Oral History
Prologue
For this assignment, we're interviewing Carmen Angelotti. She is a retired lunch aid where she worked at Osage Elementary over the years. With her experience, we are going to try and find out how her school served lunches and the effects it had on the students. We're going to discuss healthy versus unhealthy meals served in the cafeteria. In addition, we're going to ask her a list of questions to analyze deeper into our research about how schools serve lunch. Furthermore, our primary goal is for us to try to discover how school lunches are compared to McDonald's fast food.
Interview Questions:
- What are some of the health and nutrition challenges for students today?
- How important are vending machines? Should schools ban them?
- Are schools contributing to the overweight issues during lunch time?
- In a few words, how would you describe school lunches?
- Do you consider school lunches healthy for all students?
- Do you think schools should change their menus so that students choose healthier meals?
- If students brought lunch instead of buying, would it be healthier in your opinion?
- Generally, are students going after the unhealthy meals (i.e.pizza) more or are they going after healthier meals?
- Do you know on average the difference in prices between healthier meals compared to unhealthy ones?
- Do you think schools are trying to prevent unhealthy meals?
12. Do you think the school would limit the amount of unhealthy food served at lunch?
13. How are the lunch menus decided?
14. Does the school financial situation reflect what food is served?
15. How is the school fighting to decrease unhealthy meals?
16. Do you think school lunches are adding to childhood obesity?
17. How would you describe the difference between school lunches and fast food?
18. What steps are being made to to make school lunches healthier?
19. Is there are certain day in the week that school lunches serve less healthier meals?
20. In the years you have worked as a lunch would you say the lunches have become unhealthier in recent years?
Conclusion
Therefore, the interview we had with Carmen really taught us about the way school lunches are handled in schools. It was really interesting to hear what went on back in the school kitchen since we never knew. We were always curious to see if it was sanitary back there and now we know that it is very sanitary. Carmen explained how there are standards for New Jersey and that as a school, they have to follow those standards. If Carmen and the other employees didn't follow the standards, they would possibly get fired. We learned that school lunches are very organized within the menus and how the food goes out to the students. We were surprised how organized school lunches are. For instance, the menus are posted all around the school as well as being sent home with each student. This allows the parents/guardians to acknowledge what their children are eating. Considering we all went to elementary school, it was nice to hear how organized and healthy they are. Carmen even told us that when she worked, she treated every student like they were her own child. Afterwards, we asked Carmen what she thought about school lunches being compared to fast food. Carmen believed that school lunches are much healthier than fast food restaurants such as McDonald's. This really helped put a good opinion out there for our research topic. Overall, it was a great experience to hear what it was like "behind closed doors."