WPS should do a better job with inclusive lunches
An example of a lunch the school provides.
As part of the shift from a hybrid to a completely in-person schedule, lunch is that one period that everyone looks forward to. It’s a break from classes, you can catch up with your friends, and most importantly, you can eat. While some students bring their lunches from home, most students eat the lunches the school provides.
However, there are some students who cannot get school lunches because of dietary needs and preferences. Many students at WA are vegetarian, including myself. However, there are limited lunch options for vegetarians and vegans at WA.
On April 26, 2021, WA started an in-person plan for school days, complete with a long block with four lunch periods. All of the lunches served are cold lunches, not at all akin to the usual hot pasta or oven-warm pizza provided during normal years.
This new cold-lunch requirement has posed a challenge for some students, including myself. Because of the pandemic, hot meals cannot be served. There just aren’t enough vegetarian options, and even worse, there is no required number of vegetarian options WA needs to serve to students.
According to Colleen Wallace, the Director of Food Services for WPS, WA currently has four vegetarian options: garden salad, caesar salad, caesar salad wrap, and pizza. However, two of these aren’t even vegetarian. Caesar dressing in the caesar salad contains fish, which certainly isn’t something vegetarians can eat. How WPS can call something with fish in it “vegetarian” baffles me—the website the school used so students could order lunch even showed the caesar dressing as unsafe for people with fish allergies.
This brings WPS’s actual count of vegetarian options to two, one of which is fatty and unhealthy and the second of which is not filling at all for a growing teenager.
Additionally, it disgusts me that people seem to automatically equate the word, “vegetarian”, with, “salad”. The school certainly has done this, with “three” of its “four” “vegetarian” options being salad-related. Vegetarians aren’t rabbits.
Wallace says that WPS is required to have the five main meal components required by the USDA (United States Department of Agriculture): grain, protein, fruit, vegetable, and dairy.
The protein component of school lunches is covered in non-vegetarian meals with the meat that is available; but for vegetarian meals, salad is the only original thing they could come up with?
There are many options for vegetarian food, just as there are for non-vegetarian food—anything that has meat can simply be replaced with a nutritious veggie option, such as a black bean burger instead of a beef burger, or chickpeas instead of chicken in salad.
However, the school has ignored this option. WPS provides many sandwiches that contain meat, such as BLTs or chicken subs, which students actually want to eat. However, WA neglects to provide an actual vegetarian sandwich.
“Our goal is to feed everybody. So if we had something on the menu that […] was something that only 10% of the students would be interested in, then we’re leaving 90% of the students out of it,” Wallace said.
If something is made appetizing in a way that students would buy it, then it’s a win-win situation, and if our goal is to feed everyone, leaving vegetarians and vegans out of it is not a good way to do so. I’ve heard so many people aiming to be “inclusive” to all people and accept them. I think that these same people are ignoring another group: people who choose not to eat meat or animal products.
Some ways WPS could change this is providing protein options without meat. Chickpeas, lentils, and cheese are all good sources of protein. An example that is vegetarian is a vegetable sandwich which contains cheese, or a veggie wrap with chickpeas. Instead of plain salads, lunches could have the same lettuce inside veggie burgers.
With the diverse town Westford is, I expect better. While providing lunch for more than a thousand people each day is hard, I think WPS should do a better job to include everyone by providing better lunches in order to give students a better high school experience.
![Olivia Davis “I think the intention is good because they’re trying to be inclusive of people who don’t want to spend a lot of money during our senior year, because it’s already expensive enough, but I think it’s also frustrating for people who really wanted a cotil [...]. I’ve already bought a $500 dress, so if guys show up in khakis and a shirt that could be kind of annoying. I think it’ll still be fun either way though.”](https://waghostwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Screenshot-2021-09-14-6.31.03-PM-475x321.png)
Debbie • May 30, 2021 at 10:24 am
You are learning advocacy at a young age which is a great skill to learn. It’s unfortunate that you have to advocate for yourself and fellow students. I have been a vegetarian since the early 1970’s and back then choices were limited to salads and pizza unfortunately even in restaurants this was the case. There are so many plant based options if meals now that WPS should be doing a better job! Keep up you great job on advocating and hopefully you will help make changes for you and many students for years to come.
Nippa • May 27, 2021 at 5:49 pm
This is so true and much needed article. My kids used to take only pizza on Fridays as rest of the vegetarian options are useless for growing kids. With pizza, there is no vegetables because pizza has tomato sauce which doesn’t make sense. Slowly pizza quality went from bad to worse and they stopped buying any lunch. Hope awareness comes and WPS spend some money on good food.
Raji • May 27, 2021 at 6:08 am
Absolutely true and well written!!
My child is another student who struggles to get hot meal because there are not vegetarian option. Like you stated, salads is not a complete meal for a teenager. It lacks a lot of nutrition that is needed for your body.
Another issue to point out is also the time the middle schoolers are asked to have their lunch. Having lunch at 10:30…is too early. I am not understanding why students are asked to have lunch this early?
Sarah • May 27, 2021 at 5:53 am
Thank you for raising this concern. For many years prior to covid, at the elementary school level, the vegetarian option was a daily choice of a pretzel or a bagel. Both of those seem to be unacceptable on a regular basis too as they are heavy on white flour and carbohydrates.
In addition, I would suggest that inclusiveness should mean having food that draws from the food that families eat at home. The lunch program seems heavy on traditional “American” food – fish sticks, chicken nuggets, pizza. But that isn’t how most families in Westford eat on a daily basis at home – why is the assumption that is what kids have to eat at school?
Finally, the movement to diversify and improve school lunches is not new. There are many districts that are leap years ahead of us which could share many lessons learned about kids’ preferences, recipes, accessing local food etc
Monali • May 26, 2021 at 7:48 pm
Great job. These are words out of my mouth! So glad you are working hard to raise awareness. But I feel there needs to be a larger movement towards this. I really hope all the schools can get inclusive when it comes to diet. Maybe have a vegetarian food advocate person/position to supply recipes on a regular basis that incorporates a veg diet and salad should only be kept as a side dish! Because right now lack of awareness and lack of inclusion seem to be major issues.