Fed up with Lunch: The School Lunch Project

Tim, this isn’t her blog. And I’ve posted this project elsewhere… I was surprised to find it hasn’t been on Neatorama before.

What do you expect? the whole education system has a “fast food franchise” style to it.

Very cool project, though projecting this one school’s food to the entire country would be a big assumption. I admit I only skimmed the blog, and I see that the topics are indeed universal to the entire US, but the food itself seems to be that of only one school.

As a child of a former food system chef, I can personally account that not all food systems are the same, and even all food service in a single district can vary in quality and selection – which is perhaps one of the points to this project?

Another point I want to make is that lunch is usually 1 meal out of 3 for a child’s day. The other two are (likely) eaten at home with the child’s parent(s). Instilling good habits and learning to make good choices has to start at home. Yes, there needs to be healthier options. Yes, children often make poor choices when offered poor choices. Yes, school lunch programs have a great deal of improving to do. But, Parents are also responsible for teaching their children to make better choices.

Sandwich?!?! That’s a Pop Tart!

School lunches probably come from the same supplier as prison food. They’re disgusting and hardly fit for a dog to eat. I was really lucky I guess; back when I went to school we had actual cooks in the kitchen who prepared the meals like you would at home. Can you imagine, no prepackaged shrink wrapped microwaveable slop, just actual honest to goodness food.

I remember loving my school lunches as well. Elementary school, my fav was the honey PB&J sandwich served with hot veggie soup and cornbread.
Middle school was just as good.
HS was awesome. Tons of options and all of them tasty.

Too bad schools can’t go back to what they used to be.

I do not remember school lunch fondly. We had beans and cornbread twice a week. Soy burgers on Friday -that was the highlight of the week. NEVER had hot dogs, pizza, spaghetti, or tacos. Chicken nuggets hadn’t been invented. Even the soup was nasty. And they never had a “vegetarian option” or an alternate choices. But then, we weren’t allowed to eat in the cafeteria after 6th grade because it was too small.

the school lunch program is ridiculously complex. there are food accountants to keep track of things.

additionally, it’s not run by the USDA, it’s run by the Dept. of Defense. the DoD took over in the 70s.

In elementary school, I went to a small private school with delicious homemade lunches. In junior high and high school, I went to public school and the lunch system went through at least 4 major changes in the system. These lunches look…unhealthy…

What is wrong with packing a lunch???

To those who are helpfully suggesting that if these lunches are so bad, parents should just fix something at home or serve a good and big breakfast: that may have worked for your family, but school hot lunch programs serve many students for whom this is one of their only guaranteed meals of the day.

19 million children in America qualify for free or reduced-price lunches at school and depend on these meals. The real tragedy here isn’t that kids are forced to eat crap, it’s that the programs are so under-funded that we force them to rely on this crap for nutrition because “oh, their parents should just make them something to take in if they don’t like it.”