The FUHSD Nutrition Services Student Council hosted a vegan chili taste test for students in the Student Union during lunch on Thursday, March 21. Volunteers from MV Octagon and members of the Nutrition Services Student Council handed out cups of chili while students placed their finished cups in three bins to vote on the item: “Put this on the menu,” “May try it again” or “Never sample this option again.”
Senior and Nutrition Services Council Lead Amy Zhang says this event was held in response to student feedback the council received during a past advisory forum, specifically requests that more lactose-free and vegan options be added to the brunch and lunch menus.
“We’re always working with the students to get student feedback,” Zhang said. “It’s just difficult because there’s around 2000 students at every school and five schools in our district. That’s 10,000 students that we’re feeding on a day-to-day basis and we want to do it as fresh as possible and as healthy as possible.”
The council has begun to implement menu changes such as adding a fruit and veggie bar, offering lactose-free milk during brunch and replacing the noodles with rice in the stir-fry bowl to ensure student input is heard. Zhang emphasizes that adding healthy options to the lunch menu is a strong priority for the council, as all the ingredients in the chili are conventionally and locally sourced in California and whatever food goes unfinished is donated to homeless shelters.
“School food is really important for wellness because you’re mentally happy when you eat good food, you’re physically happy when you eat good food and it’s literally not healthy for you to go hungry,” Zhang said. “We’re always working on ensuring that we have healthy and tasty and fresh options for our students. These sampling events are really important because we want to know student opinions on what they’re eating, whether they like it or not and how we can improve, so we’re always synthesizing student feedback in order to make the lunch and brunch menu better.”
