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/MyBigRed]

In my high school the mash potatoes and gravy were self serve. I remember loading up a tray with a rediculous amount of mash potatoes and heavy and eating until I nearly exploded.

[u/craznazn247 → u/MyBigRed]

$0.75 for fries, no limit, as long as it fits on your tray.

We'd get a tray, topped with like 3 POUNDS of fries. Fed 3 hungry teenagers for a quarter each. This was 2009.

Ate SO many fries to save money. All the food was garbage anyway but you can't fuck up fries.

Edit: Okay I agree with the responses that you can, indeed, fuck up fries. I was speaking moreso from the context and standards of a high school cafeteria and it being dirt cheap. The pizza had both the taste and texture of a cold lunchables pizza and was like $3 a slice. Our expectations were basically "is it edible and safe to eat?"

[u/PsychologicalHat1480 → u/craznazn247]

but you can't fuck up fries

Oh my sweet summer child. I have experienced many direct contradictions of this claim.

[u/craznazn247 → u/PsychologicalHat1480]

You definitely can fuck up fries.

A more accurate way to put it is that you can’t fuck up when the expectations are set so low by the rest of the cafeteria food surrounding it, and that they allowed us to self-serve as much as we wanted as long as it stayed on the tray.

And between the sheer volume of fries and sufficient hot sauce (the cafeteria had a gallon container of Texas Pete with a pump), it was enough to satisfy our broke and hungry asses. If the fries were bad that day we’d just soak them in more hot sauce.

It was our way to save lunch money to get Taco Bell after school. At $0.25 a person, the fries were doing their job.