Ten Suggestions for Trump’s Flexible Foods School-Lunch Program

A public-school lunch has never been what you might call fine dining, but for the most part, we’ve been able to correctly refer to it as food. That is, with a few exceptions — most notably during the Reagan era, when ketchup briefly counted as a vegetable in U.S. Department of Agriculture discussions, as a money-saving move. (Legend has it that pickle relish did, too.) It was like that cheap friend of yours who asks for lemons with his water so he can make free lemonade at restaurants; it’s a wonder the USDA didn’t require that all school administrators go to Denny’s once a week on their own dime just to grab some sugar packets.

And because all of our old bad ideas are new again (racism! isolationism! plutocracy!), here comes a new “flexible foods” program from U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue, designed to redefine free and reduced lunch programs and what qualifies under that nutritional banner in order to — you guessed it — save money. You know, on the backs of American children, because “Let the next generation worry about it” is what “Make America Great Again” really means. But what does “flexible food” really imply? Before the official release on May 1, here’s a modest proposal of ten totally realistic options.

10. Other Condiments
If ketchup is going to be a vegetable (shouldn’t it be a fruit?), and pickle relish is, too, then why not make a meal of condiments? Mustard is a grain, or at least a seed, which is close enough. Mayonnaise is dairy, and don’t even get us started on all those veggies that come together to make salsa! That’s a full plate, right there, and it’s all stuff that you can get in packets at the drive-through.

9. Packing Peanuts
The word “peanut” is right there in the name, so it’s already close to actual food. They’re edible, and kids who eat school lunch are already used to food so bland that it’s almost completely without flavor. (Thanks, canned green beans!) And two bonuses: 1) no one’s allergic to these sorts of peanuts, and 2) add some cheese powder to them, and presto: cheese puffs!

8. Beer
We can all admit that at some point in most kids’ lives — probably college — beer is going to be one of the staples of their diet. So why not start them early, and train them how to drink for sustenance in a responsible and completely un-litigious way? “We’re really pleased to hear the president’s ideas,” says a completely fictional spokesperson for a major national brewing company that definitely has nothing to do with Pure Rocky Mountain Spring Water. “This is an exciting and new market for our products, previously untapped except when they’d steal from their folks or slip an extra $10 to the homeless dude in front of the liquor store. Appealing to high school students was frankly always on our radar, but to be honest, we never dared dream of cracking that elusive elementary school barrier.”

7. Pencil Shavings
Kids already love wood pulp. The stuff is in everything from chicken nuggets to french fries to cheese (and that’s your Happy Meal right there, kid — now enjoy your yummy wood and go play with your gender-specific toy). So why not use what’s already in the pencil sharpeners for the same food additive, then move it from additive up to main dish? And while we’re at it, we should also stop coddling the kids by forming cellulose into attractive shapes and flavors. That costs money, and money is something the Trump administration is trying to redistribute to the upper 1 percent so that it can later trickle down, as it has proven time and time again to so effectively do.

6. Fingernails
Studies have shown that 30 percent of children between seven and ten chew their nails, and that number rises to 45 percent in the teen years. Moving past how disgusting that may be, based on the general hygiene of the average child and what awfulness must be clinging to the underside of those nails, perhaps the USDA can put that bad habit to good use. The calories and nutrients found in the nails themselves — and what’s under them, germs aside — should count for something, right?

Keep reading for more new food groups.

5. Gruel
Remember what happened when we fed orphans gruel? They were able to work eighteen-hour shifts at local mills. They were productive members of the workforce. And remember the primary lesson from the musical Oliver: When you give a kid gruel, he loves it so much that he asks for more, despite the inevitable beating. That’s a semi-edible foodstuff that inspires.

4. Trash
Not real trash, just the stuff that restaurants and businesses and the like toss out when it’s clearly still usable. Let’s not call it dumpster diving; that’s an unnecessary pejorative. Let’s call it “culinary reclamation” and start sending the kids out to various promising locations around their respective schools during what used to be P.E. class. Who needs kickball and crab-walking when there’s lunch to salvage?

3. Unicorn Meat
The Trump administration wants to express admiration for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named; while President Trump in no way condones the human-rights violations of the Death Eaters and their undisputed leader, he’d like to point out that you can’t argue with Voldemort’s results. Trump admires Voldemort; they both appeared on 60 Minutes once. Since Voldemort has a tendency to drain the blood of unicorns to sustain himself, there must be a lot of unicorn meat just lying around Hogwarts — so it only makes sense to put that meat to good use in American public schools.

2. Cake
Here’s hoping that someone in the First Lady’s office is really working with Melania on how to answer the inevitable question “But what will the school children eat, if they cannot afford bread?” Because while the right answer might be elusive, there’s demonstrably a historically wrong answer.

1. Soylent Green
It’s the ultimate in recycling.