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L.A. Schools Get Serious About Rehabbing Lunch Menus, But Will the New Food Help Kids Learn?

The debate about cafeteria food shouldn't just focus on health. It also affects whether teachers can do their jobs effectively.

Chocolate and strawberry milk? Gone. Chicken nuggets and corn dogs? They're also being kicked to the curb. Chalk it up to spending months in the hotseat after clashing with chef Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution reality show, but the Los Angeles Unified School District is putting the kibosh on sugar-filled flavored milk and fast food staples. Great, but are the new options—vegetable pad Thai, California sushi rolls, and spinach tortellini in butternut squash sauce—going to help kids learn? That may seem like an odd question, but here's why I'm asking: If students don't eat, they come back to class after lunch, sit at their desks, and stare into space like zombies. They can't concentrate.

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The Food Gods Speak: Michael Pollan and Eric Schlosser Dish About Walmart, National Security, and Chicken Nuggets

When Pollan last ate a chicken nugget, whether Schlosser thinks that Walmart's new healthy food initiatives are for real, and what you and I can do.

Last week, food movement legends Michael Pollan (The Omnivore's Dilemma, In Defense of Food) and Eric Schlosser (Fast Food Nation) sat down together with Evan Kleiman, host of KCRW's Good Food, for a fascinating conversation that covered all of the major food stories of the past few months. For those of you who couldn't make it in person, but want to know when Pollan last ate a chicken nugget, whether Schlosser thinks that Walmart's new healthy food initiatives are for real, and what they think are the most important things you and I can do to make a difference right now, here's my recap of the highlights.

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Chicken Nuggets: Is That How They're Made? A GOOD Fact Check

After investigating, it turns out that while the making of chicken nuggets is still disgusting, its not quite as disgusting as we thought.


A lot of people have checked out our post on how chicken nuggets are made, which shows a disgusting image of a pink material and an even grosser video and offers this set of facts:

Mechanically separated chicken—the stuff chicken nuggets and patties are made from—is what you get when you grind an entire chicken through a sieve, soak it in ammonia, and add flavor artificially.

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