Have you ever attended a school with a Lunch program? In class today, we discussed the possible positive and negatives of school-wide Lunch programs. We learned about a young photojournalist named Martha, who began a blog called Never Seconds in 2009 to document what she (and her friends) were being served for lunch every day. You can access her the archive of her blog here: https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/
Image description: a slice of pizza, a muffin, a small amount of corn, and an unidentified fried item (fish stick?) are placed sloppily on a lunch tray.
We discussed how, for many people, a school Lunch or Breakfast program may be their only access to a consistent, nutritionally balanced meal for a variety of reasons (food insecurity, affordability, time constraints, etc.). Our concerns, however, were that many of the meals being served to Martha (and to many students across the world) were not nutritionally-balanced, were unappetizing, and were not a correct serving size.
What are your experiences with a school Lunch program? Do you think that all schools should have them?
Feel free to watch the video below, of how an amazing crew of “Lunch ladies” feed over 400 students a day at a middle school in New York City: