Nourish: Food + Community | Activity 6: School Lunch Survey

A story of food is being created at our schools.

Activity Overview

Students develop a questionnaire to survey their peers about the food in the cafeteria (or other lunch option). They analyze the data, and develop and present recommendations based on their findings.

Essential Question

In what ways might we improve the food at our school?

Background

Visit the lunchroom in many schools across the United States and you’ll see something similar: calorie-laden, pre-processed and packaged heat-and-serve food that has been shipped from miles away. These lunches are often unappetizing and generally wasteful, and may have questionable nutritional value. Many of these practices can be traced to our National School Lunch Program, which has historically been managed for hunger relief and farm support. With its focus on pounds of food and numbers of bodies served, the program tends to be about quantity, not quality.

Today, an alarming number of youth in the United States are poorly nourished. School-age children also face an escalation of diet-related illness, including diabetes and obesity. School lunches that support healthful food choices and sustainable practices can have a tremendous impact, not only on student health and well-being, but also on the school and the larger community.

Students may not have the power to effect big changes in the lunch offerings, but even small changes can make a difference. In Oregon, for example, schools offer one locally grown fruit or vegetable a month, which has resulted in kids enjoying and eating more fresh foods. An increasing number of schools across the country now offer salad bars stocked with fresh greens and other fresh fruits and vegetables.