Image credit: Houston Cofield | The Bitter Southerner

Do you remember eating lunch in the school cafeteria? If so, did you have any favorite foods, and do you remember any of the ladies who worked in the lunch line? Maybe you’ve heard jokes about both the food and the “lunch ladies” who serve it (think Adam Sandler singing “yesterday’s meatloaf is today’s Sloppy Joes” in a song called “Lunch Lady Land”).  But have you ever stopped to think about what it takes to get the food for that meat loaf into the schools—and about what those women do to make sure that every student gets lunch? Jennifer Justus has. She’s a food writer whose grandmother worked in a school cafeteria, and she’s written this photo essay analyzing the politics and policies that make getting food to the schools so complicated and describing how lunch ladies ensure that no students go hungry—arguing that these women are in fact “heroes of the school lunch line.” This essay first appeared in 2025 in The Bitter Southerner, a media company that publishes stories, books, and photo essays about the American South.

Continue reading “All Praise to the Lunch Ladies” →