The Slow Food USA Blog

Turns out, kids love pizza

Posted on Fri, June 05, 2009 by Jerusha Klemperer
5 Comments | Categories: Policy, School Food,

Deborah Lehmann is an editor of School Lunch Talk, a blog about school food. She is currently studying economics and public policy at Brown University.

They say you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. Cafeteria directors say you can lead a child to healthy food, but you can’t make him eat it. Well, at least when he has the option of eating pizza and fries instead.

I’m on the road this week visiting cafeterias in Ohio and Massachusetts, and I’ve been continually struck by the difference between what’s offered to students and what actually ends up on their trays. All the high school cafeterias I’ve seen on this trip have offered dozens of choices, including healthy items like fresh sandwiches and salads. Yet probably 75 percent of students buy the same two or three items: pizza, chicken patty sandwiches and fries. ”It’s great that they have all that healthy stuff,” one high school student told me. “But nobody eats it. It’s a shelf-filler.”

At a high school in Massachusetts today, students could choose from sandwiches, salads, home-made shepherd’s pie, a hot sausage and pepper sub, turkey a la king with brown rice or pizza and tater tots. The adults buy the shepherd’s pie and the turkey, the director told me. About 80 percent of the students would opt for pizza and tater tots, she said.

At the high school I visited in Ohio, the cafeteria dishes out about 1,100 servings of french fries each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. It sells about 60 salads.

Cafeteria directors always show me all the healthy options available to students, telling me how hard they work to give students the opportunity to eat a healthy meal. But that’s just what it is: an opportunity. The healthy choices are there, but they’re sitting right next to those oh-so-tempting junk foods. And when you lead a student to pizza and fries, he’s almost certain to choose that over a salad or turkey a la king with brown rice.

If we’re serious about student wellness, we’re going to have to stop approaching nutrition as an opportunity. Schools have a responsibility to make healthy eating the norm, not just an option for a few students who are already health-conscious.

photo courtesy of Adam Kuban, via flickr creative commons.

Member Comments

From Susan Rubin on Fri, June 05, 2009

Deborah did something that every parent should do: visit the cafeteria and actually EAT the food! Menus are meaningless and don’t tell the whole story. What does the food look like, smell like and taste like? What else are kids being offered that might not be on the menu?

Many food service directors complain that kids always choose the fast food option. Perhaps the question should be WHY are tater tots, corn dogs, pizza, giant pretzels and bagels offered every day of the week?

Is there food based education happening in the school that perhaps coordinates the story behind Shepherd’s pie (there’s got to be a cool social studies/history behind it!) or other food item such as a Three Sisters Casserole?

We’ve got to encourage food in the cafeteria to be part of the learning experience, not an opportunity to maximize profits at the expense of our kids health! We must tell our representatives in Washington DC to invest in school lunch so that the money is available to make the food in our cafeterias good, clean and fair.

From Fast Healthy Recipes on Thu, June 18, 2009

As a teenager i love Pizza as well. Healthy choices are there, but they?re sitting right next to those oh-so-tempting junk foods

From Amy Boyce on Thu, June 18, 2009

As someone who often ate in the school cafeteria during a three year stint as a high school teacher, I’ll also add that part of the problem might be that the people preparing the food don’t really know how to make the healthy option appetizing. Unfortunately, a lot of the unhealthy items are high in fat which hides a multitude of sins, culinarily. Poorly prepared pizza or deep fat fried chicken patties will always be more appealing than equally poorly prepared veggies or dry, lifeless sandwiches. At my school kids regularly made a meal of two containers of tater tots and a bag of baked chips. At least the chips were baked? *shudder*

I believe in limiting the unhealthy options at schools, but unless we somehow can get the kitchen to prepare the healthy food in anything approaching an appetizing way, kids will continue to cling to the idea that food that is good for you just isn’t good.

From Susan Rubin on Thu, June 18, 2009

Amy, you make a really good point. We should invest money into training school kitchen staffs. There is a school food culinary “boot camp” happening right now in Santa Barbara CA. We need to find ways to fund these on a bigger scale so that school cafeterias can serve up healthy delicious food.

From Mark Heany on Wed, July 01, 2009

Parents need to take responsibility for their children’s poor eating habits… I was sent to school with a bagged lunch because of the junk they served (20 years ago) and I know things are worse now which is why I send my son to school with a packed lunch. Those parents who say their kids won’t eat anything else but chicken fingers and french fries are guilty or being the ones who offered those items to their children in the first place. As parents it is our responsibility to teach our children right from wrong—this applies to what they eat as well.