“I don’t think that kids like very healthy food”

• In Event: Constructing the "Healthy" Child

Abstract

School meals are a routine public health intervention through which institutions attempt to produce the healthy child. Yet what counts as healthy food, and what counts as successful eating, are not settled in the cafeteria. Drawing on qualitative research in a Colorado school district (pseudonym: Hamilton), this paper examines how students and parents construct, contest, and live the meaning of child health through everyday encounters with school food. I analyze student focus groups and parent interviews to show how health is negotiated through (1) taste and legitimacy, (2) lunch time governance and uneven access, and (3) reputational narratives about cafeteria labor and food quality.
Across student accounts, healthy eating is often positioned against desirability and pleasure, for example in reactions to desserts reframed as healthier alternatives. Students’ talk illuminates how health becomes a contested category, not a neutral standard, and raises a central dilemma for school food policy: what is the value of providing healthy meals if students do not eat them. Students and parents also describe lunch as organized by scarcity of time and logistical routines that distribute desirable food and eating time unevenly. Line position, staggered lunch periods, and unreliable counting systems redistribute cold or depleted menu items toward those who eat later. In these settings, the appearance of a complete tray can become a proxy for health and compliance, even when eating is constrained by noise, pace, and short lunch periods.
Finally, I show how reputational stories (such as rumors about particular foods) shape perceptions of school food before the food is even encountered, and how students’ judgments about cafeteria labor differentiate professionalized cooking from feminized cafeteria work. Together, these findings demonstrate that the healthy child is produced through institutional routines and public health logics, but also through family pragmatics, peer discourse, and the everyday interactions of lunch time.

Author

• Ashlyn Lange, University of Colorado-Denver