School lunch
Every morning during 3rd period Strength and performance, Mr. Benages extols the value of leading healthy lives to us. Last week was about breakfast. Eating breakfast can increase reps by 15%, increase strength by 10%, and increase intelligence by a gazillion percent. Yet no one I know eats breakfast, unless you count the gourmet meals Adeleyn prepares for herself every morning.
Looking around, the hunger epidemic would make you believe you are at some coal mine in rural Poland. Kids splitting breakfast bars into 3rds and others eating bars of soap. Everyone has money, but hunger is preferable to school food. I’m not sure what genius believed that we want to eat donuts, cinnamon rolls, and sweet raisin bagels every morning. I mean a plain bagel or anything that doesn’t make you feel like you are playing Candy Crush in your mouth would be fine.
However, that’s not the worst of it as lunch is a whole other ball game. There are times when I will walk through the lunch line and just not buy anything. How are these companies really going to lose my business? As Ms. Barbino would say, demand is inelastic here, I have to eat with no other options. More than that, these companies have us imprisoned in school. I’m honestly preaching to the choir here about the quality of school meals. Bottom line is that like hogs, we have to eat whatever the farmer gives us.
At the same time, school is a learning institution, we are stuck here, and while we are trapped here, we are at the mercy of whoever is in charge of the lunch room. The companies may switch but right now it is Aramark who currently runs the cafeteria. You may also remember Sodexo from Middle School . These Food Service Management Companies (FSMCs) like Aramark profit from our captivity. School cafeterias are contracted out to these FSMCs who are in charge of making sure that the cafeteria makes money to cover expenses like food, labor, transportation costs, etc. They will do whatever it takes to make sure that cafeterias don’t lose money and are able to continue to provide food. Here’s the catch, after covering expenses they take all the profits left on top. These “Big Food” companies make billions. All those bags of Doritos and slices of cheese pizza were made with the same intention as the guy selling Supreme merch: to make hella money.
Our school is a little different, but this is what the a-la-carte thing looks like
Now there are a couple of questions to address like how are they allowed to do this in the first place? Can’t students choose to eat healthy things like a carrot or vegetable? Blah, blah, blah, etc, etc. Well, FSMCs like Aramark are notorious for creating a system that sustains their business model. They literally lobby congress to reduce federal dietary guidelines. TO REDUCE DIETARY GUIDELINES. That’s like putting the Mexican cartel in charge of the DEA. It’s honestly comical. With this much money it feels like the plots should be more devious. Yet, this is why you see those a-la-carte items that make them so much money. This is why they are allowed to sell cheesy foods, zero sugar coke, and chocolate chip cookies.
You probably see the lunch ladies wearing these
Overall, this has allowed companies to undercut the sale of expensive, less demanded items like healthy foods by making them optional and low quality while giving more access to the scrumptious foods. I mean most kids don’t want to eat carrots and apples while most of the companies lose money trying to supply tons of fresh produce to schools anyways. In the long term, the effects of school lunches train our psychology to seek out greasy, sugary foods. We are like rats undergoing operand conditioning. We grow more used to the way fast food tastes and are more likely to crave it later. Tyson foods and Kraft, some of the suppliers for FSMCs and McDonalds, reap billions of dollars more in profits when we get older and are fiending for chicken nuggets. This doesn’t even touch on the implications of consistently eating highly processed food. Like America wasn’t born fat, we got that way from foods like chips, pizzas, and burgers. We don’t really even have a food pyramid anymore, more of like a food dungeon where you come out feeling sick. Deep down, I just feel like Aramark is this imp, flailing our bodies to bloody pieces.
At the end of the day there is no solution. Don’t eat the school food, it’s bad for you. I just ask my mom to make me a garden sandwich every morning. Really, I hope you get a second chance after graduating.
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Awesome post, Varun!
Hey Varun, I really liked your blog. I’ll be honest — my “breakfast” consists of a glass of milk on the way out the door, largely because I prioritize my sleep over my nutrition. However, when 7th period rolls around and Mr. Benages talks about how important breakfast is to be a BEAST, I feel slightly guilty.
Your deep-dive into the unethical behaviors of FSMCs was really funny. It was a one-man-crusade against Big Food, and I kept wanting to read on.
I can attest to the fact that school lunches are absolutely nasty. Pizza slices have so much oil that they drip when you hold them; “mac and cheese” is really just bland pasta with unmelted cheese. And so, not only are the foods offered unhealthy, but they’re also of obscenely low quality. You mentioned this, talking about how making something that is cheap to produce just helps pad Aramark and other FSMCs’ bottom lines.
I remember that in 6th grade, school lunches were significantly healthier (perhaps related to Michelle Obama’s national initiative), but ever since then, all of the carrots have been replaced by cookies and soda. After a couple of days eating school lunches in freshman year, I made sure to pack my lunch for the rest of high school. Great post!
This blog post was awesome and very fun to read 🙂 You did a good job of making it very easy to get through and very manageable. I also loved the references to AP Psych and AP Micro, very clever (love Barbino and Scott). In terms of school food, I never eat at school. Last year I got school lunch sometimes because it was free but this year I mostly go off campus or pack a snack (usually fruit), because you’re very right, we never really have healthy alternatives to the greasy cafeteria food. Sometimes the thick, hard pizza would make me feel nauseous after lunch but I’d have it the next day again if I was hungry. You’re right in that the companies who are in charge of the cafeteria food control what we eat. I wonder if their supposed solution to the unhealthy food epidemic was offering us that free lunch if we added fruit or something healthy? I remember them doing that last year, but I think you also had the option to get a cookie. I know I never got an apple from the cafeteria, that’s for sure. Honestly, I never really thought about the system and companies that schools use to provide lunch for us, but your blog actually had me questioning what I ate last year. Overall, this post was really well-written and funny!
Hi Varun, I found your post to be really funny but at the same time really accurate. It sounds shocking, but I have actually witnessed students rationing one meal bar between a whole table and once even resorting to consuming a bar of soap in my stats class!! Truly, this is a problem that must be solved. I used to buy lunch from school during elementary school, but eventually I got sick of having the same thing day after day so my mom started packing me lunches. Sometimes when I forget to bring a lunch or there isn’t enough time to pack one, I’ll still get school lunch though and I am always surprised at how bland and tasteless it is (except the tater tots. Those are amazing). I don’t remember where I read it, but I remember reading an article about how the bad quality of school lunches often impacts the least privileged students the most as they are often reliant on the free or reduced lunch options. Reading your post, I enjoyed your humorous use of figurative language and your graphics. I also found the article you linked to be really interesting. Overall, you wrote a hilarious but important post!