--:-- [Theme music fades out]
--:-- Noel King: Welcome to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King with Miles Bryan.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Hello.
--:-- Noel King: You went to public school, right, Miles?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yes. Go South High Tigers.
--:-- Noel King: What do you remember about school lunch?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Oof. I remember sad lasagna shrink-wrapped in little containers. I remember avoiding it.
--:-- Noel King: Do you remember the nugs? The chicken nuggets?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, if I had to eat school lunch, that was a pretty good option. I actually liked them. But in addition to being very tasty, those nugs were very processed.
--:-- Noel King: And at the moment, America has got processed foods in its crosshairs. It's true. We are collectively very down on processed food right now, none more so than Health and Human Services Secretary nominee Robert Floride Kennedy Jr.
--:-- Miles Bryan: I'll get processed food out of school lunch immediately. About half the school lunch program goes to processed food.
--:-- Noel King: Ken, the man who once saved a dead bear cub for a snack, fixed school lunches. Coming up.
--:-- [Break music plays]
--:-- Noel King: Support for Today Explained comes from BetterHelp. Let me tell you a true story. Last weekend, I got an email from a listener who wanted to discuss their problems with me. And I said, look, I don't think that this is about me personally. At least I hope it's not. Why don't you try BetterHelp.com slash Explained?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Absolute truth. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Find the one with BetterHelp. The one is not me, guys.
--:-- Noel King: Our listeners get 10% off their first month at BetterHelp.com slash explain. That's BetterHelp.com slash explained. You're listening to Today Explained. I'm Noelle King.
--:-- Miles Bryan: And last week, Miles Bryan and I went to Idea Charter School in Northeast D.C.
--:-- Noel King: OK, Miles, the challenge for American school lunches is to get the ultra processed foods out. And the challenger is?
--:-- Miles Bryan: My name is Reese Powell. Reese Powell. He's the CEO of a company called Red Rabbit.
--:-- Noel King: So Red Rabbit is one of the largest black-owned school food companies. But we're really a social justice company.
--:-- Reese Powell: Red Rabbit's mission is to serve kids, you know, basically the opposite of chicken nuggets. It's fresh, healthy, unprocessed. Our chefs prepare meals using whole, real ingredients.
--:-- Noel King: Sure, that all sounds good, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Take chicken for an example. If you want to serve chicken and you use a processed chicken, it comes with a CN label.
--:-- Reese Powell: A CN label, that's a child nutrition label. It shows how a food fits into the federal rules around what goes on the plate. You see them a lot on prepackaged school foods.
--:-- Noel King: The school food regulations like the CN label because then they can flow through into the school food regulations. And so if you're an operator, the process of buying chicken, then giving the CN label to the regulators to prove to them that you bought the chicken is a very straightforward one.
--:-- Reese Powell: We don't use processed chicken. We use real chicken. Real chicken doesn't come with the CN label. Neither does any real produce come with a packaging label.
--:-- Noel King: And so the process of us explaining to the regulators that we are following the rules and we are doing what's necessary for the children to have a healthy meal is a little bit more complex, a little more complicated, because the system isn't designed for you to serve whole, natural, real chicken.
--:-- Reese Powell: So we have to go the extra mile to make our fresh chicken work for the USDA, which runs the school lunch program.
--:-- Noel King: They got to replicate that process with all their food. And they got to do it all within the budget the federal government provides, which is about $4 per lunch per kid.
--:-- Reese Powell: And even if you can solve for all of those challenges, you still have to cook the food, which requires a real chef.
--:-- Noel King: In this case, in Northeast D.C., that is Darian Devar. Wow. Chef, may I come behind the line?
--:-- Darian Devar: Okay.
--:-- Noel King: So today we have spaghetti with whole wheat pasta, and we have mixed veggies, that's green beans, sautéed peppers, peppers and onions, a fresh garden salad.
--:-- Darian Devar: We also have Parmesan cheese and something that I love dearly, which is the brown butter ricotta. It comes very well with the pasta and the kids absolutely love it.
--:-- Noel King: Let me ask you about these green beans because I am dipping into the past, but you do remember the green beans.
--:-- Darian Devar: I do. You remember they were colorless? Yes, flavorless. What's the word? Slimy.
--:-- Noel King: Slimy. Yeah, exactly. I do.
--:-- Darian Devar: You got peppers in there, you got onions in there, you got spices in there too?
--:-- Noel King: Absolutely, spices, garlic, seasoning.
--:-- Darian Devar: There was not a chicken nugget in sight in Northeast D.C.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yeah, that meal looked beautiful.
--:-- Noel King: But as the father of a young daughter, I have to tell you something. The only thing that really matters here is, are the kids going to eat it?
--:-- Noel King: How's it going? Parmesan cheese or ricotta?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Parmesan.
--:-- Noel King: You're not eating today?
--:-- Miles Bryan: I want the pasta.
--:-- Noel King: I can't eat the pasta. Are the kids going to want to eat their vegetables?
--:-- Miles Bryan: We're going to leave you in suspense for a bit because here's the thing. School lunch has a history. It is a rich history. It is a vivid history. It is classic Americana.
--:-- Noel King: And it's the purview of Jane Black. She's a longtime food journalist who writes the newsletter Consumed.
--:-- Jane Black: The history of school lunch is, I think, a really interesting case study. When you look at the promises that Make America Healthy Again and RFK Jr. are making, what they're promising to do, which is take out all of these additives and use simple ingredients, it should be really easy, right?
--:-- Noel King: This idea that you just buy food and you cook it and you give it to kids, it should be simple, but it has never been simple.
--:-- Jane Black: And it's not only because of the money, although that is a big piece of it. It's also for historical reasons. School lunch is this weird little world, this complex upside-down and backwards world that is shaped by rules that were made for specific reasons at the time, but that when you're trying to change things, make it very difficult to untangle and do something that just seems like common sense.
--:-- Noel King: And that kind of why I love school lunch because I love these wacky little places where you really have to get in there and understand you know where the rubber hitting the road you know, what the problems are.
--:-- Jane Black: But to somebody just looking in from the outside, you're thinking, why can't they just do that? Where is, where do we start? If we're going to tell a history of school lunch in the United States, Where does it come from, the idea that if a kid goes to school, the school is going to feed him?
--:-- Noel King: So there have always been hungry children in America. And the school lunch program is unofficially born during the Depression.
--:-- Jane Black: And they were these ad hoc programs at different schools where children were in need. The government helped out by providing money for this, but they also helped out by buying food from farmers.
--:-- Noel King: Because in the Depression, they were struggling to sell the products that they needed. So the government would buy these things in order to stabilize prices so that farmers also could make a living and take that food and give it to schools.
--:-- Jane Black: The program becomes formalized in 1946. It's called the National School Lunch Act. It's signed by President Harry Truman.
--:-- Noel King: And he says this famous line when he, famous to school food nerds like me, when he signs the bill that is, No nation is any healthier than its children or more prosperous than its farmers.
--:-- Jane Black: And so I think that's such an important line because this program was never really only about children and nutrition. The program always had two masters.
--:-- Noel King: And the fact that the program was controlled and directed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture rather than, say, the Department of Education or the Department of Health and Human Services shows who was really driving this program.
--:-- Jane Black: It was agriculture. I had always wondered that, how ag became so involved. And it's because, oh, it always was involved in this thing. From the very beginning.
--:-- Noel King: What's on the plate back in the earliest days? You know, what's funny is it's not that different than the way we picture school lunch right now.
--:-- Jane Black: You know, it's 1950s food. Lunches are planned by a local school manager whose menus have taste appeal and day-to-day variety.
--:-- Noel King: A good lunch provides from a third to one half of the student's daily needs. It's chicken, it's scoops of mashed potatoes, you know, that you take out with the ice cream scoop.
--:-- Jane Black: Meats and other foods rich in protein, a combination of fruits and vegetables, bread, butter, milk.
--:-- Noel King: In poorer schools, they may have not had a hot lunch. They may have had a sandwich and an apple.
--:-- Jane Black: But I think that what you need to know about school lunch at the beginning was that it was cooked in the schools.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, so it's not processed food, a TV dinner that's brought in and just reheated and given to kids. There are lunch ladies, they're cooking it and they're making it fresh and they're serving it to the kids.
--:-- Jane Black: A nutritious lunch helps a child stay alert. It helps teenagers make that final spurt of growth that develops them into healthy grown-ups.
--:-- Noel King: My husband, who grew up in West Virginia, always tells stories about when he was in elementary school that you could smell the bread baking.
--:-- Jane Black: Oh. And, you know, what a lovely memory. A lovely memory.
--:-- Noel King: Yes, he's not that old. Right, no, he wouldn't be.
--:-- Jane Black: You're saying like within our lifetime, this is something that was done on site. And then, so the food is what we would expect it to be, no real surprises.
--:-- Noel King: But then a change did come, and it was at a point in American history when a lot of things were changing.
--:-- Jane Black: What happened? Okay, so Reagan is elected president. Ronald Reagan is elected president.
--:-- Noel King: And the federal budget is out of control. He comes in planning to slash budgets everywhere that he can.
--:-- Jane Black: He will propose budget cuts in virtually every department of government. And school lunch is no exception.
--:-- Noel King: And so they cut the budgets. And the way that I often describe it to people is that schools are kind of a lot like families.
--:-- Jane Black: When a ton of your income disappears, what do you do? You cut back, right? You have to cut costs.
--:-- Noel King: And at this point in the 80s, the easiest way for them to do that is to get rid of the staff that are cooking.
--:-- Jane Black: They have salaries. They also, at that point, had pensions that people didn't really want to pay anymore.
--:-- Noel King: So we'll get rid of the lunch ladies and we won't have to maintain all this equipment. We won't have to have stoves and refrigerators and walk-ins.
--:-- Jane Black: We'll just get these suddenly available big food companies to make all the food, package it, and bring it in.
--:-- Noel King: That doesn't mean there was no cooking going on, but increasingly you see pre-prepared foods and processed foods coming into schools because they're cheaper.
--:-- Jane Black: So we move from the bread is baking in the kitchen in West Virginia to what?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Well, I remember from the 80s, you know, there were tater tots, which I loved.
--:-- Noel King: There were sloppy joes. And then Friday was pizza day. Pizza day.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Yes. Pizza day. And it was not a triangle. It was a square. It was a square.
--:-- Noel King: It was a square. And it had, you know, tomato sauce. And then I always remember it was like the shredded cheese that was kind of spackled on.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Like it had never moved. But we loved it.
--:-- Noel King: You picked up one edge and you could tear the whole thing off.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Exactly, exactly.
--:-- Noel King: And so, you know, that's what there was.
--:-- Miles Bryan: I can't believe I'm actually going to consume this whole hamburger.
--:-- Noel King: What do you want with these beef hearts?
--:-- Miles Bryan: On the floor.
--:-- Noel King: It doesn't look very clean.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Just do your job, heart boy.
--:-- Noel King: And that's what kids got used to seeing. Not only at school, but increasingly throughout society, we all start eating a lot more processed foods.
--:-- Jane Black: And a lot more fast food, et cetera, et cetera.
--:-- Noel King: Coming up Jane Black comes back to tell us what happened when we tried to make the kids eat some vegetables And what is a vegetable, anyway?
--:-- Noel King: Support for Today Explained comes from Built Rewards. These days, it seems like everybody has a rewards program.
--:-- Miles Bryan: You swipe your card and you get one cent on the hundred dollars.
--:-- Noel King: But with your rent, frequently, you just pay month after month. You never get anything from it other than that roof over your head.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Not anymore, says Built Rewards.
--:-- Noel King: Built Rewards says it lets you earn points on your rent.
--:-- Miles Bryan: By paying rent through Built, they say you can earn flexible points that can be redeemed toward hundreds of hotels and airlines, perhaps a future rent payment, your next Lyft ride, and so much more.
--:-- Noel King: Your home isn't just where you sleep, it's your community, and Built wants you to go out and do things in the community.
--:-- Miles Bryan: You can eat at your favorite local restaurants, then earn more points.
--:-- Noel King: You can get VIP treatment at certain fitness studios.
--:-- Miles Bryan: You can enjoy exclusive experiences just for Built members every month.
--:-- Noel King: When you're ready to travel, they say Built points can be converted to miles or hotel points all around the world.
--:-- Miles Bryan: You can earn points on rent and around your neighborhood wherever you call home by joining built.com slash explained.
--:-- Noel King: That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash explained. It's Today Explained. Miles Bryan and I are back with Jane Black.
--:-- Jane Black: She writes the Consumed newsletter and has covered school lunch for many years.
--:-- Noel King: So when we left off, American kids were getting mostly processed foods in their school lunch.
--:-- Jane Black: And then one woman risked it all. The person who comes along and raises a ton of awareness about what's happening in school food is Michelle Obama.
--:-- Noel King: And so when Obama is elected in 2008, Michelle Obama, like many first ladies before her, sort of chooses an issue.
--:-- Jane Black: Right. You know, Nancy Reagan had just say no to drugs. Say no to drugs and say yes to life.
--:-- Noel King: And Laura Bush was very focused on literacy. Start by reading this book, one of my favorite books, Duck for President.
--:-- Jane Black: And Michelle Obama is going to focus on healthy eating and healthy kids.
--:-- Noel King: And so a part of that is school lunch. And so you've got her, you know, dancing with Elmo.
--:-- Jane Black: So how do you guys feel about getting kids pumped up and excited about eating healthy food?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Oh, well, it's wonderful. Elmo loves healthy food.
--:-- Noel King: You've got her bringing chefs to the White House on the newly planted garden on the South Lawn.
--:-- Jane Black: Do you know what Swiss chard is? It's like a green. It's like a lettuce.
--:-- Noel King: She's out there talking about how important school lunch is to children, especially children who are hungry and getting some of their most important calories of the day and how it is essential to make those meals as healthy as possible.
--:-- Jane Black: How does her advocacy go over?
--:-- Noel King: So it really depends who you talk to. Michelle Obama was a hero to so many liberals.
--:-- Jane Black: On the other hand, you then have the opposition, the Republicans, who are not into this at all.
--:-- Noel King: There is no sign this morning that congressional Republicans are being swayed by First Lady Michelle Obama.
--:-- Jane Black: The decisions about the lunchroom should be made there, should be made with the parents in the school district, not some bureaucrat in Washington, D.C.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, to them, what Michelle Obama is doing is the ultimate nanny state.
--:-- Jane Black: She's saying, here's what you can eat. I'm going to tell you what to eat. You know, parents shouldn't have control. Kids shouldn't have control.
--:-- Noel King: It was very much portrayed as if she was stepping on parents' toes and telling them what they were allowed to feed their kids.
--:-- Jane Black: The other piece of it that I think is worth mentioning is that there was a big pushback, partially from people in the school food world, who were saying, hey, not so fast.
--:-- Noel King: If we give kids quinoa and, you know, roasted vegetables, are they going to eat them? You know, they like pizza.
--:-- Jane Black: And pizza, which kids and all of us do love, kind of becomes a bit of a flashpoint here, remind us of this embarrassing chapter.
--:-- Noel King: Yes, this was quite a moment.
--:-- Jane Black: So, And one of the things that Michelle Obama and her team discover when they dive into the school food nutrition rules is that one eighth of a cup of tomato paste, that's about two tablespoons, and conveniently the amount that is on a piece of pizza counts in school lunch world as half a vegetable.
--:-- Noel King: Which is weird.
--:-- Jane Black: And they're able to say, hey, wait a minute, look at this. Something is wrong here. Pizza is a vegetable.
--:-- Noel King: Do you see how crazy this has become?
--:-- Jane Black: And she wrote an op-ed for The New York Times.
--:-- Noel King: It was somewhat snarky saying, you know, remember when Congress declared that the sauce on a slice of pizza should count as a vegetable in school lunches?
--:-- Jane Black: Common sense. It's not a vegetable.
--:-- Noel King: What's next? Are Twinkies going to be considered a vegetable?
--:-- Jane Black: What was really crazy was that she lost that battle.
--:-- Noel King: You know, the school lunch people, the food companies, the pizza makers get to members of Congress and they're like, wait a minute, you are not going to say that pizza doesn't count as a vegetable.
--:-- Jane Black: And they they refuse to let it happen.
--:-- Noel King: I mean, just to complicate the story just a little bit. I did talk to some nutritionists and I think this is really interesting.
--:-- Jane Black: They didn't really object to the fact that an eighth of a cup of tomato paste does give you some nutrients.
--:-- Noel King: In fact, they told me it is about the equivalent of half an orange in terms of vitamins and nutrients.
--:-- Jane Black: What's crazy, though, is just how quickly this was shut down.
--:-- Noel King: And I think it shows how powerful interests really have a hold on the school lunch program and how difficult it is to make common sense changes.
--:-- Jane Black: So let me ask you, Leslie, you've laid out how school lunch in a lot of ways illustrates what American priorities have been for a century, right, since the Depression.
--:-- Noel King: And we see how lunch becomes something that is good for kids, but also convenient for business.
--:-- Jane Black: In 2025, people like RFK and the Maha movement that has aligned behind him, they are starting to look very differently at not just school lunch, but at the way we eat.
--:-- Noel King: And it feels like we really are having a moment.
--:-- Jane Black: And I wonder, first, whether we are really having a moment.
--:-- Noel King: And second, if we are, if this moment has real potential, real promise.
--:-- Jane Black: I think we are having a moment.
--:-- Noel King: I think there is a lot of energy behind the ideas that he is putting out there, this new frame he's putting out there about companies and powerful interests taking advantage of us.
--:-- Jane Black: And that appeals both to Democrats and to Republicans who feel it happening in this country.
--:-- Noel King: How you translate that energy into real change, I think, is a big question.
--:-- Jane Black: And I think that's why school lunch is a really good thing to talk about it, because it gives us this example.
--:-- Noel King: These things that seem like they should be simple are actually not that simple.
--:-- Jane Black: You know, and with school lunch, in order to really change it, in order to pull ultra processed foods out of school lunch, I mean, that's making over the entire menu.
--:-- Noel King: That's hiring thousands and thousands of people to cook in schools.
--:-- Jane Black: That's building thousands and thousands of school kitchens.
--:-- Noel King: Costs a lot of money.
--:-- Jane Black: So people have to put their money where their mouth is.
--:-- Noel King: And I think it's the same thing when you look at a lot of the other areas that the Maha movement is talking about, right?
--:-- Jane Black: It's just not as easy.
--:-- Noel King: They're talking about regulating ingredients that they put in foods.
--:-- Jane Black: So again, a lot of these are good ideas, but putting them into practice, it's a long haul.
--:-- Noel King: The long haul that Jane spoke of begins in a place like Idea Charter School in Washington, where Red Rabbit is serving unprocessed meals and where Miles and I set out to ask, Will the youths eat real food?
--:-- Miles Bryan: Good, good, good, good.
--:-- Noel King: What is your name?
--:-- Wesley Parr: Wesley Parr.
--:-- Noel King: How did you meet you?
--:-- Noel King: What y'all recording for?
--:-- Wesley Parr: We are doing a story about school lunch.
--:-- Noel King: Oh, well. Yeah. Well, the one out here is some dog shit.
--:-- Wesley Parr: It looks so good.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, it's the best you can get with government money.
--:-- Noel King: How old are you?
--:-- Noel King: 18. I remember being 18.
--:-- Wesley Parr: They were giving us chicken nuggets, canned corn, canned green beans.
--:-- Noel King: This stuff is all fresh.
--:-- Wesley Parr: Yeah. Yeah, you're right. I'm probably just complaining to complain because I'm a teenager.
--:-- Noel King: What do I know?
--:-- Wesley Parr: What about you, sir?
--:-- Noel King: What do you think?
--:-- Jamar Jackson: It's good, but I'm not going to eat my vegetables.
--:-- Jamar Jackson: It's much better than old lunches, at least.
--:-- Noel King: That's what I like about it.
--:-- Noel King: What were the old lunches like?
--:-- Jamar Jackson: It was terrible. It didn't even look good.
--:-- Noel King: What did it look like?
--:-- Jamar Jackson: Sometimes it looked like sludge, and I wouldn't touch it.
--:-- Noel King: I'm pretty sure I went the whole school year without eating the lunch back then.
--:-- Jamar Jackson: Yeah, back then it was good to me. Now I feel like it's more healthy, but certain days it's good.
--:-- Noel King: It has all these.
--:-- Noel King: How important is healthy to you guys? Like, how important is it to, do you feel like, to be eating not unprocessed foods and vegetables, things like that?
--:-- Jamar Jackson: I mean, it's good. We got to watch our figures, you know?
--:-- Noel King: But sometimes I just be eating anything.
--:-- Noel King: Okay, here we go. Here we go. First impressions. All right, we got spaghetti. Whole wheat.
--:-- Jamar Jackson: We got meat sauce. It's good. There's spices in it. It's garlic, basil, rosemary. It's really good.
--:-- Noel King: Very nice.
--:-- Jamar Jackson: The whole wheat's a nice touch.
--:-- Noel King: The whole wheat's a nice touch.
--:-- Noel King: Thank you to Idea Charter School in Northeast D.C. Wesley Parr, Jamar Jackson, Latia Gregory, and Kiara Roundtree.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Thanks, kids.
--:-- Noel King: Today's show was produced by... Me, Miles Bryan.
--:-- Jolie Myers: Jolie Myers is our editor.
--:-- Noel King: Laura Bullard fact-checked the show.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Patrick Boyd and Andrea Kristinsdottir are our engineers.
--:-- Noel King: It's Today Explained. I'm a historian. I'd like to explore mostly.
--:-- Noel King: I usually like to learn about the Gilded Age and learn more and more about Appalachia mostly.
--:-- Noel King: College next year? Possibly.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Don't play around college.
--:-- Noel King: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
--:-- Noel King: So the Gilded Age and Appalachia, those are your interests?
--:-- Noel King: Support for this show comes from Macy's. Fall is right around the corner, and that means layering season is too.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Macy's Fall Fashion Guide can help you get a pulse on all the latest trends and must-haves.
--:-- Noel King: Try a romantic look with a sheer top from INC.
--:-- Miles Bryan: Or mix it up with some fun textures, like a faux fur bomber jacket from Karl Lagerfeld Paris.
--:-- Noel King: No matter your vibe you can explore the macy's fall fashion guide and find
