The Wrong Way to go About Curbing Food Waste

This article from the Washington Post first starts by telling the story of a 9-year-old student of color at a student in Ohio being ridiculed for throwing away the food she didn’t want to eat. She was given packaged waffles on her lunch tray, which she didn’t want to eat. She ended up throwing them away, and a white cafeteria monitor forced her to retrieve them from the trash and sit at a table until she ate them. This prompted the cafeteria monitor and the principal to be fired. But this wasn’t the end of the story, a video of the incident was released by the district, which is now being used as evidence in a lawsuit against the district.

This incident showed racism not only in school districts but also the aspect of food waste in schools. Why are schools forcing students to take and eat food they don’t want? The officials at this school wanted to curb food waste, and they had already instated a cafeteria monitor, which, as mentioned in my previous discussion, is a way to focus on food waste. Yet, their monitor was being harsh towards students instead of simply monitoring what was thrown out to look for changes that could be made.

There are many ways they could have gone about curbing food waste, they could make a table where packaged food, like the little girl’s, could go for other students to take. They could have also not forced her to take food she didn’t want to eat. The school, in this instance, was wrong and could have discovered many different ways to help stop its food waste.