This school year, the LA Unified School District was one of several districts to redesign their lunch program in an effort to create healthier meals for students. Just last week, several leading news outlets ran a story about the backlash that the district has received, most notably high levels of waste and secretive junk food black markets. The students hated the healthier meals.

Opponents to school lunch reform have long argued that the additional costs of redesigning lunch programs would be a waste of money because students would opt out of the lunch programs altogether. LA Unified’s apparent failure can easily be seen as evidence against school lunch reform, but if we compare LA Unified’s failure with the success stories of other districts we can clearly see that the failure was not caused by healthy food but by unfamiliar food. Continue reading →