What's for Lunch: Uneaten Rice & Beans

By Ed Bruske

aka The Slow Cook

Believe it or not, many kids go through the lunch line at school and then barely touch the food. It just gets tossed in the trash. I'm not sure how the children make it through the day, but so many of them just nibble.

This is what one boy's tray looked like near the end of lunch hour. He didn't even take a bite out of the cheese quesadilla--nor the beans and rice, nor the salad. The only thing he ate was a little cup of apple sauce. But look! He drank his milk! Who says kids won't drink plain milk?

This tells me that kids are served way more food than they actually need. They typically ignore vegetables and anything else that looks suspicious--like brown rice mixed with beans and tomato sauce.

To make sure my eyes weren't deceiving me, I took a slow walk around the lunchroom and observed closely what the kids were doing with their rice and their salad. I counted exactly six kids eating the rice. Two of them were Hispanic, one Asian. My daughter, the carbohydrate hound, wolfed hers down and went back for seconds (she was denied).

Fewer still ate the salad. I don't understand that. It's Romaine lettuce with croutons, not that stale, commercial mix of iceberg and shredded carrots and cabbage the schools used to serve. All that salad, along with the rice and beans, simply gets dumped in the garbage.

The kids were a bit more enthusiastic about the cheese quesadillas. In fact, I'd say Mexican food is a pretty safe bet in school cafeterias.

What's for Lunch: Black Bean Burger

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

No, this isn't a hamburger, although it looks very much like one. Chartwells at its menu website called it a "spicy black bean burger on a whole wheat roll."

I would love to know where the black been burger came from. I guess I'll have to do some snooping around to find out, since the info isn't posted by Chartwells or the schools.

But here's where it gets even more interesting. What looks like a salad of romaine lettuce and tomato on the side is actually intended as a topping for the burger. And in that plastic cup--what the kids throught was salad dressing--was actually an "ancho sauce" that was supposed to be spread on the burger as well.

I didn't see any of the kids using the salad or the sauce the way. This is where parent volunteers in the cafeteria could help out: coaching the kids on the food and how to eat it. But that doesn't seem to be a particular priority at the moment.

The vegetable on the tray is "herb-roasted potato wedges with shredded carrot." The potatoes, of course, arrive frozen. I didn't see a lot of shredded carrot. Have you ever heard of shredding carrots on roasted potatoes? That's a novel concept, I think.


Here's what the burger looked like with the top down.

What's for Lunch: Bean Taco

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells at its menu website called this "vegetarian Baja bean" taco. The corn you see on it was actually a side dish (Tex-Mex corn), but some kids opted to have it served on top of the beans.

What looks like a salad on the side is actually "Romaine, tomato and salsa taco fixings" intended to go on top of the vegetables inside the taco.


Here's what the taco looks like if you remove the corn. The apple was advertised as "locally grown."

This might not look like much, but the kids seem to enjoy eating their tacos, although there is spillage.

What's for Lunch: Bean Taco

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Chartwells calls this "vegetarian Baja bean whole wheat soft taco." Quite a mouthful. It looks like canned black beans and frozen corn with lettuce, topped with a tomato sauce or salsa. It was served open faced with a choice of "Tex-Mex corn" and a "pineapple cup." Or, in this case, pineapple without the cup.

I saw very few kids actually choose this lunch. Most of them were taking the Tuesday alternate: "turkey and cheese whole grain wrap." Meaning, there was a choice of tortilla two different ways.


One fifth-grade girl wanted nothing to do with the tortilla. She emptied out the contents--turkey, tomato, lettuce, grated cheddar cheese--and was tossing it around to make a salad.

This poses its own challenges, since the processed turkey meat, cut into deli-style rounds, does not lend itself to being cut with a plastic "spork."

What's for Lunch: Starch, starch, starch

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

In the federally-subsidized school lunch program, potatoes qualify as vegetables. That's how you end up with a tray like this, jammed with starches in the form of baked potato, bread roll and beans. Add the sugar in the apple sauce and you have quite a glycemic load. (Thankfully, the apple sauce has no added sugar, just what occurs naturally in the apples.)

Actually, what Chartwells called this on its menu website was "baked potato with vegetable chili and low-fat cheddar cheese." That explains what those beans are in the upper left, because the kids weren't sure what they were (baked beans?) or whether they wanted to eat them (strangely sweet).

I did not see the cheddar cheese, but maybe it was already stirred into the beans.

Also on the menu were "seasoned green beans," which translates as green beans out of a can. Thus, here's another version of this lunch, with the green beans but without the salad of fresh cucumbers and tomatoes.

And here's yet a third version, without the applesauce. Schools that follow the U.S. Department of Agriculture's food-based menu plan must offer five items at lunch. To reduce plate waste, school district must allow high schools an "offers versus served" option, meaning kids only need select three of the offered items to qualify as a federally-subsidized "meal." But they can take all five if they want, as this particular fifth-grade girl did. Here in the District of Columbia, kids in all grades get the "offered versus served" option.

The kids really liked the baked potato, even though there was no dressing for it. (Where's the sour cream? my daughter wanted to know.) What they didn't eat so much were the "chili" or the other vegetables. The best thing on this tray by far was the "locally grown" cucumber and tomato salad. The cucumbers were crisp and cool, the salad perfectly dressed. I could have eaten it all day. But not many kids had it on their trays, and those that did didn't really touch it before it went into the trash.

Vegetarian Alternate: Taco Chips

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This is the standing "cold" alternate lunch for Fridays in D.C. elementary schools, according to the menu posted on Chartwells website. Chartwells calls this, "western corn and black bean salad with whole grain tortilla shells and homemade BBQ ranch dressing."

To me, this looks like frozen corn tossed with canned black beans next to some corn tortilla scoops you usually see in the chips aisle at the grocery store. I don't see the "homemade BBQ ranch dressing." What would you put it on? The pear had been served with the main lunch the day before, and of course milk--either low-fat or non-fat--is always available for the kids to choose from.

How would you rate this meal? Is this a meal?