Happy Food Revolution Day! In case
you didn’t know, Saturday, May 17 has been dubbed thusly by none
other than British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver. One of the main
goals of the day, according to Oliver, is “to get the world to
focus on food issues and rally our efforts to bring food education
back into schools.” That mission comes as no surprise because, as I

discussed in Reason two years ago, Oliver originally
brought the Food Revolution concept to America with the
express mission of improving school lunches.

School food is always a hot topic, and is perhaps more so now
than it’s ever been. From a publicity standpoint, school food has
taken off as an issue largely due to the efforts of Oliver and
First Lady Michelle Obama. But viewed from the standpoint of
edibility, cost, and healthiness, food served by public schools via
the USDA’s National School Lunch Program was already an issue
because that program and its food have a decades-long track record
of sucking. And in spite of the best efforts of Oliver and Mrs.
Obama, along with
new rules set to take effect in the coming months, I’m not
optimistic that the quality of school food is likely to change
anytime soon. Why?

If you’re one of those who thought all this talk about the
National School Lunch Program had translated into better food,
think again. Contrary to any visions you may have of expensive
reforms leading to school kitchens serving as virtual
clearinghouses for fresh fruits and vegetables, that just isn’t the
case. Expensive reforms? You bet. They crop up every few years. But
schools are still serving kids nachos. And sometimes—as happened
last week at a public school in Ohio—those
nachos are full of ants.

Issues like ants in food are hardly rare. And other systemic
problems persist.

For example, special interests help define foods standards for
school lunches. Echoing the Reagan Administration’s declaration of
ketchup as a vegetable, Congress recently declared that pizza
(because of its tomato sauce and the tomato and institutional
frozen pizza lobbies)
counts as a vegetable.

(Article continues below Reason.tv’s “The Case Against Jamie
Oliver.”)

School lunches also neuter the ability of families to make
dietary choices their children. Consider the
pink slime controversy earlier this year. Whether you were

up in arms over chemically treated meat or thought it was

completely fine to eat, the truth is if you’re a public school
parent whose child eats a school lunch you still have
little say over whether or not your child eats pink slime—or
genetically-modified foods, sugars, starches, and a whole host of
other foods about which decent parents (and experts) disagree.

Another good example of how school lunches usurp family
decision-making took place in Chicago last year, where a seventh
grader named Fernando Dominguez helped
lead a revolt against his school’s six-year-old policy that
banned students from taking their own lunch to school. According to
the Chicago Tribune, the principal argued that the policy
was put in place “to protect students from their own unhealthful
food choices.”

A similar story played out earlier this year in North Carolina,
where a public school
forced a Pre-K student to eat the chicken nuggets that were
part of the school lunch because school cafeteria monitors didn’t
feel the student’s lunch (a turkey sandwich) was healthy
enough.

Where does a school get off acting this way? We don’t know
because,
according to documents obtained by the nonprofit that exposed
Nuggetgate in the first place, the principal allegedly
stonewalled a state investigator looking into the issue, saying
he “would not respond to any questions” the investigator asked of
him.

Another glaring problem with school lunches is their cost. In
Philadelphia,
closing 26 school kitchens—as part of an effort to help staunch
a nearly $700-million city deficit—will save the city $2.3 million
dollars. New York City’s decision to cut its hot lunch offerings
from two to one is expected to save the city an astonishing $20
million a year. But these savings are minimal compared to the
nationwide cost—currently $11 billion, but expected to climb to $14
billion once new rules take effect this summer—of the National
School Lunch Program. (That figure doesn’t include the cost to
taxpayers of subsidizing many of the agricultural products that are
produced in surplus and go on to become school lunch.)

And then there are the often confusing and sometime punitive
rules that come with taking part in the school lunch program. This
month, for example, a public school in Salt Lake City was
fined $15,000 for selling soda outside of approved hours (in
apparent violation of USDA rules). The principal appears unhappy
and confused:

“Before lunch you can come and buy a carbonated beverage. You
can take it into the cafeteria and eat your lunch, but you can’t
first go buy school lunch then come out in the hallway and buy a
drink,” said Davis High Principal Dee Burton.

Principal Burton said he does not understand the law with rules
that seem to be contradictory.