Each Monday and Wednesday, college students at Channelview Excessive Faculty, outdoors Houston, are handled to Domino’s for lunch. Supply drivers from a neighborhood department of the fast-food chain arrive on the college with dozens of pizzas contemporary out of the oven, served in Domino’s-branded cardboard containers. Youngsters might be choosy eaters, however few meals are extra universally engaging than freshly cooked pizza—not to mention from a restaurant college students are virtually actually already acquainted with. “For teenagers to have the ability to see Oh, they’re serving Domino’s, I feel it makes an enormous distinction,” Tanya Edwards, the district’s director of diet, instructed me.
The deliveries are a part of Domino’s “Good Slice” initiative, which sends pizzas to high school districts across the nation—typically at little or no price to college students themselves. “Good Slice” is a part of the nationwide school-lunch program, so taxpayers foot a portion of the invoice to ensure that each child has lunch to eat. Regardless of children’ enthusiasm, you’ll be able to see the issue: College students munching on free quick meals may appear to embody all the things incorrect with the American food plan. If college cafeterias might be considered lecture rooms the place children find out about meals, giving them Domino’s can be akin to educating driver’s-ed college students how you can drive by letting them play Grand Theft Auto.
The times of faculty Domino’s—and college pizza typically—are numbered. Well being and Human Providers Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his supporters are on a mission to overtake college lunch. Late final month, the Trump administration’s Make America Wholesome Once more Fee launched a extremely anticipated report on youngsters’s well being that pointed to high school meals as one venue the place ultra-processed meals are supplied to children unabated, contributing to weight problems and different kinds of power illness. Until cafeteria employees make college pizza from scratch, almost all types incorporates industrial elements that qualify the meal as an ultra-processed meals. In impact, ridding college lunch of ultra-processed meals means the tip of pizza day as we all know it.
Most of the meals reforms pushed by RFK Jr.’s motion are fashionable. Eliminating synthetic meals dyes, for instance, is way extra wise than Kennedy’s conspiracist views about vaccines. However within the case of banning most college pizza, RFK Jr. might be going through a more durable promote. MAHA’s imaginative and prescient for meals is about to run headfirst right into a bunch of hungry children in a faculty cafeteria.
Although Domino’s college pizza is delivered by Domino’s drivers carrying Domino’s pizza containers, the corporate’s Good Slice is totally different from what would arrive at your door must you order a pie for dinner tonight. Cafeteria pizza has to abide by diet requirements for varsity meals that the Obama administration spearheaded in 2010. The overly tacky rectangular pizza with a cracker-like crust that you simply might need eaten in class not cuts it. Take into account Domino’s Good Slice pepperoni pizza: It’s made with principally whole-wheat flour, low-fat cheese, and pepperoni that has half as a lot sodium than typical Domino’s pepperoni. It’s not a inexperienced salad by any means, however college Domino’s is way from the worst factor children may eat.
Different widespread cafeteria choices—comparable to mini corndogs, mozzarella sticks, and rooster tenders—are additionally now extra nutritious than in many years previous. These requirements may nonetheless be improved (and we’re nonetheless speaking about corndogs, mozzarella sticks, and rooster tenders), however they’ve led firms to promote barely more healthy variations of their meals in colleges. Analysis has proven that, on common, college meals are actually the healthiest issues children eat in a day.
In an e mail, HHS Press Secretary Vianca N. Rodriguez Feliciano mentioned that “whereas a few of these merchandise might technically meet outdated federal pointers, they’re nonetheless closely engineered, nutritionally weak, and designed for company revenue, not for the well being of our children.” Certainly, college lunch begins to look significantly much less wholesome in case you account for the rising concern over ultra-processed meals. Many college lunches are made in factories with chemical compounds comparable to emulsifiers and taste enhancers you wouldn’t discover in a house kitchen. Consuming plenty of ultra-processed meals is related to a variety of maladies, together with Sort 2 diabetes and coronary heart illness, although nutritionists are deeply divided on simply how a lot we must be fretting over these industrial elements.
To some extent, whether or not college pizza must be prevented as a result of it’s ultra-processed is moreover the purpose. By permitting Domino’s into college cafeterias, the federal government additionally is basically giving the corporate carte blanche to promote its pizza. Serving Good Slice out of a typical Domino’s field offers “the misunderstanding to youngsters and fogeys that the less-healthy merchandise served of their eating places are wholesome decisions,” Jennifer Harris, a food-marketing professional, instructed me in an e mail.
Kennedy has referred to as for colleges to serve “actual meals, entire meals, farm-fresh meals,” as an alternative of something ultra-processed. It might, after all, be higher for varsity cafeterias to swap out the pepperoni pizza with salad and rooster breast. However for a lot of children, college lunch backed by the federal government could also be their solely actual meal of the day. At Channelview, the place such a big portion of scholars are eligible for public help that everybody eats totally free, merely getting meals in children’ bellies is high of thoughts. “I could make a elaborate little sweet-potato black-bean bowl, however I don’t assume my children are going to eat it,” Tanya Edwards mentioned. “As an alternative, they will go dwelling hungry, and I don’t actually know what they’ve at dwelling.”
The priority isn’t theoretical. Proof reveals that when college meals are too wholesome, a large portion of children merely get off the lunch line. Within the early 2010s, when the Los Angeles Unified Faculty District overhauled its lunch choices—an effort that included eradicating pizza from the menu—colleges reported that huge quantities of meals have been touchdown within the trash. (The district later introduced again pizza, and pepperoni pizza is now the district’s hottest merchandise, a spokesperson mentioned.) Meals waste is a perennial difficulty in class meal applications. A Division of Agriculture research of greater than 100 colleges discovered that a mean of 31 p.c of the greens included on noticed college lunch trays have been wasted. Pizza, nonetheless, was among the many least wasted meals, together with breaded and fried rooster patties and nuggets.
Even advocates for more healthy college meals admit that there’s a restrict to how a lot college students will tolerate more healthy choices. “We undoubtedly have to harness college meals to teach children about wholesome consuming, however I don’t assume which means no pizza,” Janet Poppendieck, a professor emerita at Hunter School who wrote a e-book on fixing college meals, instructed me. “We have to embody wholesome variations of children’ favourite meals; in any other case, I don’t assume they’ll eat.” Partly to make sure that children really eat lunch, many college districts appear to have pizza day at the very least as soon as every week. A spokesperson for Florida’s Hillsborough County Public Colleges, the seventh-largest district within the nation, instructed me that its first, second, fifth, and seventh hottest entrees are all within the pizza household (No. 5 is mini calzones; No. 7 is pizza sticks). All instructed, the district has doled out almost 3 million servings this college yr.
If it needed to, the Trump administration may merely pressure children to suck it up and actually eat their greens. Technically the accountability of overseeing the school-meal program falls to the USDA—which isn’t underneath Kennedy’s purview—however Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins has signaled that she is onboard with MAHA-ing college lunch. Nonetheless, any try and enact a ban would possible invite vital backlash. In 2023, when the federal authorities floated the concept of banning the sale of sugary chocolate milk in elementary and center colleges, many dad and mom flooded the federal government with complaints. So did some college students: Ben, a fourth grader who left solely his first title, wrote in an official remark to the USDA that it ought to abandon the proposal “as a result of college students are tremendous MAD.” Members of Congress additionally put stress on regulators to cease the reform. The USDA later deserted the chocolate-milk ban. In 2011, after the Obama administration launched its new pointers for varsity lunch, Republicans in Congress tried to battle again in opposition to more healthy pizza by classifying the dish as a vegetable.
It’s no marvel why MAHA has an issue with college pizza. Kennedy has pointed to company malfeasance as a number one supply of America’s food plan issues. You don’t should be a fan of his to really feel uneasy that Domino’s, a fast-food firm that sells philly-cheese-steak-loaded tater tots, is taking part in a taxpayer-funded program meant to feed children nutritious meals. However Kennedy’s favored method to meals and, effectively, all the things—huge proposals and dramatic overhauls—isn’t effectively suited to high school meals. The well being secretary may dream of children consuming from a salad bar stocked with seed-oil-free dressings 5 days every week, however ending college pizza day gained’t routinely make that occur. Telling children what to eat is one factor; getting them to eat it’s one other.
