What’s for lunch?

School API: 943. School lunch sodium: 770.

What’s for lunch in a public elementary school in Sunnyvale, California? One curious mom stopped by at lunchtime to find out…

The school’s multipurpose building (cafeteria/gym/auditorium) has been torn down and is being rebuilt, so for the next year and a half, students will be served lunch from a trailer on the school playground. Many students ate their lunches in their classrooms because it was too chilly to eat outside on the grass or at the picnic tables under the metal awning.

The kids filed up the ramp into the little trailer and walked into the spare interior. Student volunteers in plastic gloves handed out the food. First choice was one of three entrées, placed into a paper tray: a PB&J sandwich on whole-wheat bread in plastic wrap, or two mini cheeseburgers of “seasoned” beef with American cheese on white bread buns (720 milligrams of sodium), or a mini cheese pizza (770 milligrams of sodium). The last two items—packaged in cellophane—had been heated offsite and delivered to the trailer in insulated bins. Next, kids could choose from a plastic bag of baby carrots, or a paper bowl of salad with two cherry tomatoes. Dessert was either an apple or two orange quarters, served in another little paper dish. Finally, the kids could choose between plain or chocolate low-fat milk. Then, with a napkin and some plastic cutlery in hand, they filed outside into the chilly October breeze.

Cellophane cheeseburger and pizza bags blew around the asphalt and tumbled across the grass field nearby. Serving a prepackaged lunch generates a huge amount of trash every day—the paper trays and bowls, plastic bags, milk cartons, paper napkins, and plastic cutlery.

I asked two fourth-grade boys what they thought of their lukewarm mini cheeseburgers. One boy was picking the white-bread bun off the “seasoned” beef patty and eating it bit by bit. “It’s okay,” he said mildly. Another boy was eating his cheeseburgers the normal way. “I like it!” he said brightly. A third boy, eating a home-packed lunch of cottage cheese and fruit alongside his friends, offered his opinion: “It smells horrible!”

The meal service at this school is by Sodexo, “A world leader in food and facilities management services.” We’ll have more school lunch snapshots in the months to come…

Recommended Daily Values for Children

The Baylor College of Medicine has published a handy table that lists the nutritional recommendations for children.