Each Monday and Wednesday, college students at Channelview Excessive Faculty, exterior Houston, are handled to Domino’s for lunch. Supply drivers from an area department of the fast-food chain arrive on the faculty with dozens of pizzas contemporary out of the oven, served in Domino’s-branded cardboard packing containers. Youngsters could be choosy eaters, however few meals are extra universally engaging than freshly cooked pizza—not to mention from a restaurant college students are virtually actually already conversant in. “For youths to have the ability to see Oh, they’re serving Domino’sI believe it makes an enormous distinction,” Tanya Edwards, the district’s director of diet, informed me.
The deliveries are a part of Domino’s “Good Slice” initiative, which sends pizzas to high school districts across the nation—typically at little or no value to college students themselves. “Good Slice” is a part of the nationwide school-lunch program, so taxpayers foot a portion of the invoice to ensure that each child has lunch to eat. Regardless of youngsters’ enthusiasm, you’ll be able to see the issue: College students munching on free quick meals may appear to embody all the pieces incorrect with the American eating regimen. If faculty cafeterias could be considered lecture rooms the place youngsters study meals, giving them Domino’s can be akin to instructing driver’s-ed college students drive by letting them play Grand Theft Auto.
The times of college Domino’s—and college pizza usually—are numbered. Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his supporters are on a mission to overtake faculty lunch. Late final month, the Trump administration’s Make America Wholesome Once more Fee launched a extremely anticipated report on kids’s well being that pointed to high school meals as one venue the place ultra-processed meals are supplied to youngsters unabated, contributing to weight problems and other forms of power illness. Except cafeteria employees make faculty pizza from scratch, almost all types incorporates industrial elements that qualify the meal as an ultra-processed meals. In impact, ridding faculty lunch of ultra-processed meals means the top of pizza day as we all know it.
Lots of the meals reforms pushed by RFK Jr.’s motion are in style. Casting off synthetic meals dyes, for instance, is way extra wise than Kennedy’s conspiracist views about vaccines. However within the case of banning most faculty pizza, RFK Jr. might be going through a harder promote. MAHA’s imaginative and prescient for meals is about to run headfirst right into a bunch of hungry youngsters in a faculty cafeteria.
Despite the fact that Domino’s faculty pizza is delivered by Domino’s drivers carrying Domino’s pizza packing containers, the corporate’s Good Slice is totally different from what would arrive at your door must you order a pie for dinner tonight. Cafeteria pizza has to abide by diet requirements for college meals that the Obama administration spearheaded in 2010. The overly tacky rectangular pizza with a cracker-like crust that you simply may need eaten at school not cuts it. Take into account Domino’s Good Slice pepperoni pizza: It’s made with principally whole-wheat flour, low-fat cheese, and pepperoni that has half as a lot sodium than typical Domino’s pepperoni. It’s not a inexperienced salad by any means, however faculty Domino’s is way from the worst factor youngsters might eat.
Different widespread cafeteria choices—corresponding to mini corndogs, mozzarella sticks, and rooster tenders—are additionally now extra nutritious than in many years previous. These requirements might nonetheless be improved (and we’re nonetheless speaking about corndogs, mozzarella sticks, and rooster tenders), however they’ve led firms to promote barely more healthy variations of their meals in faculties. Analysis has proven thaton common, faculty meals are actually the healthiest issues youngsters eat in a day.
In an e-mail, HHS Press Secretary Vianca N. Rodriguez Feliciano mentioned that “whereas a few of these merchandise might technically meet outdated federal pointers, they’re nonetheless closely engineered, nutritionally weak, and designed for company revenue, not for the well being of our children.” Certainly, faculty lunch begins to look significantly much less wholesome in case you account for the rising concern over ultra-processed meals. Many faculty lunches are made in factories with chemical substances corresponding to emulsifiers and taste enhancers you wouldn’t discover in a house kitchen. Consuming plenty of ultra-processed meals is related to a spread of maladies, together with Kind 2 diabetes and coronary heart illness, although nutritionists are deeply divided on simply how a lot we ought to be fretting over these industrial elements.
To a point, whether or not faculty pizza ought to be prevented as a result of it’s ultra-processed is moreover the purpose. By permitting Domino’s into faculty cafeterias, the federal government additionally is basically giving the corporate carte blanche to promote its pizza. Serving Good Slice out of a typical Domino’s field provides “the misunderstanding to kids and fogeys that the less-healthy merchandise served of their eating places are wholesome selections,” Jennifer Harris, a food-marketing knowledgeable, informed me in an e-mail.
Kennedy has known as for faculties to serve “actual meals, complete meals, farm-fresh meals,” as a substitute of something ultra-processed. It could, after all, be higher for college cafeterias to swap out the pepperoni pizza with salad and rooster breast. However for a lot of youngsters, faculty lunch sponsored by the federal government could also be their solely actual meal of the day. At Channelview, the place such a big portion of scholars are eligible for public help that everybody eats free of charge, merely getting meals in youngsters’ bellies is prime of thoughts. “I could make a flowery little sweet-potato black-bean bowl, however I don’t suppose my youngsters are going to eat it,” Tanya Edwards mentioned. “As an alternative, they’re going to go dwelling hungry, and I don’t actually know what they’ve at dwelling.”
The priority isn’t theoretical. Proof exhibits that when faculty meals are too wholesome, a large portion of youngsters merely get off the lunch line. Within the early 2010s, when the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District overhauled its lunch choices—an effort that included eradicating pizza from the menu—faculties reported that large quantities of meals have been touchdown within the trash. (The district later introduced again pizza, and pepperoni pizza is now the district’s hottest merchandise, a spokesperson mentioned.) Meals waste is a perennial challenge at school meal applications. A Division of Agriculture examine of greater than 100 faculties discovered that a mean of 31 p.c of the greens included on noticed faculty lunch trays have been wasted. Pizza, nevertheless, was among the many least wasted meals, together with breaded and fried rooster patties and nuggets.
Even advocates for more healthy faculty meals admit that there’s a restrict to how a lot college students will tolerate more healthy choices. “We undoubtedly must harness faculty meals to coach youngsters about wholesome consuming, however I don’t suppose meaning no pizza,” Janet Poppendieck, a professor emerita at Hunter Faculty who wrote a e book on fixing faculty meals, informed me. “We have to embody wholesome variations of youngsters’ favourite meals; in any other case, I don’t suppose they’ll eat.” Partially to make sure that youngsters really eat lunch, many faculty districts appear to have pizza day at the least as soon as every week. A spokesperson for Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Faculties, the seventh-largest district within the nation, informed me that its first, second, fifth, and seventh hottest entrees are all within the pizza household (No. 5 is mini calzones; No. 7 is pizza sticks). All informed, the district has doled out almost 3 million servings this faculty 12 months.
If it wished to, the Trump administration might merely drive youngsters to suck it up and actually eat their greens. Technically the accountability of overseeing the school-meal program falls to the USDA—which isn’t below Kennedy’s purview—however Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has signaled that she is onboard with MAHA-ing faculty lunch. Nonetheless, any try and enact a ban would possible invite vital backlash. In 2023, when the federal authorities floated the thought of banning the sale of sugary chocolate milk in elementary and center faculties, many dad and mom flooded the federal government with complaints. So did some college students: Ben, a fourth grader who left solely his first identify, wrote in an official remark to the USDA that it ought to abandon the proposal “as a result of college students are tremendous MAD.” Members of Congress additionally put strain on regulators to cease the reform. The USDA later deserted the chocolate-milk ban. In 2011, after the Obama administration launched its new pointers for college lunch, Republicans in Congress tried to combat again towards more healthy pizza by classifying the dish as a vegetable.
It’s no surprise why MAHA has an issue with faculty pizza. Kennedy has pointed to company malfeasance as a number one supply of America’s eating regimen issues. You don’t must be a fan of his to really feel uneasy that Domino’s, a fast-food firm that sells philly-cheese-steak-loaded tater tots, is taking part in a taxpayer-funded program meant to feed youngsters nutritious meals. However Kennedy’s favored strategy to meals and, properly, all the pieces—huge proposals and dramatic overhauls—isn’t properly suited to high school meals. The well being secretary may dream of youngsters consuming from a salad bar stocked with seed-oil-free dressings 5 days every week, however ending faculty pizza day gained’t routinely make that occur. Telling youngsters what to eat is one factor; getting them to eat it’s one other.
