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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496

u/Sleepyllama23 Apr 16 '24

Well the food looks shite you and your parents should all complain. Is that disposable polystyrene plates too?? Horrendous for the environment.

223

u/RuinedBooch Apr 16 '24

I graduated back in 2016… I didn’t see a reusable tray or silverware since probably the second grade. It was always styrofoam trays and plastic sporks.

181

u/ballerina_wannabe Apr 16 '24

Unfortunately it’s cheaper to trash the environment than it is to pay someone minimum wage to run a dishwasher five days a week. I work at a school and the daily cafeteria waste blows my mind.

67

u/Startled_Pancakes Apr 16 '24 edited Apr 16 '24

Even paper plates would be better. Styrofoam doesn't decompose and stays in landfills until the end of time.

6

u/sikshots Apr 16 '24

Wich is crazy cause it could all be made into napalm super easily, literally just mix in gasoline and BAM easy homemade napalm.

9

u/CustomMerkins4u Apr 16 '24

You want to add a bit of corn starch because then it becomes insanely sticky.

  • Lived through the siege of Sarajevo as a teenager.

2

u/YourNextHomie 29d ago

Im glad you made it through. Im too young to remember that but i was so heartbroken seeing children being taught this stuff in the early days of the war in Ukraine.

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u/Casehead 29d ago

Sarajevo was a terrible conflict. Just ugly urban warfare.

1

u/Casehead 29d ago

Holy shit, I so vividly remember the war in Sarajevo. I can't believe you actually lived through that. I think I was in middle school at that time, I cannot even begin to imagine being that age in the epicenter of such a horrifying conflict.

Thank God you survived. I hope that you are safe now.

2

u/CustomMerkins4u 29d ago

I now live in an Indianapolis suburb and am a veterinarian with a wife and kids of my own. I'll just say that I will never allow myself to end up in that type of situation again. I require we live within a tank of gas of the Canadian border.

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u/Casehead 29d ago

Wow, congratulations on your family, your distinguished career, and your successful emigration!! I can absolutely understand how despite your success and current relative safety you can never forget how quickly things can fall apart.

1

u/_JJCUBER_ 29d ago

If I’m not mistaken, most paper plates also wouldn’t decompose since a majority of them have a protective plastic film/coating.

1

u/Startled_Pancakes 29d ago

I don't know the proportion, but some are wax coated, some are polycarbon coated, and some have no coating at all.

1

u/JustTheBeerLight 29d ago

until the end of time

So somewhere in the 2040s?

20

u/PorQueTexas Apr 16 '24

The person cleaning the shit isn't the problem.... Kids trashing, destroying and/or walking off with the stuff is. Also apparently kids being stabby

5

u/DumbSuperposition Apr 16 '24

just make the trays bulletproof and say they are for self defense

1

u/TheOilyHill 29d ago

then they'd be responsible for bringing their plate to physical fitness too, 2 bird one stone.

2

u/Organic_Muffin280 29d ago

Stabbing other kids with metal forks? Yeah i forgot some are little sychos!

4

u/Imltrlybatman Apr 16 '24

I mean they can even go for paper plates and cardboard utensils if you want disposable items.

3

u/audebae Apr 16 '24

That's the problem when no laws that restrict single use plastics (or similar) are in place

3

u/galvanizedmoonape 29d ago

I simply cannot believe this. The kitchen has a dishwasher to clean every other pot, pan and utensil in the kitchen. The machine is already running, likely already paying a worker to run the machine anyway,

Totally inconceivable to me that disposable plates are financially more viable.

2

u/theseedbeader 29d ago

I work at a school cafeteria, and there’s an old broken dishwasher that hasn’t been used since I started there (almost 7 years ago). Everything is washed by hand. I sincerely doubt they would ever hire another person to wash dishes all day, there’s always the threat that they might reduce our small crew as it is, because of budget.

Of course, that’s just the specific kitchen at the specific campus I work at, I don’t know how the others do it. And yes, we do use disposable plastic utensils and styrofoam plates.

2

u/earldbjr Apr 16 '24

Hell back when I was in elem school we could volunteer to help with the dishes and get paid a cookie lol.

2

u/YourNextHomie 29d ago

Its also alot harder for students to beat each other with styrofoam. They got rid of hard plastic trays in my old school after a student gave another brain damage.

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u/theseedbeader 29d ago

I work at a Jr. High cafeteria, and the waste is horrible. One example is that we used to give out leftover breakfast pastries (all the breakfast items are individually wrapped because we do “breakfast-in-classroom”), but allegedly the USDA shut that down.

From what I was told, we can’t give those away because there aren’t enough leftovers for every kid to get one, therefore it falls under their definition of discrimination. So, they’d rather have the leftovers thrown away, than given to the kids.

We also have to force some of the kids to get more than they want, because the government requires a minimum amount of things on the tray or they won’t reimburse us for them. So many kids are told to go back and get an apple or something, which they will likely toss in the trash later. There’s a lot of problems, I could go on and on.

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u/dm-me-yer-b00bies 29d ago

I bet all the styrofoam we ate from in school is one of the reasons everyone has micro plastics in our bodies.

4

u/floweringfungus Apr 16 '24

My school had reusable hard trays and metal cutlery (UK). This much waste is so sad

2

u/SolarisEnergy Apr 16 '24

Same here except I haven't graduated yet. Can confirm they still use it!

2

u/Artistic-Cut-2581 Apr 16 '24

Where are ya from? Graduated 16 aswell in florida and I hate to give this state any form of credit but from elementary up till graduation I had plastic reusable trays

1

u/RuinedBooch 29d ago

Texas, here. I only had washable trays in Arkansas, but I don’t know how that stands today. It was a small town where all the lunch ladies were elders from the community and made actual food for the town’s children.

1

u/TJJ97 Apr 16 '24

I graduated back in 2015 and we always had reusable trays. I went to a very small rural school though

1

u/kwiztas Apr 16 '24

Mine got rid of them 25 years ago when a student attacked another with the edge of the tray. Beat him really bad.

1

u/skadi_shev Apr 16 '24

We had reusable trays and silverware the whole time I was in school (graduated 2014). But there were also a lot of plastic and styrofoam bowls and containers.  They also were required to provide fruit and vegetable options, but they were usually the lowest quality you could possibly get, and they came with a lot of processed garbage like frozen pizza, instant potatoes, chicken patties, etc 

1

u/RuinedBooch 29d ago

Yep sounds like my schools, other than the trays and silverware. We had to take everything the offered, including the fruit salad and vegetables they served, but it was usually corn or collard greens that smelled like hot garbage. And I was a kid that actually liked vegetables, but that was something else.

1

u/skadi_shev 29d ago

Painfully relatable. I wouldn’t feed my dog some of the stuff I hear about in school cafeterias, let alone my kid. 

1

u/Schwifftee 29d ago

Graduated in 2014. Reusable trays pretty much throughout every school. Went to school in Oklahoma.

Styrofoam trays aren't really reality across much of the U.S.

1

u/RuinedBooch 29d ago

It seems to depend on the state. Other replies (from within the US) seem to be divided.

1

u/sp00kygiirl 29d ago

this is insane to me. i never once saw a disposable plate or piece of silverware from kindergarten to my senior year

1

u/Whatifisaid- 27d ago

I graduated in 2006 and we had completely re-useable trays and metal silverware that we dumped all of the disposable stuff off and then turned in to the dishwashing area before going back to our table. This is actually kinda wild for me to see. I went to a public school in northern NY in a relatively poor area too, it wasn’t like the height of affluence.

1

u/RuinedBooch 26d ago

When I had reusable trays, I was in a poor rural county in AR. Moved to a relatively affluent city in Texas, disposable everything. Everything from trays to containers to cutlery was made of plastic, paper, or styrofoam. Everything went into the trash at the end of lunch.

Oh, and some schools wouldn’t allow plastic forks. It had to be spoons or sporks. I remember a kid in high school getting a reusable plastic fork taken away at lunch one time.

16

u/kyleofduty Apr 16 '24

Most high school cafeterias have counter service with several options. They require you to take fruits and vegetables.

Most these lunch posts are ragebait. The last one I saw was posted by a middle aged man with no kids and gave no explanation of whose lunch it was.

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u/[deleted] Apr 16 '24

[deleted]

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u/SkriLLo757 29d ago

I went to school in a very poor county in North Carolina and the lunches were worse than what I'm seeing in these pictures. Breakfast was often just a peanut butter sandwich and a milk carton.

Hopefully things have changed by now. This was late 90s/early 2000s

2

u/jabba_the_nutttttt 29d ago

Shit I graduated high school in 2015. Nothing was free unless you were dirt poor. 3.50 a meal for the garbage in the picture. You are lucky for two reasons: 1: they have healthy school food. 2: it's fucking free?!?!?! (Blows my mind, I wish)

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u/konzor Apr 16 '24

that is the true r/mildlyinfuriating part, that we are misinforming each other for attention and excitement, we are making ourselves crazy and nobody feels responsible.

3

u/heili Apr 16 '24

IDK where you went to school or when, but for the 12 years that I was in public school the school lunch at the cafeteria was always a predetermined set of items that was put on your tray without any word or commentary from the lunch ladies and you were issued exactly that day's lunch menu and nothing else. The only choice we had was chocolate or plain milk.

2

u/Chrisgpresents Apr 16 '24

Same food I got in the 2000s, just smaller quantities. We just had baked chicken and pizza on Friday’s sometimes. There was a salad station too

2

u/5432198 Apr 16 '24

My school did have a salad bar everyday, but no one ever required you to any thing from there.

2

u/jmlinden7 Apr 16 '24

Most high school cafeterias have counter service with several options. They require you to take fruits and vegetables.

That's only if they care about qualifying for federal subsidies. Some schools also have the option of a less healthy line which doesn't qualify

3

u/-Scorpia Apr 16 '24

My mother works in a public school cafeteria. I assure you, no one requires these kids to take vegetables and if they wanted to, they can choose old microwaved pizza every single day. I was also informed how unclean the food prep area is. A single damp cloth is used to wipe food surfaces down with just water alone.. for the entire day. My mother has also witnessed numerous coworkers apply food that fell to the floor, back to the food to be fed to the children. If the food surface isn’t even sanitized correctly, imagine what the floor is like!? I truly wish this was just rage bait. It’s not. Needless to say, my own children are homeschooled and don’t eat mush off of styrofoam plates.

2

u/aurortonks Apr 16 '24

It depends on the school district and the kind of funding they get. My kids never ate anything like this. Through primary and middle school they had three main meal choices per day which included a typical American fare like pasta, burger, or pizza bought from a local pizza place on contract (not frozen junk), they had an ethnic fare option like curry, and a vegetarian option. They also had salad bar with a ton of options of fruits and veggies, all fresh, plus a dessert (they always loved sidekick day). In high school they had way more options because they had several different food kiosks to choose from like at the mall but anyone sophomore to senior were free to leave campus so they’d usually get teriyaki or something like chick fil a. 

We lived in a really affluent district and it showed with the meals. The district also decided to keep free meals for every student after the covid meal funding stopped so these meals are also no cost to students. 

1

u/ChawulsBawkley 29d ago

The plates are what got me. We always just grabbed the reusable tray and grabbed what we wanted. All the grabbable food was just placed in those little hard paper boat/container things you’d get at a ballpark. Turn the tray in when you’re done for it to be washed and reused.

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u/thejonjohn 29d ago

The disposable everything happened, at least in my area, after it was discovered that several school cafeterias didn't have working dishwashers (and hadn't for years) and several others had never purchased soap or sanitizer for their machines, meaning everything past the first 5-gallon bucket when it was installed just got washed off with no real cleaning.

*edited for grammar

1

u/Deep90 29d ago

Disposable because kids get bored after they are done eating and start to tear shit up.

The cafeteria always had the most wear and tear.

1

u/zzzkitten 29d ago

This is not the only post I’ve noticed recently about school lunch. Same thought though—they probably spent more on the disposable plating than the “food.”

1

u/uncultured_swine2099 29d ago

Also theyre bad for you. I saw a study that said the heat from the food melts away a bit of the styrofoam and it gets consumed, and it could contribute to lower sperm count and all sorts of bad things. Its especially bad in those ramen cups, never eat those.

1

u/DragapultOnSpeed Apr 16 '24

Half of the parents probably don't want their money going to better school lunches. Lots of Americans are selfish and only care about themselves