What Are We Eating?

Your stomach is growling, and you're eagerly waiting for your food so that you can sit down with your friends and enjoy a break from classes. However, even the lunch room is a field of study. Your lunches in school don’t randomly appear each day. There are specific guidelines and people working behind the scenes for students to get their lunches. 

Do you know where school lunches come from? As of now, you could be eating anything from anyone. Mrs. Bates, who is the school lunch director and monitors the testing of new foods for Niskayuna, gave me an idea of how the school lunches actually come to be. 

“The free lunch program was a federal based program that was started during COVID,” says Mrs. Bates. States like Maine, California, Massachusetts and more have already put the free lunch program back into effect. However, New York is not one of them. Different school lunch facilitators such as Mrs. Bates are going to petition for the free lunch program. For instance, during the last week of January, they will be going to the State Capitol in support of Universal Free Meals. 

As of right now, we do not have the option of free lunches. However, teachers have cleverly found some solutions to this issue. Some teachers, such as those in the art classrooms, have snacks stored in cabinets for students to take whenever they want. This is one of the innovative ways that help students, who might’ve ran out of the house without breakfast or didn’t bring money for lunch that day, to have something to eat. This is a simple act that can provide students with much needed food, as well as make them feel like others care for them. 

Additionally, school lunch is not a part of the school budget. Mrs. Bates explains, “All expenses such as food costs, employee salaries, and benefits are paid with the revenues that we bring in.” The school funds for many new accessible services like sports fields and monitors; however, the food the school serves is not one of them. The food is received from a different organization that operates as its own restaurant, working solely to create school food. 

The high school participates in the National School Lunch program. As Mrs. Bates said, “We work with a dietitian at Capital Region Boces to ensure that all of the requirements are met and that the menus contain meals that the students want to eat.” Since we participate in this program, the school is given many regulations of food options. 

If you weren’t required to take that extra fruit at lunch, would you? In many instances, it takes a little push to eat healthy. Why would you willingly choose a bag of chips over an apple? “The guidelines that we follow now require students to take a fruit or vegetable with their meal, whereas prior to 2012, this was not the case,” states Mrs. Bates. As studies continue to be done on school nutrition, food has improved. In the vending machines and lunch lines at the school, it's important that we have healthy and eco-friendly options, not just junk food.