Cafeteria Society

All that and a bag of chips: Sheila Jackson chooses the pizza and fries for lunch at Barratt Middle School in South Philadelphia. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Contrary to an earlier study, public school lunches in Philly aren’t as bad as all that. Still, there’s room for improvement.

by Elisa Ludwig

Visit any school lunchroom in Philadelphia and you’ll notice, first of all, the noise of kids blowing off classroom steam. You’ll notice the series of bright decorations -- smiling pineapples and plastic inflatable bottles of Snapple and posters reminding students of protein and fiber and the food pyramid. Then you’ll see the sights familiar to any former student: tater tots, Salisbury steak, pizza, canned peaches. And, of course, milk.

Lunch in Philadelphia's schools is similar to most any lunch you'd find nationwide. After all, school lunch has been dictated by a set of national nutrition standards since 1994. Since those standards have been adapted, even the commodity foods supplied by the USDA -- once the source of low-grade meat by the ton -- have to meet quality standards.

In an era when the CDC estimates teenagers are three times more likely to be overweight than they were 20 years ago, what students eat in school has become a very public issue. Last January, the Surgeon General declared childhood obesity an epidemic, leaving legislators to calculate the potential health costs of whole generations beset by diabetes and heart disease.

So the news back in August, when the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) gave Philadelphia an F on its annual report card for national school lunches, came as a blow to Philadelphia schools. The story appeared in Newsweek and was locally broadcast on KYW-TV.

"This was a disappointment to us because we have always been proactive with national guidelines and we've had a nutrition person on board for 15 years, well ahead of our time," says Paul Schmid, the school district's director of food services.

It has since been revealed that the PCRM is a pro-vegetarian and dairy-free interest group, and that Philadelphia schools "failed" because most of their lunches contained meat and didn't offer lower-fat, vegetarian options. The American School Food Service Association has condemned the study as "false and ludicrous."

Indeed, in many ways, Philadelphia's lunches are ahead of the curve. The school district has a comprehensive nutrition program that integrates nutrition education into the classroom time of other school subjects. While other schools have Coca-Cola-sponsored athletic programs and regularly distributed meals from Taco Bell and Arby's, Philadelphia schools prohibit candy and soft drinks in elementary and middle schools.

Even the blue and green smoothies served at lunch snack counters, says coordinator of dietetic services Joan Nachmani, are 50 percent juice. Nachmani has also ensured fresh fruit is available at all schools and that all milk is 1 percent, significantly lowering the fat content in lunches. And for the vegetarian student, the program also offers a peanut butter and jelly sandwich option.

"We've come a long way from the lunch lady -- we run this like a restaurant," says Kevin Casey, food services' manager of operations.

Still, some of the school district's methods for distributing food may counteract its best nutritional efforts. One problem is with its universal feeding program, a system that enables the district to serve free meals in 230 out of 310 schools. Originally meant to avoid the stigma of federally subsidized lunch plans, the universal feeding program was established in 1991, during the anti-welfare era, and got rid of the application process that identified students in need. Instead, a school now gets free lunch if at least 80 percent of the students live close to the poverty line.

The stigma of "handouts," however, is still very much alive. During a recent visit to Barratt Middle School in South Philadelphia, students refused to take the free lunch, snacking instead off of other students' plates or on colorfully packaged chips and pink and blue soda purchased on the way to school.

"You could put the same chicken they give for free here on the pay-for snack line, and the kids would rather buy it than get it for free," says Roy McKinney, principal at Barratt. "So what happens is these kids are eating doughnuts, gum and chips all day. That's become their meals."

A fifth-grader agreed. "Most people are too cool to go up to the lunch line. But the snacks are bangin'."

Food services has not found a way to further discourage the stigma, which to teachers and principals is interfering not only with lunch but with students' ability to study. There are currently no plans to address the issue on a district-wide basis.

"When you look at the numbers," says Schmid, "we are still giving away 115,000 lunches out of 175,000 kids. I think that percentage is pretty good."

Another edible offender in Philadelphia's schools is the satellite lunch program, which serves 58,000 of 120,000 lunches a day. In 1946, the National School Lunch Act was passed -- because so many enlisting soldiers were malnourished -- requiring all public schools to provide lunch to their students. At that time it was more cost efficient to retrofit older schools with "pre-plated" lunches rather than build new kitchens.

Today, 207 of 313 schools in urban Philadelphia rely on satellite lunch and breakfast for their students. The food, which is provided by the lowest bidding contractor and is currently trucked in from a vendor in Brooklyn, N.Y., might be pre-packaged sandwiches, meatloaf or Papa John's pizza. Breakfast may be a pastry pie with the meal's "fruit" portion inside. Often fruit punch will also be counted as a "fruit." While on paper the satellite lunch follows national nutritional guidelines, its packaging and preservatives make it at best unappetizing, and at worst a lot less healthy than a fresh lunch.

Teachers point to the fact that the food can be stored -- in its plastic wrapping and unrefrigerated -- for months at a time. The pre-packaged food arrives unlabeled, though all of the nutrition information is available in the food services office.

Students at Fairhill Elementary School in North Philadelphia rejected the meat sandwiches they were offered because of the mayonnaise and "too much meat." Others said they enjoyed them because they were "like hoagies."

Jayne McGinley, a special elementary teacher at Logan Elementary School, is routinely dismayed with what her students are served. "We'll see things like a cheese croissant for breakfast and grilled cheese sandwich for lunch. There's no variety. It's always a pizza -- it may be in a square, a triangle or maybe they get really crazy and put it on French bread. It's frustrating when you're trying to teach lifelong skills and habits about what a healthy meal may look like."

McGinley also describes something called a "Space lunch" available on half-days or holidays, usually served once a month: a pre-wrapped stick of meat, a brick of cheese, orange peanut butter crackers and an apple juice box. Not exactly something to look forward to.

While there is no candy or soda in middle and elementary schools, there are still chips, cookies and funnel cake on snack lines and soda in high schools. A Los Angeles school recently passed legislation to ban soda in all of its schools. The Oakland, Calif., school district, the state of Texas and the city of Stamford, Conn., have each enacted a universal ban on junk food in its schools, while schools in New Mexico have begun to consider a similar policy.

Such measures in Philadelphia may be a long time coming. With cost efficiency, national legislation, criticism from the media and sheer numbers to contend with, food services has its own daily battles to contend with. "So many parents depend on us," says Joan Nachmani, "we're just trying to do the best that we can."

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