Peoria student’s photos of mold on school lunch cause Facebook uproar

A moldy lunch has caused quite a stir on Peoria social media and has once again raised questions about food quality at Peoria Public Schools.

A parent of a Peoria High School student posted photos of a meal she and her son say was served Tuesday at the school. The images of that meal show moldy pizza dough on a dish called a “pizza munchable.”

Candace Howard and her son, Alinyjah Nellum, a junior at Peoria High School, say something needs to be done to fix the quality of food at Peoria Public Schools so that no more students are served moldy or low-quality food.

“You just spent all this money on phone bags but you’re feeding our kids … they might as well go out back and eat out of the trash, that’s basically the grade of food they’re getting out of the lunchroom,” Howard told the Journal Star on Wednesday.

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Peoria Public Schools, meanwhile, says it is trying to figure out how it is possible a pizza munchable — which is a cold dish served with round dough circles, shredded cheese and cold sauce — was served on Tuesday at Peoria High School, given that it was only on the menu for Monday.

Nellum says the pizza munchables are served out of a fridge, grab-and-go style, and he took one out of a fridge for lunch on Tuesday. He took a few bites and then spit the food out when he saw the mold. He was going to just throw the food away, but a friend told him to show a cafeteria worker.

When Nellum brought the food to a cafeteria worker, he says she quickly snatched it away and hid it in her arm while telling him to grab something else for lunch. Nellum, not wanting anymore moldy food, said he decided not to eat anything at all.

“I told her I didn’t want anything else because if that could have mold on it, what could anything else have?” Nellum said.

Peoria Public Schools spokesperson Marjorie Kauth said all of the pizza munchables provided by the district’s food vendor, Organic Life, were served on Monday and none remained left over to be served on Tuesday.

Kauth also said the cafeteria workers at Peoria High School told district officials that no student had complained about moldy food.

“Organic Life used this post as an opportunity to reinforce their food safety protocols, which is regularly review their food inventory, discard any questionable items whether or not the item is within its expiration date and remind staff of food handling and storage protocols and diligently follow all protocols,” Kauth said.

But Nellum says he did, in fact, take a pizza munchable out of the grab-and-go fridge on Tuesday and said there were about four other pizza munchables in the fridge when he grabbed his lunch.

Nellum said, like most students at Peoria High School, he normally eats the salads served at lunch, but on Tuesday he decided to have a pizza munchable instead because he didn’t see any salads.

Nellum said students at the high school often have issues with the food that is served, outside of the pizza and salads. He said a friend of his had an undercooked chicken sandwich and said other students have encountered moldy, stale and soggy bread.

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This is not the first time food quality at Peoria Public Schools has been a hot button issue for parents and students.

In 2022, more than 100 parents shared their concerns with the Journal Star over the poor food quality at Peoria Public Schools, and state Rep. Jehan Gordon Booth, D-Peoria, even pushed a bill in Springfield that aimed to increase the quality of food served in schools.

Still, Howard says there are concerns about what children are eating at school — worries she plans to bring before the school board at its next meeting on Sept. 23.

Howard, who also has a grandson at Peoria Public Schools, worries about incidents like this happening at district elementary schools where children might not be able to recognize things like mold.

“They would just be eating it without knowing it, and then here we are as parents and grandparents trying to figure out what’s wrong with our kids, why is our kids getting sick when this is what’s happening to them — this is what they’re feeding them at this school,” Howard said.

She said her son will not be allowed to eat the food the school serves anymore, and despite her limited resources, she is going to find a way to send him to school with a lunch.

“At this point, it’s something I have to try to manage, something I have to try and make available, because I can’t just tell him ‘well today might be better,'” Howard said. “I wouldn’t go eat at a restaurant again after I found a bug in my food or got moldy food. I wouldn’t go back there. He has to go there to learn, but he does not have to eat.”

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