Letters: Why is so much food wasted at LAUSD?

Re “Nutritious but uneaten,” April 2

The Los Angeles Unified School District serves 650,000 meals a day, with $100,000 worth of food thrown away each day by students. That adds up to $18 million wasted every year.

Our society needs a renaissance of responsibility — and to resolve not to waste food. What better places to start than in homes and schools?

For decades, nutritionists and educators have taught that certain foods are junk, rather than focusing on the cardinal principles of variety and moderation. Embedded in the notion of junk food itself is contempt for life’s precious resources. In truth, all foods are carbohydrate, protein and fat, and all are life-sustaining substances.

Virginia C. Li

Los Angeles

The writer is a professor emerita at UCLA’s Fielding School of Public Health.

My goodness, how times have changed.

When I was in public school in L.A. County, if we bought our lunch, we had to eat what the cafeteria lady put on our plate: a healthy entree, vegetables, fruit and milk. We weren’t allowed to leave the lunch table until we ate every morsel.

I’ll never forget the day I stuffed my brussels sprouts into my mostly empty milk carton in an attempt to outwit the teacher on cafeteria duty. She caught me, tore open the milk carton, dumped it all on my plate and ordered me to eat. To this day, the smell, sight or taste (perish the thought) of brussels sprouts produces a gag response.

It is an excellent idea to encourage students to include healthy options in their diets and to educate them about the long-term benefits. But forcing them to take a portion each of vegetables and fruit is an ineffective and wasteful approach.

Linda Linville

Corona

Only in America would wasting millions of dollars of food even be conceivable. As an assistant principal in L.A. Unified, each day I watch my students throw out whole lunches because all they wanted was the drink.

In other parts of the world, starvation is a daily reality; thousands die each year for the lack of what our children throw in the garbage. We should be ashamed.

Tom Iannucci

Los Angeles

Here’s the $100,000 question: Why are Cheetos and Pop-Tarts being sold in schools? That implies the schools’ approval of junk food and negates the nutritious food program.

There are two bad lessons being taught: First, that wasting food is OK, and second, that it’s fine to eat junk food.

A first step is for schools to stop being vendors of non-nutritious food, which enables students to dump or waste healthful food.

Julie Lister

Glendale

The Times’ report about students wasting food needs some perspective. If 650,000 meals result in $100,000 in wasted food, that is about 15 cents per meal that is thrown out.

That hardly seems worth much fuss in view of a Natural Resources Defense Council finding that a typical American family of four wastes $2,275 worth of food per year. That amounts to about $1.50 per person per day of waste.

Fifteen cents seems pretty minimal.

David Altheide

Solana Beach

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