Mark Sperrazza, food services chief for the Port Townsend and Chimacum public school districts offered insights from the battlefront to viewers of the documentary, “Two Angry Moms.”
Lay out only health food, he said, and too many students may turn away.
They can bring junk food from home or buy it at the nearest store, after all.
A drop in cafeteria customers could precipitate a reduction in state and federal funding, “and my program loses employees.”
The food in his schools isn’t all bad, he added.
Sperrazza, a retired Navy man, introduced salads and fruit juices to his lunch rooms.
“I’m all about choices,” he said.
“The kids have a choice: pizza or a lunch salad,” for example.
“If you take away pizza, are all of the kids going to have a lunch salad? No.”
Despite local farmers’ urgings, Sperrazza has no plans to buy organic produce.
Growers “can’t supply what I want,” in district-scale quantities.
“The truth is that I live within the program I have and the funding I have.”
To his mind, overhauling cafeteria fare isn’t the solution to the nation’s obesity problem.
“Who’s going to monitor the kids when they go to 7-Eleven?” he asked.
The foods in his lunch rooms meet U.S. Department of Agriculture guidelines, Sperrazza added.
“We should be fixing this at the USDA level . . . It’s a cultural thing that’s bigger than me and bigger than the two angry women.”
