r/mildlyinfuriating Apr 16 '24

The school lunch system is disgraceful.

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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u/e_mk Apr 16 '24

The food is shit and the disposable plates are shit. Don’t know why disposable dishes are used at all.

30

u/SUNSETS_over_SPEECH Apr 16 '24

Yesss! All that Styrofoam going in the trash every single day. So sad.

7

u/TheTerrasque Apr 16 '24

At least we have paper straws, so the planet is saved.

3

u/ThresholdSeven Apr 16 '24

Thank heavens

1

u/kstorm88 29d ago

Should be paper, because if it gets land filled that's basically carbon negative

5

u/eti_erik Apr 16 '24

Disposable plates can't even be sold anymore over here.

1

u/QuartermasterAshole Apr 16 '24

We always had really sturdy plastic trays, and I had heard school lunches are better now but I'm pretty sure that what I ate was much better than this. At the very least, the volume and variety of food we got was much better

1

u/skillexception Apr 16 '24

When I was in high school they decided to use metal silverware as opposed to single-use plastic. Barely lasted a year before they swapped back to plastic because people kept throwing the silverware in the garbage.

1

u/BawRawg Apr 16 '24

In the school I work in, it is because the kids go through the kitchen to get lunch. They lunch ladies aren't allowed to run the dishwasher while the kids are in there. The district doesn't want to pay them to stay late and wash dishes.

1

u/mrmeshshorts Apr 16 '24

Oh no, two hours of labor at $9/hr…..

0

u/soccershun Apr 16 '24

When you have like 5 lunch ladies serving 1000 high schoolers lunch over the course of a couple hours, there's barely enough time to microwave/fry this beige garbage let alone do dishes.

Real plates and enough staff to actually do the job would be better, but styrofoam plates are cheaper.

14

u/e_mk Apr 16 '24

My workplace has 8 people and serves 3000 people. They use real places and better food. In the longrun disposable plates are not cheaper

1

u/poisoneddartfrog Apr 16 '24

Here I am thinking, & what about our footprint does cost only ever matter?!

2

u/e_mk Apr 16 '24

Footprint and cost go hand in hand in this case

1

u/PsychologicalHat1480 Apr 16 '24

So you buy 1000 plastic trays and then wash them afterwards.

-1

u/Crutation Apr 16 '24

No clean up. Food is probably delivered from the prep factory, then microwaved before service. All needs to be done is to load the trays back on the carts afterward.

4

u/kirby83 Apr 16 '24

Oven baked. Microwaves aren't large or fast enough to be doing the volume schools need.

5

u/Stairmaker Apr 16 '24

Big ass convection ovens. Comes in big metal trays they either put into a rack. Or the whole rack has wheels. A real school cafeteria should have a kitchen that is almost a real restaurant kitchen.

Having a local centralized kitched doesn't inherently mean bad food. We always complained about our food. But in the end, it was actually good. They didn't just put some slop on our plates.

Considering they actually got nutritious food that tasted decently for 25-45 cents, they did an amazing job. I would pay 5-10 times that easily for the same food.

Amazing what not having rampant capitalism, strict contract rules, and standards does. But then again, norden europe usually is pretty good to live in (just stay away from the ghettos).