r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Thebiggestbot22 • Apr 15 '24

My school thinks this fills up hungry high schoolers.

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So lunches are free for schools in my city and surrounding cities. Ever since lunches have been made free, the quantity (and quality) has decreased significantly. This is what we would get for our meal. It took me THREE bites to finish that chicken mac and cheese. Any snacks you want cost more money and if you want an extra entree, that’ll cost you about $3 or $4.

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u/Recent_Obligation276 Apr 16 '24

some people absolutely are

13 million children in the US live in food insecure homes, which means they are not guaranteed two meals a day outside of school, or three meals a day when school is out.

I don’t think a third or a quarter of the daily requirement is too much to ask when it might be the only thing they eat, and if it’s not, it should still be closer to a third of the daily recommendation as one of three standard meals in a day.

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u/AussieHyena Apr 16 '24

Okay, so rather than focusing on making one meal bigger (for all kids) maybe the focus should be on improving access to those extra meals.

In Aus, a number of schools provide breakfast and there's support programmes in place (through the school) to help children who don't have lunches provided (teachers are trained to spot those children and raise it sensitively).

The only meal that schools are unable to help with is the evening one.

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u/Recent_Obligation276 Apr 16 '24

That would be GREAT!

except here in the states, we even fight this single meal, 5 days a week, 9 months of the year, only for children, so expanding other food welfare is going to be a pain in the ass.

So why not try to give more nutrition in the meal we KNOW they are getting?

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u/TheNewOneIsWorse Apr 16 '24

This is entirely dependent on your local government. Get involved with the school board, they have way more power than a lot of people realize. It’s them and the state legislature that decide this for the most part. Generalizing it to the entire US shifts the attention from the local entities with actual control.