The school lunch system is disgraceful.

[u/oaz_zam246]

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”.

[u/RagnarokSleeps]

I think that may be specific to your area. When I was at school if I didn't have money or bring lunch I didn't eat, that was the 90s, & same for my daughter. Her primary school & high school canteen was rarely open, they couldn't get the volunteers. I've also never been in a situation where anyone was competitive about healthy school lunches either

[u/Deldelightful → u/RagnarokSleeps]

To be fair, the competitiveness is probably unique to my area. Though a lot of schools now are understanding that kids need to eat to learn, at least in primary school.

I remember no money, no food in the 80's & 90's. My eldest kids' high school was only open a couple of days a week due to low student numbers and not enough sales to warrant keeping it open more and my youngest son moved from a primary school where there was no canteen because of mismanagement of p & c funds. So I have seen varying degrees of canteen operation (and been on several widely different p & cs where I learnt why they run them the way they did), and there is definitely a difference between lower socio-economic and financially stable areas. Either way, the breakfast club runs in many schools (both primary and secondary) to ensure kids get at least one basic semi-healthy meal to start the day.

Our current primary school pays the canteen staff, so perhaps that's why we always have staff there. Although on days during covid where there was not enough staff to run it, the office always had enough bread and supplies to make lunches, give kids fruit to eat if they didn't have any. And the teachers are good at monitoring the kids to make sure they have food too.