Should Students Help Create School Lunch Menus?

By Annalise Knudson for the Staten Island Advance

What would a school lunchroom menu look like if it was created by students? That’s what one non-profit organization recently set to find out.

Non-profit FoodCorps, which aims to connect children to healthy food in schools, recently partnered with national salad chain Sweetgreen to introduce a way for students to have more power when it comes to the food they eat at school.

Three pilot programs let kids customize their meals, participate in taste tests and think of new ways to redesign their school cafeterias.

About 6,500 students in 15 cafeterias in several states across the United States, including New York, New Jersey, Michigan, Massachusetts, Maine, Iowa, George, Arkansas, Oregon and Virginia, are part of the pilot programming that began in September.

The programs are set to expand in the 2020-2021 school year to 50 schools, engaging more than 20,000 elementary school students across the country, according to Sweetgreen.