School lunch is a hot topic in today's food policy discussions. From parents to policymakers, industry executives to day-care providers, people across the country have a vested interest in what is being served to children in school cafeterias. Last year, anonymous blogger "Mrs. Q" made a splash with her blog Fed Up With Lunch, where she tried to tackle this issue head-on. Mrs. Q, a teacher in an undisclosed state, ate lunch from her school's lunch line for a full year, and posted pictures of the daily meal on her blog. The blog drew attention quickly, with readers both concerned and unsurprised at the meager state of school lunches.

As her readership and momentum grew, Mrs. Q—who goes now by her real name, Sarah Wu—decided it was time to come out of hiding and use her status to promote better school food policies. Her new book, Fed Up With Lunch: How One Anonymous Teacher Revealed the Truth About School Lunches—and How We Can Change Them, exposes her identity and profession, and takes us through her journey of unpleasant meals, growing fame, and crafting ideas on how to mobilize communities to school food reform.

Wu decided to start her blog one ill-fated afternoon when she ran out of time to pack a lunch, and figured she would stop by the cafeteria for mid-day fueling. The resulting meal was so hard to choke down and sickly sweet that she started paying more attention to what her students were eating before they came to her class. Suddenly their inattentiveness, fidgety behavior, and lack of motivation started to make more sense. Their sugar-laden, non-nutritious meals were not giving them the energy they needed to focus in the classroom. Wu decided something needed to be done.

She began eating from the cafeteria each day, sneaking up to her classroom to snap a surreptitious photo before digging in. There was much repetition in the foods offered—pizza, hot dogs, hamburgers (and variations thereof), and tater tots were common. Frozen "icee" bars, flavored with sugar and food dye, met the necessary fruit requirement; the occasional canned vegetable or meek side salad was often thrown out by the students. The ten-page photo spread of lunches in the book illuminates the realities of school food. What we all suspected is true: it's pretty gross.

Along with the nutritional deficits and high caloric content of the foods that come from the National School Lunch Program, Wu also highlights other problems with how students get their mid-day meal. She often mentions the meager 20 minutes allotted for lunch—which includes getting to the cafeteria, waiting in line, eating, cleaning up, and booking it back to class. She reports many instances in which students returned to the room having only eaten the most appealing parts of their meal—a cookie, or french fries, or chicken nuggets—and tossed the items with any nutritional value to speak of.

Wu's book is a quick and easy read, and a good one if you're new to the issues of how school lunch policy is crafted and the industry interests that have controlled the cafeteria over the years. I became frustrated, though, with her tentativeness in providing critique and recommendations for reform. For example, after describing the disgusting process by which chicken nuggets are created, and declaring that her own son no longer eats nuggets at day care, she notes that she would "prefer if most children and adults avoided chicken nuggets." I wish she had taken more of a stand in her opinions. We've reached the point in this conversation where it is not enough to say that school food could be better, that we'd rather our children eat well, that it would be nice if poor families could rely on school lunch to give their children one square meal a day. Wu is shifting from blogger to advocate, and in that transition she should assert herself as an expert, one who cares for the needs of children and has a good head on her shoulders. And perhaps a few more processed pizza slices in her belly than she'd like.

About the Author: A student in Providence, Rhode Island, Leah Douglas loves learning about, talking about, reading about, and consuming food. Her work is also featured in Rhode Island Monthly Magazine.