What the Lunch Ladies Didn’t Tell You

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We’re excited to present another episode of Bite, our new food politics podcast. Listen to all of our episodes here, or by subscribing in iTunes, Stitcher, or via RSS.

Cast your mind back to your high school cafeteria, and recall that feeling of having a tray full of tater tots, grayish Salisbury steak, and lime Jello and trying to find a friendly place to sit. Excruciating, right?

Two words: Cow tongue.

Impressive, then, that our guest on this week’s episode of our podcast Bite voluntarily spends a whole lot of time thinking about that lovely place. Bettina Elias Siegel is the writer behind the popular blog The Lunch Tray, which is all about the fascinating politics behind what kids eat. Siegel schools us on how mandatory cookies at her kids’ cafeteria inspired her to start blogging, and she tells us about the weight-loss video that McDonald’s made for schools and the truth about those too-perfect photos of what schools in other countries serve for lunch.

But that’s not all the lunch fun in the episode! We asked you, our listeners, to share your cafeteria memories, and you guys delivered. I don’t want to give too much away, but let me just say two words: Cow tongue.

And if school lunch isn’t your thing, don’t worry—you can still tune in to hear Tom Philpott wonder whether we’ve finally reached peak juice.

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We were built for times like these

Russian bots are impersonating us. Trump and his allies want to silence us. AI wants to (and does!) steal our content. The list goes on. But with 50 years of experience, we know we were built for this moment: We’re ready to keep diving deep and uncovering the truth, then getting that to you right here, completely accessible and never behind a paywall.

While our work is free to read, watch, and listen to online, it’s incredibly costly to make. Court documents, travel, research: It all adds up. Because we’re a nonprofit newsroom, we rely on reader support to fund our investigations. Will you stand with us in these extraordinary times, as headlines clamour for our attention and disinformation is rampant? We can’t get the truth out without you.

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