A hamburger patty flying through the air, with pieces of the (almost) artificial meat crumbling mid-air. When I was little and watched TV, it almost seemed like food fights were an every day occasion in high school. Some would even say a tradition. While I was disappointed with that being false, I found a common disappointment among the student body: school lunch.

When Ms. Aguilar, a dietitian for TUSD, met during 6th period on January 22nd in Mrs. Stevenson’s room, students were encouraged  to participate and ask questions about almost anything regarding school lunches. The conversation ranged from salads to mozzarella sticks. There are some essentials that Ms. Aguilar did highlight to understand the school lunch system. The requirements for the diet are determined by national legislation. TUSD in particular, goes through an extensive taste testing process, where chefs will create a meal and a group of people will determine if they will produce it. They rotate menus every 5 weeks, so they are constantly busy trying to curate their menus. They try and use student input to change menus, but they want to find a way to increase communication and feedback for certain dishes. There were many student complaints about food having a lack of quality, freshness, and fillingness. Senior Nathan Schmidt wants “more

variety.” Aguilar hopes to build on local partnerships with farmers to get more fresh produce to your plate, but also cites the struggles of ordering fresh produce in mass amounts. She also expressed a hope to work with local companies to bring food outside of campus inside it, much similar to the Domino’s Pizza program we have now. Mrs. Stevenson even said, “Why don’t you work with culinary classes where kids can cook some food if they are passionate about culinary?” Which Ms. Aguilar responded to with a surprising optimism, saying that she’d bring it up at the board meeting.