Truckin'

Marin Schools Bribing Kids With Cookies to Stop Buying Lunch From Off-Campus Food Trucks

Photo: NBC Bay Area

A high school in Novato is having trouble preventing students from walking three houses down from the campus to buy lunch from a couple of junk-food wagons that only sell soda, candy, and chips. We first heard about this kerfuffle back in May, and now the Bay Citizen reports on the ongoing struggle the principal and the school district are having discouraging kids from leaving the campus and encouraging them to eat better. In fact, in a sad effort to lure them back, they’ve even reinstated some of the unhealthy foods — like chocolate cookies — that had been removed from cafeteria offerings under recent efforts to Mobama the school lunch program.

So far, in the last year, the district has seen an overall twelve percent decline in student participation in the school lunch program, following their menu changes that included the nixing of saturated fats, high-sodium foods, and chocolate milk. Also, the district has gotten a petition together, with 1,000 signatures, to try to remove the trucks, so far to no avail.

Maybe if the school lunch workers got all Jamie Oliver on the kids and figured out how to season food and make it taste good, this wouldn’t be such a problem.

Bay Citizen reporter Katharine Mieszkowski just went on the local NBC affiliate to discuss the matter. Watch below.

View more videos at: http://nbcbayarea.com.


Junk Food Trucks Frequent a Bay Area High School [NBC]
Earlier: Junk Food Trucks Undercut Healthy School Lunch Rules [Bay Citizen]

Marin Schools Bribing Kids With Cookies to Stop Buying Lunch From Off-Campus