BRISTOL, Va. – Third-grade student Matthew Kilby refuses to eat school lunches.

He tried his school’s cafeteria food once and didn’t like it. The brown-bagger now happily chows down on sandwiches and chips from home.

On the other side of the same cafeteria at Washington-Lee Elementary, second-grade teacher Diane Curcio eats a school lunch. She relishes its offerings of fruits and vegetables, and she said she feels cafeteria lunches offer healthier items than she could find in her own pantry.

Like those from Kilby and Curcio, opinions on cafeteria food range from “You couldn’t force me to eat it” to “I think it’s restaurant quality.” Some only eat specific meals, while others devour any food placed on their trays.

When talking about school cafeteria food, the only certainty is that those who eat it have an opinion about it.

How does it taste?
Amber Smith, a Tennessee High senior, will not touch the lunches in her school’s cafeteria; instead, she opts for vending machine products.

“It’s disgusting,” she said of the cafeteria food. “It tastes bad and old.”

And she’s not alone. Kayla Peters, a senior at the same school, will drink bottled water for lunch rather than eat cafeteria food.

“The only time I ever eat is if I get a salad,” she said.

“The food is just real greasy. I want more choices. I like to go in and choose what I want. You kind of know what to expect there. We don’t have a large variety of food.”

Mary Catherine Wampler, a Virginia High School junior, said most people who buy a school lunch every day choose pizza. Kevin Morrison, a senior classmate of hers sitting across the lunch table, agreed heartily as he worked on his third helping of the cheesy pie.

“I wonder sometimes about it,” she said of school food. “I wonder how it’s cooked. Sometimes, it doesn’t taste good.”

Katie Horn, a junior at Tennessee High, said her classmates are concerned about the taste, freshness and nutritional value of school food.

“It tastes like it smells, which is nasty,” Horn said. “It’s not healthy. We walk in some days and you can tell that they’re having the same meal from yesterday.”
For others, cafeteria food satisfies their need for mid-day nourishment.

Patricia Lee, a second-grade student at Washington-Lee, said she loves her school’s lunches for one reason – the taste. Like others who said they enjoy school lunches, its taste, not nutritional value, that plays a large role in why they liked it.

“I eat school lunch every day,” said Chandler Davis, a third-grade student at the same school. “It’s not as good as home, but it’s good. I like them because they’re good.”

In a Bristol Herald Courier survey given to area students, one fifth-grader rated her school’s lunches as a 10 on a scale from one to 10 because they “tasted like they were supposed to.”

Another echoed her feelings, saying it tasted like other “regular food.”

Cafeterias for younger students didn’t have as many choices as those for older ones, but older students tended to complain more about a lack of offerings.

Matt Stickley, a senior at Tennessee High, eats in the cafeteria every day because he likes what it offers.

“I’m probably one of the only ones that does (like it),” he said. “A lot of people think it’s nasty just because it’s a cafeteria and because they’re always eating at nicer places. I do like a lot of it.”

How schools buy and prepare food
To get the best quality food at the best price, school systems partner to leverage their buying power. Bristol Tennessee and Sullivan County schools belong to the Northeast Tennessee Cooperative, which includes 10 other Tennessee school systems in the region.

In Southwest Virginia, 12 school systems, including Bristol Virginia and Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell, Scott, Washington, Wythe and Wise counties, belong to Southern Appalachian Mountains Food Buying Co-op.
The co-ops create bids that specify exactly what foods, sometimes including brand names, that the school systems will accept.

School nutrition directors say they generally look at four factors when making decisions about what food to buy – nutrition, price, availability and student acceptance.

If there’s a problem in any of those areas, it’s likely that cafeterias will not carry a product. It’s a balancing act that nutrition directors said requires rating each factor for every product.

Besides buying food through co-ops, school systems often receive commodities from the government such as beef, chicken and pudding. Instead of using those items to cook a meal, school systems divert the products to companies that process them into meals. Cafeteria workers then simply heat the food.

One school nutrition director estimated that no more than a fourth of meals in school systems are prepared from scratch, which some students said negatively affects the taste.

Taste-testing products
Because of the importance of taste, school nutrition directors dedicate a large portion of their time to choosing cafeteria food.

They said they rarely, if ever, spontaneously decide they like a product.

“The students’ response is a big part of our decision because it’s not going to do us any good to bring in products that students don’t like,” said Karen McGahey, coordinator for the Northeast Tennessee Cooperative.

“There are so many things we have to take into consideration to make it work, and student acceptance is way up there. They don’t realize how we agonize over every decision.”

They solicit student feedback in a number of ways, including taste tests, surveys, advisory councils and food shows.

At a recent food show in Johnson City hosted by NETCO, more than 400 students from area schools showed up to taste food from more than 50 vendors.

Vendors there meant business, and they prompted students to try their products and attempted to elicit positive feedback.

Have you ever eaten at Taco Bell?” asked one vendor who was trying to entice students to sample his company’s burrito. “Well, these are 100 times better than Taco Bell. Isn’t it good?”

The group of girls picked up burritos and tried them, nodding slowly in halting agreement.

Students carried evaluation forms on which they ranked their favorite products. Vendors know that if students don’t like it, school nutrition directors won’t buy it.

“Students want to eat what they’re used to eating at home and at restaurants,” said Trish Holt, a food broker for Integrity Food Services. “If they can get the same thing at school, they’re going to eat it.”

Vendors don’t hesitate to cater to student palates; they know it’s how they’ll receive approval from the student judges.

“That’s pretty good,” said Smith, a high school senior, after she sampled one vendor’s chicken nugget. “It tastes like Wendy’s.”

What’s next
School nutrition directors say they want more people to eat in their cafeterias, and they’re continually trying to improve the flavor of their offerings because of its impact on their bottom lines.

“We’ve had a bad rap for hundreds of years,” said Kathy Hicks, Bristol Virginia schools nutrition director. “We’re working to market our food to get away from that typical lunch-lady reputation.”

Her cafeteria employees have attended workshops on how to make school food more appealing to students.
School nutrition directors are constantly thinking about how to encourage students to eat their products, with some even garnishing sandwiches and color- coordinating fruits.

“It’s a lot of marketing,” said Jackie Hall, a seven year cafeteria manager at Washington-Lee Elementary.

dcourrege@bristolnews.com | (276) 645-2549