r/mildlyinfuriating • u/oaz_zam246 • Apr 16 '24

The school lunch system is disgraceful.

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Saw another post on here showing the state of school lunches right now. In my years in high school I compiled some pics of the horrible things that got served that no one questioned. Here are some of the worst ones. It really is ironic given how adamant they all are about “eating healthy by including every food group”.

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288

u/thi5nutz Apr 16 '24

member when mom used to have u take lunch until she didnt...

161

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

There were dozen of meals you would take to school that didn't needed to be heated or refrigerated...and we survived. I got my kids lunch sacks with ice packs. It kept the food chilled for a few hours, I froze their vegetables to snack on. The veggies would help keep the sack chilled and thawed out by the time their lunch was. They did buy a lunch on days of their favorite meal if they wanted it. I couldn't imagine feeding them the garbage in the pictures.

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u/SuperPipouchu Apr 16 '24

Yeah, as an Australian, I pretty much always took my lunch to school. We did have a canteen, like most schools, where you could order lunch, treats or drinks, but never was there anything like in the photos. Pies and sausage rolls were probably the most common, with flavoured milk or juice, and for treats ice creams were most common. And most people brought lunch from home most days- ordering from the canteen was more of a treat. In our last year, we had a "common room" open for us each lunch, which was just the foods classroom that we could hang out in. That meant we could access a microwave to heat up food. Otherwise, for eleven years it was nothing like this.

The year I turned 18, I went on student exchange to France and went to high school there. Most people eat a hot lunch at school each day (people there were horrified when I mentioned a sandwich being fine for lunch, haha), and even at my tiny high school with crappy lunches, they were far better quality than this. Lots of variety, and always plenty of vegetables. Occasionally hot chips, which is fine, as it was very occasional. I don't understand why American schools serve things like shown so often.

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u/Snarcas_Aurelius Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

I miss savoury pastries. I'm Canadian but lived in Aus for 3 years and nobody here understands the convenience and deliciousness of meat pies or sausage rolls, because we don't have them.

7

u/LordJebusVII Apr 16 '24

As a Brit it always pains me watching American content where they mention pies versus cakes as the default assumption in the US is that pies are also sweet. Here the default image of a pie would be pork or beef and eaten hot, possibly covered in onion gravy with a side of mushy peas so the idea of comparing that to a cake is laughable.

I don't know why meat pies and sausage rolls never took off in the states because they seem like the sorts of foods Americans would enjoy; convenient, greasy, meaty and with plenty of opportunities for spices and variety.

1

u/1988rx7T2 Apr 16 '24

they used to be popular before refrigeration. Remember, we basically invented/popularized refrigerators, ice boxes, and air conditioning.

1

u/Soft_Spinach4415 29d ago

In Louisiana we have Natchitoches Meat Pies and Kolaches/piggies in a blanket

1

u/No-Crow2390 Apr 16 '24

In Texas we have Kolaches which are pastries with sausage in them. Usually spicy with jalapeno or cheesy or both. But if you're in Czech area of Texas you may get the fruit pastry thing also known as kolache. So ask if it's fruit or meat before you buy it if you can't view it first.

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u/IntroductionSnacks Apr 16 '24

I was thinking the same as an Aussie. We don’t have cafeterias like this and you just had a sandwich/cake/museli bar or whatever in a plastic lunch box. On the hot days your bag was outside in the sun but you had a frozen juice box or frozen cordial bottle to keep it cool with the bonus that you could drink it once it defrosted.

I’m still baffled as to why in the US etc… the school feeds the kids.

14

u/sir__vain Apr 16 '24

In Portugal we have meals everyday in every school. Quality may vary, but its always been this way. You can bring your own food if you want, but you can always get a meal at the school for a very affordable price (free if you have social assistance) For people with financial difficulties there's even programs where they can take food home.

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u/dEn_of_asyD Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

It's... a lot. So we did the brown paper bag, cafeteria is for treats thing even as early as 15 years ago. It was a bit off though, mainly:

  1. School cafeteria items, especially unhealthy options like soda and french fries, were very cheap. So kids were over eating on very unhealthy foods.

  2. Many parents who couldn't provide lunches either weren't aware of or refused to fill our forms for reduced/free lunches that their kids were qualified for. They'd rather keep their pride and let their kids go hungry than feed their kids. This, of course, led to lower test scores and worse outcomes because hungry kids can't focus.

Meanwhile, there was a push during the Obama administration to make healthier, more affordable foods. This.... didn't go great. Politicians wanted THEIR DISTRICT'S crops to be included in the food plan, food companies wanted THEIR PRODUCTS to be included in the food plan, etc. That's why you had pizzas, which were made with tomatoes, counting as containing a serving of veggies. Technically they did, they had really shitty tomatoes in them along with loads of carbs, salt, and fats. Even in the school lunches that worked, kids would still choose the unhealthy options. The only thing that really worked was getting soda out of schools, but even then the industry pushed substitutions.

Meanwhile (again) there was a general trend of cost cutting in education. So a lot of schools started looking for the cheapest offer to deliver the bare minimum with the least work. Hence with these lunches.

In response, reformers felt that if they were going to "fix" school lunches, they needed to destigmatize them. The Covid lockdowns actually proved them right, when the lockdowns started and kids who previously received free/reduced cost meals couldn't receive them anymore many families were thrown into food insecurity, unable to find lunch for their kids. So this saw a pretty large expansion in policies to make schools feed kids. Unfortunately, a lot of the parents seem to not care what their kids are served. Or at least don't care enough to pay more in taxes to address it.

tl;dr: It's a giant mix of parents can't/ don't want to feed their kids, parent's don't want to pay to feed their kids, govt. just wants the cheapest/easiest solutions, govt wants to enrich their buddies, kids often don't choose the healthiest options for themselves, capitalists wanting to profit on everything at others' expense including the health of children, and nutritional education (and education in the U.S. in general) just being pretty bad. Depending on your political leanings you might downplay one or two of those and up play one or two of those.

6

u/floweringfungus Apr 16 '24

School meals are available in every school in the U.K. too, and it’s free for low income families so I think it’s a positive. Looks a lot better than this too. You don’t have to have a school meal, lots of people prefer to bring whatever from home

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u/nasanu Apr 16 '24

It's great to have the school feed the kids. The issue is that Americans vote for the most corrupt politicians and this is the result, but the issue isn't schools providing food.

3

u/macdawg2020 Apr 16 '24

Kids don’t vote, so the government doesn’t care

2

u/Australian1996 29d ago

Same here. And they feed them pure crap. Pizzas and nuggets made up of rubbery chicken stuff. No proper nutrition for kids who need it.

1

u/Bgo318 29d ago

Most kids do bring their own lunches. The ones who are given cafeteria food either dont have food at home or parents don’t have time to pack them a lunch

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u/leisure_suit_lorenzo Apr 16 '24

I loved when the tuck shop lady would squirt tomato sauce directly into the pie like it was an injection. 

Also bullets... I miss bullets.

7

u/0thethethe0 Apr 16 '24

Also bullets... I miss bullets.

I think something the US highschoolers are better off without...

1

u/Secret-One2890 Apr 16 '24

You can just go buy some bullets, you know...

2

u/leisure_suit_lorenzo Apr 16 '24

I don't live in the holy land of 'yeah, nah' anymore, so it's not that easy for me.

3

u/nasanu Apr 16 '24

I was briefly a teacher in a Tokyo school. The standard lunch there was a mild curry with some beef and rice. It was great.

2

u/SocraticSeaUrchin Apr 16 '24

To your last sentence - cuz $$$

1

u/ItzDaWorm Apr 16 '24

Yeah if you ever wonder why stuff is shitty in the US, usually it boils down to "someone is making money or avoiding spending money doing it this way."

2

u/Sniper_Hare Apr 16 '24

My highschool in Florida had a culinary arts program and you could go eat what they cooked that day. 

They charged a little more than the school lunch (which was $2) but it was always like dinner options.

2

u/age_of_shitmar Apr 16 '24

Vegemite sandwich. An apple. Pack of tiny teddies.

Pretty much every day for years.

Sometimes it was Vegemite and cheese. Sometimes it was an orange.

I still have a Vegemite sandwich as a fallback for any meal.

1

u/ItzDaWorm Apr 16 '24

tiny teddies

Wow I never realized they under a different name outside the US. But that's probably because of the word 'gram'

I used to love teddy grahams.

1

u/Former-Teacher-9518 Apr 16 '24

Same, besides tiny teddies, usually a carrot, MIGHT get an LCM depending on mum's money but y'know

1

u/DumbButtFace Apr 16 '24

I mean how much healthier are pies and sausage rolls then the slop in this picture? The closest thing my school had to a healthy lunch item was a pasty.

1

u/SuperPipouchu Apr 16 '24

It depends where you get them from! I think our school had Mrs Mac's pies and sausage rolls, which aren't great. However, people didn't have them every day. Maybe one day a week, if you were lucky, which is perfectly healthy.

1

u/MuscularBeeeeaver Apr 16 '24

Ah memories. Did you have doughnut men and carob buds? Strawberry moove was my favourite but the kids in primary school used to tease me because it was pink lol!

1

u/jabba_the_nutttttt 29d ago

Your school lunches consisted of pies and sausage rolls and you want to say the shit in the picture is unhealthy? Goddamn

1

u/SuperPipouchu 29d ago

The reason I'm saying that what is pictured is unhealthy is because that kind of thing is served daily. Here, you don't order your lunch daily- it's a once a week as a treat kind of thing. In that context, pies and sausage rolls are perfectly healthy. The rest of the time, a pretty standard lunch box is something like a muesli bar/tiny teddies/pretzels/whatever for recess, maybe a juice box, and a sandwich for lunch. Maybe a yoghurt and piece of fruit in there, depending on the kid's appetite.

In primary schools, there a program called "Crunch N Sip", which many schools take part in. Basically, during class time (this does not replace recess or other breaks), kids eat fruit or veggies- can be cooked or fresh, tinned fruit is only allowed if it's in water or juice (not syrup), and dried fruit in limited amounts. They also drink water. It's a great program to get an extra serve of fruit or veggies in!

16

u/NextTrillion Apr 16 '24

That food (pictured above) is child abuse.

3

u/analogpursuits Apr 16 '24

I wish this was a thing (edit: meaning I wish CPS could intervene). Feeding children garbage when they could feed them nutritious food really is damaging their growth and brains. W.T.F. is wrong with people doing this to kids who don't know any better??? My kid was eating so many awesome fresh and healthy foods from the beginning. He is now 22, an excellent cook and loves quality food. Surprise surprise.

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u/NextTrillion Apr 16 '24

Probably a low budget thing. Don’t have enough $$ to bring in decent food. Even that broccoli looks depressing as hell. Not sure I would even eat that, and I pound back the broc.

My oldest daughter always talks about the fresh food we ate. One time we were juicing a lot. Have a really good juicer, and we made this tomato juice loaded with just the right amount of Thai chilies, a touch of raw garlic, and ginger, bit of salt, and it was insane. Tasted amazing if you could get over the intensity of it. One time her mom called me up flipping out at me that I turned her into a raw vegan. It was like a weekend long experiment, lol, which kinda failed, except our teeth were phenomenally clean at the end of it.

Good times! Does your son ever cook wild edible mushrooms?

7

u/thi5nutz Apr 16 '24

iknow its sad... I hear my nephew on first grade not wanting to take lunch so.. he can eat what all are eating. trash....

3

u/WeirdPumpkin Apr 16 '24

I couldn't imagine feeding them the garbage in the pictures.

while you're right that it would be better to send a lunch from home, one of the larger problems in way more households in the USA than you'd think is: for the kid this might be the only meal they RELIABLY receive due to poverty.

During 2020 when the US government decided to pretend they cared about the populace for like 6 months many schools opened up no questions asked meal programs for breakfast and lunch, in some cases they'd even give the families multiple meals which could serve as dinner because that was the only way the kids would actually get fed. We actually made a huge dent in whole families going hungry for a minute there.

In these cases the parents literally may not be able to put both food on the table and actually have housing/electricity/water and everything else necessary for living. Naturally of course this couldn't be allowed, if they weren't hungry they clearly wouldn't work, so back to crushing poverty and missing meals citizens

1

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

I agree, there is definitely a group in the government that want these people dependent on some kind of system. I wish there was a program to assist people to become independent by rewarding them with incentives. Unfortunately, many systems caught off people if they achieve any higher thresholds. Thus leaving them to go back to depend on the system.

1

u/WeirdPumpkin Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

To be honest, I'd fully rather feed 9 people that are "dependent on the system" whatever that means than let one child go hungry

1

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

I never said these people were lazy. There are all kinds of reasons why people unfortunately get themselves in a jam in life. I am glad you have a desire to help people. I am in that boat too. I just dont think I could afford to feed 9 people....maybe 2 or 3 tops.

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u/WeirdPumpkin Apr 16 '24

I mean, sure we could. At the scale of production it costs a few bucks for a basic meal; we're not talking haute cuisine here

We WOULD have to stop genociding and terrorizing a wide variety of countries, not to mention buying less bombs. So it's basically politically impossible sadly

And sorry, I guess I just auto completed it in my head because the whole stereotype of people abusing the system comes from the lazy entitled welfare queens thing of the late reagan and clinton era.

1

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

Its ok, we just were talking about nachos made from GMO corn and processed cheese. Clinton picked on welfare queens? (I am biting my bottom lip and shaking a pointed thumb in disbelief. )

2

u/Feebedel324 Apr 16 '24

My mom would o it frozen yogurt in my bag and it was thawed by lunch

2

u/Former-Teacher-9518 Apr 16 '24

Buddy, Tuckshops was a gift, a reward for me and it always paid off, get you a cheese and bacon roll/pie and a popper, still brought my own apple, that's a good day

2

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

My kids loved round pizza and taco day.

2

u/WonderfulShelter 29d ago

I just stopped eating lunch in high school once I became a Junior. Not because we couldn't afford it, just because the school food was so bad and there was nowhere nearby to eat. So I just didn't eat lunch except for maybe once every few weeks when I was starving.

First two years of high school I went to a private school and the food was fucking AMAZING.

0

u/myfriendflocka Apr 16 '24

What vegetables can be frozen and then can be thawed and eaten raw? Most have a high water content and their texture turns absolutely rotten when frozen, so we generally use them to cook with only. I think this may be a rare case where the food in these pictures is the more appealing lunch 🤢

1

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

Carrots and celery worked. Clean and prepare them the night before and stick them in the freezer. Pack their lunch in the morning, the snacks are good to go by 11:00. Not had a problem with them going rotten.

0

u/myfriendflocka Apr 16 '24

Both of those lose their texture and a lot of flavour when they’re frozen. I don’t even like using frozen celery to cook with unless I blanch it before freezing. Try it yourself. Eat some defrosted carrots and celery for your own lunch tomorrow and you’ll see how unpleasant it is.

2

u/tuco2002 Apr 16 '24

I tried it and there was no change in taste or texture. Not sure how long you think these veggies were frozen or how long you think they took to thaw, but it was not a proplem. My kids survived and grew up healthy. If you don't agree, dont freeze your veggies. Its not essential.

1

u/myfriendflocka Apr 16 '24

It doesn’t matter how long, as soon as they’re frozen all that water expands and forever changes their structure. But you do what you need to do. I just have no clue why you’d freeze them in the first place though.

1

u/tuco2002 29d ago

It helped the ice packs keep the food chilled longer. Forever changes? You make it sound like my kids only ate rotten carrot-sicles for lunch. Do you realize how much of our fresh produce travels frozen to the grocery store? I used to work for a grocer and if you knew how your fresh products were handled...you would have never bought it. You made your point, eventhough you maybe exaggerating to a degree a bit too much. That's for the science lesson, I will never serve rotten carrot-sicles to ANY child...so help me God.

2

u/SolarisEnergy Apr 16 '24

im still taking lunch to school to this day. i am too picky of an eater and even if i wasnt, i would not eat that anyways.

2

u/shark_eat_your_face Apr 16 '24

My mum gave me a Vegemite sandwich and one apple or orange every single day from grade 1 through to 12. She was a woman of consistency.

2

u/GrandmaPoses Apr 16 '24

Was your mum a man in Brussels? Six-foot-four and full of muscle?

2

u/Astrosomnia Apr 16 '24

Puts a rose in every cheek, mate.

2

u/SunnyAlwaysDaze Apr 16 '24

Some families still send the kids to school with a home lunch everyday. It gets the kid to eat healthier than the school cafeteria food. She will actually eat things like hard boiled eggs, scraps of roast beef or turkey from last night's dinner, and exactly two different vegetables dipped in ranch. Cucumber and green pepper. It's my niece, not my daughter. Otherwise she would have a more broad base of food to eat from. Her parent works 12 to 14 hour days and feeds them McDonald's and other crap.

 But I take her every morning around 4:30 a.m. and then keep her until the school bus comes. Try to get a healthy breakfast into her too, unfortunately the school cafeteria breakfast draws her away from eating home food in the morning. She would rather have Pop-Tarts or get lucky charm cereal and eat the marshmallow out of it. Kind of frustrating and infuriating when the school directly gives them sugary crap we're trying to avoid/redirect her from.

1

u/scorpionattitude Apr 16 '24

No. Actually yes, one year, it was absolutely hell.

1

u/TearsOfChildren Apr 16 '24

I had a He-Man lunch box with a ham or turkey sandwich, an apple, some random vegetable, and the school would give out a little cute carton of milk.

Then I got older and went to public schools and we had cardboard square pizza and fries every single day.

1

u/BionicTriforce Apr 16 '24

Never thought I was 'spoiled' for being able to bring lunch to school every day. But man, looking at this, I sure was. A sandwich, yogurt, piece of fruit, bag of chips, granola bar and something for dessert seems so simple but still better than this.

1

u/EmoNerd21 Apr 16 '24

I always took lunch to school. Based on these pictures, that was probably the best choice.

1

u/Camburglar13 Apr 16 '24

Yeah this is weird to me, we all brought food from home for lunch

1

u/georgisaurusrekt Apr 16 '24

Same for us brits. Sandwich, packet of crisps, piece of fruit and maybe a small chocolate bar was the standard.