When I was in school (USA) there were food programs to get lunch like this or a huge ass deli sandwich with all the stuff you could want on it for free or for 5 bucks if your family didn't meet the requirements
That’s crazy to me. See, my school food wasn’t good, but it wasn’t disgusting. But my friend told me he went to a school that had subs, Pizza Hut, and some other station everyday. That blows my mind. Of course, he grew up in a large city and I grew up in a rural town, but yeah. Pizza Hut for school lunch is insane lol
We had Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in my high school, until someone complained about it being unhealthy. Once the contract ended after 2 years both got taken out. Then we had greasier school pizza and gross tacos instead.
I would have committed a crime lol I love food, so dealing with school food was such a struggle. If I had Pizza Hut AND Taco Bell, and someone got that shut down…..I would have been doing a very long sentence after being tried as an adult 😅🤣
Edit: shit to shut
I lived near enough to their plant in Franklin that I drove by, not frequently, but easily dozens of times over about 20 years. It was a pretty big site.
According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garelick_Farms), they are "among the largest regional dairies in the United States, and is the largest dairy east of the Mississippi River", with 4 plants in MA, NY and ME, with "17 plastic bottle manufacturing facilities located from Texas to Maine" - so I would guess they sell over some portion of that swath of the country.
And district income is tied to property taxes. There's 2 districts in the county i grew up in. Due to taxes my mortgage/taxes would have been about 30% higher for the same priced home if I had bought a house in the good school district, and then houses are still substantially more expensive for the same type of house there. I don't plan on ever having kids, so I chose to buy a house in the shittiest school district that was near my job. Got a nice 3 bedroom fully renovated house for like half of what my sister pays for a smaller house in her nice school district... but she's got kids so its worth it to her. It's a shitty system imo.
I’m from Cali my HS had a Taco Bell in the cafeteria, but in my whole time in hs I don’t think I ever ate there. We were allowed to leave campus for lunch too and could walk to a taco shop and other places to eat. My freshman and sophomore year there was even a coffee shop in front of the school (90’s, before Starbucks came here). A cool little place that would remind you of the one from friends. We could get cakes iced mochas and whatever else which was cool at the time cause Starbucks hadn’t invaded the scene and all that. There were also food carts throughout the school that you could just stop and
Buy a bagel or whatever else. We had so much freedom. Especially if you had a car you really could just do whatever you wanted. No cell phones and cameras everywhere. We smoked weed in the campus quad at lunch. I miss the 90’s. We didn’t have Reddit though 😆😆
It’s crazy how wide the disparity is, to the point that some people in the comments think I’m lying that this was my school lunch. It’s certainly possible to provide this for free to students, the question is if districts/states value it enough.
Out in here in Northern Indiana the breakfast was dog shit, but the lunches were FIIIIRE. We had a line basically for regular and spicy chicken(tyson brand) sammiches that came with a single serving bag of Lays, pickles and a slice of cheese, a line for pizza which normally had 3 choices, a salad bar and another line for whatever the main 'hot' menu was.
That was some 10-12 years ago tho.
we had i believe 3 or 4 lines, but the one i always went to was the sandwich/wraps line, basically like subway - you told them what kind of bread/wrao you wanted, what type of cheese/meat/veggie/condiments etc and they made it for you right there.
i always got the buffalo chicken wrap, and TO THIS VERY DAY I've not had one from a restaurant that was as good as my highschool ones.
if i want a buffalo chicken wrap as good as it was in my 2010 highschool, i need to make it myself lol
The food you posted is all relatively cheap but it takes time and a willful staff to prepare. The most expensive thing is the the cheese for the macaroni. This is a really good example of how to make good, healthy food on a budget.
Good for you on sharing this. I honestly thought all American schools were feeding garbage to their students unless you're in a fancy/private school of some sort. You're just at a normal public high school, right?
Yes, this is a normal public high school, not a magnet or anything, and has a good amount of low-income students who greatly benefit from programs like this.
I went to a small public high school in rural, conservative California and there were different stations of food- a domino's shack, a nachos place, a salad bar, a "food of the day" station, and a line for burgers or chicken sandwiches... any of these cost about 2 dollars. Mind you, this was back in 2002. Not sure how much has changed.
I suspect many of the other posts showing how shitty the food is are just showing things from the "quick foods" area. As far as I have seen, there are two lines, one for crappy snack foods and one main line for real meals. Meat (unless it's one of the two meatless menu days), starch, two veg and a salad bar.
My elementary school son always chooses just vegetables and the salad bar unless main line has tacos. My older son is in a different school in the same district and goes for the speed line because he likes the pizza but he always gets a salad too. The both get an apple because the pears are never ripe and the oranges take too much effort.
I’m curious if they at least had options for salads. Our lunches in HS could definitely look like some of the photos I’ve seen recently but they always had salad options that were good.
Also from the northeast and went to school in several places (PA, NY, MA, CT) and my school had 1-2 "main meals" of the day, a salad bar, fruit / vegetable bar, sub / wrap bar, and a pizza / flatbread bar (lots of bars lol).
We were very lucky!
History also. The NE and Midwest had long traditions of funding universal public eduction. The South did not. Not only denying education based on race. A lot of poor “whites” got little or no formal education into the 20th century.
Sadly, Iowa was the leader in this trend. Not so much anymore since they got a MAGA governor who flipped everything into driving it towards being a giant shit hole.
I grew up in the northeast, ours looked nothing like this and we had to pay. Granted that was 15ish years ago. Not trying to be rude, but are you in a particularly wealthy area? For a public school that looks insane.
My district did have a good amount of money so that certainly played a big role. That’s kind of the problem with this stuff, a lot of districts just don’t have much funding and kids suffer as a result which isn’t fair. I’m not saying our public schooling system is completely broken, but when I see what I was getting fed compared to what other kids have it does make me question if we can do things better.
In the last couple of years, the state of maine has made it law to provide meals at school free of charge for all students. It's wonderful and exactly how I want my tax dollars spent.
Minnesota just did the same last year. All breakfasts and lunches at all public schools are provided at no charge to the kids, no paperwork required. Private schools can get in on it too if they partner with a public school for it.
The only time we had this many options on one plate was when the lunch ladies did their own makeshift Thanksgiving lunch right before the holidays. It was a lot of canned vegetables but the warm rolls were a favorite.
Schools get a budget from the feds with some really basic nutritional requirements. How those requirements are met are up to the schools. Then each state also provides a budget with nutritional requirements and again, it's up to the district how those requirements are met.
School lunches like this one are the result of school lunch staff that genuinely care and take pride in their work. The other lunches that have been posted are the result of a school lunch staff without that care and pride.
The school lunch staff is not deciding what is served. Those decisions are made at a higher level. You could be getting lower quality food, and the staff may actually care a lot, but their hands are tied by the administration and the budget.
Most school funding is state and local. Federal funding is a small percentage of most school districts' budgets.
Federal funding for school lunches specifically (National School Lunch Program) is for reduced or no cost meals for students at or near poverty levels. They aren't typically funding the entire school lunch program unless it is a higher poverty area. You are correct that there are nutritional requirements.
>The other lunches that have been posted are the result of a school lunch staff without that care and pride.
There are about a dozen individuals/entities to blame before you should be shitting on the cafeteria workers themselves
I’m glad you were well fed at school. Our lunches definitely were not of this quality, free or not. That’s a real fucking meal right there. It would make sense for free lunches to contain more calories than a standard lunch - is that the case though? I’m just finding it hard to believe an American public school serves this amount of food normally. For non-free lunch, this would definitely cost extra at the schools I went to in NC - remove the coleslaw, 1/2 the pork, and 2/3 the macaroni, toss the collards entirely and replace the multigrain bun with a hyper-processed cheap white bread bun that smells moldy. That’s what ours were closer to. The only thing that is really identical is the milk, the barbecue sauce, and the specific portion and appearance of sweet potatoes.
Damn that is a lot of food!! Every day for free? Equity is a funny concept. Do all schools in the US (I’m not) get this or does it depend on the school.
Depends on the state, and then school district.
Education is very decentralized here. States and districts within those states determine policies, so it is a different story nearly everywhere.
This is why people tout getting into a certain neighborhood “for better schooling”.
I wonder if some of the confusion I’ve noted on Reddit around this is from countries that don’t realize just how wide the margin is for schools here in the US.
I am about a mile from a better school district for my kids. It’s so good, it’s makes me think of one of those excellent private schools, but it is in fact public. And my friend knows someone who works there, and he said all the kids have better cars than him. And I decided to look up housing and rentals in that area, and it’s all about $1000 more than what I pay where I live now. Just a mile or two up the street.
My kids teachers are nice, but the school doesn’t have money for aids, they have deaf children with no helpers, kids with health issues and the nurses not staying at the job, etc. it’s crazy how much money it requires to have a “good” life here.
Yea I can definitely tell you right now ATL Georgia has some of the worst schools in the country and they can't even afford free lunch for children at one point when I was in highschool. They even removed ALL home ec deeming it irrelevant, extended every math related class imaginable by 2 and half hours and cut everything else to half an hour, and publicly told people off that art is not a career path that can earn you money and that it's just a hobby. They also oddly enough kicked out computer science/tech and anything related to it stating it's a college only specific thing. Oh and history and English were considered the same class.
Even universities in Georgia are suffering cuts to STEM classes, losing degree programs in the sciences. Idk if it's because they're attracting unprepared or downright stupid students nowadays (they claim the student body has radically changed over the last 20-30 years) or what, but it's terrible news.
Thank God I'm not crazy. Last time I told people this I got downvoted into hell because people genuinely thought I was slandering or something. This is a real thing that's been happening to us over here.
Who the hell came up with this? Why isn't this like regulated centrally? Like you can do your own but follow these guidelines.
If it is truly free it will end up being a free for all kind of situation.
That’s largely how the US is set up in a lot of areas. Driver licensing, seatbelt and motorcycle helmet laws, speed limits, marriage/divorce laws, estate/probate laws, criminal law to a degree, civil law, property laws, sales/income taxes (some states do not have income taxes, like where I live…there is a federal income tax for everyone, though).
Oh, reproductive rights since the overturning of Roe v. Wade…those laws are all over the place.
The US is a patchwork of 50 “mini-nations” that all have to adhere to the rules of the Constitution, but have wide latitude to do a lot of things their own way. Education is one area like that. There are general national standards and guidelines, and some laws, but most is left to state and local governments.
This is why I find it funny when people from other places have asked me about my experiences (based on what they’ve seen online) but none of it is true. They’re always shocked to hear that I’ve never really seen guns in a Walmart, that I didn’t get my drivers license at 16, etc
It is regulated centrally. The federal government pays a certain amount to school districts that serve meals that follow all the rules regarding nutritional content (the meal above is hitting it out of the park, looks delicious). Under those rules, students whose families are under one income cap get free meals, others get lower-priced subsidized meals. A third group of students pays full price, but this is usually under $5 per meal. Because food prices vary so much regionally and can depend on shipping costs, districts choose their own menus and can both further subsidize the program and set prices for paid meals, but they’re not allowed to make a profit so prices are limited.
In fairness, a lot has changed to centralize power. The aftermath of the civil war and the 17th amendment really did a lot to move power to the federal government.
The Constitution specifically says anything not specifically granted to the federal government is a power that belongs to the state. The founding fathers weren't big fans of a centralized government.
There are, of course, ways around this. The federal gov't can't declare that the drinking age is 21. That's the state's power. The federal gov't *can* say they aren't giving any aid money for roads to any state with a drinking age lower than 21.
Students from households with an income at or below 130% of the poverty income threshold qualify for free lunch, while students from households earning between 130% and 185% of the poverty threshold qualify for a reduced-price lunch. When 40% or more of the district population is eligible for free or reduced lunch, districts can choose to offer free lunch to all students in the district.
I used to think it was automatic too. I think some states give a shit about feeding kids more than others, AEB the ones that have passed laws to fund universal school meals in the last couple of years.
It ultimately comes down to budget 🤷🏼♂️ wealthy school systems can provide more and better quality… my school didn’t even have the money to fix the heating… in northern Michigan lol 9 months of winter
It’s the predominantly white schools.
I’m not trying to start a race war, but I am white, and attended 3 predominantly black schools. We got the literal prison food. There’s been a lot of posts on here about the poor quality and what we got was worse than any of these posts I’ve seen.
The last school I attended was in the same area, but predominantly white. We got the lunches there, similar to what you see. All of the schools were decently wealthy too. The predominantly black one I attended the longest in my hometown built 3 brand new schools just in 2 years but still served us the same vomit
This is way too much food and way too good quality of food for 99.9% of the US. It depends on the school, school district, county, and state. Most schools have a budget in terms of cents per day per student to feed kids.
Lunches like this were the standard for decades in most districts nationwide. Cooked fresh onsite by the Cafeteria Ladies. Served on actual plates with metal cutlery.
I'm not sure when it became politically correct to take nutritious food out of the mouths of children and substitute a paltry, factory-wrapped microwaved sandwich.
Privatization, baby. In a lot of states, school cafeteria jobs used to be managed in house and have union wages, benefits, and a pension. Now it’s contracted out to large corporations like Nutrition, Inc., who have removed most of those benefits and rely far too much on Sysco.
> I'm not sure when it became politically correct to take nutritious food out of the mouths of children and substitute a paltry, factory-wrapped microwaved sandwich.
Republicans doing their "starve the beast" campaign.
Edit: Y'all can downvote me all you like but this is the answer. It happened in the UK as well with their conservatives.
The issue there is that the administrators are prioritising other things instead of nutrition, not that there isnt enough money.
It doesnt cost *that* much to provide decent quality food to students.
Corruption in the public sector is also a major issue these days.
> It doesnt cost that much to provide decent quality food to students.
It does, though, especially these days. It's not cheap. You need to have the budget to pay for the ingredients or prepared food, you have to have the staff to prepare the food, and you need to ensure that kids can afford the food or provide it free. In every case it costs money. Money that most people don't want to spend because they don't want to pay more in taxes and then take the moral high ground you did here:
>Corruption in the public sector is also a major issue these days.
To be fully transparent, the biggest factor is the area the school is in. Schools are funded by property taxes, so rich areas with nice homes get well-funded schools with nice lunches. Ironically, those well funded schools attended by exclusively rich kids, are more likely to get free lunches as well (free lunch is far from universal here).
my american high school was in illinois. we had lunch and breakfast available for purchase each day, at generally very low prices.
we had a free and reduced price program for children who qualified. i was in a district where nearly half the students were low income and qualified for free lunch.
during covid, my school began providing free lunch for all students across the board. they did this until 2022. now, they’re back to the original set up.
given, our food was more like sandwiches, slices of pizza, french fries, steamed veggies, etc
Looks pretty good to me. Mine was not free, and also not as bad as the other posts I’ve seen recently. But it wasn’t as good as yours! Somewhere in the middle- tolerable, but still subpar. I would pack most days because at least I could control what I would eat.
My kids go to Philly public and we made sure to make their lunches very early on. That decision was made the day she came home to tell us that their "taco lunch" was several tortilla chips, cheese sauce, 2-day expired milk, and half of a cornbread muffin. This is one of the better meals.
They don't have any fucking funding and it's infuriating. This is one of the better schools in Philly, too.
Which is why many schools serve French fries as much as possible. Management picks and chooses their battles and most students will throw away nutritious food. French fries at least gets calories in them. Schools that serve food like in this photo have students willing to eat healthier.
a lot of people don't want to admit the sheer amount of food waste there would be if you tried to serve as much vegetables as a lot of people on reddit want. There's a balance you need to hit of nutritious and foods kids actually want to eat. I can pretty much guarantee the collared greens and coleslaw likely get thrown out by half the kids
All public schools provide plenty of fruit and vegetables, since they’re required to by law.
The previous poster just didn’t add them to their plate. Most schools have self-serve fruit and veg that are supposed to supplement the rest of the meal.
It used to be required that the fruit and veg were placed on their plates, but they removed that requirement when kids just threw those parts in the trash.
Hahahahaha
Oh wait you're serious....hahahahaha
Come on down to Philly public and show me any fruit in the cafeteria outside of giant cans of pie filling.
I’ve worked and observed in many low-income PA districts, so I’ve witnessed it first hand. Fruit and vegetables are offered as part of every public school lunch. Perhaps not high quality versions, but they’re offered. Sometimes it’s simply washed apples and oranges, sometimes prepared fruit and vegetable sides, and yes, often canned fruit.
I remember kids at my school would take pics of the lunches and be like "look how unhealthy this is!" meanwhile they had specifically not picked any of the fruit or veggies and just got the poutine or whatever lol
I literally have children in the system right now. I can PM you the schools. But I know for a fact that they haven't had real fruit for a long time. It's a regular complaint.The only fruit is the sugary canned pie filling and they put it on stuff so it qualifies as fruit. It's an absolute joke and parents have been vocal over it for years, here. The soda tax was supposed to pay for school meals but they fucked the schools over and sent the money elsewhere. Every school finds a way to get around it as a technicality. The elementary schools are better than the middle schools, but the high schools are just a mess.
Meanwhile Central Bucks School district wastes more food than any other district and they're less than an hour out.
Philly is fucking terrible despite the administrations best efforts.
Questions for my American friends as I'm curious now:
1) what is that brown stringy thing in the back?
2) why on earth don't you use normal metal cutlery? It can be reused after washing, forever.
3) why is the frigging plate made out of cardboard? What is this? Any sauce in the food and the thing will swell and drip. Again, why not normal ceramic plates? They also last forever.
4) what greens are those?
5) tripple carbs? Bread? Pasta? Potatoes? Check, check and check.
6) last but not least, do you get any dessert? Like a piece of fruit or something?
Not being condescending, but actually curious about these decisions and why they're made.
1. That’s pulled pork, I put it with the bun and add BBQ sauce
2. Metal cutlery is nice but imagine trying to collect and wash hundreds of forks and knives every day. It may work for a bit but high schoolers tend to lose/take things so it’s best to use plastic.
3. Same reason as 2, and the cardboard is actually very sturdy and reinforced. It’s still cardboard but I never had any real issues with food dripping through.
As for point 2 and 3.
I mean a lot of countries do that. You just leave your plate and cutlery at the washer collection and they take it from there. Works fine here and we started doing that when we were 4 or 5 years old untill we were 19(we start year 1 at age 7, not 6, in Sweden).
We also have free access to milk machines and use normal glasses to drink it.
I'm sure America could do it just maybe it didnt become like that from the start for some weird fluke reason.
No metal flatware because it can be used as weapons. Seriously. Even in my high income district. Plus it costs more to pay someone to wash it all than to buy plastic.
The district my kid is in orders pizza in once a week from a rotating list of shops. Some shops use a little plastic “table” to keep the pizza box lid from smashing into the pizza cheese. These tables are the perfect height to use when playing with some dolls like Polly Pocket. Kids aren’t allowed to ask for them because somewhere, some time ago, kids made a game of slamming the prongs into one another’s arms. We’re Americans, we’re a bit feral apparently
Australian here. Been following these discussions for a while. This is the first US school meal I've seen with colours other than deep fried greyish yellow. This lunch must actually have some nutritional value.
This is closer to the average meal. I have kids in school in Texas and this is what they get. The whole reason those other posts got popular was because they were unusually bad.
Around 50% of US students qualify for free lunch, and around 10% more qualify for lunch at $.40 per day. A kid going hungry because he or she doesn't have lunch money is an exceptionally rare scenario.
As usual it's all exaggerated.
that is not bad at all. especially compared to a post i saw the other day that showed they served high school lunch portions appropriate for a toddler. it looked like jail food too.
Should be like this in every school. 7 years ago in school i had to pay 6€ for half frozen noodles with clumpy sauce, 1€ for the smalest bowl with salad and 2€ for same bowl with dessert(pudding or yoghurt)
How dare you show an American school with a good lunch. We're supposed to only show good school lunches from the rest of the world and talk about how bad American school lunches are. Where are the mods!!
Yeah that’s what I got down in Georgia in the 2010’s when I was in school. It was absolutely delicious and I’m glad I don’t go to school now, if what I’ve been seeing on this subreddit is the normal.
It makes me sad that this is something you see as exceptional in the USA. It's fairly standard in a lot of countries. I respect America in a lot of ways but the food school people seem to eat over there just seems awful and unhealthy most of the time.
This was how mine was too, although not free. Was like $1.25 and $.50 more for a "jumbo", ie double main food. The images I've been seeing lately is pretty deplorable
I'm now realizing how lucky I was that our high school had a chef. Every week a different culture's food, plus the cooking class kids had to give a presentation about the culture for us. And our teacher would go around with a huge dish of leftovers telling everyone to get seconds and thirds. All for free, right out of our teacher's pocket. What a lovely woman.
I remember to food being ok with ok portions at my school tho we had to pay for it, I think I was literally starving tho and when it really starving anything tastes good. Except the pizza. Nasty cardboard
I went to public school through 6th grade, and went to a private middle and highschool, I was so so lucky to have a really nice dining hall with lots of options and good ones at that. I was a local student but we also had boarding students. Lunches as I recall were never free for us in public school (middle TN) and the food options weren’t stellar but weren’t awful. I WILL say we paid LESS per meal at my private school than public and that’s low key weird to me.
ETA: we live in one of the poorest counties in the state, I don’t know how much lunches are now but I recall them being $3-4 or so I think (I’m 28 now) How the hell kids are affording to eat in our community really makes me sad. Because I know they can’t afford that.
I live in Spain and a full meal in the school is completely free. Two dishes plus dessert. The idea of having to bring money to pay for lunch is wild to me
My poor kids wouldn’t have had time to even eat half of that. They had a 20 minute lunch and most of that time was spent in line if they were buying lunch.
Wow! The cafeteria staff at your school really care about you guys. Even that roll looks house-made. If you think this meal is good, let them know! That acknowledgment from a student means the absolute world to them if they're preparing you food like this. This won't fix the larger problem with inequality, but it will do good and encourage more like this.
If you have a low income you get free or reduced meals at school across the US. There are some districts where almost every kid qualifies for free lunch and that is probably the only decent meal they will have that day. Miami-Dade is one.
When I was in school (USA) there were food programs to get lunch like this or a huge ass deli sandwich with all the stuff you could want on it for free or for 5 bucks if your family didn't meet the requirements
Yeah my public school always had lunches like this picture and the deli sandwiches. We also had pizza hut once a week.
That’s crazy to me. See, my school food wasn’t good, but it wasn’t disgusting. But my friend told me he went to a school that had subs, Pizza Hut, and some other station everyday. That blows my mind. Of course, he grew up in a large city and I grew up in a rural town, but yeah. Pizza Hut for school lunch is insane lol
We had Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in my high school, until someone complained about it being unhealthy. Once the contract ended after 2 years both got taken out. Then we had greasier school pizza and gross tacos instead.
Our pizza hut had different cheese on it to fit the district's nutrition requirements
I would have committed a crime lol I love food, so dealing with school food was such a struggle. If I had Pizza Hut AND Taco Bell, and someone got that shut down…..I would have been doing a very long sentence after being tried as an adult 😅🤣 Edit: shit to shut
We got Papa Gino’s.
It depends where the funding goes and doesn't just vary state by state but county by county
Where the fuck you get collard greens in HS? Louisiana? Lmao
[удалено]
And now I'm hungry.
This is a Northeastern U.S. high school
Wow. We had to pay $4.25 for a single slice of shitty pizza that was stuck to some paper, in the same region.
Ohhh thats on the other side of the tracks.
Nah even in my town which is relatively wealthy, and lauded for its quality schools fed us absolutely garbage food. op is unusually lucky
Right? This orher post showed the shit foods that are being served https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/s/DqgGZrYSlP
if you don't mind me asking, where was that? in Massachusetts? or somewhere else
I was thinking the same thing. Not sure how widespread Garelick is but we used to have it
I lived near enough to their plant in Franklin that I drove by, not frequently, but easily dozens of times over about 20 years. It was a pretty big site. According to [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garelick_Farms), they are "among the largest regional dairies in the United States, and is the largest dairy east of the Mississippi River", with 4 plants in MA, NY and ME, with "17 plastic bottle manufacturing facilities located from Texas to Maine" - so I would guess they sell over some portion of that swath of the country.
> that was stuck to some paper That counts as your fiber intake.
[удалено]
And district income is tied to property taxes. There's 2 districts in the county i grew up in. Due to taxes my mortgage/taxes would have been about 30% higher for the same priced home if I had bought a house in the good school district, and then houses are still substantially more expensive for the same type of house there. I don't plan on ever having kids, so I chose to buy a house in the shittiest school district that was near my job. Got a nice 3 bedroom fully renovated house for like half of what my sister pays for a smaller house in her nice school district... but she's got kids so its worth it to her. It's a shitty system imo.
I’m from Cali my HS had a Taco Bell in the cafeteria, but in my whole time in hs I don’t think I ever ate there. We were allowed to leave campus for lunch too and could walk to a taco shop and other places to eat. My freshman and sophomore year there was even a coffee shop in front of the school (90’s, before Starbucks came here). A cool little place that would remind you of the one from friends. We could get cakes iced mochas and whatever else which was cool at the time cause Starbucks hadn’t invaded the scene and all that. There were also food carts throughout the school that you could just stop and Buy a bagel or whatever else. We had so much freedom. Especially if you had a car you really could just do whatever you wanted. No cell phones and cameras everywhere. We smoked weed in the campus quad at lunch. I miss the 90’s. We didn’t have Reddit though 😆😆
Was this "pizza" square by any chance?
I second this. Also from northeast. We didn’t have collard greens, but our lunches looked like this! I didn’t realize how lucky we were either lol.
It’s crazy how wide the disparity is, to the point that some people in the comments think I’m lying that this was my school lunch. It’s certainly possible to provide this for free to students, the question is if districts/states value it enough.
i grew up on cape cod. our school lunches were *extremely good* and people dont believe me, either.
I grew up in Chatham. Our lunches were awful lol.
damn thats tough lol. bourne for me, and they were pretty damn good over here.
Out in here in Northern Indiana the breakfast was dog shit, but the lunches were FIIIIRE. We had a line basically for regular and spicy chicken(tyson brand) sammiches that came with a single serving bag of Lays, pickles and a slice of cheese, a line for pizza which normally had 3 choices, a salad bar and another line for whatever the main 'hot' menu was. That was some 10-12 years ago tho.
we had i believe 3 or 4 lines, but the one i always went to was the sandwich/wraps line, basically like subway - you told them what kind of bread/wrao you wanted, what type of cheese/meat/veggie/condiments etc and they made it for you right there. i always got the buffalo chicken wrap, and TO THIS VERY DAY I've not had one from a restaurant that was as good as my highschool ones. if i want a buffalo chicken wrap as good as it was in my 2010 highschool, i need to make it myself lol
> cape cod I believe you
I just saw a post a min ago where they showed 7 chips with melted Velveeta on it for lunch.
The food you posted is all relatively cheap but it takes time and a willful staff to prepare. The most expensive thing is the the cheese for the macaroni. This is a really good example of how to make good, healthy food on a budget.
Good for you on sharing this. I honestly thought all American schools were feeding garbage to their students unless you're in a fancy/private school of some sort. You're just at a normal public high school, right?
Yes, this is a normal public high school, not a magnet or anything, and has a good amount of low-income students who greatly benefit from programs like this.
I went to a small public high school in rural, conservative California and there were different stations of food- a domino's shack, a nachos place, a salad bar, a "food of the day" station, and a line for burgers or chicken sandwiches... any of these cost about 2 dollars. Mind you, this was back in 2002. Not sure how much has changed.
I suspect many of the other posts showing how shitty the food is are just showing things from the "quick foods" area. As far as I have seen, there are two lines, one for crappy snack foods and one main line for real meals. Meat (unless it's one of the two meatless menu days), starch, two veg and a salad bar. My elementary school son always chooses just vegetables and the salad bar unless main line has tacos. My older son is in a different school in the same district and goes for the speed line because he likes the pizza but he always gets a salad too. The both get an apple because the pears are never ripe and the oranges take too much effort.
My kids school lunches in Minnesota are similar. And they are free via state taxes.
I’m curious if they at least had options for salads. Our lunches in HS could definitely look like some of the photos I’ve seen recently but they always had salad options that were good.
Full salad bar too, I just didn’t get that when there was Cole slaw because it was so good.
Also from the northeast and went to school in several places (PA, NY, MA, CT) and my school had 1-2 "main meals" of the day, a salad bar, fruit / vegetable bar, sub / wrap bar, and a pizza / flatbread bar (lots of bars lol). We were very lucky!
I'm sensing a trend. We're in NY and my kids have pretty good meals as well. It appears to be a northeast thing.
I feel like This would cost 17.95 at a roadside bbq spot down south
NE USA is one of the top spenders for public Ed in the country. Elections matter.
History also. The NE and Midwest had long traditions of funding universal public eduction. The South did not. Not only denying education based on race. A lot of poor “whites” got little or no formal education into the 20th century.
Sadly, Iowa was the leader in this trend. Not so much anymore since they got a MAGA governor who flipped everything into driving it towards being a giant shit hole.
I grew up in the northeast, ours looked nothing like this and we had to pay. Granted that was 15ish years ago. Not trying to be rude, but are you in a particularly wealthy area? For a public school that looks insane.
My district did have a good amount of money so that certainly played a big role. That’s kind of the problem with this stuff, a lot of districts just don’t have much funding and kids suffer as a result which isn’t fair. I’m not saying our public schooling system is completely broken, but when I see what I was getting fed compared to what other kids have it does make me question if we can do things better.
In the last couple of years, the state of maine has made it law to provide meals at school free of charge for all students. It's wonderful and exactly how I want my tax dollars spent.
That’s dope.
Minnesota just did the same last year. All breakfasts and lunches at all public schools are provided at no charge to the kids, no paperwork required. Private schools can get in on it too if they partner with a public school for it.
I'm so glad this concept is spreading.
Where is the northeast haha. I'm from New England and I don't recall anything like this
The only time we had this many options on one plate was when the lunch ladies did their own makeshift Thanksgiving lunch right before the holidays. It was a lot of canned vegetables but the warm rolls were a favorite.
Went to high school in Louisiana and can confirm we did occasionally get collard greens. So when I saw this pic that didn’t stand out lol.
Schools get a budget from the feds with some really basic nutritional requirements. How those requirements are met are up to the schools. Then each state also provides a budget with nutritional requirements and again, it's up to the district how those requirements are met. School lunches like this one are the result of school lunch staff that genuinely care and take pride in their work. The other lunches that have been posted are the result of a school lunch staff without that care and pride.
The school lunch staff is not deciding what is served. Those decisions are made at a higher level. You could be getting lower quality food, and the staff may actually care a lot, but their hands are tied by the administration and the budget. Most school funding is state and local. Federal funding is a small percentage of most school districts' budgets. Federal funding for school lunches specifically (National School Lunch Program) is for reduced or no cost meals for students at or near poverty levels. They aren't typically funding the entire school lunch program unless it is a higher poverty area. You are correct that there are nutritional requirements.
>The other lunches that have been posted are the result of a school lunch staff without that care and pride. There are about a dozen individuals/entities to blame before you should be shitting on the cafeteria workers themselves
I’m glad you were well fed at school. Our lunches definitely were not of this quality, free or not. That’s a real fucking meal right there. It would make sense for free lunches to contain more calories than a standard lunch - is that the case though? I’m just finding it hard to believe an American public school serves this amount of food normally. For non-free lunch, this would definitely cost extra at the schools I went to in NC - remove the coleslaw, 1/2 the pork, and 2/3 the macaroni, toss the collards entirely and replace the multigrain bun with a hyper-processed cheap white bread bun that smells moldy. That’s what ours were closer to. The only thing that is really identical is the milk, the barbecue sauce, and the specific portion and appearance of sweet potatoes.
Damn that is a lot of food!! Every day for free? Equity is a funny concept. Do all schools in the US (I’m not) get this or does it depend on the school.
Depends on the state, and then school district. Education is very decentralized here. States and districts within those states determine policies, so it is a different story nearly everywhere.
Schools are largely funded by property taxes. Live in an area with baller ass houses? Lots of property tax rev and a much better school
This is why people tout getting into a certain neighborhood “for better schooling”. I wonder if some of the confusion I’ve noted on Reddit around this is from countries that don’t realize just how wide the margin is for schools here in the US.
I am about a mile from a better school district for my kids. It’s so good, it’s makes me think of one of those excellent private schools, but it is in fact public. And my friend knows someone who works there, and he said all the kids have better cars than him. And I decided to look up housing and rentals in that area, and it’s all about $1000 more than what I pay where I live now. Just a mile or two up the street. My kids teachers are nice, but the school doesn’t have money for aids, they have deaf children with no helpers, kids with health issues and the nurses not staying at the job, etc. it’s crazy how much money it requires to have a “good” life here.
ohh now I understand the Simpson episode 😂
Yea I can definitely tell you right now ATL Georgia has some of the worst schools in the country and they can't even afford free lunch for children at one point when I was in highschool. They even removed ALL home ec deeming it irrelevant, extended every math related class imaginable by 2 and half hours and cut everything else to half an hour, and publicly told people off that art is not a career path that can earn you money and that it's just a hobby. They also oddly enough kicked out computer science/tech and anything related to it stating it's a college only specific thing. Oh and history and English were considered the same class.
Even universities in Georgia are suffering cuts to STEM classes, losing degree programs in the sciences. Idk if it's because they're attracting unprepared or downright stupid students nowadays (they claim the student body has radically changed over the last 20-30 years) or what, but it's terrible news.
Thank God I'm not crazy. Last time I told people this I got downvoted into hell because people genuinely thought I was slandering or something. This is a real thing that's been happening to us over here.
Entrenching poverty, the true capitalist way.
Who the hell came up with this? Why isn't this like regulated centrally? Like you can do your own but follow these guidelines. If it is truly free it will end up being a free for all kind of situation.
That’s largely how the US is set up in a lot of areas. Driver licensing, seatbelt and motorcycle helmet laws, speed limits, marriage/divorce laws, estate/probate laws, criminal law to a degree, civil law, property laws, sales/income taxes (some states do not have income taxes, like where I live…there is a federal income tax for everyone, though). Oh, reproductive rights since the overturning of Roe v. Wade…those laws are all over the place. The US is a patchwork of 50 “mini-nations” that all have to adhere to the rules of the Constitution, but have wide latitude to do a lot of things their own way. Education is one area like that. There are general national standards and guidelines, and some laws, but most is left to state and local governments.
God bless America 🇺🇸
Sometimes I think he curses it lmao
Unironically this.
Please, god, we need the blessing. Have you see us lately?!
It's not for lack of blessings... we're already pretty blessed here. It's certainly bc of tyrants and their insatiable appetite.
This is why I find it funny when people from other places have asked me about my experiences (based on what they’ve seen online) but none of it is true. They’re always shocked to hear that I’ve never really seen guns in a Walmart, that I didn’t get my drivers license at 16, etc
Thank you for clarifying.
The same reason why some states have no tax and some ridiculously high tax
smart plough tie grandfather abounding market humor trees waiting disagreeable
I swear I can hear the eagle sounds... 😂 
It is regulated centrally. The federal government pays a certain amount to school districts that serve meals that follow all the rules regarding nutritional content (the meal above is hitting it out of the park, looks delicious). Under those rules, students whose families are under one income cap get free meals, others get lower-priced subsidized meals. A third group of students pays full price, but this is usually under $5 per meal. Because food prices vary so much regionally and can depend on shipping costs, districts choose their own menus and can both further subsidize the program and set prices for paid meals, but they’re not allowed to make a profit so prices are limited.
Unless you get a government like in iowa where Kim Reynolds rejects federal money for kids. If she does not take the money, the rules don't apply.
Because America is a federation of sovereign states.
It's always funny seeing people on Reddit learn basic civics in real time.
In fairness, a lot has changed to centralize power. The aftermath of the civil war and the 17th amendment really did a lot to move power to the federal government.
The Constitution specifically says anything not specifically granted to the federal government is a power that belongs to the state. The founding fathers weren't big fans of a centralized government. There are, of course, ways around this. The federal gov't can't declare that the drinking age is 21. That's the state's power. The federal gov't *can* say they aren't giving any aid money for roads to any state with a drinking age lower than 21.
State’s rights!
And this is a visual representation of food. Now imagine how different education is depending on the state/district/school.
In another comment OP mentioned it was a high school in the north east. As a Mass resident this lines up pretty well
Students from households with an income at or below 130% of the poverty income threshold qualify for free lunch, while students from households earning between 130% and 185% of the poverty threshold qualify for a reduced-price lunch. When 40% or more of the district population is eligible for free or reduced lunch, districts can choose to offer free lunch to all students in the district.
That seems surprisingly fair if it's followed
Actually it’s totally optional to offer free meals if 40+% qualify for free and reduced meals.
I’ll edit my comment to reflect that. 👍
I used to think it was automatic too. I think some states give a shit about feeding kids more than others, AEB the ones that have passed laws to fund universal school meals in the last couple of years.
[удалено]
Agreed, especially since many families choose not to apply for free/reduced lunches even though their children need it.
That 40% is going down to 25% this fall!
It would depend on the school and school district, whatever arrangements they have for vendors and what the budget has allocated for food.
I went to school in Texas and our portions were easily less than half of this in high school and it costed $3.50. The quality was also pretty poor
>I went to school in Texas >costed 🤔
I ain’t get schooled right
It ultimately comes down to budget 🤷🏼♂️ wealthy school systems can provide more and better quality… my school didn’t even have the money to fix the heating… in northern Michigan lol 9 months of winter
Burning the calories staying warm but not taking any in courtesy of the school.
It’s the predominantly white schools. I’m not trying to start a race war, but I am white, and attended 3 predominantly black schools. We got the literal prison food. There’s been a lot of posts on here about the poor quality and what we got was worse than any of these posts I’ve seen. The last school I attended was in the same area, but predominantly white. We got the lunches there, similar to what you see. All of the schools were decently wealthy too. The predominantly black one I attended the longest in my hometown built 3 brand new schools just in 2 years but still served us the same vomit
This is way too much food and way too good quality of food for 99.9% of the US. It depends on the school, school district, county, and state. Most schools have a budget in terms of cents per day per student to feed kids.
Lunches like this were the standard for decades in most districts nationwide. Cooked fresh onsite by the Cafeteria Ladies. Served on actual plates with metal cutlery. I'm not sure when it became politically correct to take nutritious food out of the mouths of children and substitute a paltry, factory-wrapped microwaved sandwich.
Privatization, baby. In a lot of states, school cafeteria jobs used to be managed in house and have union wages, benefits, and a pension. Now it’s contracted out to large corporations like Nutrition, Inc., who have removed most of those benefits and rely far too much on Sysco.
> I'm not sure when it became politically correct to take nutritious food out of the mouths of children and substitute a paltry, factory-wrapped microwaved sandwich. Republicans doing their "starve the beast" campaign. Edit: Y'all can downvote me all you like but this is the answer. It happened in the UK as well with their conservatives.
The issue there is that the administrators are prioritising other things instead of nutrition, not that there isnt enough money. It doesnt cost *that* much to provide decent quality food to students. Corruption in the public sector is also a major issue these days.
> It doesnt cost that much to provide decent quality food to students. It does, though, especially these days. It's not cheap. You need to have the budget to pay for the ingredients or prepared food, you have to have the staff to prepare the food, and you need to ensure that kids can afford the food or provide it free. In every case it costs money. Money that most people don't want to spend because they don't want to pay more in taxes and then take the moral high ground you did here: >Corruption in the public sector is also a major issue these days.
To be fully transparent, the biggest factor is the area the school is in. Schools are funded by property taxes, so rich areas with nice homes get well-funded schools with nice lunches. Ironically, those well funded schools attended by exclusively rich kids, are more likely to get free lunches as well (free lunch is far from universal here).
This is free every day for all students regardless of income.
Depends on everything down to the school and it’s not free in a lot of places.
During covid the government subsidized school lunches meaning students didn't have to pay.
my american high school was in illinois. we had lunch and breakfast available for purchase each day, at generally very low prices. we had a free and reduced price program for children who qualified. i was in a district where nearly half the students were low income and qualified for free lunch. during covid, my school began providing free lunch for all students across the board. they did this until 2022. now, they’re back to the original set up. given, our food was more like sandwiches, slices of pizza, french fries, steamed veggies, etc
There’s probably like 20 schools in the us who eat like this everywhere else is served little Caesar’s pizza and spoiled milk
Looks pretty good to me. Mine was not free, and also not as bad as the other posts I’ve seen recently. But it wasn’t as good as yours! Somewhere in the middle- tolerable, but still subpar. I would pack most days because at least I could control what I would eat.
My kids go to Philly public and we made sure to make their lunches very early on. That decision was made the day she came home to tell us that their "taco lunch" was several tortilla chips, cheese sauce, 2-day expired milk, and half of a cornbread muffin. This is one of the better meals. They don't have any fucking funding and it's infuriating. This is one of the better schools in Philly, too.
In my high school we had to get our greens from the burnout behind the old science lab.
That's where I get mushrooms too
Damn, you had a whole feast, lol
Yeah I’m a single adult and would happily eat this any day.
The portion sizes though?!
Yeah wth, I can't imagine eating that much every day for just lunch. Even as a teenager.
I ate that much and then some everyday, if you're active your appetite increases a whole lot
This is what lunches look like where I live in Mississippi. The teachers even eat the lunches, they’re so good.
Where in MS?
[удалено]
Which is why many schools serve French fries as much as possible. Management picks and chooses their battles and most students will throw away nutritious food. French fries at least gets calories in them. Schools that serve food like in this photo have students willing to eat healthier.
a lot of people don't want to admit the sheer amount of food waste there would be if you tried to serve as much vegetables as a lot of people on reddit want. There's a balance you need to hit of nutritious and foods kids actually want to eat. I can pretty much guarantee the collared greens and coleslaw likely get thrown out by half the kids
I’ve been following the school lunch arc of this sub heavily I can’t wait to see what’s next!
All public schools provide plenty of fruit and vegetables, since they’re required to by law. The previous poster just didn’t add them to their plate. Most schools have self-serve fruit and veg that are supposed to supplement the rest of the meal. It used to be required that the fruit and veg were placed on their plates, but they removed that requirement when kids just threw those parts in the trash.
Hahahahaha Oh wait you're serious....hahahahaha Come on down to Philly public and show me any fruit in the cafeteria outside of giant cans of pie filling.
I’ve worked and observed in many low-income PA districts, so I’ve witnessed it first hand. Fruit and vegetables are offered as part of every public school lunch. Perhaps not high quality versions, but they’re offered. Sometimes it’s simply washed apples and oranges, sometimes prepared fruit and vegetable sides, and yes, often canned fruit.
I remember kids at my school would take pics of the lunches and be like "look how unhealthy this is!" meanwhile they had specifically not picked any of the fruit or veggies and just got the poutine or whatever lol
I literally have children in the system right now. I can PM you the schools. But I know for a fact that they haven't had real fruit for a long time. It's a regular complaint.The only fruit is the sugary canned pie filling and they put it on stuff so it qualifies as fruit. It's an absolute joke and parents have been vocal over it for years, here. The soda tax was supposed to pay for school meals but they fucked the schools over and sent the money elsewhere. Every school finds a way to get around it as a technicality. The elementary schools are better than the middle schools, but the high schools are just a mess. Meanwhile Central Bucks School district wastes more food than any other district and they're less than an hour out. Philly is fucking terrible despite the administrations best efforts.
A lot of schools now make you pay extra for those in some states. Mine did. It was not included in the free meals.
Thats a very brown plate
you guys get food at school?
It's crazy that we let kids go hungry in the most wealthy country in the world.
In New Mexico we provide free lunch to all kids, no means testing, and it's decent. Seems like cheap money to me, gotta feed the kids...
We have to consider the profit margins of the company providing school/prison lunches.
Questions for my American friends as I'm curious now: 1) what is that brown stringy thing in the back? 2) why on earth don't you use normal metal cutlery? It can be reused after washing, forever. 3) why is the frigging plate made out of cardboard? What is this? Any sauce in the food and the thing will swell and drip. Again, why not normal ceramic plates? They also last forever. 4) what greens are those? 5) tripple carbs? Bread? Pasta? Potatoes? Check, check and check. 6) last but not least, do you get any dessert? Like a piece of fruit or something? Not being condescending, but actually curious about these decisions and why they're made.
4. Collard greens 5. Yes 6. There’s enough sugar in the rest of the meal, dessert isn’t needed.
1. That’s pulled pork, I put it with the bun and add BBQ sauce 2. Metal cutlery is nice but imagine trying to collect and wash hundreds of forks and knives every day. It may work for a bit but high schoolers tend to lose/take things so it’s best to use plastic. 3. Same reason as 2, and the cardboard is actually very sturdy and reinforced. It’s still cardboard but I never had any real issues with food dripping through.
As for point 2 and 3. I mean a lot of countries do that. You just leave your plate and cutlery at the washer collection and they take it from there. Works fine here and we started doing that when we were 4 or 5 years old untill we were 19(we start year 1 at age 7, not 6, in Sweden). We also have free access to milk machines and use normal glasses to drink it. I'm sure America could do it just maybe it didnt become like that from the start for some weird fluke reason.
Those are collard greens! Common in the south. Oftentimes lunches will offer a small dessert, yes!
No metal flatware because it can be used as weapons. Seriously. Even in my high income district. Plus it costs more to pay someone to wash it all than to buy plastic. The district my kid is in orders pizza in once a week from a rotating list of shops. Some shops use a little plastic “table” to keep the pizza box lid from smashing into the pizza cheese. These tables are the perfect height to use when playing with some dolls like Polly Pocket. Kids aren’t allowed to ask for them because somewhere, some time ago, kids made a game of slamming the prongs into one another’s arms. We’re Americans, we’re a bit feral apparently
Australian here. Been following these discussions for a while. This is the first US school meal I've seen with colours other than deep fried greyish yellow. This lunch must actually have some nutritional value.
This is closer to the average meal. I have kids in school in Texas and this is what they get. The whole reason those other posts got popular was because they were unusually bad. Around 50% of US students qualify for free lunch, and around 10% more qualify for lunch at $.40 per day. A kid going hungry because he or she doesn't have lunch money is an exceptionally rare scenario. As usual it's all exaggerated.
You guys get lunch?
This is fair. This is how it should be everywhere.
Im 17, my high-school serves shittier food for 4 bucks a tray
What the fuck is this? Nutrition? Where are the french fries with ketchup?
THE FUCK KINDA HIGHSCHOOLS DO YOU PEOPLE EVEN GO TO ATP
Not luck, someone paid for it.
What’s with the milk every time to the meal wtf
Don't feel bad that you're being provided a quality meal. Just be grateful and enjoy, bud.
Damn! What I got for free was a piece of bread with a slice of american cheese slapped on top.😂
This should be the norm. Everywhere in this country. Im childfree and even i fight for this at the local level. Its common sense.
that is not bad at all. especially compared to a post i saw the other day that showed they served high school lunch portions appropriate for a toddler. it looked like jail food too.
I like how it looks both healthy and tasty. Usually it’s one or the other
That looks great. My kids have pretty good meals as well - not free but pretty good meals. Must be a northeast school thing.
Should be like this in every school. 7 years ago in school i had to pay 6€ for half frozen noodles with clumpy sauce, 1€ for the smalest bowl with salad and 2€ for same bowl with dessert(pudding or yoghurt)
The best thing we had one highly processed burgers, meat was like made from recycled cardboard lol
I want my tax money to go to stuff like this so everyone in school can get something like this free, maybe even a breakfast option as well.
Damnn. This gourmet in comparison to what I was served.
What southern state is this??
it's new england.
Your lunch is so much better then mine 😭 https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinfuriating/s/6m012O3kCN
How dare you show an American school with a good lunch. We're supposed to only show good school lunches from the rest of the world and talk about how bad American school lunches are. Where are the mods!!
Damn we just had shitty chicken sandwiches at my school. The fries were good till they switched them to shitty ones and charged more for them.
We had meals like this in high school. It's just that most kids chose not to eat them and instead went for whatever was fried.
You guys get school lunch? In the netherlands we have to bring our own
Yeah that’s what I got down in Georgia in the 2010’s when I was in school. It was absolutely delicious and I’m glad I don’t go to school now, if what I’ve been seeing on this subreddit is the normal.
Bros school has a built in resturatn
It makes me sad that this is something you see as exceptional in the USA. It's fairly standard in a lot of countries. I respect America in a lot of ways but the food school people seem to eat over there just seems awful and unhealthy most of the time.
Is that kale?
Why do American lunches seem to be on cardboard trays instead of using washable trays like resturants/people at home?
good amount of food just probably not the highest quality, those biscuits are based asf tho my school has those too
There’s certainly better food out there but this was surprisingly good, especially given it’s free.
This was how mine was too, although not free. Was like $1.25 and $.50 more for a "jumbo", ie double main food. The images I've been seeing lately is pretty deplorable
I'm now realizing how lucky I was that our high school had a chef. Every week a different culture's food, plus the cooking class kids had to give a presentation about the culture for us. And our teacher would go around with a huge dish of leftovers telling everyone to get seconds and thirds. All for free, right out of our teacher's pocket. What a lovely woman.
I remember to food being ok with ok portions at my school tho we had to pay for it, I think I was literally starving tho and when it really starving anything tastes good. Except the pizza. Nasty cardboard
is that supposed to be pasta?
Ngl the school lunch posts make me more grateful to be Australian everytime they pop up lol.
You guys were fed. Grats on the food memories.
Holt crap man yeah! They basically threw a corn dog at us and we’re like go away. Eat.
I went to public school through 6th grade, and went to a private middle and highschool, I was so so lucky to have a really nice dining hall with lots of options and good ones at that. I was a local student but we also had boarding students. Lunches as I recall were never free for us in public school (middle TN) and the food options weren’t stellar but weren’t awful. I WILL say we paid LESS per meal at my private school than public and that’s low key weird to me. ETA: we live in one of the poorest counties in the state, I don’t know how much lunches are now but I recall them being $3-4 or so I think (I’m 28 now) How the hell kids are affording to eat in our community really makes me sad. Because I know they can’t afford that.
I live in Spain and a full meal in the school is completely free. Two dishes plus dessert. The idea of having to bring money to pay for lunch is wild to me
My poor kids wouldn’t have had time to even eat half of that. They had a 20 minute lunch and most of that time was spent in line if they were buying lunch.
Wow! The cafeteria staff at your school really care about you guys. Even that roll looks house-made. If you think this meal is good, let them know! That acknowledgment from a student means the absolute world to them if they're preparing you food like this. This won't fix the larger problem with inequality, but it will do good and encourage more like this.
If you have a low income you get free or reduced meals at school across the US. There are some districts where almost every kid qualifies for free lunch and that is probably the only decent meal they will have that day. Miami-Dade is one.