This is a guest post excerpt from Energy Convertors. To read the entire post, please click here.
By: Samantha Perez Medrano, EC Oakland Fellow-Cohort 6
Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver once said, “How can we expect students to thrive academically when the fuel we give them is subpar?” As someone who has consumed school cafeteria food for years, this quote rings true to me.
There are those days I would not have time to eat breakfast, or times I would arrive late to school and just wait for lunch to eat. But when I was finally in line, I would back out when I saw that the meal was a processed pizza that was cold or what was called a “hamburger,” with two stale buns that taste like cardboard and only an overcooked meat patty inside.
As a Hispanic daughter who comes from a low-income family I am grateful for the food that is provided to me. Yet at my school, I would watch as kids threw their food in the trash without eating it. I feel bad about all the food being wasted but at the same time, I understood why no one could eat it.