For too long, the most hungered for period of the day, lunch, has been a source of disappointment and distress to cafeteria-loyal students. However, some relief has come in the form of a lunch menu update. Cafeteria menus now include a host of new entrees, such as boneless drumsticks, popcorn chicken, and mandarin chicken, along with updated sides and vegetarian options. Lower quality and unpopular foods were removed from the menu and have been replaced with entrees like PB and J pockets and chicken egg rolls.

“You get tired of the same thing over and over again,” cafeteria manager Sharon Forbes said. Before any new foods can join the menu, students from Montgomery County schools sample them at a tasting.

Students and staff alike welcome the changes, especially the retirement of tater tots, an old cafeteria standby which is unlikely to be missed. (“[They] tasted like sawdust,” Forbes said.) The fresher, more flavorful roasted potatoes have replaced them.

“The new fries are a lot better,” freshman Austin Marks said.

There is still room for improvement before the healthy and vegetarian options are completely student-friendly.

“I wish they sold foods that [didn’t] bounce off the walls,” senior Bryan Pike said. Pike buys lunch every day, and has learned it is easiest, and sometimes safest, not to branch out with unfamiliar foods at school. “The healthy foods taste like crap,” Pike said.

“[School lunches] are nasty, but I get them anyway,” sophomore Jashai Rowe said.

Sometimes, the menu is dictated by changes in suppliers’ products and not by the cafeteria staff. Recently, the vegetarian spicy bean burgers were replaced by a much less popular garden burger.

“The garden burgers are like eating grass after you’ve mowed the lawn. The spicy bean burger was more like a hamburger. Even the meat-eaters were taking two or three. Now it’s like standing on a street corner trying to give garden burgers away,” Forbes said.

Forbes is working with Kathy Lazor, director of food and nutrition services for Montgomery County Public Schools, to bring back the more appetizing bean burgers. While students may be noticing changes down the lunch line only recently, Lazor has reduced the fat in school foods by 30 percent in the last two years.

Currently, Lazor is working on having the school lunch program reauthorized, which could mean an increase in the base salary parents must make for their children to qualify for free and reduced lunches.

“Maybe if they made [the food] less expensive, people would buy it more, and they could actually make the food instead of the freezing thing they do,” sophomore Sara Mason said.

As of 1995, all of the cafeteria’s sauces, soups, dressings and meats come either straight from a supplier or prepackaged from a cook-chill facility. The switch from freshly cooked foods was made to cut costs on labor.

“I liked the work that was involved in it. We’d have meatloaf and fried chicken, different things like that,” Forbes said. The cafeteria kitchen operates now without any stove or Combi Ovens, which explains the few real pitfalls in the lunch menu.

Some options, like the recently banished tater tots and questionable soups seem to live up to the harsh stereotypes about school food.

“They look kind of strange and not very appealing visually,” senior Maithri Kondapaka said of the soups she has tried. Despite the obvious setbacks, Kondapaka finds that convenience outweighs quality.

“It’s hot food. I don’t get time in the morning to pack my lunch,” Kondapaka said.

For many students, rushing to get ready in the morning is a way of life. Combine that with weaknesses for late night television, and packing a lunch can often manage to slip one’s mind.

Past experiences with the cafeteria might drive one to wait until after school to satisfy their hunger. However, the next time a student is empty- handed when their lunch period rolls around, they might set their preconceptions about school food aside and bite the bullet with some mandarin chicken.