(The above is a genuine early childhood afternoon snack that I helped serve while I was working. All students received white milk and cucumber slices.)

In response to readers who think water bottles fall low on the list of educational priorities that America needs to address:

I agree. On the macro scale of educational importance, the Chicago Public School budgetary crisis dwarfs water bottles. The Detroit drop-out rate makes posts about missing vending machines seem absurd. School violence anywhere in America should trump water bottles.

But I also disagree. We live life in moments. Today, I ate carrot cake, coffee yogurt and broiled salmon. I read a few chapters of a vampire romance novel, walked my scruffy wheaten terrier in my sandals, put on a sundress for the hot October day, and admired the one and only tree in the neighborhood whose leaves are changing. I photographed the vivid reds, rusts, oranges, melons and yellows. Mysteriously, all the other local trees seem to have missed the change of seasons memo. I edited parts of my book while drinking a green tea frappe in my favorite coffee shop. I had a great day.

When government and school regulations make school food unpalatable, prevent students from bringing better options from home, and fill the vending machines with endless, identical bottles of water, well-meaning attempts at behavior-modification take away a few small pleasures from the school day. Imagine being forced to spend 180 days of a year eating a salt, fat and sugar-restricted diet, with your choice of white milk, bottled, or fountain water to wash down those taste-free victuals.

YUCCH. I have eaten some of those meals when I forgot my lunch. They make excellent diet choices, actually, low on calories and low on flavor. You’d have to be starving to ask for another helping. They also fascinate the other teachers, none of whom venture down to the cafeteria anymore.

“Is that what they’re eating?” They ask.

Eduhonesty: In some schools, the picture’s much more appetizing. I sub in a wealthier district that still offers local restaurant pizza and ice cream sandwiches. But I also work in districts where lunch offerings and snacks look positively grim, grimmer and grimmest. In our pursuit of academic excellence, we now sometimes neglect the nonacademic parts of the school day. That’s a mistake. Gym, recess, lunch and snack come together to form big parts of what a kid says when asked about the school day.

“How was your day?” We ask.

The answer to that question should be, “Great!”

We should be creating enthusiasm for school. Enthusiasm does not come automatically. We build enthusiasm, moment by moment.

If a little chocolate milk and a slice of pizza can up a kid’s answer from “O.K.” to “Great!”, we should be cutting up cheese and pepperoni pizzas, and throwing red jello with a daub of whip cream onto our food trays. I say, bring back dessert. Bring back pop machines. Bring back delicious food.

We will know we have succeeded when teachers start venturing into the cafeteria again, buying lunch trays that they regard as more than desperate and probably edible curiosities.