School Lunches : In the Mouths of Babes

Ask 8-year-old Anya Desai what she likes best in her lunch box, and there is a long silence. A very long silence. “Well,” she says finally, “I like carrots.” Is there anything she doesn’t like? Another long pause. “Sometimes I don’t like tomato sandwiches.” Try again: “Is there anything you see in other kids’ lunches that you’d like to have?”

“Well, sometimes I see things I’d like to have, but they’re not too healthy, like fruit roll-ups and candy bars.”

Anya’s mother has another story. “Oh,” she says, laughing. “She knows the party line, or our party line, at any rate. Last year, we really went through it with Anya and her lunches. She told us her lunches were the worst in the class. And I guess they were pretty scant.

“All this intense trading goes on at lunch. Anya told us nobody wanted anything from her lunch, but she wanted things from other kids’ lunches. Anya’s lunches were not envied. Kids were making donations to her. Of course, what she wanted were the packaged items, the crackers and puddings and gelatins in their own containers that are so environmentally unsound. We go out of our way to use reusable containers. This is not a big hit. Commercial packaging has such allure.

“The (packaged) food may not even be something the kids like, it’s just what’s in . When her teacher, who’s a vegetarian, was eating spinach salads every day for lunch, Anya and other kids all of a sudden wanted raw spinach all the time because they liked their teacher so much.

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“We’ve had a lot of conversations with Anya about her lunch and some of our reasoning has sunk in and so has some of hers: I try to put more treats in Anya’s lunches, even if it sometimes means more sugar, so that she can have something to look forward to, if not something to trade. And she really does like carrots, although they have no trade value.”

In talking to elementary school children about their school lunches, there are few surprises. While many children don’t question what their parents pack for them, the grass is always greener--or rather, the chips are always crisper--in another kid’s lunch.

When 9-year-old George Himmel is asked what he likes best in his school lunch, he is somewhat blunter than Anya: “Mostly what I like, I don’t get.” What would that be? “Fruit Snacks,” he says. “Potato chips. Cookies.”

He never gets cookies?

“Not often enough.”

Pizza, bought in the school cafeteria or brought cold from home, is the number one favorite. Jared Stallings, who proclaims he’s “8 3/4,” says, “My favorite food is sausage pizza from the night before. My least favorite lunch? When my mom packs East Indian food, it’s just not a taste I like. I’d trade pizza for Jell-O, if I had more than one slice.”

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Fresh fruit ranks low. Sabrina Maldonado, 8, who likes pizza and Coke best of all and finds tuna “disgusting,” admits that real disappointment is finding an apple in her Little Mermaid lunchbox.

Boxed fruit drinks are popular, as are fruit roll-ups. Sugar, in most any form, is revered.

Nine-year-old Kathleen Lawrence says, “The best thing my mother puts in my lunch would be cookies. The worst is any kind of sandwich on wheat bread. A good trade would be really good cookies for a fruit roll-up.”

Samantha Cavero, 9, likes chips, cookies and fruit drinks best, hates bananas, dreams of having candy. Her 7-year-old brother Alfredo is unequivocally fond of fruit roll-ups and cookies, and also would swap anything for candy.

And then there’s the eternal seduction of clever packaging. Levon Vartanian, 5, is too shy to tell us what he likes best, but he’s not too shy to show us: Lunchables--those highly prized TV dinners of school lunches by Oscar Mayer which contain, in perfect little compartmentalized containers, luncheon meat, crackers and a sweet.

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Eleven-year-old Allison Orjallo takes the same lunch to school every day: a sandwich (usually peanut butter and jelly on Wonder bread), a juice drink and a snack of cookies or chips-- preferably Doritos in the individual portion bags.

Six-grader Anthony Porter says: “the coolest thing is when you have MacDonald’s in your lunch box.”

Some children don’t seem to care that much about what shows up in their lunch box. Others seem reasonably content: Even if they don’t get everything they want, they look around and see they aren’t suffering. Take Keely Myres, 7 1/2, who says, “My favorite thing is Jell-O. Strawberry Jell-O, with fruit in it.”

Does anything terrible ever appear in her turquoise lunch box?

“Nothing!”

Does she ever see anything wonderful in someone else’s lunch?

“A chocolate-peanut butter candy bar!”

Does she ever see something terrible in other kids’ lunches?

“Yes: yogurt on crackers.”

Is there anything else about lunches at school we should know about?

“Yes,”Keely says, “A lot of the boys don’t even eat. They don’t like their lunches, so they just throw them away. The teachers have to take the food back out of the trash cans and make them eat it.”

*Cover design by TRACY CROWE

*Food styling by Donna Deane and Mayi Brady