According to the World Wildlife Fund, U.S. schools waste approximately 530,000 tons of food every year. Since the 2022-2023 school year, California has mandated the Universal Meals Program, which requires all public schools to offer two free meals a day to every student. At Miramonte High School, over 800 students take advantage of this service daily. While having access to these meals is a benefit, it is unclear if all this food is being eaten or if a huge portion is just ending up in the trash.
To help fix this problem, students can start by using the shared bins located in the cafeteria. Instead of tossing uneaten food, you can put unopened items there for someone else to grab. The school could also help by letting students pick and choose what they actually want to be served. For example, if a student only wants a piece of fruit, they shouldn’t be asked to take the whole tray just to throw most of it away. If the cafeteria staff kept track of what students usually leave behind, they could stop serving those unpopular items to save a lot of food.
The Kitchen Supervisor Ward makes the menu every month, a menu is posted on the Miramonte website for brunch and lunch. The cafeteria has the entire month’s food plan mapped out, from juices to cheese and pepperoni pizza. The cheese pizza and salads are served every day for lunch as a vegetarian option.
When it comes to the amount of food the kitchen staff has to make an educated guess. Sometimes the food will be completely gone. Food can run out as early as 15 minutes into lunch. However, sometimes they will make too much food, and it will go to The White Pony Express (WPE). Which is a volunteer-nonprofit organization that focuses on eliminating hunger and poverty by distributing food to other organizations to help people in need
One anonymous lunch worker explained that trying to predict what food to give out each day that students will enjoy is a “guessing game.” Since some of the more popular options are pepperoni or cheese pizza, salads, and tater tot bowls, the kitchen staff are randomly picking which meals to serve in order to meet the students’ standards.
The WPE website claims, “Our mission is to eliminate hunger and poverty by delivering the abundance all around us to those in need.” Miramonte partners with WPE to distribute any leftover meals at the end of each school day. They arrive every Friday, at the end of the day to collect dozens of leftover meals that would otherwise go to waste.
According to California officials and Gavin Newsom, the Universal Meals Program was made to ensure that “no student goes hungry,” however the program has not fully addressed the issue of food waste in schools.
However, school food is still going to waste every day. Since students take a full tray just to eat a single item like juice or fruit, the main entree is sometimes treated as trash, resulting in tons of untouched meals being tossed, which is frustrating for other kids who might actually enjoy eating that meal. Instead of going to someone who needs a meal, good food is wasted just because one person only needs a drink. Miramonte Principal Jami Greer is also aware of this issue and the need for a more organized system.
“I know the cafeteria does has some food waste, I really wish somebody could create an app where students by 10 o’clock in the morning could say what they want, so then that gets sent to the laddies so they know to make this much pizza, so the know to make this much salad,”
To make the program more effective, Miramonte could host a monthly taste test where students try possible or previous meal items. This would give students the opportunity to give feedback so the kitchen staff can create a menu around what students would actually enjoy eating. If the menu matched the students preferences, it is more likely that the food would be eaten rather than tossed.
Ultimately, lunch and brunch are essential parts of the school day that help students stay focused and energized. While the Universal Meals Program provided the food, it is up to the students and staff to make sure it doesn’t go to waste. By being mindful of what we take and using the share bins, we can make sure this program actually works for everyone.
