APRIL 7, 2014 VOLUME V, ISSUE V
CONTENTS COPYRIGHT 2014
GOOD TIMES FREE
SCHOOL LUNCH The truth about what you’re eating might surprise you By Kaylin Lopez Most students who don’t take their own lunches to school and get stuck with the school lunch don’t like it. The school lunch most of the time doesn’t seem very appetizing because of the ingredients. Sheila, the assistant cafeteria manager at Bancroft Middle School, said “All the ingredients come from a food warehouse downtown.” A lot of students don’t eat because they refuse to eat the school lunch. The bad thing about school lunch is that the menu does not change; the same food rotates over and over throughout the year. According to a survey, only 11 students in the 826LA journalism workshop get school lunch. Only 1 out of those 11 like the lunch. Four out of 11 don’t like the lunch, and 6 out of 11 like some of the foods. Some of the favorites were burrito, chicken, rice and beans, and turkey with rice. Some of the least favorite were chicken fajitas, spaghetti, enchiladas, hamburgers, and cheese sandwiches. Victoria, a food service worker at Bancroft Middle school, said, “The most given food is burritos, but the most popular is burger with fries.” Most students don’t like the breakfast they serve in homeroom either. If students don’t eat breakfast at home, and they don’t eat at school, then they don’t eat until lunch. There are some students who don’t eat until they get home. Three students at 826LA got surveyed about the school lunch. The two questions were: Why don’t you like the school lunch? And: How could the lunches be better?
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A parched Folsom Lake, northeast of Sacramento. Credit: Sacramento Bee
WATER BATTLE California feels the effects of drought By Dayanara Martinez-Lozano California has a drought that is causing us a lot of problems with crops and nature, including danger of wildfires in the driest years. Los Angeles gets most of its water from mountains in Nevada and Colorado. This year we had half the snow that we usually have, and that was also part of the problem. Many people are trying to help with the drought. Even Lady Gaga became a spokeswoman for the drought and told people to save water. Other people are taking out grass and planting other plants that use less water. Some people also recommend taking shorter showers to save water so that we can use water for crops. In order to know more about the drought, we talked with Evelyn Cortes-Davis from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. She explained how the drought causes California problems and how we can save water. Q: How did the drought happen? A: Droughts are periods when a region does not have rain. Global climate is changing: dry weather
UNUSUAL FOODS
gets drier, causing droughts. Wet weather gets wetter, causing floods. These extremes are happening all over the world. We don’t know exactly when a drought will happen but we know they can happen anywhere in the United States. In Los Angeles, our weather has dry and wet “cycles”: for every 10 years, we have about 3 years with good rain and about 7 years that are dry. Q: How could we solve it? A: We don’t have control over droughts but we can control how we use the water we do have. We can find better ways to capture the rain we do get. We can conserve even more water than we are already doing. We can also reuse water whenever possible. In L.A. we have been using recycled water to water the grass and for industrial uses for more than 30 years. We want to recycle even more in the future. We have the technology to purify recycled water so well that we can place it in the ground and mix it with our drinking water supplies. So, part of the solution will be to capture, conserve, and reuse more water. Q: Is it bad or good? A: Droughts are bad. They can cause shortages in the water supply, destroy crops, and increase danger of wildfires when trees and plants dry up. In many parts of the world, droughts can cause widespread hunger. Droughts also dry up soil, which could then get TURN TO ‘WATER’ ON PAGE 5
SECRET MENUS Shhh ... I know where menus are a secret
By Ana Martinez-Lozano There are a bunch of unusual foods, but here are just a few unusual foods.
By Gem Anthony Galiciano
A survey of students and tutors asked, “If you were to live on a island, what food would you choose?” found that they would eat mostly snakes and pink slime. The things that they would eat least were crickets, cockroaches, spiders, scorpions, and dog meat.
Mention “secret menus” and many people think of hidden functions on Blackberries or Xbox games. Actually, “secret menus” refers to items you can special order at restaurants that aren’t mentioned on standard menus.
Some of the different foods that students and tutors have eaten are alligator, frog legs, balut, duck, cow stomach lining, and sea cucumber. Patrick, who is an awesome drawer, had eaten balut. A balut is a developing duck embryo that has been boiled alive and is eaten with the shell. Balut is from the Philippines. Emily has eaten frog legs. She ate them in Hong Kong. She says it tasted like chicken.
Balut, a food from the Philippines. Credit: www.mrstyleking.com
Joy ate cow stomach lining, which is from Mexico. It is part of a soup called menudo. Ryuichiro ate duck. His family bought it in Chinatown. He said it tastes a lot like chicken. Ana Martinez-Lozano is in fifth grade and goes to Clifford Street School. She is 10 years old. Her favorite sport is soccer. She likes journalism because it’s fun and she gets to learn a lot.
Some places, like Chipotle Mexican Grill, have a whole secret menu that’s limited only by your imagination. On the other hand, In-N-Out Burger’s “secret menu” is so un-secret it’s posted on their Web site. Kind of takes the cool factor out of having the inside scoop, doesn’t it? Here is sample of secret menu items — try keep it under your hat. TURN TO ‘SECRET’ ON PAGE 5