Teacher Blogs About Mystery Meat

Anonymous teacher eats school lunch every day for a year

"If it's yellow, then it's jello. If it's blue, it could be stew..."

Sure, the kids in the movie Fame joked about their school lunch, but it's no laughing matter to thousands of kids who really have no idea what they're eating... or what they're not eating.

A teacher in the Midwest has decided to take on the brave task of eating school lunch every day for a year and blog about it.

In her blog, "Fed Up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project," the teacher prefers to remain anonymous, stating that she wants to protect her job and her identity. Instead, she simply goes by "Mrs. Q."

Mrs. Q admits in a blog entry, "I am not a nutritionist. I am just a parent who wants the best for all kids."

And it appears she has every right to question whether her students are actually getting "the best." Because while she admits she liked the macaroni & cheese as well as the chili, the latter was not immediately identifiable to her fellow diners.

Here's a transcript of my mini-conversation with a student about today's lunch:

Mrs. Q: "What did you eat for lunch today?"
Student: "Chips" while making a dipping motion.
Mrs. Q: "What did you dip the chips in?"
Student shrugged.
Mrs. Q (easy follow-up): "Was it chili?"
Student: "No."
Mrs. Q: "Are you sure?"
Student: "Yep."

And that's not the only misunderstood dish Mrs. Q ran into. Alongside her "meatloaf" (which the teacher feels is better described as a "meat patty"), Mrs. Q was served a pile of green stuff. But exactly what it was, she wasn't certain. Broccoli? Spinach? Collard greens? She posted a photo so that readers could comment with their own ideas.

Finally, if you like the color yellow, then Day 43 is your jackpot. A cheeseburger, corn, peach fruit cup, and popcorn chips(?!). Yellow, yellow, and more yellow.

"Can you get over how everything is the same color?" Mrs. Q comments. "And then there's two corn-based sides..."

So just what does Mrs. Q hope to gain from all this?

"I'm eating school lunch just like the kids every day in 2010 to raise awareness about what students eat every day," she writes in a blog entry. "My hope is that the US becomes more reflective about how the food children eat affects their well-being and success in school."

Matt Bartosik is a Chicago native and a social media sovereign.

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