Have school cafeterias across the country become another political arena?

My first assignment (as a teacher) this past summer was at a Title 1 middle school in east Tulsa. Title 1 schools provide free breakfasts and lunches.

On the first morning in the cafeteria, I saw kids throwing their disposable breakfast trays of untouched food into the trash, except for their chocolate milk. Apparently, the only way kids can have their chocolate milk is if they go through the food line and take a tray of food.

I asked my nearest colleague, “What the heck?”

She described how terrible the cafeteria food was. I shall quote: “The food is inedible. Not a single teacher eats in the cafeteria.”

I asked why the cafeteria would continue making “inedible” meals knowing that they would go to waste.

The answer? “Michelle Obama.”

Oh boy, I thought. That’s an answer that probably has more layers than an onion.

As her first lady’s cause, Michelle Obama took on childhood obesity. I recall images of Mrs. Obama and her two daughters tending to the White House vegetable garden ― something that she modeled after Eleanor Roosevelt’s World War II victory garden. She even wrote a bestselling book, “American Grown: The Story of the White House Kitchen Garden and Gardens Across America.”

Mrs. Obama’s influence led to nutritional guidelines, which included more fresh fruits and vegetables and less fat, starches and sugar in school cafeterias across the country.

Yet, on Jan. 17, 2020, which was Mrs. Obama’s birthday and three days before President Donald Trump left office, his Agriculture Department enacted rules that would give schools more latitude to decide how much fruit to offer during breakfast and what types of vegetables to include in lunches. It would also broaden what constitutes snacks, the thought being that schools could offer foods like hamburgers and hotdogs as snacks.

Let’s go back to summer school. … Later that day, my curiosity caused me to have lunch in the cafeteria.

This is what was served:

1. Whole wheat tortilla chicken quesadillas

2. Steamed broccoli

3. Baked apple wedges

4. Chocolate milk. I was told that if regular milk was served, then over 90% of it would go unconsumed. The lesser of two evils was to serve chocolate milk.

I should share that my mother was a dietician. Korean food is generally healthy, and meals at the Lee house were good, healthy and tasty. So, to my trained taste buds, the school’s lunch was wonderful. Kudos to the cafeteria workers!

Everyday a faculty teammate would take orders from the staff and dash to McDonalds or Taco Bell. True to word, not a single faculty member ate in the cafeteria.

Kids are not blind. Nor are they deaf. Their young antennae are very sharp. They (and the cafeteria workers) see what the faculty are eating, and they hear when school lunches are deemed “inedible.”

Scientists, including anthropologists, believe that by design, humans crave fat, salt and sugar. That is how we survived and grew as a species. But in 21st-century Oklahoma, food is no longer something we must chase (or be chased by), cultivate, nor forage through physical exertion.

The food industry lobbied Trump’s Agriculture Department to loosen nutritional guidelines because proposed bills died in Congress at the committee level. Votes were split down party lines.

Weeks after taking office, President Joe Biden directed the Agriculture Department to roll back nutritional guidelines to when Mrs. Obama was a year younger.

The questions that beg to be asked are these: Do Republicans like burgers and Democrats like apples? Or have school cafeterias across the country become another political arena?

If the latter is true, then our kids’ palates might need adjusting every four years.

K. John Lee worked last year as a teacher in Tulsa Public Schools.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Are teachers not eating schools’ lunches modeling behavior for students?