Adam Sandler Sang It Best

Woke up in the morning.

Put on my new plastic glove.
Served some re-heated salsbury steak

With a little slice of love.

Got no clue what the chicken pot pie
Is made of.
Just know everything's doing fine

Down here in Lunch Lady Land.

I have always admired people who are willing to put themselves on the line in the name of political activism. A teacher, dubbed Mrs. Q, kept her own blog about eating school lunches every. single. day. to prove a point about the weak standards used in American school lunch programs. While I have yet to read her personal blog, I did come across a Yahoo! Shine article, Would You Volunteer to Eat School Lunch Every Day to Prove a Point? This Teacher Did.

Mrs. Q uses pictures and personal taste test stories to get her point across that American school lunches are not healthy or good tasting. The Shine article attests that the lunches served in schools all across the nation are teaching students poor nutrition and eating habits. I can attest to the fact that in my high school, if it was gyro (always pronounced ji-row not the proper "hero" way) day or riblets day, I would A) raid the vending machine for chips, combos, taffy, and Mountain Dew; B) drive home and make 2 grilled cheeses; C) drive to Cenex to grab a personal pan pepperoni pizza, a sub, or breadsticks and Mountain Dew.

More recently, I read an article in Fargo's High Plains Reader, an independent newsmagazine type of paper written entirely by its staff (never AP wires) and distributed in the Fargo-Moorhead area. I was sitting in the Broadway Erbert and Gerberts enjoying my turkey sub on wheat and chicken dumpling soup reading Of School Lunches and Socialism by Ed Raymond. This article compares American lunch programs to French ones. What a difference! (And no, the French kids don't enjoy a complimentary cigarette after each meal, either *ha!) It's a great read that I definitely recommend.


Going off of that article, I came across another HPR article, The Problem with Public School Lunch. This one deals with how vegan and vegetarian students aren't given choices in today's hot lunch lines. The author throws out a lot of information, stats about diseases, the USDA, and how food, mostly processed, gets on our fading yellow lunch trays.

Now, I just want a "slop, sloppy joe, slop, sloppy joe" on my fading yellow lunch tray!