Students generally know that school lunches are low-quality, unappealing, and unhealthy. What students don’t generally know is that LAUSD knows that students dislike school lunches. LAUSD Food Services has publicly stated that they are working on changing the perceptions of school lunches for the better. 

I was able to learn more about what LAUSD was doing in regards to school lunches by talking with Mr. Manish, the Director of LAUSD Food Services. Mr. Manish, who has a diploma in hotel management from the Oberoi School of Hotel Management and who has worked with LAUSD for the past 15 years, says that things are “going to be coming up” in the realm of school food. 

And indeed things are. Mr. Manish explained to me how LAUSD has been purchasing the “cadillac of ovens” or combi-ovens. Combi-ovens have a variety of cooking mechanisms and are used in many prominent restaurants.

These ovens can be found in a few elementary schools in LAUSD. Additionally, Mr. Manish affirmed LAUSD’s commitment to food that is cooked from scratch and food which is new, healthy and exciting. Furthermore, LAUSD Food services have been hiring “celebrity” chefs, one of whom had worked for the CIA, to fulfill these nutritional values. 

All of these things are welcome, but as a student of LAUSD for 12 years, I feel like I have heard all of these promises before. While new recipes have certainly been introduced to our schools, such as chicken wings, Venice High School lunches still seem small. Students often go back to the lunch line with that famous plea on their lips: “Please sir, I want some more.”

LAUSD attests to the nutritional value of their foods (with all nutritional facts being found in LAUSD’s Yumyummi app available to download from the app store) yet suspiciously high levels of sugar still seem to be slipping into our school diets. 

While I can’t say that I regularly eat our school lunches, I have not seen the introduction of the new foods advertised at the LAUSD test kitchen-an event of which I was invited to. Some of these new meals were a vegan salad dish, a cinnamon roll, a jalapeno breakfast sandwich, and a baria bowl. 

I don’t want to be a pessimist, but in spite of the promises made by LAUSD Food Services, I wouldn’t recommend getting your hopes up. After all, it is really time for LAUSD to underpromise and over-perform instead of over-promising, and not performing at all.