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By Daphne Chan
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Oct. 16, 2003 |
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One student will be more wary of cafeteria food now after opening a year-old container of yogurt on Wednesday, March 19.
Senior Karmen Wong ordered a yogurt and some string cheese from the cafeteria and discovered the yogurt had expired on March 26, 2002.
"When I opened it, I saw moldy stuff on the side," Wong said. Wong then noticed her string cheese had a expired a month ago.
Student Nutrition Services supervisor Debbie Odiye said she does "not know" why the cafeteria sold expired food and urged students to bring old food back.
The school's kitchen orders food weekly, and the district imposes a "First in, first out" inventory system, which "ensures that whatever product we receive first we use first to prevent the cafeteria from using food after its expiration date," Odiye said. Lowell gets food from the United States Department of Agriculture and Cysco and then freezes it, according to Odiye.
Acting cafeteria manager Lynn Lau did not believe the cafeteria could have sold old yogurt, because the cafeteria usually spends its entire order in a week.
This is not the first time such incidents occured. In January 1999, social studies teacher Steve Schmidt bought string cheese from the beanery. He found it sour and checked the expiration date Oct. 7, 1997.
One month after the incident and Odiye's assurance "it won't happen again," English teacher Elizabeth Rogers bought nine-day-old cafeteria milk, and on March 2, 1999, a student bought carrots that had expired three weeks earlier. Odiye then said Berkeley Farms may have misprinted the date on the milk. Odiye said they checked the food after Schmidt's incident. |
