Chicago Students Can Eat Nachos Every Day

Photo: Little Li/Flickr

Imagine teenagers crunching nachos Monday through Friday during the school season. Then wash it all down with a pint of chocolate milk. Gross. But that's an option for highschoolers in the Chicago Public Schools, and many scoop 'em five days a week. With reimbursement of school food vendors tired directly to food sales, student preferences rule the school cafeteria, says the head of School Food FOCUS, a coalition of big-city school districts targeting healthier, sustainable and more-locally produced foods for students.

Not exactly a supportive business model for a healthy school lunch. Unfortunately nutritious decision-making costs money. Get this -- a typical CPS meal of nachos, tater tots, low-fat chocolate milk and an apple has 923 calories, 37 grams of fat and 1,470 mg of sodium. An all-organic school meal with significantly less sodium, calories and fat is estimated to double the cost per meal from $1.00 to $2.00. And don't say brownbagging a healthier lunch is a viable solution, in this dismal economy 84.3 percent of CPS students now receive free or reduced-price lunch.

It'll take adequately-funded government policy to stop nacho breath and take back control of the high school cafeteria. If Congress reauthorizes the Child Nutrition Act per the Healthy Schools Campaign's main requests to increase reimbursement rates and encourage distribution of healthier foods, reversing the rising tide of childhood obesity has a fighting chance. Many kids eat two meals a day at school.