Philly public school students campaign for tastier and healthier lunches

Philadelphia students are campaigning to dump the company that provides many of the city’s public schools with frozen, pre-plated lunches, contending that the food provided by Maramont, a subsidiary of Illinois-based Preferred Meal Systems, Inc., tastes bad and is bad for their health.

The contract, which has been awarded solely to Maramont for the past decade, includes pre-plated lunches, breakfasts and after-school meals. It will expire in July, and the District has issued a Request for Proposals that has attracted bids from two rival food-service companies. Youth United for Change (YUC) student activists, who worked with the District to rewrite the RFP, say that providing better food is a simple thing that cash-strapped public schools can do to improve student health and learning.   

“A lot of my elementary schools had pre-plated food, and we would mainly get ‘space lunches,’” says Deionni Martinez, a 17-year-old sophomore at Kensington High School for Creative and Performng Arts (KCAPA) and a YUC member, referring to the plastic-wrapped, frozen pizzas and “sausage things” heated on site. Martinez, like almost all District high school students, now eats lunches prepared in an on-site kitchen, which she says is “way better.”

Currently, 41 percent of Philly public school students receive food prepared at an on-site kitchen, while 59 percent eat pre-plated meals that are heated on site. 

At Frances E. Willard Elementary, a K-4 school in Kensington, the lunchroom was packed on Tuesday as students moved in and out in shifts. The students have just 25 minutes to eat, and then 20 minutes for recess.

Drew Lazor, a local food writer, joined City Paper to taste test the pre-plated school lunch: a hamburger patty inside a wheat bun, a bag of mini carrots with ranch dressing dip, baked beans (in a T.V. dinner-style plastic covered dish), an orange or apple, diced peaches in sweet syrup, and graham crackers, all served with a choice of chocolate or regular milk. 

“I thought it tasted like microwaved hamburger,” says Lazor, appraising a meal that he found edible if not particularly nutritious or tasty. The bun was dry, and the burger “reminded me of the burgers I had as a kid in school lunches,” he says.

Student opinion was mixed, but generally leaned positive: They like hamburgers, and many praised chicken nugget day. According to Wayne Grasela, School District senior vice president for Food Services, the students’ favorite foods are salisbury steak, chicken nuggets, pizza, meatballs and (turkey) hot dogs, in that order.

With the District mired in a severe budget crisis, shuttered schools and shrunken staffing have dominated headlines. School lunches — like arts, music, physical education and health — have been put on the back burner and suffered big cutbacks. 

In 2011, the School District closed 26 on-site kitchens at the onset of the current budget crunch. Sam Reed, a teacher at Dimner Beeber Middle School in Overbrook, says that the pre-plated lunches that followed were a turn toward the nasty.

“The food sucks,” says Reed. “I used to eat lunch in the cafeteria. The food was decent and eating lunch was a good bonding time with students.” 

The campaign to improve school lunches nationwide has gained momentum in recent years as public-health experts and high-profile figures  have taken aim at reducing childhood obesity.

The federal government holds big sway over food in Philly public schools, because 98 percent of funding comes from federal and state programs, mainly the U.S.D.A.’s National School Lunch Program. Philadelphia also participates in the U.S.D.A. Donated Commodity program, buying meat, cheese and other items at a huge discount. The burgers and steaks in pre-plated meals are the same government-provided food cooked in on-site cafeterias. 

In January 2012, the U.S.D.A. released new guidelines for federally subsidized school lunches that mandated more fruits and vegetables and less salt and fat, and set calorie limits for the first time. The battle over school lunches is politically charged, and food-industry groups like the National Potato Council have successfully blocked attempts to reduce starchy vegetables (like french fries) and make it harder to count tomato paste on a slice of pizza as a “vegetable.”

Xuan Nguyen, an 18-year-old KCAPA senior who participated in a blind taste test evaluating the companies submitting bids, says that it’s a misconception that young people won’t eat vegetables. “Almost everybody loves the salad,” she said. 

Grasela oversees an enormous and complex operation, but his administrative staff has been cut severely, from 75 employees in 2000 to 13 today. That makes innovation a challenge. But student activists and food advocates say that the District has been a good partner, working with activists to rewrite their Request for Proposals in order to attract more varied bidders. Maramont is now competing with two companies that have a reputation for healthful and fresh food — Revolution Foods and Whitsons — for the new contract. 

YUC has circulated a community letter urging the District to contract with Revolution Foods. It was signed by a number of groups, including Asian Americans United, Philadelphia Student Union and the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers. 

Grasela says that school lunches will include more salads and fruit regardless of which companies win the contracts, which has now been broken into a larger and smaller segment to allow for more providers. And the District is shifting more schools toward on-site cafeterias, aiming for 70 percent by the 2017-18 school year. It then plans for students in the remaining schools to be served fresh food prepared at centralized, off-site commissaries.

“This isn’t our long-term plan,” he says, gesturing toward the line for pre-plated lunches. “This RFP is just a bridge.”

Last year, the value of Maramont’s contract was $29.9 million, and it is projected to fall to $27.5 million for the current year and continue declining as the number of on-site kitchens increases. In the 2012-13 school year, the District’s Food Services office spent $77.7 million serving 28.5 million meals, meaning that the average breakfast, lunch or dinner costs $2.73. Maramont charges the District $1.85 for each pre-plated lunch, through that price does not include costs related to District labor and supplies. 

Maramont may not give up Philadelphia’s young diners without a fight. In Boston and San Francisco, parent company Preferred Meal sued school districts in recent years after they decided to switch vendors. Preferred Meal alleged that the districts violated bidding rules; they lost the suit against San Francisco, and Boston schools say that the company dropped its challenge there. 

A spokesperson for Maramont declined an interview request, saying the company does not comment on its relationship with a district while a bid is under way, nor does it comment on legal matters. The company also declined to discuss the quality of its food.