They were being destroyed by the mountains of burgers and fries and nuggets that filled their restaurants, schools, refrigerators and arteries. In 2015, the USDA issued its first professional standards for school nutrition directors, and it required continuing education, too. With the party now in control of Congress and the White House—and with Michelle Obama, the program’s greatest defender, gone—school lunch is as vulnerable as it’s ever been. Those from families with incomes between 25 and 95 percent above the poverty line paid a reduced price, while everyone else paid the full price. $5.16, $10.32 Despite the locals’ resistance, it looked as if Oliver was replicating that success in Huntington. The Lunch Lady has been preparing and delivering lunches and nutrition programs to schools for over 25 years with dozens of kitchens across the country. At a time when 94 percent of U.S. schools were failing to meet federal guidelines, Cabell County hit, and often exceeded, every one. The snap peas with mint, a quintessentially English combination, lost the mint; the garlicky greens became a lot less garlicky; the cinnamon in the chili was eighty-sixed. The formula for CEP is complex, but it essentially allows schools in high-poverty areas to provide free meals to all students. When McCoy saw me inspect one, she blushed and opened her mouth to explain, but ultimately said nothing. It allows schools to adapt to America’s regularly shifting nutrition standards; we live, after all, in a country where the “right” diet can swing from low-fat to low-carb seemingly overnight. Not so much. Since 2010, it has allocated another $115 million to kitchen equipment. At Huntington High School, where McCoy worried that teenagers would shun hot lunches—even free ones—she conducted a pilot before officially signing up. From shop SouthernTraditions2. “My part involved putting a spotlight on the town,” he said. To those unfamiliar with the absurdist theater of school lunch, it is puzzling, even maddening, that feeding kids nutritious food should be so hard. It was pushed through Congress after World War II with the support of military leaders who wanted to ensure that there would be enough healthy young men to fight the next war, and of farmers who were looking for a place to unload their surplus corn, milk and meat. The school went from serving 700 or so meals a day to nearly 1,300. By contrast, if a school depends on a food conglomerate to change its menu, it might wait years for new products to make their way through research and development and food-safety testing. When I asked her once what she likes to cook for dinner, she looked startled, then tucked her hands beneath her thighs and swung nervously back and forth in her swivel chair. Saying no will not stop you from seeing Etsy ads, but it may make them less relevant or more repetitive. Original Price $21.99" So could state budgets, which subsidize the salaries of her cooks. She started by assembling a group of cooks to rework Oliver’s recipes so they reflected local tastes. He had seen it before, when he filmed a similar show in an industrial area of England. Top subscription boxes – right to your door, © 1996-2020, Amazon.com, Inc. or its affiliates. She grew up in Lincoln County, a rural area at the edge of the southern coalfields, the poorest region in a very poor state. In 2008, the West Virginia Board of Education had imposed tough new rules that required meals to include fresh fruits and vegetables, lean meats, whole grains, low-fat milk and water. In 2014, now-House Speaker Paul Ryan said that public assistance, including school lunch, offered a “full stomach and an empty soul” because it made kids reliant on government handouts. She never answered. That flood of meat and dairy hiked the fat content of school meals just as the country was descending into an anti-fat frenzy. The effect was quick and severe. I didn’t taste the pancake on a stick. In 2011, the USDA proposed limiting the amount of potatoes and other starchy vegetables permitted in school lunches so that cafeterias could make room for healthier options. In a USDA study of 544 schools conducted several years later, only 1 percent met the requirement for overall fat and just a single school had managed to keep saturated fat to a healthy level. A report reveals that only one third of the countryâs six million school-age children who live in poverty are receiving school lunch. Then there’s the pizza lobby. But if Rokita wins this battle, more than 7,000 schools, feeding nearly 3.4 million kids, will once again have to start charging for some meals. Students from families with incomes up to 25 percent above the federal poverty line—about $3,300 for a family of four, or around $24,000 in today’s dollars—were entitled to free meals. For more stories that stay with you, subscribe to our newsletter. But there was a problem with this made-for-TV narrative—several, actually. But each one of the made-from-scratch meals that McCoy dishes out costs only $1.50 in ingredients—about 2 cents less than when Jamie Oliver arrived. Schools need an ambitious leader at the helm, one who understands both nutrition and how to manage complex operations.