Mitch Arnold, McKinley’s cafeteria manager, agrees with Michelle Obama in getting schools to make meals healthier, but he said, “The plan was poorly executed.” These meal changes are not helping the school financially.

“The USDA is going to have to realize this,” said Arnold.

McKinley is spending thousands of dollars every week on food. Sometimes it goes to waste. There are not enough students participating in the School Lunch Program or the School Breakfast Program in McKinley either.

“Not enough that I’m satisfied with,” said Arnold.

He wants to see at least 1,000 to 1,100 students eat lunch. Most of the time, the cafeteria is stuck with leftovers. When Arnold checks the trash bins, he finds whole fruits thrown away, which disappoints him. One time the cafeteria wasted 580 salads because students did not want them. Time and money is wasted when students just throw away food.

Arnold suggests, “If you don’t want it, don’t take it!”

Diana Gomez (12) said she feels the same way. Students are always offered the food and not forced to take it.

However, Arnold encourages students to take the fruits because “it’s cheap, free and comes with the meal.”

He said, if you are not going to eat the fruit during lunch, you could always save it as a healthy snack for later.

Arnold said that more students should be grateful for what they are given. There are people who are starving in the world, yet McKinley students still take the food they are given for granted. One of the goals of the campaign is to resolve child obesity. A reason why we have obesity in America is because of the food we eat.

Overall, McKinley is doing its best to help with this issue and the school has one of the best cafeterias in the state. The next step is to serve students less processed food, which means making more from scratch. This idea is slowly being implemented.