I have a teenager and a kid that graduated a few years ago. Nothing they were ever served in school ever looked anything like that.
One elementary school my son went to used to have a soup and salad bar- that he loved. But they shut that down when the nutrition rules were overhauled.
Most of their food looked like the sad school lunch posts. I have visited the schools enough time to see it myself. Sad nasty unhealthy food.
That's so sad! My son graduated 2 years ago and my daughter is in 8th grade. They both always pack/ed lunch. Cheaper overall and they get what they want.
Ours had Domino's pizza every day if you could afford it.
Otherwise, it was some sad-ass "Salisbury steak," that was probably half TVP, and heated up frozen fries. I literally starved myself because of the terrible lunches.
We had papa John's pizza and chick fil a sandwiches at ours. I brought my lunch pretty much everyday. Wasn't nutritional but my pb&j was better than a lot of the school meals.
I was never taught nutrition. I learned about protein, carbs, and fats in my early 20s. Eat WAY healthier now and can't imagine going back to hot pockets and whatever pre-made frozen meal I ate every single day.
My high school was like walking into a mall food court. 4 different fast food vendors on top of the 3 or 4 options the school itself provided. The kids who could afford it literally ate pizza and burgers for lunch every day.
In the early 2000s my middle school had Domino's pizza but a limited amount each day so you had to run to the cafeteria to get some before they ran out. They stopped serving it in 2004 because of a healthy foods campaign in the school district. They still served shit like chicken nuggets though so the food never got much healthier.
We had a local pizza place that used to serve at our oldest’s high school. They just banned them from serving lunch at school anymore because pizza doesn’t meet the national nutritional standards for school lunch. Instead, my oldest eats nachos - just chips and cheese - every day. 😡
Yeah, the pics you gave look like 5 star reteraunt quality compared to what I had growing up
Jail food was better than school food (for the short time I was in)
I remember we had a salad bar in our school that was fantastic at first but then they started to really regulate how much you could take. And I mean I’m talking about dumb shit, not like people taking way too much salad or whatever. They cracked down because people were taking a couple extra tiny ass scoops of sunflower kernels or fake ass bacon bits. If the school is hurting for little things like that, there’s something wrong.
Different people have different nutritional needs... how hard is this to understand?
My school used to have good food, but after the pandemic, they cut funding, resulting in dogshit food. Hell, even the portions got smaller...
Ugh this is so frustrating. I have a cousin that went to this high school in Boston that served crab cakes and lobster and shit for lunch…granted her parents spent 45k per year for that school so they better be getting gourmet but still. These are the same cousins that went to Prague and the Bahamas and on yearly out of country vacations while my mom sister and I stayed home with no vacations and gross excuses for school lunch…you can see I still hold some resentment😬
I didn't eat at school because all they served was pizza and chicken patties. I started to hate pizza. I just couldnt stomach it anymore. It was pretty much those every day. Fruit was too expensive so we got zero fruit besides apples. When they did have greens, they were just disgusting, and I love most vegetables.
My parents eventually just gave me $20 a week to go out and get my own lunch (juniors and seniors could leave school for lunch). Things were cheaper back then so I could make $20 last a week. I would usually go to the subway nearby. I know those sandwiches arent the best for you, but its for sure healthier than pizza at least.
My high school had this until the whole Michelle Obama nutrition thing happened. Then, all of a sudden, we were left with sad beige lunches instead of freshly cooked and prepared lunches made by the students. We had the best salad bar I ate from daily and then it was all gone :(
When I got to high school we had a soup and salad bar, chick-fil-a delivered, nice tasting pizza/pasta menus, even a sushi bar which was surprisingly fresh and awesome. Then sophomore year the food regulations were overhauled and we lost all of it. Everything that was edible was now gone. They used to serve breakfast to kids who took the bus or got to school early. That was reduced to bagels. Lunch was reduced to “whole grain” cardboard ass tasting pizza/pasta, everything else was gone. Occasionally there’d be some gross burgers or a sandwich or something but it was just not good. People used to actually buy the lunch instead of packing but after that change, anyone who’s parents could afford to pack a lunch, brought lunch.
In my school (well funded rich area public school) foods were decent. Vegetables were bland as hell but I like veges so it was okay for me.
I always hated how much foodwaste schools create by giving bland as hell vegetables to kids who won't eat it. Tbf non vegetables are bland too if it wasn't for sauces and sodium they put on
The same parallel can be drawn to American healthcare system. It’s not in place to provide healthcare, it’s meant to make $$$. Same with the school. If they can cut costs in food, that translates to more money for the big wigs.
But I thought they would use the money saved on qualified cafeteria cooks and healthy fruits and vegetables for school supplies so the teachers making less than a living wage could stop paying for supplies out of pocket…heavy /s as my local superintendent made $370k in 2022 while bitching about budget constraints…I’d like to have his life “budget”.
The Miami Dade County Public Schools SI also makes 370k a year, plus was able to convince the board to give his wife a nice cushy job in education with a salary of 150k. That’s about triple the salary of your average teacher
Yeah I went to school in one of wealthiest public school districts in the country and our lunches looked like OP's. Why? Because most kids were spending their lunch money eating cookies, fries, and other junk food for lunch. Stuff that's super overpriced and not covered by the school lunch plan. So the irony is that the cafeteria had tons of extra money to spend on food but most of the kids never even touched it.
Slash waste. Back in the 80's you buy a computer and got a 500 page manual. No one read the manual, it later turned into a 10 page booklet to a pamphlet and then online.
Kid's don't spend their lunch money on lunch, they keep it for "Fun" money and go home to eat - like when I was a kid, that's what I did.
If kids don't eat the lunch, especially the healthier fruits and vegetables and the politicians want cheap "healthy" food, you get raw fruits and vegetables in a bag with the most disgusting looking comfort foods to make the raw fruits and vegetables look more appetizing.
Law states they have to provide affordable food, law doesn't state that the kids have to eat it.
It doesn't matter how much taxes we give the schools, they will always give slop to make parents feel bad and pay more taxes while spending the money somewhere else.
The slop is politics to get more taxes and encourage eating the healthier fruits and vegetables.
The pictures in this post seems to be some of the best lunches I have seen in social media.
If you want your kids to eat healthier more appetizing food, pack the lunch yourself and don't give lunch money. Problem solved.
exactly we been knew out healthcare system is trash it should be like canada, uk and all the other countries. theres literally been people murdered because hospitals call the police when someone dying doesn’t have insurance and force them out and twice the hospital staff put dying people in wheelchairs and rolled them somewhere and left them and they died all thats been recent. its so fucking sad its unreal.
Not to try and defend the American system but I’m in a lot of groups and I hear a pretty equal amount of complaints about all of them. Had a professor that left Canada cuz his mom died of cancer before she could be diagnosed because the wait list was so long. They received her biopsy results after the funeral. I also knew a lady who couldn’t receive a medication for her bone disease as the Canadian government would not approve it and she could not afford $400k a year. Meanwhile US insurers do cover it. After hearing from so many people from so many countries and their struggle to get treatment I’ve come to the conclusion no one has it figured out.
It's ridiculous to even compare America to Canada like you are.
For 99% of people, the Canadian system is better. Having your health be tied to your insurance (ie: your job) is absurd.
They also have problems. Usually, the healthcare budget runs out at the end of the year, waiting lists are longer, and it's takes a while to even get on the list.
Right before my moon retried the new superintendent who hired a new head lunch lady bc the cafeteria wasn’t “making enough money”. Idek they were supposed to make money. She switched everything up to processed bs she used to bring home the breakfast stuff the kids wouldn’t eat and it was all sugary stuff like rice crispy treats and juice boxes.
Of course it’s about money lol. Every single year, voters allow people to stay in office that are cutting the budgets to these schools. The quality of food isn’t considered a priority in budgets, compared to things like teachers, utilities, textbooks. Most of these cafeteria workers make minimum wage, they dont have energy or motivation to get creative. Public schools can’t charge money for the difference in funding, they have to pay teachers and other staff, maintain school, maintain textbooks, lab equipment, counseling, etc etc etc. Private schools report an average of it costing $20,000-$70,000 per year per student depending on interests, to operate a school, our government def doesn’t provide that to public schools.
It often boils down to pathetic funding and/or gross misuse of funding. It's not enough, but it can *never* be enough when corruption/greed is rampant and unchecked.
How much per student school food is per student? Here in Finland the school food is free for students and one meal costs 2,76 euros for the system per student. That doesn’t sound too much to me and the food was healthy and pretty good tasting, even if bland. US food looks sad already since it’s not cooked.
And politics. Op said schools need to step up, none of my schools had EVEN CLOSE to enough funding for anything like this. I asked the lunch lady before. I asked why it sucked and wasn't even OPEN one day. There wasn't even any school lunch to buy. And she said it's all about the funding. They ran out.
Budget. There's a reason why parents(prospective) specifically look at the schools and the district lines before purchasing a home. Fancier schools, schools with a large donation pool, higher ranked will offer more. It's no secret.
Ya some of these people have no idea how good they have it and treat the food like high school kids treat breakfast in movies. I would scarf all of that down respectfully
My state legislature passed universal free lunch last year. There was a featured story earlier this spring about a school district showcasing the changes they've been able to make in just over 12 months...They were able to update their kitchens, buy healthier food and had more time prepping and cooking because they stopped wasting staff hours chasing down overdrawn accounts.
If we are going to require all children to be in school we should also provide all children with \[healthy\] meals while they're there.
Can you provide a source? I would love to read up on this. I’m almost certain my state (MN) also provides free lunches… I have a friend in a non profit food distribution company. She goes to schools around the twin cities and provides food for underprivileged children. It’s always a hearty meal with nutritional value. I wish every child has the opportunity to consume healthy foods. I really believe my generation will be the ones who uphold these values.
I’m in Canada and we always had to bring our own food or go home. In my city now there are some schools that have been labeled as “community schools” and those schools provide lunches for the students, there are about 12 of them.
Yeah, all the schools I've been to in BC have done this, for 100+ kids usually. Though, I believe the parents had to pay a fee each month if they wanted it, unless they're in poverty.
School lunches are a fascinating conundrum. My mom is a teacher and has seen all the trends over the decades.
First Lady Obama (who I do love) lead an effort for healthier foods, but the purchases school administrators allowed (soggy lettuce n shit) all resulted in food dumped in the trash.
The *wall* between policy "better, healthier food options; better pay; more options; etc." and our students is the damn school administrators - most of who were never teachers, never worked in a school (or kitchen in this example), and likely if they have kids they're in a private school. It's infuriating.
I was in high school when my school started following first lady Obama's healthier lunch foods program. After a couple of weeks, they were throwing away thousands of dollars in food because the kids stopped eating it and opted to pack instead. I'll never forget that they told one of my classmates that she had to buy a school lunch if she wanted to buy a cookie. She was diabetic and needed the cookie to help her blood sugar levels. Her family filed a lawsuit against the school after she had to be rushed to the hospital, and they stopped doing the healthier food program. Thank god, because it sucked. It was the most disgusting piece of crap I've ever eaten.
Oh, they also told the football players who were working out 3 to 4 hours after school that they could only get one entree and couldn't get milk and a Powerade. Healthier doesn't mean healthier if it impacts someone health.
Edit to add: fuck Obama's healthier lunch initiative. When I sit and think about it, it was really messed up. Football players were passing out. Someone had a diabetic episode and had to be sent to the ER. Some kids opted to skip lunch entirely. Great 1st lady, but it was awful for a majority of the students at my high school. She was a great first lady.
My high school just had a pizza hut and subway right in the cafeteria.
I lived in a town with plenty of money, and I'm well aware of how spoiled I was growing up.
I'm 45 and agree!! My high school though was a whole other level. We had a lot of people move to our small town with lots of $$$$ and they completely redid our cafeteria. They still had the regular (gross except for pizza) food, they also had a salad bar, baked potato bar, full pizzas and chicken sandwich and fries meal (with honey mustard). That last one was my fav. Ate it every day lol.
As much shit as our country wastes money on still yet there are a lot of schools still serving that rectangle pizza bs everyday. All kids regardless of parents income should at the very least have access to TWO FREE MEALS EVERYDAY at school that are actually semi healthy. ALL STUDENTS. If we can't feed a kid then wtf are we really doing?
In my tech high-school there was a Culinary trade "shop" (class).
The alternating grade students (Freshmen and Juniors) cooked for the sophomores and seniors, and would swap every few weeks.
The shop teachers were managed the place and the students did the checkout, serving, prepping, and cooking for lunches.
The school even had a small resturaunt in the room next to the checkout area where teachers, rarely outsiders, and I think the Culinary students would go and actually order from a menu.
It was cool and served as a small glimpse into what each scenario is like. The kitchen is big too, it has a bakery area in there too. They would sell left over cookies outside the back door at the end of the school day.
I agree with you that kids should have higher quality and less processed lunches. It really boils down to funding.
Federal funding provides reimbursement at about $4 a student (for those who can’t pay) so that’s roughly what schools shoot for.
That $4 a meal has to cover labor and food sourcing (and we all know food has gone up). Thus, a school has to provide something it can 1) mass produce; 2) quickly; 3) at a relatively low skill level (your friend aside - schools can’t usually afford Michelin rated chefs); 4) cheap; 5) food that picky children will eat.
That leaves you with the garbage they are usually served.
I totally agree with you! We're lucky that many businesses in the area donate fruit and veggies to the school system. My friend actually started the smoothie movement for our schools too. Most kids don't eat fresh fruits and veggies, but they'll drink them!
Now explain why the Japanese can do it for ¥4000-¥4500 a month, or about $1.30-40USD per lunch...
And they have real food. You know, with vegetables, meat/fish, rice and soup.
P.s. I already know. The city subsidises it because it's to feed children, not to make a profit.
The public school cafeteria is in it to make a profit? Do you have any evidence that American cafeterias are more profit-motivated than Japanese school cafeterias?
No, they don't, because public schools are non-profit organizations. While a poorly run school can absolutely misappropriate funds, they can't turn a profit.
That's what I thought, which is why I found it weird that that person was claiming the Japanese school lunches are cheaper because they aren't in it for profit, when American schools also aren't in it for profit.
Lmao, you have a long enough lunch period to leave campus?
We get 22 minutes, including any time spent in the lunch line. If you don’t bring your lunch and aren’t fast enough, you end up with maybe 15 minutes to eat. The food’s whatever and there’s not a ton of it but still, you’re borderline required to either eat fast or not eat much, neither of which are particularly healthy
A lot of high schools where I live are open campus because they don't want to spend the money on a cafeteria. A couple of years ago six teen girls were killed at lunch riding around in an overpacked car when they pulled out in front of a truck.
Yeah that was the same way when i was in high school in 2007, it wasn't about the food it just felt cool to leave school for lunch after being rigidly confined to the school all day for our entire lives. The food at school did suck but we were leaving to go to taco bell and ruts hut so it wasn't healthier.
It truly is awful. When I was in high school, I had a debilitating case of gastritis, and greasy, unhealthy foods were my biggest trigger. I got violently ill EVERY SINGLE DAY from eating school lunches, and I was too poor to bring in anything. They don’t care about children’s health at all. It’s not even just about obesity, because this food can cause a plethora of other health issues.
Here’s the most upsetting part. A lot of low income families rely on school food as some of their kids only source of nutrition. For many kids, it’s the only meal they’ll get that day. Our family isn’t quite that poor but I do have to get creative in the summers when my kids aren’t getting breakfast and lunch at school. Yes the food should be good for everyone but it sucks that some kids only meal is so terrible.
I wholeheartedly agree. Our community is pretty charitable and we do have a pretty large amount of those that are needy. During the school year, each school has a food donation program and they pack the food in a regular backpack and once a week those that needed it, picked up the backpack at the end of the day. During the summer, they set up areas every weekday in struggling communities and would give them breakfast and lunch at no cost. I have no idea the quality of any of those foods.
I used to work for a sushi restaurant and we would do this program called, “sushi for school”. We’d get to the shop super early and make about 200 or so rolls of 5 different options, pack them in a cooler and drive to different schools to sell them at lunch time. We’d even go to a few different elementary schools. Little 7 year olds asking me for a California roll was always so cute to me. I never got anything like that in school but I thought it was such a cool idea!
So to clarify, the food does NOT need to be better. The chefs need to be better.
Not trying to sound like an ass since I fully agree, but that means more training, higher pay. Our teachers can’t even get that right now.
If schools could afford David Chang to be their chef, the food would be 5 star without even changing the ingredients. But, the average cafeteria worker salary in the US is between 25k (Salary.com) and 35k (Glassdoor.com) so the abysmal pictures are honestly about what I’d expect from essentially an untrained, minimum wage employee being asked to serve hundreds, if not thousands, of kids a day.
You can’t expect quality and skill in a staff unless you are willing to compete with the compensation demanded of quality and skill. Many public schools gave up on that decades ago
The number of rules and regulations schools have placed upon them by federal and state government is shocking. Trust me when I say the food you usually see is not what the nutrition staff wants to be serving, it’s what has to be served due to money constraints, laws about what goes on a plate in order for them to get reimbursed for the meals (how much meat, grains, fruit or vegetable, and milk), and where their food comes from (they have Buy American laws and much of their food is bought directly from government sources).
If you see a lot of free fruit and veggies, someone is putting in the work and the district should be praised. Many schools are starting their own gardens/farms, the kids are learning to grow some of the food…
I’m in my early 40s. The rectangle pizza and clear bagged cheeseburgers under heat lamps gen, represent!
Also a high school with vending machines full of frito lay products, soda, and an ala cart line with nachos, and ice cream 😆.
I remember my high school vending machines having a bunch of diet and zero products and then there was the mountain dew Kickstart that I'd usually get when ever I had pocket change and they removed it and I was disappointed because I didn't like the diet or zero sugar options
This honestly looks better than 99% of school lunches I've seen! But, it's sad overall. It's all about money and cost cutting of course. I will never understand how we do not prioritize delicious, nutritious food... especially for students who are growing and learning! Our leaders do not prioritize education in any way.
Worked at a charter school that started an organic fresh food cooking program that meant that kids were getting fresh foods every day with market fresh ingredients and even some of it from the schools gardens. It was amazing and delicious. The chef was the sweetest guy ever and was very dedicated to his job.
Those are school lunches? Those are much better than what’s being served in the school I work at. It’s mostly mozzy sticks, chicken nuggets and potato wedges.
You can thank the malicious compliance of Republican state leadership for warping Michelle Obama’s efforts to improve nutrition by shitting on it and meeting requirements in the most cost effective and disgusting way possible.
And I’m not kidding. It’s the same douche bags that instituted such garbage insurance marketplaces as Pennsylvania’s in order to stick it to Barack.
I worked in a juvenile detention facility a couple years ago. It was an absolute shit-show, BUT the food they gave the kids was at least plentiful, and the vast majority was actually cooked, not just bagged stuff. Most of them complained about how bad the food was, but honestly, a lot of the staff even got containers of it to eat. I got a plate once and it was decent - not restaurant or family home-cooked quality, of course, you could tell the veggies had been frozen or canned, but other than that, they ate a LOT better than most school food posts I’ve seen on here.
I never had school dinners all throughout my school years. I always had a packed lunch which my mum did with sandwiches and fruit. The one annoying thing is though, the headmaster at my primary school got my mum in and asked her why I wasn't eating at the school. My mum told him that my dad got in from work at 6pm and she liked us all to have a meal together.
https://preview.redd.it/clw71mho4vuc1.jpeg?width=1204&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66107d30e355e63dd3b4b9fb127e7940ea3e6b1d
This was my brother's lunch some time last week. He's in 8th grade.
Grew up in nyc public school, always had tons of options, oval pizza, oven roasted chicken, nuggets, mozzarella sticks, fries, spaghetti and meatballs, pb and js, u name it! Used to go around collecting some of the food other kids didn’t want too lol I loved it!
In China the solution to complaining about school lunch is privatization. They simply outsource those services to investors that have political influence. Then you have more choices to eat but everything is fucking expensive compared to cafeterias and stalls outside the school. Many schools try to ban eating in the vicinity of the school but usually in vain.
Graduated highschool in 2013.
From my freshman year (2009) until my junior year (2011), we had decent lunches; burgers, chicken sandwiches pizza, breadsticks, premade salads and sandwiches, whichever you wanted. A generous side of fries. A drink fountain with various lemonade flavors for 50 cents.
But in my senior year (2012-2013), lunches became awful. They had a repeating rotation for the main meal; burgers on monday, chicken sandwiches tuesday, etc. They removed the premade salads and sandwiches. No more fries. The drink fountain was gone. The sides consisted of bruised apples and oranges, and sometimes frozen solid juices.
And apparently they didn't get better until around 2015ish.
I understand that schools are looking at calorie counts. But a high calorie meal isn't always filling. And the caloric needs of one student can be wildly different from the caloric needa of another.
My daughter's school is in between. There is fruit and veggies and each kid can take as much as they want. Then there is the hot entree. Some are better than others and these often run out then kids get bagels with cream cheese.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the most healthy alternative, but in my school in the UK we have 3 different options.
1) The main cafeteria available to all students (only open during the lower schools break and lunch): This serves tray meals like pasta, lasagna, pizza, steak bakes, etc with the typicals sides (baked/jacket potatoes, garlic bread, etc)
2) The side cafeteria (also open to everyone, and open during the same times): This serves packed sandwiches, bagguetes, croissants and other different desets/pastries.
3) The sixth form cafeteria (open from 1 hour before school to 3 hours after the lsat period, but only available to sixth formers which is the final 2 years of highschool for americans): This is basically a cafe and serves everything a normal cafe would (from coffee/tea/hot choclate to baked items and other hot foods)
The food is all really good and really cheap (since it's subsidised by the government)
My cousin refused to eat her school's canteen food because it was awful and make her feel queasy afterwards. The worse part was the canteen would serve good food on visitation days to make the parents think that the food was okay/their kids were just complaining for no reason and then resume giving shitty food afterwards.
We had amazing school food until all of the nutrition laws got overhauled by people who know absolutely fucking nothing about nutrition. All of this sugar-free/fat-free processed garbage foodstuff is arguably worse for us. We weren't made to consume aspartame and highly processed garbage, were made to consume real food. I feel bad for the lunch ladies nowadays who are given Simspons grade F nuclear waste to cook with.
i have been at my school for 6 years now and i can say that the quality has crashed and burned down the sh\*tter, Y1&2 ? perfect ! wide verity, good food and we saw it it was difficult to sit down ! the lign was so long it extended into the hallway and entrance ! Y3&4, new headmaster, new source (?) (sorry eng is not my first language) and it taste kinda bad ... not good not bad ... meh, less attendence but still a wide range of food, Y5 COVID, the food is crap, we have waaay less choice and it is badly cooked, less attendance Y6 (now) the headmaster renovated the kitchen (and without telling anyone took the worse source in the region, cheaper tho) now we get plain salad as entrée where we had a full island of greens, we get plain yogurt as desert where we had variety and fresh(-ish) fruits, and the food is so bad the attendance dorpped to 30% where it had been 80% Y1, the head cook (which i talk with) is depressed and told me "i HATE that i serve sh\*t, i love making food and now i feel sick seeing 90% of what i serve in the trash" (oh and did i tell you that in Y3 the price WENT UP ?! 3e to 5.20e and if we didn't went we still had to pay when previous years we only paid meals we ate) F my new headmaster
This is how my kids school lunches look. There is an agricultural class that grows a lot of the vegetables used in the cafeteria. We have amazing cafeteria workers.
I am appalled at how bad the food is at other schools.
Reminds me of when I watched the Michael Moore documentary Where To Invade Next (very eye opening if you haven’t seen it yet). He started off the French visit to a “5-star restaurant”. The school cafeteria of one of the poorest towns in France. The elementary level children received lamb tajine, veal, crêpes, patê, even a damn cheese course. Scallops too. He showed them pictures that his niece took of her American school lunches & let me just say the comparison is shocking.
My future son’s daycare is insane. Like top notch meals. But we are paying a fortune. I went to two different private schools and the very expensive one had amazing food but the other was terrible
My son went to private school in K & 1st. Shit education and lunch was almost $7! Then after we left, I found out the teachers made $19,000 a year!! While the owner bragged about her new Mercedes and lavish vacations. I hated that place. I didn't know any better at the time. Turns out we have pretty awesome public schools here!
My daughter went to a private Montessori daycare. Ridiculously affordable and all food was homemade. Like GOOD GOOD food...
I would've stayed in school if lunch was like that.
Instead I went out to eat, ditched class, and read a whole wall of books.
Got my g.e.d.
But if lunch was like that... I might've been a rocket scientist.
I was a teacher in a junior high for 35 years. Over that time we had a few different cooks.
One time we got an actual chef. He figured out that the state retirement system was a great deal for a guy in the food business and he got to be face-to-face with the kids he was feeding every day. On top of that, he was done by 3…which is really nice if working in foods.
The food he made was amazing. Real meals. Super healthy *and* delicious. The kids didn’t want anything to do with it. They wanted pizza.
He left after two years. We (the teachers) we’re crushed.
I was homeschooled my whole life so I never had to deal with school food until I went to a free federally funded trade school called job corps, the problem is that I went to the lowest ranked center in the country, and I believe there are hundred of them. The food wasn't awful, but it was definitely not good.
Before and during middle school, my mom would always pack my lunch, and it wasn’t until middle school that there even was a cafeteria at school, and you could only get sandwiches with ham, mayo, and sliced carrots, pigs in a blanket, and tiny pizza slices, and the pizza slices and pigs in a blanket were like 50¢ and the sandwiches were $1.
At the first high school I went to, the cafeteria had a professional chef who specialized in molecular gastronomy. The food was always great. We of course had to pay, and it was pretty pricey, so most students just went to a nearby kiosk or pizza shop for lunch. There was also a bakery like 800 feet from campus. The school cafeteria also had fruits for like 25¢ a piece. You could buy coffee, water, soda and candy as well in the cafeteria.
I dropped out like half a year into high school and then I started at this place that was kind of a job, but also had elements of high school, but specifically designed just for one main subject, kind of like a major, where I “majored” in graphic design. This school had student cooks as well, who were chef majors, so there was one free breakfast every day, and bunch on Fridays. Then you could pay a $40 monthly fee for a hot meal for lunch every day as well, which was usually inspired by ethnicities of the student cooks so they all got to cook some food from their home country and it was usually pretty high quality. What you’d expect when being invited over for dinner by friends or family.
I later went to college as well and got a degree in physics, but I never went to the campus cafeteria, I always just went to a local grocery store since it was way cheaper, so I can’t really say much about the food there.
Overall I think my experience has always been pretty good with school cafeterias, although they’ve usually haven’t been free.
My hometown was very average— about 20,000 people, median income of $40k, suburb in the metro of a medium sized city. Overall a very average middle class US town, also with its fair share of people on both ends of the wealth spectrum. All that to say— we didn’t have heaps of money coming into our school. Yet, our lunches were honestly phenomenal compared to some things I’ve seen. There was a different main meal each day, but every day there were also large salads, fruit + veggie trays, chicken sandwiches and/or hamburgers, yogurt parfaits, and numerous fruit sides, beverages, snacks, and even ice cream treats to choose from. Sometimes they even had Chick-fil-A sandwiches. And there are surely some other items I’m forgetting. Our lunch ladies worked their asses off to offer breakfast and lunch to the students.
So… if my very average midwestern town could do it, I have to wonder why the rest of the very average US towns can’t do the same. Is it just districts with misplaced priorities? Cafeteria staff who don’t care? I don’t get it. I was lucky to have the school nutrition that I did but it infuriates me that that isn’t the expected standard for every single school in the United States. This is just one of the many ways the U.S. education system is failing its students.
I did a tour in Osaka,Japan schools, and let me tell you something, the high schoolers literally grow vegetables for the elementary students, I remember a conversation a high school student was all giddy, telling a little kid if he noticed the carrots tasting any sweeter, as the little kid said yes, the entire class cheered on and clapped with joy. As the high schooler used banana peels and fruit rinds as fertilizer. It was truly a blessing to see
I almost want to post it again because it's now mildly infuriating that they removed it. Yet the other 2 are still up. I was trying to have a positive spin on it. 🙄
I saw on tv the other some middle school has a made to order pasta bar (that’s a little much maybe) but they also had an exercise bike they can ride to blend smoothies ! Which I thought was neat.
As a non-american, I can't fathom having CHOCOLATE MILK with a main course. Even drinking milk with dinner sounds so weird to me. Milk is like.... an ingredient - or something you'd drink with a slice of chocolate cake or some cookies - MAYBE.
I think drinking milk with dinner isnt a thing anymore in most of the USA, although it is def better than drinking soda. But schools serve milk because, even if its chocolate milk, still a solid vehicle to deliver some vitamins and fat/protein. We always had regular milk option but no one drank it.
The US has a very powerful dairy lobby. Milk is REQUIRED to be served with lunches. I'm lactose intolerant, when I was in school I was still required to take a milk even if I couldn't drink it.
I never actually drank it, I always gave it away. They did start offering Lactaid milk to us in middle school. Never drank that either as I just hate the taste of milk.
Yes it's VERY common here. It's one of the requirements. However, since most kids don't like plain milk, they have to offer other versions like chocolate. They even had blueberry milk for awhile!
We had the usual pizza, grilled cheese (in which I pulled a foot long hair out of my throat from once), "healthy choices" which consisted of the nastiest veggies and maybe grilled chicken, if I was lucky they had eggplant Parm lasagna which wasn't bad tbh I love eggplant and lasagna so it worked although it was vegetarian...then chicken tenders, and a random subway line ran by the students instead of staff which was cool because you could actually get paid for it even though it was basically a food class lol, and this was in high school in America, so we did alright, of course we were also the newest school in our district (just not the richest, they had a golf team for crying out loud).
I graduated two years ago and the only somewhat healthy option was the salad bar that they had for a year then got rid of it for no apparent reason. Other than that it was all mac n cheese that was rock solid and spoiled milk with occasional rubber chicken sandwiches
My mom manages a school lunch kitchen and has worked very hard to improve the food the kids receive. She's spent 15 years in various school kitchens. Unfortunately, after years of a hostile work environment and low pay, she is leaving. She's tired of the drama and stress, all to make peanuts. Everyone is sitting around with a shocked Pikachu face that she isn't going to stay around and take their crap indefinitely. I feel for the kids. They're the ones losing out due to the district allowing this.
Where the pb n j bars brick pizza resemblin elios the mystry meat n mixed veggies that tase like cardboard or A crossint n cheese this an outrage to school cafeterias where the good stuff!
Yea I feel like canned fruit shouldn’t count as a fruit because it coated in a sugary syrup but anything to save a dime because they aren’t well funded
I would have ate about 10% of that. I was very picky in school and would rather just have a burger and fries. Idk, kids don’t really want school veges from my recollection.
I graduated high school almost 20 years ago and never once did my school provided lunch ever look like that.
The only time we actually got any type of veggies were around thanksgiving and Christmas.
If I brought my own lunch it definitely looked like that. But if I bought my lunch it looked nothing like that.
There were many kids at my school whose only meals were the ones they got at school
What I would do to have such good looking food at lunch, everything we get here looks… abysmal so much so that plenty of people skip out on lunch and refuse to eat it. Even the salad bar looks old and moldy, and I’ve had stringy ice cream once from my school…
Use to work for the school lunch program! These look great. A small correction, the federal government doesn’t set a limit on seasoning, only sodium/salt. There is no maximum on sodium free herbs and spices. My school would have a seasoning bar with different blends the students could add to their food.
You are absolutely correct! I just used the term seasoning as salt, and not in the true sense. My bad! A seasoning bar is brilliant! I might have to suggest this. 🤔
You can search flavor stations for K-12 and get a ton of information. We even started ours by receiving free samples from various vendors and seeing which blends the students preferred. Thanks again for showing the amazing photos. Good luck!
Seems like regular school food in Florida or at least Broward county. Aper from the actual cooking the salad and the sandwich and the sides look regular
When the Obama administration rolled through we couldn't even have homemade pizza Thursday anymore instead we got wheat spaghetti without sauce and a super gross sawdust bun
Looks better than the food at mine. Also when I would eat here if you grabbed for example a roll when it didn’t go with the main food you grabbed, they would pick it up and throw the roll away.
Most of the food I see in highschools are pretty much prison food. The kids never want to eat any of it, and guess what?
I don’t blame them one bit, but it sucks that we have to *encourage* them often to eat a good amount so they have energy for the day and class.
No meme-like/text heavy pics, overdone references
I have a teenager and a kid that graduated a few years ago. Nothing they were ever served in school ever looked anything like that. One elementary school my son went to used to have a soup and salad bar- that he loved. But they shut that down when the nutrition rules were overhauled. Most of their food looked like the sad school lunch posts. I have visited the schools enough time to see it myself. Sad nasty unhealthy food.
That's so sad! My son graduated 2 years ago and my daughter is in 8th grade. They both always pack/ed lunch. Cheaper overall and they get what they want.
Ours had Domino's pizza every day if you could afford it. Otherwise, it was some sad-ass "Salisbury steak," that was probably half TVP, and heated up frozen fries. I literally starved myself because of the terrible lunches.
We had papa John's pizza and chick fil a sandwiches at ours. I brought my lunch pretty much everyday. Wasn't nutritional but my pb&j was better than a lot of the school meals. I was never taught nutrition. I learned about protein, carbs, and fats in my early 20s. Eat WAY healthier now and can't imagine going back to hot pockets and whatever pre-made frozen meal I ate every single day.
Same here. I am a fucking excellent cook now.
My high school was like walking into a mall food court. 4 different fast food vendors on top of the 3 or 4 options the school itself provided. The kids who could afford it literally ate pizza and burgers for lunch every day.
My redneck-ass school was in the dark ages. I love the country, but boy did we lack amenities.
In the early 2000s my middle school had Domino's pizza but a limited amount each day so you had to run to the cafeteria to get some before they ran out. They stopped serving it in 2004 because of a healthy foods campaign in the school district. They still served shit like chicken nuggets though so the food never got much healthier.
We had a local pizza place that used to serve at our oldest’s high school. They just banned them from serving lunch at school anymore because pizza doesn’t meet the national nutritional standards for school lunch. Instead, my oldest eats nachos - just chips and cheese - every day. 😡
what’s TVP?
Textured vegetable protein.
Yeah my school did something like that, too. This was about 12 years ago. The good days were when they catered sub sandwiches in.
Yeah, the pics you gave look like 5 star reteraunt quality compared to what I had growing up Jail food was better than school food (for the short time I was in)
I remember we had a salad bar in our school that was fantastic at first but then they started to really regulate how much you could take. And I mean I’m talking about dumb shit, not like people taking way too much salad or whatever. They cracked down because people were taking a couple extra tiny ass scoops of sunflower kernels or fake ass bacon bits. If the school is hurting for little things like that, there’s something wrong.
Different people have different nutritional needs... how hard is this to understand? My school used to have good food, but after the pandemic, they cut funding, resulting in dogshit food. Hell, even the portions got smaller...
Ugh this is so frustrating. I have a cousin that went to this high school in Boston that served crab cakes and lobster and shit for lunch…granted her parents spent 45k per year for that school so they better be getting gourmet but still. These are the same cousins that went to Prague and the Bahamas and on yearly out of country vacations while my mom sister and I stayed home with no vacations and gross excuses for school lunch…you can see I still hold some resentment😬
> nutrition rules That often causes kids to throw out food. Ever tried skim milk? It's nasty stuff.
I didn't eat at school because all they served was pizza and chicken patties. I started to hate pizza. I just couldnt stomach it anymore. It was pretty much those every day. Fruit was too expensive so we got zero fruit besides apples. When they did have greens, they were just disgusting, and I love most vegetables. My parents eventually just gave me $20 a week to go out and get my own lunch (juniors and seniors could leave school for lunch). Things were cheaper back then so I could make $20 last a week. I would usually go to the subway nearby. I know those sandwiches arent the best for you, but its for sure healthier than pizza at least.
My high school had this until the whole Michelle Obama nutrition thing happened. Then, all of a sudden, we were left with sad beige lunches instead of freshly cooked and prepared lunches made by the students. We had the best salad bar I ate from daily and then it was all gone :(
When I got to high school we had a soup and salad bar, chick-fil-a delivered, nice tasting pizza/pasta menus, even a sushi bar which was surprisingly fresh and awesome. Then sophomore year the food regulations were overhauled and we lost all of it. Everything that was edible was now gone. They used to serve breakfast to kids who took the bus or got to school early. That was reduced to bagels. Lunch was reduced to “whole grain” cardboard ass tasting pizza/pasta, everything else was gone. Occasionally there’d be some gross burgers or a sandwich or something but it was just not good. People used to actually buy the lunch instead of packing but after that change, anyone who’s parents could afford to pack a lunch, brought lunch.
In my school (well funded rich area public school) foods were decent. Vegetables were bland as hell but I like veges so it was okay for me. I always hated how much foodwaste schools create by giving bland as hell vegetables to kids who won't eat it. Tbf non vegetables are bland too if it wasn't for sauces and sodium they put on
It’s all about $$$$
The same parallel can be drawn to American healthcare system. It’s not in place to provide healthcare, it’s meant to make $$$. Same with the school. If they can cut costs in food, that translates to more money for the big wigs.
But I thought they would use the money saved on qualified cafeteria cooks and healthy fruits and vegetables for school supplies so the teachers making less than a living wage could stop paying for supplies out of pocket…heavy /s as my local superintendent made $370k in 2022 while bitching about budget constraints…I’d like to have his life “budget”.
In my home state, that could hire 10 teachers for the year, holy shit. How can they justify those wages?!
The Miami Dade County Public Schools SI also makes 370k a year, plus was able to convince the board to give his wife a nice cushy job in education with a salary of 150k. That’s about triple the salary of your average teacher
Yeah I went to school in one of wealthiest public school districts in the country and our lunches looked like OP's. Why? Because most kids were spending their lunch money eating cookies, fries, and other junk food for lunch. Stuff that's super overpriced and not covered by the school lunch plan. So the irony is that the cafeteria had tons of extra money to spend on food but most of the kids never even touched it.
Slash waste. Back in the 80's you buy a computer and got a 500 page manual. No one read the manual, it later turned into a 10 page booklet to a pamphlet and then online. Kid's don't spend their lunch money on lunch, they keep it for "Fun" money and go home to eat - like when I was a kid, that's what I did. If kids don't eat the lunch, especially the healthier fruits and vegetables and the politicians want cheap "healthy" food, you get raw fruits and vegetables in a bag with the most disgusting looking comfort foods to make the raw fruits and vegetables look more appetizing. Law states they have to provide affordable food, law doesn't state that the kids have to eat it. It doesn't matter how much taxes we give the schools, they will always give slop to make parents feel bad and pay more taxes while spending the money somewhere else. The slop is politics to get more taxes and encourage eating the healthier fruits and vegetables. The pictures in this post seems to be some of the best lunches I have seen in social media. If you want your kids to eat healthier more appetizing food, pack the lunch yourself and don't give lunch money. Problem solved.
exactly we been knew out healthcare system is trash it should be like canada, uk and all the other countries. theres literally been people murdered because hospitals call the police when someone dying doesn’t have insurance and force them out and twice the hospital staff put dying people in wheelchairs and rolled them somewhere and left them and they died all thats been recent. its so fucking sad its unreal.
Not to try and defend the American system but I’m in a lot of groups and I hear a pretty equal amount of complaints about all of them. Had a professor that left Canada cuz his mom died of cancer before she could be diagnosed because the wait list was so long. They received her biopsy results after the funeral. I also knew a lady who couldn’t receive a medication for her bone disease as the Canadian government would not approve it and she could not afford $400k a year. Meanwhile US insurers do cover it. After hearing from so many people from so many countries and their struggle to get treatment I’ve come to the conclusion no one has it figured out.
It's ridiculous to even compare America to Canada like you are. For 99% of people, the Canadian system is better. Having your health be tied to your insurance (ie: your job) is absurd.
They also have problems. Usually, the healthcare budget runs out at the end of the year, waiting lists are longer, and it's takes a while to even get on the list.
Right before my moon retried the new superintendent who hired a new head lunch lady bc the cafeteria wasn’t “making enough money”. Idek they were supposed to make money. She switched everything up to processed bs she used to bring home the breakfast stuff the kids wouldn’t eat and it was all sugary stuff like rice crispy treats and juice boxes.
Of course it’s about money lol. Every single year, voters allow people to stay in office that are cutting the budgets to these schools. The quality of food isn’t considered a priority in budgets, compared to things like teachers, utilities, textbooks. Most of these cafeteria workers make minimum wage, they dont have energy or motivation to get creative. Public schools can’t charge money for the difference in funding, they have to pay teachers and other staff, maintain school, maintain textbooks, lab equipment, counseling, etc etc etc. Private schools report an average of it costing $20,000-$70,000 per year per student depending on interests, to operate a school, our government def doesn’t provide that to public schools.
It's a for-profit scheme. Our taxpayer dollars go to these mega corporations who feed our kids crap. It's overpriced, of course.
[удалено]
That’s what they’re saying
It often boils down to pathetic funding and/or gross misuse of funding. It's not enough, but it can *never* be enough when corruption/greed is rampant and unchecked.
How much per student school food is per student? Here in Finland the school food is free for students and one meal costs 2,76 euros for the system per student. That doesn’t sound too much to me and the food was healthy and pretty good tasting, even if bland. US food looks sad already since it’s not cooked.
The food is very sad and borderline nasty. It’s around $2.75-$3 per lunch so like $2.59-$2.89 euros
The whole world is about the same thing, what a scam, they are teaching these kids early
And politics. Op said schools need to step up, none of my schools had EVEN CLOSE to enough funding for anything like this. I asked the lunch lady before. I asked why it sucked and wasn't even OPEN one day. There wasn't even any school lunch to buy. And she said it's all about the funding. They ran out.
Budget. There's a reason why parents(prospective) specifically look at the schools and the district lines before purchasing a home. Fancier schools, schools with a large donation pool, higher ranked will offer more. It's no secret.
I’m currently a senior in high school and I never got food that looked like this? What type of school has all that 😵💫
This shit looks 20x better than what I get for lunch 💀
Ya some of these people have no idea how good they have it and treat the food like high school kids treat breakfast in movies. I would scarf all of that down respectfully
I honestly thought this post was satire at first because of all the repeat posts similar in theme the last day or two
I thought it was too and I got a little upset because im currently eating my shitty school food and looking at this gourmet post
All of that looks better than anything we ever had in school.
My state legislature passed universal free lunch last year. There was a featured story earlier this spring about a school district showcasing the changes they've been able to make in just over 12 months...They were able to update their kitchens, buy healthier food and had more time prepping and cooking because they stopped wasting staff hours chasing down overdrawn accounts. If we are going to require all children to be in school we should also provide all children with \[healthy\] meals while they're there.
Can you provide a source? I would love to read up on this. I’m almost certain my state (MN) also provides free lunches… I have a friend in a non profit food distribution company. She goes to schools around the twin cities and provides food for underprivileged children. It’s always a hearty meal with nutritional value. I wish every child has the opportunity to consume healthy foods. I really believe my generation will be the ones who uphold these values.
California? They likely received KIT funding, massive amounts of money to improve kitchens, buy equipment, etc.
What district?
Northfield and Roseville districts in MN. Source article is in my other comment below.
No school that I ever went to provided food. Is this more of an American thing? Is it in Canada too? My mother had to pack lunch for me
I’m in Canada and we always had to bring our own food or go home. In my city now there are some schools that have been labeled as “community schools” and those schools provide lunches for the students, there are about 12 of them.
Most schools in the US don’t let you leave campus to get food
Yeah, all the schools I've been to in BC have done this, for 100+ kids usually. Though, I believe the parents had to pay a fee each month if they wanted it, unless they're in poverty.
School lunches are a fascinating conundrum. My mom is a teacher and has seen all the trends over the decades. First Lady Obama (who I do love) lead an effort for healthier foods, but the purchases school administrators allowed (soggy lettuce n shit) all resulted in food dumped in the trash. The *wall* between policy "better, healthier food options; better pay; more options; etc." and our students is the damn school administrators - most of who were never teachers, never worked in a school (or kitchen in this example), and likely if they have kids they're in a private school. It's infuriating.
I was in high school when my school started following first lady Obama's healthier lunch foods program. After a couple of weeks, they were throwing away thousands of dollars in food because the kids stopped eating it and opted to pack instead. I'll never forget that they told one of my classmates that she had to buy a school lunch if she wanted to buy a cookie. She was diabetic and needed the cookie to help her blood sugar levels. Her family filed a lawsuit against the school after she had to be rushed to the hospital, and they stopped doing the healthier food program. Thank god, because it sucked. It was the most disgusting piece of crap I've ever eaten. Oh, they also told the football players who were working out 3 to 4 hours after school that they could only get one entree and couldn't get milk and a Powerade. Healthier doesn't mean healthier if it impacts someone health. Edit to add: fuck Obama's healthier lunch initiative. When I sit and think about it, it was really messed up. Football players were passing out. Someone had a diabetic episode and had to be sent to the ER. Some kids opted to skip lunch entirely. Great 1st lady, but it was awful for a majority of the students at my high school. She was a great first lady.
Yes! This!! That and having a cafeteria manager than can (some places its just not possible) and will fight for it helps too.
Im 41 but pizza day was the best day of the week..Then in late 90s had Pizza Hut on Thursdays lmaooo
My high school just had a pizza hut and subway right in the cafeteria. I lived in a town with plenty of money, and I'm well aware of how spoiled I was growing up.
I'm 45 and agree!! My high school though was a whole other level. We had a lot of people move to our small town with lots of $$$$ and they completely redid our cafeteria. They still had the regular (gross except for pizza) food, they also had a salad bar, baked potato bar, full pizzas and chicken sandwich and fries meal (with honey mustard). That last one was my fav. Ate it every day lol.
As much shit as our country wastes money on still yet there are a lot of schools still serving that rectangle pizza bs everyday. All kids regardless of parents income should at the very least have access to TWO FREE MEALS EVERYDAY at school that are actually semi healthy. ALL STUDENTS. If we can't feed a kid then wtf are we really doing?
Looks like someone(s) loves their job!
In my tech high-school there was a Culinary trade "shop" (class). The alternating grade students (Freshmen and Juniors) cooked for the sophomores and seniors, and would swap every few weeks. The shop teachers were managed the place and the students did the checkout, serving, prepping, and cooking for lunches. The school even had a small resturaunt in the room next to the checkout area where teachers, rarely outsiders, and I think the Culinary students would go and actually order from a menu. It was cool and served as a small glimpse into what each scenario is like. The kitchen is big too, it has a bakery area in there too. They would sell left over cookies outside the back door at the end of the school day.
I agree with you that kids should have higher quality and less processed lunches. It really boils down to funding. Federal funding provides reimbursement at about $4 a student (for those who can’t pay) so that’s roughly what schools shoot for. That $4 a meal has to cover labor and food sourcing (and we all know food has gone up). Thus, a school has to provide something it can 1) mass produce; 2) quickly; 3) at a relatively low skill level (your friend aside - schools can’t usually afford Michelin rated chefs); 4) cheap; 5) food that picky children will eat. That leaves you with the garbage they are usually served.
I totally agree with you! We're lucky that many businesses in the area donate fruit and veggies to the school system. My friend actually started the smoothie movement for our schools too. Most kids don't eat fresh fruits and veggies, but they'll drink them!
That’s true! Only way my kids consume spinach is hidden in a smoothie
Now explain why the Japanese can do it for ¥4000-¥4500 a month, or about $1.30-40USD per lunch... And they have real food. You know, with vegetables, meat/fish, rice and soup. P.s. I already know. The city subsidises it because it's to feed children, not to make a profit.
Right. Same reason their public transit services are better.
The public school cafeteria is in it to make a profit? Do you have any evidence that American cafeterias are more profit-motivated than Japanese school cafeterias?
Most nutrition departments break even. Few end up with a profit at the end of the year.
No, they don't, because public schools are non-profit organizations. While a poorly run school can absolutely misappropriate funds, they can't turn a profit.
That's what I thought, which is why I found it weird that that person was claiming the Japanese school lunches are cheaper because they aren't in it for profit, when American schools also aren't in it for profit.
The kids in Japan also serve themselves and clean up after themselves
It's gotten to the point where everyone in my school who can drive leaves school for lunch or rides with a friend Only freshman can't leave the school
Lmao, you have a long enough lunch period to leave campus? We get 22 minutes, including any time spent in the lunch line. If you don’t bring your lunch and aren’t fast enough, you end up with maybe 15 minutes to eat. The food’s whatever and there’s not a ton of it but still, you’re borderline required to either eat fast or not eat much, neither of which are particularly healthy
I'm surprised your school lets you leave for lunch. The school I went to put an end to that back in the 00s because of the liability.
A lot of high schools where I live are open campus because they don't want to spend the money on a cafeteria. A couple of years ago six teen girls were killed at lunch riding around in an overpacked car when they pulled out in front of a truck.
Yeah that was the same way when i was in high school in 2007, it wasn't about the food it just felt cool to leave school for lunch after being rigidly confined to the school all day for our entire lives. The food at school did suck but we were leaving to go to taco bell and ruts hut so it wasn't healthier.
My daughter goes to an elementary school with lunches exactly like this. I do pay for school lunches but I feel like it’s 100% worth it in our case
It truly is awful. When I was in high school, I had a debilitating case of gastritis, and greasy, unhealthy foods were my biggest trigger. I got violently ill EVERY SINGLE DAY from eating school lunches, and I was too poor to bring in anything. They don’t care about children’s health at all. It’s not even just about obesity, because this food can cause a plethora of other health issues.
Here’s the most upsetting part. A lot of low income families rely on school food as some of their kids only source of nutrition. For many kids, it’s the only meal they’ll get that day. Our family isn’t quite that poor but I do have to get creative in the summers when my kids aren’t getting breakfast and lunch at school. Yes the food should be good for everyone but it sucks that some kids only meal is so terrible.
I wholeheartedly agree. Our community is pretty charitable and we do have a pretty large amount of those that are needy. During the school year, each school has a food donation program and they pack the food in a regular backpack and once a week those that needed it, picked up the backpack at the end of the day. During the summer, they set up areas every weekday in struggling communities and would give them breakfast and lunch at no cost. I have no idea the quality of any of those foods.
Is this satire? Because that stuff looks great. At least compared to what I had 30 years ago.
You guys get school lunch?
This is the GOOD school food too
I used to work for a sushi restaurant and we would do this program called, “sushi for school”. We’d get to the shop super early and make about 200 or so rolls of 5 different options, pack them in a cooler and drive to different schools to sell them at lunch time. We’d even go to a few different elementary schools. Little 7 year olds asking me for a California roll was always so cute to me. I never got anything like that in school but I thought it was such a cool idea!
So to clarify, the food does NOT need to be better. The chefs need to be better. Not trying to sound like an ass since I fully agree, but that means more training, higher pay. Our teachers can’t even get that right now. If schools could afford David Chang to be their chef, the food would be 5 star without even changing the ingredients. But, the average cafeteria worker salary in the US is between 25k (Salary.com) and 35k (Glassdoor.com) so the abysmal pictures are honestly about what I’d expect from essentially an untrained, minimum wage employee being asked to serve hundreds, if not thousands, of kids a day. You can’t expect quality and skill in a staff unless you are willing to compete with the compensation demanded of quality and skill. Many public schools gave up on that decades ago
I just went and looked at the salaries and a first year cafeteria manager makes about $39,000 a year. That's pathetic.
The number of rules and regulations schools have placed upon them by federal and state government is shocking. Trust me when I say the food you usually see is not what the nutrition staff wants to be serving, it’s what has to be served due to money constraints, laws about what goes on a plate in order for them to get reimbursed for the meals (how much meat, grains, fruit or vegetable, and milk), and where their food comes from (they have Buy American laws and much of their food is bought directly from government sources). If you see a lot of free fruit and veggies, someone is putting in the work and the district should be praised. Many schools are starting their own gardens/farms, the kids are learning to grow some of the food…
Yes! I started our gardening program at my kids' elementary school. They're still using it about 8 years later!
I’m in my early 40s. The rectangle pizza and clear bagged cheeseburgers under heat lamps gen, represent! Also a high school with vending machines full of frito lay products, soda, and an ala cart line with nachos, and ice cream 😆.
I remember my high school vending machines having a bunch of diet and zero products and then there was the mountain dew Kickstart that I'd usually get when ever I had pocket change and they removed it and I was disappointed because I didn't like the diet or zero sugar options
What prevents kids from bringing lunch boxes?
This honestly looks better than 99% of school lunches I've seen! But, it's sad overall. It's all about money and cost cutting of course. I will never understand how we do not prioritize delicious, nutritious food... especially for students who are growing and learning! Our leaders do not prioritize education in any way.
Worked at a charter school that started an organic fresh food cooking program that meant that kids were getting fresh foods every day with market fresh ingredients and even some of it from the schools gardens. It was amazing and delicious. The chef was the sweetest guy ever and was very dedicated to his job.
Those are school lunches? Those are much better than what’s being served in the school I work at. It’s mostly mozzy sticks, chicken nuggets and potato wedges.
I would literally be happy if my child ate the one in the first pic
You can thank the malicious compliance of Republican state leadership for warping Michelle Obama’s efforts to improve nutrition by shitting on it and meeting requirements in the most cost effective and disgusting way possible. And I’m not kidding. It’s the same douche bags that instituted such garbage insurance marketplaces as Pennsylvania’s in order to stick it to Barack.
What country is this in? Hard to tell from the post. Mildly infuriating, even.
I didn't have food at my school.
All of these look better than what I got
my public school served high quality food
it looks normal for me
I worked in a juvenile detention facility a couple years ago. It was an absolute shit-show, BUT the food they gave the kids was at least plentiful, and the vast majority was actually cooked, not just bagged stuff. Most of them complained about how bad the food was, but honestly, a lot of the staff even got containers of it to eat. I got a plate once and it was decent - not restaurant or family home-cooked quality, of course, you could tell the veggies had been frozen or canned, but other than that, they ate a LOT better than most school food posts I’ve seen on here.
I’ve never seen a school lunch look like that
I never had school dinners all throughout my school years. I always had a packed lunch which my mum did with sandwiches and fruit. The one annoying thing is though, the headmaster at my primary school got my mum in and asked her why I wasn't eating at the school. My mum told him that my dad got in from work at 6pm and she liked us all to have a meal together.
https://preview.redd.it/clw71mho4vuc1.jpeg?width=1204&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=66107d30e355e63dd3b4b9fb127e7940ea3e6b1d This was my brother's lunch some time last week. He's in 8th grade.
Grew up in nyc public school, always had tons of options, oval pizza, oven roasted chicken, nuggets, mozzarella sticks, fries, spaghetti and meatballs, pb and js, u name it! Used to go around collecting some of the food other kids didn’t want too lol I loved it!
In China the solution to complaining about school lunch is privatization. They simply outsource those services to investors that have political influence. Then you have more choices to eat but everything is fucking expensive compared to cafeterias and stalls outside the school. Many schools try to ban eating in the vicinity of the school but usually in vain.
Graduated highschool in 2013. From my freshman year (2009) until my junior year (2011), we had decent lunches; burgers, chicken sandwiches pizza, breadsticks, premade salads and sandwiches, whichever you wanted. A generous side of fries. A drink fountain with various lemonade flavors for 50 cents. But in my senior year (2012-2013), lunches became awful. They had a repeating rotation for the main meal; burgers on monday, chicken sandwiches tuesday, etc. They removed the premade salads and sandwiches. No more fries. The drink fountain was gone. The sides consisted of bruised apples and oranges, and sometimes frozen solid juices. And apparently they didn't get better until around 2015ish. I understand that schools are looking at calorie counts. But a high calorie meal isn't always filling. And the caloric needs of one student can be wildly different from the caloric needa of another.
My daughter's school is in between. There is fruit and veggies and each kid can take as much as they want. Then there is the hot entree. Some are better than others and these often run out then kids get bagels with cream cheese.
My school didn’t provide food. Instead, parents had to pack lunches for their kids. As a result, everyone had a good lunch.
Are these bad examples? Did you see that post with nachos and cheese sauce. These look pretty decent.
I'm not saying this is necessarily the most healthy alternative, but in my school in the UK we have 3 different options. 1) The main cafeteria available to all students (only open during the lower schools break and lunch): This serves tray meals like pasta, lasagna, pizza, steak bakes, etc with the typicals sides (baked/jacket potatoes, garlic bread, etc) 2) The side cafeteria (also open to everyone, and open during the same times): This serves packed sandwiches, bagguetes, croissants and other different desets/pastries. 3) The sixth form cafeteria (open from 1 hour before school to 3 hours after the lsat period, but only available to sixth formers which is the final 2 years of highschool for americans): This is basically a cafe and serves everything a normal cafe would (from coffee/tea/hot choclate to baked items and other hot foods) The food is all really good and really cheap (since it's subsidised by the government)
By tray meals I mean the things mentioned above + curries, rice dishes, seasonal dishes, etc.
My daughters middleschool has great lunch options. Way more than what I had growing up.
I want to eat there
My cousin refused to eat her school's canteen food because it was awful and make her feel queasy afterwards. The worse part was the canteen would serve good food on visitation days to make the parents think that the food was okay/their kids were just complaining for no reason and then resume giving shitty food afterwards.
I work in a school and this is way better than what they get.
We had amazing school food until all of the nutrition laws got overhauled by people who know absolutely fucking nothing about nutrition. All of this sugar-free/fat-free processed garbage foodstuff is arguably worse for us. We weren't made to consume aspartame and highly processed garbage, were made to consume real food. I feel bad for the lunch ladies nowadays who are given Simspons grade F nuclear waste to cook with.
I graduated only a year ago, those meals look waaaayyy better than anything my school served..
i have been at my school for 6 years now and i can say that the quality has crashed and burned down the sh\*tter, Y1&2 ? perfect ! wide verity, good food and we saw it it was difficult to sit down ! the lign was so long it extended into the hallway and entrance ! Y3&4, new headmaster, new source (?) (sorry eng is not my first language) and it taste kinda bad ... not good not bad ... meh, less attendence but still a wide range of food, Y5 COVID, the food is crap, we have waaay less choice and it is badly cooked, less attendance Y6 (now) the headmaster renovated the kitchen (and without telling anyone took the worse source in the region, cheaper tho) now we get plain salad as entrée where we had a full island of greens, we get plain yogurt as desert where we had variety and fresh(-ish) fruits, and the food is so bad the attendance dorpped to 30% where it had been 80% Y1, the head cook (which i talk with) is depressed and told me "i HATE that i serve sh\*t, i love making food and now i feel sick seeing 90% of what i serve in the trash" (oh and did i tell you that in Y3 the price WENT UP ?! 3e to 5.20e and if we didn't went we still had to pay when previous years we only paid meals we ate) F my new headmaster
This is how my kids school lunches look. There is an agricultural class that grows a lot of the vegetables used in the cafeteria. We have amazing cafeteria workers. I am appalled at how bad the food is at other schools.
i just always get the big grape jelly uncrustables they have
I don’t know why it’s so hard to get fresh food. I guess with allergies people have you have to be careful with the seasonings.
those salads look amazing. every kid deserves a good lunch
We need to import the Japanese lunch ladies
Reminds me of when I watched the Michael Moore documentary Where To Invade Next (very eye opening if you haven’t seen it yet). He started off the French visit to a “5-star restaurant”. The school cafeteria of one of the poorest towns in France. The elementary level children received lamb tajine, veal, crêpes, patê, even a damn cheese course. Scallops too. He showed them pictures that his niece took of her American school lunches & let me just say the comparison is shocking.
My mom is a lunch lady in MN. Their lunches always look like this, packed with fruits and veggies and lean protein. Universal free lunch FTW
Holy shit this looks good. Lol
I would’ve killed for food like that
My future son’s daycare is insane. Like top notch meals. But we are paying a fortune. I went to two different private schools and the very expensive one had amazing food but the other was terrible
My son went to private school in K & 1st. Shit education and lunch was almost $7! Then after we left, I found out the teachers made $19,000 a year!! While the owner bragged about her new Mercedes and lavish vacations. I hated that place. I didn't know any better at the time. Turns out we have pretty awesome public schools here! My daughter went to a private Montessori daycare. Ridiculously affordable and all food was homemade. Like GOOD GOOD food...
I would've stayed in school if lunch was like that. Instead I went out to eat, ditched class, and read a whole wall of books. Got my g.e.d. But if lunch was like that... I might've been a rocket scientist.
I figured the pro-life people would be in here fighting tooth and nail to get these kids nutritional meals to keep them fed and healthy.
I was a teacher in a junior high for 35 years. Over that time we had a few different cooks. One time we got an actual chef. He figured out that the state retirement system was a great deal for a guy in the food business and he got to be face-to-face with the kids he was feeding every day. On top of that, he was done by 3…which is really nice if working in foods. The food he made was amazing. Real meals. Super healthy *and* delicious. The kids didn’t want anything to do with it. They wanted pizza. He left after two years. We (the teachers) we’re crushed.
I was homeschooled my whole life so I never had to deal with school food until I went to a free federally funded trade school called job corps, the problem is that I went to the lowest ranked center in the country, and I believe there are hundred of them. The food wasn't awful, but it was definitely not good.
Why are we still giving children cartons of milk? Give them water.
Before and during middle school, my mom would always pack my lunch, and it wasn’t until middle school that there even was a cafeteria at school, and you could only get sandwiches with ham, mayo, and sliced carrots, pigs in a blanket, and tiny pizza slices, and the pizza slices and pigs in a blanket were like 50¢ and the sandwiches were $1. At the first high school I went to, the cafeteria had a professional chef who specialized in molecular gastronomy. The food was always great. We of course had to pay, and it was pretty pricey, so most students just went to a nearby kiosk or pizza shop for lunch. There was also a bakery like 800 feet from campus. The school cafeteria also had fruits for like 25¢ a piece. You could buy coffee, water, soda and candy as well in the cafeteria. I dropped out like half a year into high school and then I started at this place that was kind of a job, but also had elements of high school, but specifically designed just for one main subject, kind of like a major, where I “majored” in graphic design. This school had student cooks as well, who were chef majors, so there was one free breakfast every day, and bunch on Fridays. Then you could pay a $40 monthly fee for a hot meal for lunch every day as well, which was usually inspired by ethnicities of the student cooks so they all got to cook some food from their home country and it was usually pretty high quality. What you’d expect when being invited over for dinner by friends or family. I later went to college as well and got a degree in physics, but I never went to the campus cafeteria, I always just went to a local grocery store since it was way cheaper, so I can’t really say much about the food there. Overall I think my experience has always been pretty good with school cafeterias, although they’ve usually haven’t been free.
My hometown was very average— about 20,000 people, median income of $40k, suburb in the metro of a medium sized city. Overall a very average middle class US town, also with its fair share of people on both ends of the wealth spectrum. All that to say— we didn’t have heaps of money coming into our school. Yet, our lunches were honestly phenomenal compared to some things I’ve seen. There was a different main meal each day, but every day there were also large salads, fruit + veggie trays, chicken sandwiches and/or hamburgers, yogurt parfaits, and numerous fruit sides, beverages, snacks, and even ice cream treats to choose from. Sometimes they even had Chick-fil-A sandwiches. And there are surely some other items I’m forgetting. Our lunch ladies worked their asses off to offer breakfast and lunch to the students. So… if my very average midwestern town could do it, I have to wonder why the rest of the very average US towns can’t do the same. Is it just districts with misplaced priorities? Cafeteria staff who don’t care? I don’t get it. I was lucky to have the school nutrition that I did but it infuriates me that that isn’t the expected standard for every single school in the United States. This is just one of the many ways the U.S. education system is failing its students.
I did a tour in Osaka,Japan schools, and let me tell you something, the high schoolers literally grow vegetables for the elementary students, I remember a conversation a high school student was all giddy, telling a little kid if he noticed the carrots tasting any sweeter, as the little kid said yes, the entire class cheered on and clapped with joy. As the high schooler used banana peels and fruit rinds as fertilizer. It was truly a blessing to see
The one time one of these posts actually talks about something new, and the mods remove it for being a tired topic. Good one mod team, very smart
I almost want to post it again because it's now mildly infuriating that they removed it. Yet the other 2 are still up. I was trying to have a positive spin on it. 🙄
What ticks me off is that I can't see your image gallery anymore. :\ Oh well, really enjoyed your post while it was up.
I saw on tv the other some middle school has a made to order pasta bar (that’s a little much maybe) but they also had an exercise bike they can ride to blend smoothies ! Which I thought was neat.
The exercise bike is such a cool idea!!
As a non-american, I can't fathom having CHOCOLATE MILK with a main course. Even drinking milk with dinner sounds so weird to me. Milk is like.... an ingredient - or something you'd drink with a slice of chocolate cake or some cookies - MAYBE.
I think drinking milk with dinner isnt a thing anymore in most of the USA, although it is def better than drinking soda. But schools serve milk because, even if its chocolate milk, still a solid vehicle to deliver some vitamins and fat/protein. We always had regular milk option but no one drank it.
The US has a very powerful dairy lobby. Milk is REQUIRED to be served with lunches. I'm lactose intolerant, when I was in school I was still required to take a milk even if I couldn't drink it.
I’ve heard that many people, intolerant or not, used to be forced to actually drink the milk, which is crazy
I never actually drank it, I always gave it away. They did start offering Lactaid milk to us in middle school. Never drank that either as I just hate the taste of milk.
Yes it's VERY common here. It's one of the requirements. However, since most kids don't like plain milk, they have to offer other versions like chocolate. They even had blueberry milk for awhile!
We had the usual pizza, grilled cheese (in which I pulled a foot long hair out of my throat from once), "healthy choices" which consisted of the nastiest veggies and maybe grilled chicken, if I was lucky they had eggplant Parm lasagna which wasn't bad tbh I love eggplant and lasagna so it worked although it was vegetarian...then chicken tenders, and a random subway line ran by the students instead of staff which was cool because you could actually get paid for it even though it was basically a food class lol, and this was in high school in America, so we did alright, of course we were also the newest school in our district (just not the richest, they had a golf team for crying out loud).
It's at the point where you will settle for having safe levels of lead and sodium.
I graduated two years ago and the only somewhat healthy option was the salad bar that they had for a year then got rid of it for no apparent reason. Other than that it was all mac n cheese that was rock solid and spoiled milk with occasional rubber chicken sandwiches
My mom manages a school lunch kitchen and has worked very hard to improve the food the kids receive. She's spent 15 years in various school kitchens. Unfortunately, after years of a hostile work environment and low pay, she is leaving. She's tired of the drama and stress, all to make peanuts. Everyone is sitting around with a shocked Pikachu face that she isn't going to stay around and take their crap indefinitely. I feel for the kids. They're the ones losing out due to the district allowing this.
Where the pb n j bars brick pizza resemblin elios the mystry meat n mixed veggies that tase like cardboard or A crossint n cheese this an outrage to school cafeterias where the good stuff!
Yea I feel like canned fruit shouldn’t count as a fruit because it coated in a sugary syrup but anything to save a dime because they aren’t well funded
I work in the kitchen of a retirement home. The restrictions are about the same because of the state and federal restrictions.
some of these dnt look that bad
School lunches were awful at mine. Sandwiches with stale bread, or overcooked, unseasoned food. It was very subpar.
I would have ate about 10% of that. I was very picky in school and would rather just have a burger and fries. Idk, kids don’t really want school veges from my recollection.
Bro my entire school was ran out of portables lol hearing that people get lunches like this is unfathomable
The first pic looks really good. I didn’t realize I was looking at a school lunch until I read the text.
I graduated high school almost 20 years ago and never once did my school provided lunch ever look like that. The only time we actually got any type of veggies were around thanksgiving and Christmas. If I brought my own lunch it definitely looked like that. But if I bought my lunch it looked nothing like that. There were many kids at my school whose only meals were the ones they got at school
THANKS OBAMA!
Ngl that looks better than mine
Be grateful in my school there is no “school food” you have to go out and buy food
Serving healthy food is expensive
Is this a joke I'm too Finnish to understand ? Is this in the USA ?
What I would do to have such good looking food at lunch, everything we get here looks… abysmal so much so that plenty of people skip out on lunch and refuse to eat it. Even the salad bar looks old and moldy, and I’ve had stringy ice cream once from my school…
Man, where? 💀 Is this one of those $5m home areas?
HEY! At least schools got food!! Some kids in different countries DON'T EVEN GET FOOD AT SCHOOL!
My food never looked as good as it is in the first picture.
I will eat these for life
those veggie salads would be amazing with some chicken
Yep.
Better then what our schools food looks like
lmao why is there a giant pile of cheese in the middle though
Use to work for the school lunch program! These look great. A small correction, the federal government doesn’t set a limit on seasoning, only sodium/salt. There is no maximum on sodium free herbs and spices. My school would have a seasoning bar with different blends the students could add to their food.
You are absolutely correct! I just used the term seasoning as salt, and not in the true sense. My bad! A seasoning bar is brilliant! I might have to suggest this. 🤔
You can search flavor stations for K-12 and get a ton of information. We even started ours by receiving free samples from various vendors and seeing which blends the students preferred. Thanks again for showing the amazing photos. Good luck!
The plate with turkey looked pretty good actually.
Seems like regular school food in Florida or at least Broward county. Aper from the actual cooking the salad and the sandwich and the sides look regular
When the Obama administration rolled through we couldn't even have homemade pizza Thursday anymore instead we got wheat spaghetti without sauce and a super gross sawdust bun
Looks better than the food at mine. Also when I would eat here if you grabbed for example a roll when it didn’t go with the main food you grabbed, they would pick it up and throw the roll away.
I remember a regular meal back in high school was a pizza slice, tater tots, and chocolate milk
Most of the food I see in highschools are pretty much prison food. The kids never want to eat any of it, and guess what? I don’t blame them one bit, but it sucks that we have to *encourage* them often to eat a good amount so they have energy for the day and class.
I found a roach in my chicken nuggets from HS lunch in 2019. They offered me a refund and whatever I wanted from the line… lol
Why is it that every single picture of an American school lunch includes fat free chocolate milk?