.

However, this is not as troublesome when considering other data, like the number of children who can receive these lunches.

One of the more startling pieces of data in this article is that only one-third of 6 million impoverished children received free or subsidized lunch, as reported by “Their Daily Bread.” The article provided more statistical evidence confirming this large problem in the United States and the school lunch programs.

Government subsidies for the lunch program and cafeterias account for a considerable part of the funding, so it is important to remember these issues in current politics.

Now Rhonda McCoy, a registered dietician, is introduced onto the scene. A key part of the story is that she grew up in one of these poor school districts in rural West Virginia and knows the regional tastes preferences.

What she could do that Oliver wasn’t was improve the food quality more realistically while keeping in mind what the students liked to eat and adapting locally to their tastes.

To sustain the new recipes and healthier eating, she continued to accept government handouts and saved an extra $50,000 for her district. She was then able to spend on new kitchen equipment. Believe it or not, the new equipment solved the issue of cooking enough food efficiently to feed the school.

McCoy has also introduced fresh produce grown by the students into the meals. The Huntington school nearly doubled the meals served, and more students ate the cafeteria-provided lunches.

What McCoy could do in the Huntington School Cafeteria can be transferred to schools nationwide. The article points out that it is important for schools that need a change in their food programs to have a strong leader like McCoy, who understands every facet of the system and strives for a healthy eating culture while being realistic about the resources at hand.

A lot of the funding resources come from the government, and the government needs to be willing to fund these improvements, such as new kitchens, to keep up with changing times. If any of this interests you, the reader, I completely urge you to look at the original, more in-depth article.

Jane Black, February 9, 2017 Images by Sam Kaplan. "Revenge of the Lunch Lady." Food and Environment Reporting Network. N.p., 19 Apr. 2017. Web. 14 June 2017.