Fairfax, VA – After a successful advocacy campaign to get 100 percent all-beef hamburger patties to replace processed mystery meats , one Virginia school district is actually going back to the mystery meats because students think the real thing tastes funny.
During the 2011-2012 school year, Real Food for Kids, a Fairfax-based advocacy group, ran an ambitious campaign to get additive-filled hamburgers off the lunch menu at Fairfax County Public Schools. They succeeded, and counted the campaign among its greatest achievements.
But it seems it was all for nothing. This fall, the district put a version of the processed burgers back in the cafeteria thanks to student complaints about the all-beef patties. Some said the better burgers just didn’t look or taste right .
“To me, it was surprising because it seems a bit like a step backwards,” said school board member Ryan McElveen.
Part of the problem could be that the schools didn’t exactly explain or introduce the all-beef burgers before simply dumping them on the menu. This could imply a soured relationship between RFFK and the district, as could a note sent from the district food director to the advocacy group explaining the decision to shift back.
“Students are our customers and we listen to them and implement their requests if possible,” it read in part.
Still, the new version of processed beef is reportedly better than the old. A school spokesperson said that it doesn’t contain “pink slime,” the odious ammonia-sprayed beef scrap additive , which marks an improvement over old servings.
The old patty contained 27 ingredients, or “tongue-twisting additives and preservatives,” as the Washington Post calls them. The new patty contains 26.
Of course, one less ingredient makes little difference to RFFK. “If you look at a hamburger package and you can’t read the ingredients because you need a dictionary to understand it, something’s wrong,” said JoAnne Hammermaster, co-founder and president of RFFK.
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