Healthy school food praised - in concept

San Francisco Chronicle ^ | November 3, 2012 | by Joanna Lin

[Oldeconomybuyer]

In a taste test of new lunch items last year in the Long Beach Unified School District, the fiesta salad received a nearly 73 percent approval rating. One student even declared that the dish of pinto beans, cilantro, corn, tomatoes and cayenne pepper was "better than McDonald's."

Yet the salad was a flop when the district put it on the menu this year.

A recent statewide survey shows that although students overwhelmingly support the new nutrition standards, most are tossing the foods they don't like. About 40 percent of students say they eat school lunches in their entirety.

But what students support and what they'll actually eat are not always aligned. At Long Beach Unified, vegetables, in particular, have been a tough sell.

"We've seen them just take the item and just put them in the trash can," said Cecelia Slater, the district's nutrition services director.

[Timber Rattler]

Same story everywhere else, and according to the bureaucrats, its all the fault of the parents and students because they don’t like the new federally-mandated gruel.

[varmintman]

The whole world knows that a little kid’s reaction to alcohol and tobacco products is correct, why would anybody think that same kid’s reaction to green veggies was wrong? When something tastes bad, your body is trying to tell you something.

[tacticalogic]

When you agree to let career beltway bureaucrats tell you what to eat, don’t complain that it all tastes like paper and red tape. You should have seen that coming.

[muawiyah]

We always had this horrid fish dish on Fridays ~ no idea what it was called, but they had to soak it 2 or 3 days to reconstitute it, and then scrub it to get the soap off ~ and sometimes they didn't do that.

I was in my 40s before I found it had a name ~ LUTEFISK ~

[married21]

It takes too long to eat a salad. The kids want to go play. A wrap or a sandwich that has veggies inside, that you can hold and eat, would be better. Also, nobody minds eating the veggies in egg rolls.