I need help for the past several years the choices of food for our students lunches has become terrible. They are all processed foods and just not at all nutrituous and many parents are complaing. They "follow" the NYS school guidelines, but are just poor choices in our eyes nachos and cheese, mozzarella sticks and sauce to name a couple some aren't too bad but not the greatest.

Has anyone had any experience on getting their school to change and what steps did you take. We are a public school with about 2500 students and presently go through a food company. Any insight would be helpful.

Cindy

I'm very interested in this topic as well!!! Hopefully there will be some good responses. Thanks for posting such an important issue.

Catherine

We just formed a new committe for this reason and other food related issues at our school. We have started to research other schools we heard through the grapevine are healthy and have met with their PTO's about what they did and as soon as we gather enough info, we will go ahead to the school board, I believe this will take a long time, but it needs to be addressed, I am sick of the usual answer "if you don't like what the school offers, bring your own lunch" we do, but we have many students who are on a free lunch program who eat what they are served. Good luck with your schools.

Here are some organizations working on the quality of food served in schools that might be a good resource for you.

The Lunch Box www.thelunchbox.org/

Two Angry Moms www.angrymoms.org/

Edible Schoolyard www.edibleschoolyard.org/

Slow Food USA Time for Lunch campaign www.slowfoodusa.org/index.php/campaign/time_for_lunch/

This is really not a PTO issue. This should be discussed with the food service department and the school administration.

Unfortunately, if you get free or reduced lunch, you're stuck with what the school serves but if you are paying for the lunch, try packing a healthy lunch for your child. There are power in numbers and if enough people stop buying the lunch, you may be able to get a change.

But in the meantime, please speak to the administration about their menu. They don't know there is a problem unless you bring it to their attention.

This sort of this is a fine issue for our PTO -- we in fact had the director of food service come to one of our meetings and discuss various issues like this. Actually, it was the reverse: the kids don't much care for the whole-grain pizza crusts.