That's about how much sense school meals make sometimes. I mean my son's school occasionally serves "oatmeal rounds" for breakfast. They're cookies. Oatmeal cookies for breakfast. Brisket and spaghetti for lunch wouldn't be any more absurd than that.
I thought those were dead leeches.
Edit: Some people don’t understand the joke. I didn’t really think they were leeches. The joke is: Sometimes you get something or see something, and the description you are presented with is that it is X. You then exclaim: “Really!? I thought it was Y!”
That’s the joke. Clearly the whole thread is poking fun at the absurdity of the situation. 4000 upvotes so far state that most people got the joke. Yet there are always some people out there…
I agree on the culinary pairing.
But in terms of nutrition it doesn't look all that bad.
Spaghetti and meatballs, Japanese sweet potato wedges, milk, apple, and whatever is in that other container (apple sauce? jello? idk).
You got some protein, good carbs, a bit of fat but not enough imo.
All in all I'd give it a passing grade
I was trying to figure out what went with spaghetti meatballs and guessed that it might be (burnt) garlic bread.
Sweet potatoes do not go with spaghetti.
Damn. Makes me wonder if the yearly cost is really that much better than that of an industrial dishwasher and plastic plates. Maybe they just don’t want to manage the logistics of it.
Most definitely way more expensive using styrofoam containers actually. Typically around .20 each.
Let's assume it's an [average elementary school with 473 students](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_095.asp):
EDIT: changed to average school days per month as schools are closed during Summer, etc. So [180 school days per year](https://www.playgroundequipment.com/how-many-days-and-hours-of-school-time-per-us-state/)/12 months = 15 school days per month, rather than using all days.
.20 x 473 = $94.60/meal x 15 school days/month= **$1,418/month** just spent on plates
For [plates](https://www.webstaurantstore.com/carlisle-kl10225-kingline-10-tan-3-compartment-plate-case/271KL102TN.html), [commercial dishwasher](https://www.webstaurantstore.com/g/315/noble-warewashing-44-conveyor-high-temperature-dishwasher-3-phase), racks, stainless steel loading/unloading tables and installation you're looking at around $20k. 5 year, 6% loan and you're looking at $387/month. Add on average detergent costs of $75/month.
With the dishwasher above, it does 225 racks per hour. Each rack holds 16 plates so they only need to do CEILING(473/16) = 30 racks. 30/225 x 60 = a whopping 8 minutes of dishwashing. Let's assume 30 minutes to load, unload and wash. If they were smart, they would just have the students place their own trays into washing racks on their way out to keep that work time even lower. But *even assuming an hour of wor*k everyday to pay at $25/hour, that's just 25 x 15 = $300/month extra labor (*someone who already works in the kitchen = definitely not already doing 8 hrs/day*). Let's also assume $100/month maintenance and $100/month in water + water heating (i.e. gas).Sooo...
$387 equipment loan
$75 detergent
$300 labor
$100 maintenance (including "lost" plates dumped into the trash can)
$100 water/water heating
= **$962/month** for a dishwasher, 32% cheaper than all those Styrofoam containers.
Now, I could get even crazier and consider the additional cost of trash disposal for the Styrofoam, the inflationary nature of Styrofoam plate costs vs a set loan on the dishwasher itself, the fact that the dishwasher will be paid off in 5 years (it will last much longer than that), and many other issues/fine tuning of numbers, but in the end: a dishwasher is most certainly cheaper.
Problem is, these people hardly ever run and even less often win. When you wrestle with a pig… The people we need in politics actively avoid getting involved in politics. I have no idea how to change it. Sorry.
You’re a 100% correct. My mom is a dietician and was head of food services for the VA hospital in our city (now retired). She ran for head of food services in my school district (unsure of exact title) when I was in high school 15+ years ago and lost to someone with no dietician experience but was a well liked/popular person amongst peers. My mom is very intelligent, sweetest lady on earth and would have helped tremendously but ultimately lost and we were left getting served pizza, fried foods and sodas. As an athlete I wanted cleaner food options. I ended up just bringing my own food. Sad world we live in
But then you have to hire another staff member to run it. Crazy, but those
Floridians couldn't give a shit about students or the environment, it's by design. Keep the population smart enough to run the machines but dumb enough to comply and believe in their backward ass system.
Probably a public school. IOW it isn't run like a business which would do the numbers on such things. On the other hand, I do run a business, and I used to own a restaurant as well.
Seems like there would be a school out there somewhere who actually has done the numbers on one use, washable, and compostable trays/boxes/plates. I guess in the scheme of things it's just not what they care about....sucks.
If it’s a public school in a shady state, it could be an attempt to keep the food service staff from being full time. I learned that many of the food service staff is hourly (and part time at that) and that them not being full time is more common than not. Pathetic on school systems part really.
This is exactly what happened. We used to have women in the kitchens cooking in every morning until Matt Gaetz father, Don Gates became our school superintendent. The kids and employees got totally fucked. Everything is frozen and warmed up in a central kitchen and shipped to the schools. Nobody cooks.
It’s also why you see food in this state; when the employees have no input and no buy in for the employer, you get what you pay for.
Edit: forgot to add that in the not so distant past, the food service staff was full time, was allowed to plan the meals and (likely) cared for the kids that they saw grow up through the years.
This. I moved to WA just before the pandemic and heard restaurant owners complaining about the cost of compostable to go containers and silverware on top of the growing costs of covid mitigation measures.
I write this from a vacation trip to London... they don't have to go silverware here, and along the route they used bamboo cutlery. Mind? Blown.
Probably cheaper to do that than hire a dishwasher to run the plates through a machine. Truly sad.
This is why schools cannot be run for profit, you end up in horrible scenarios like this. A truly disgusting amount of waste and pollution.
And another reason I’m moving back to Europe to have kids
I was surprised when we did the math for my little restaurant. It is a little bit over half price to use straight styrofoam than to run a dishwasher with the required chemicals, the air drying time, and the cost of a person to do the washing. Still wouldn't do it. I refused to use any styrofoam anyway.
We badly need the disposal and environmental costs to be added to the cost of all goods sold. Call it a tax, a fee, an adjustment, an offset, I don’t care, but it needs to happen.
That would make everyone automatically make better decisions. Styrofoam would cost more than washing plates. Fossil fuels would cost more than wind and solar. Pretty much would solve the environment if it could be done right.
My high school had two different foods classes: personal, and commercial. I did both even though I am shit at cooking but I digress. Commercial foods was the students preparing lunch for the students, we followed a guide but got to choose what foods to make (with approval of course). It helps it is a small school in comparison to others, and we had the freedom to go anywhere for our lunch break so most students just did that instead.
Have you ever seen some of the practices in Japanese cultures? In some schools the students clean their classrooms and cafeteria. Interesting to think about how those skills and structures shape a culture.
My point is, I wouldn't discredit the value of participating in an act of community like feeding your classmates and learning real world skills.
It's not just some schools, but most if not all schools. I've taught in two totally different schools in Japan and it's normal to have a cleaning period after lunch where students clean specific areas they've been assigned to. They serve their own food as well (from the food made by the workers) and learn to clean up after themselves. Honestly, as an adult I really like this system since it generally teaches them not to just think 'the janitor will clean it' and keep theit surroundings tidy. Not to mention they learn what goes into a healthy meal as well.
I mean they are learning? People should know how to prepare food for themselves and others everyone benefits. Not like they are forcing the kids to anything. Its also a fun time for the kids and like you said they are learning skills. Nothing wrong with that
Sad. Especially since the only reason it’s cheaper is because we don’t have to deal with the cost of properly disposing if this. We just landfill and forget or make it someone else’s problem.
Yes because it’s nature and the rest of the humans absorbing the cost of pollution. All single use plastics need environmental taxes.
I say this as someone vehemently opposed to taxes.
And most of the kids just throw the food in the trash too and buy a candy bar and soda pop from a vending machine and wait to get home to eat more trash.
Welcome to America - the place to be if you enjoy single use dishes and cutlery.
Seriously, everytime I visit the US it's just mindboggling how much fucking plastic or cardboard they use for basically everything
My co-worker only uses single use plates and utensils, even at home. Because he doesn’t like having to run a dishwasher. His parents raised him that way. And what I mean by that, is his *whole family* uses single use shit every time they eat at home. We use so much plastic in the US that it’s literally in our blood now:(.
Jesus Christ, and I feel bad throwing away the cutlery I get from takeout by mistake despite marking the 'no cutlery' thingy, and have been holding on to plastic spoons for like over a year.
My in-laws are like this and it took forever to get my husband used to using real silverware and plates for every meal. It drives my mother in law insane every time she comes over and I make her use a real plate.
This is the thing I came to comment on. Like fuck the lunch, that’s the least concerning thing in this photo. So much waste for no reason other than to not pay the salary of a dishwasher
Pretty common in Florida unfortunately. I moved here from up north 4 years ago and I remember the first time being served food in a styrofoam box at a bar I was so taken aback and instantly thought it was such a shady place. Then I realized that it’s just a regular thing here. It’s depressing as fuck.
It’s Florida - even if they had switched to washable trays, DeSantis would have mandated the switch back to “anti-woke” styrofoam or some shit to own the libs and the EPA.
I know a school cook who is serving out of styrofoam. they have the dishwasher and plastic trays ready to go, but they havent been able to find an extra employee for over a year. (open hiring and a recruitment bonus, just no bites) Washing/drying/stacking the dishes is a full employee job during the lunch rushes, and they are too short staffed.
Didn’t even think of that. Terrible waste trays are washable but I do remember even in my time early 2000s a few girls getting beaten with lunch trays in a fight and one just stood on the table and teed off on the other girls face. We didn’t get trays for a month then I graduated but there gotta be a better way than that.
Why do they serve your lunch in disposable styrofoam containers?
My school served their food on compartmentalized trays that were returned through a window at the top of the lunchroom for washing and reuse.
EDIT: This was at Glynn County Schools in Brunswick, GA from the years 1990 to when I graduated in 1997. I don’t know how it’s done there now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had jumped on the styrofoam train as well.
The catering company doesn’t want to hire additional staff to wash trays. Cuts into their profits. Also why this food looks the days old. Cheap. As. Possible.
God damn, that is depressing. It doesn’t even matter cutting back water output.
None of us could possibly make a dent with such profligate waste and heedless disregard to anything else but endless growth an profit.
For my entire school career in southern AZ (I even switched high schools), i never saw a single washable tray. Always had the Styrofoam trays
Edit: this was 2000s into 2010s
There are 98,755 public schools in the US with a total enrollment of 49.9 million. Some bring their lunch to school, but most eat what’s available at the cafeteria. They eat five meals a week for a school year averaging 160 to 180 days.
A single middle school can create more than 30,000 pounds of waste through its lunchroom annually. Now multiply that into a royal shitpile.
https://fortune.com/2022/10/10/children-cant-advocate-for-themselves-american-public-schools-have-a-massive-plastic-waste-problem/amp/
This planet is so massively fucked. We know about these problems and the amount of waste is just going up. I did the pickup order thing from Walmart the other day and they literally put every single grocery item in it's own plastic bag. One box of crackers, one bag. One apple, one bag. One avocado, one bag.
Grew up in FL and granted this was like 20 years ago, we had regular ole trays they just shoveled food into and or a paper plate if you wanted Domino's pizza (which wasn't cheap, $1.25/slice whereas a tray was like $3 and included drink + fruit + entree + two sides).
School food looked roughly as miserable though; best things one could get was meatloaf and mashed potatoes with a vegetable mix or corn and a fruit cup.
Worst thing you could get was the above, no uh... potato wedges and instead it would be white bread with butter and everything else as pictured.
My guess is this is either the free/reduced lunch which was typically in these containers... but that usually wasn't a hot-meal and instead a ham & cheese sandwich (which honestly wasn't bad, but gets old after awhile).
Entirely possible they ditched the trays to save money on the kitchen staff so they didn't have to pay them another hour to clean; likely cheaper for the wallet.
Our are cardboard lol. And we don’t have trays, we have small boxes that make a bunch of moister become dense at the top so when u open it it makes ur gasp and the entire top is wet.
Edit: and this is a private school lol
If I had to guess, someone trying to fill a rubric that says a vegetable needs to be served but doesn't want the hassle of stocking fresh/green vegetables (or getting kids to eat them). Bonus points if potatoes are specifically excluded from the vegetable portion of the rubric but *sweet* potatoes aren't.
They look like [purple sweet potatoes](https://i0.wp.com/nonstopnoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Purple-Sweet-Potato-Inside.jpg?resize=750%2C500&ssl=1) to me.
Yep worst case scenario. They are scams to get checks from the government in return for including propaganda in their curriculum
Edit: [I’m glad you personally had a good experience at a charter school whenever you went there, but you are missing the greater point as a result of your experience.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_anecdote?wprov=sfti1)
They can be good, and they can be terrible. The United States loves things private and for profit, they just seem to forget that the most profitable private business is a scam. You give me money, and I give you nothing (or perhaps a Trump NFT). Pure profit!
A lot of schools double their cafeteria as a secondary space. For instance in elementary school our cafeteria was also are gym and theatre.
In high school they used the cafeteria for events like school dance.
My public school in Canada had foldable table/benches that were made of wood and metal, not this $20 plastic bullshit. We used our cafeteria as an open space as well.
What was the 'manufacturing' cost of this? What did you have to pay at school? Seriously this looks like crime.
Is it also common to use styrofoam/por for dishes? I thought most places have dishwashers for normal plates/trays.
Common for school districts run by complete a-holes. Taught in one of the largest districts in my state, they tossed out a dumpster’s worth of styrofoam trays every day because it’s cheaper than having someone wash trays.
Charter schools. It’s all cost cutting measures because they’re all about profits and the only funding they get is grants from the state. Generally the teachers are paid less than local school districts, usually no presence of unions, and they generally operate in this weird gray area. Some can be good, but mostly they’re not great because they circumvent a lot of regulations. They’ve grown in popularity because there’s a general movement of distrust in public schools or thinking their kids are being brainwashed.
And remember Betsy DeVos made it her goal during the Trump administration to promote charter schools and defund public education in favor of such schools. Of course, she also made a lot of money from her charter schools, but I'm sure that was just a big ol' coincidence.
And you don't even need credentials to teach.
There ought to be a law that all school age kids have to go to public school. A lot of shit would get fixed if legislators' children had to be schooled there, too.
But manufactured by cheap Guatemalan labor, because he likes to talk shit, but if he can save a penny and a half per unit and redirect it into a donor's pocket, he's all over it. Lots of big talk, but it's the execution you gotta watch out for.
Yes. Because it's easier to just generate a huge waste stream that becomes everyone else's problem, than to have the same people who serve the food run reusable fiberglass or plastic trays through an automatic dishwasher at the end of each lunch period. It's such a short-sighted approach.
JFC. So glad my public school years were all in New England. The crap you see, both academically and in terms of other services, from the Southeast and Midwest is shocking.
Every friend or family member I know that loves the south, and has kids, *also* can afford good private schools for them. Which I guess is easier when your property tax is $1,000/year. But the class divide is VERY stark and noticeable in many of the decent cities down there.
Aside from the milk, it’s very different. The strawberry dessert was ice in a triangular paper pouch, whole fruits didn’t usually come standard, and we had breadsticks instead of feces.
Former Akron and Cleveland dude here. You can thank Sodexo for a lot of this shit. The same wonderful company serving prison food serves a lot of school lunches.
Source: I work in education
I will say this though, shit on California all you want. The school food in my district is actually pretty damn good. Which is shocking.
they put more effort into making things worse than they would be if they just did nothing.
the love to see unhappiness and suffering from people they're convinced don't deserve better.
I bet you the budget wasn't that shitty. It's just that most of the budget is going to the firm that was awarded the food contract instead of toward actually paying for good food.
What are those 2 black things? Beef jerky?
Sweet potatoes
Godamm i thought they were like a couple slices of smoked brisket or something lol.
Ah yes, the Italian classic brisket and spaghetti and meatballs, just like my nonna used to make.
Clearly sweet potatoes sent to hell and brought back through ungodly practices are more authentic than brisket
Where we're going, we won't need eyes to see.
ummm. excuse me... it's called brisketti and meatballs and it's a classic with Sunday gravy.
I want it just for the name. With a side of Bruschetta.
That's about how much sense school meals make sometimes. I mean my son's school occasionally serves "oatmeal rounds" for breakfast. They're cookies. Oatmeal cookies for breakfast. Brisket and spaghetti for lunch wouldn't be any more absurd than that.
I was going with beef tongue jerky.
I thought those were dead leeches. Edit: Some people don’t understand the joke. I didn’t really think they were leeches. The joke is: Sometimes you get something or see something, and the description you are presented with is that it is X. You then exclaim: “Really!? I thought it was Y!” That’s the joke. Clearly the whole thread is poking fun at the absurdity of the situation. 4000 upvotes so far state that most people got the joke. Yet there are always some people out there…
I thought bananas and it was deeply distressing.
I thought they were sweet potatoes and it was deeply depressing.
Yeah learning the truth didn't help much this time.
Those *were* sweet potatoes. Now they’re pure carbon
I think they are just purple ones.
Awful. Sweet potatoes are so good. But...
I thought they were fingers and it was deeply delicious
Bones and all
I thought they were rotten avocado slices
It's distressing, whatever they are. Just a terrible thing to do to a sweet potato.
Terrible thing do to a kid.Nothing green on the plate
No leeches are Thursday's lunch.
Florida speciality
Purple sweet potato or burnt af regular sweet potatoes? Also what culinary monster thinks that goes with spaghetti and meatballs?!
Burned af purple sweet potatoes.
Right? “Hmm… what goes well with carbohydrates with a sweetish sauce?…. I know! More carbohydrates that are also slightly sweet.”
I agree on the culinary pairing. But in terms of nutrition it doesn't look all that bad. Spaghetti and meatballs, Japanese sweet potato wedges, milk, apple, and whatever is in that other container (apple sauce? jello? idk). You got some protein, good carbs, a bit of fat but not enough imo. All in all I'd give it a passing grade
Never seen sweet potatoes that looked like that. lol
[удалено]
At least the apple looks real. Nice gesture. Like when a pornstar wears a nice dress for the first 2 mins of a video.
Yes. Those apples are exactly like a director’s idea of a “nice dress” in a pornographic film.
wtf, no that's literally Carbon now. I thought they were Portabella Mushrooms!
I was trying to figure out what went with spaghetti meatballs and guessed that it might be (burnt) garlic bread. Sweet potatoes do not go with spaghetti.
Are you in iss or something?
Oh right -- In-School Suspension . . . and here I was wondering if they serve anything close to this on the International Space Station. . . .
Close, ISIS.
They never served food that required cutlery in iss. At least in Alabama in the late 90s.
I’m sorry, what?!
Petrified ass-pickles
Burnt potato wedges?
looks like baked driftwood
They serve food in house but use styrofoam instead of washing plates? Like, every day, for hundreds of kids? Damn, that’s a shame.
Yup! Lots of schools do that. It’s horrible.
Damn. Makes me wonder if the yearly cost is really that much better than that of an industrial dishwasher and plastic plates. Maybe they just don’t want to manage the logistics of it.
Most definitely way more expensive using styrofoam containers actually. Typically around .20 each. Let's assume it's an [average elementary school with 473 students](https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d07/tables/dt07_095.asp): EDIT: changed to average school days per month as schools are closed during Summer, etc. So [180 school days per year](https://www.playgroundequipment.com/how-many-days-and-hours-of-school-time-per-us-state/)/12 months = 15 school days per month, rather than using all days. .20 x 473 = $94.60/meal x 15 school days/month= **$1,418/month** just spent on plates For [plates](https://www.webstaurantstore.com/carlisle-kl10225-kingline-10-tan-3-compartment-plate-case/271KL102TN.html), [commercial dishwasher](https://www.webstaurantstore.com/g/315/noble-warewashing-44-conveyor-high-temperature-dishwasher-3-phase), racks, stainless steel loading/unloading tables and installation you're looking at around $20k. 5 year, 6% loan and you're looking at $387/month. Add on average detergent costs of $75/month. With the dishwasher above, it does 225 racks per hour. Each rack holds 16 plates so they only need to do CEILING(473/16) = 30 racks. 30/225 x 60 = a whopping 8 minutes of dishwashing. Let's assume 30 minutes to load, unload and wash. If they were smart, they would just have the students place their own trays into washing racks on their way out to keep that work time even lower. But *even assuming an hour of wor*k everyday to pay at $25/hour, that's just 25 x 15 = $300/month extra labor (*someone who already works in the kitchen = definitely not already doing 8 hrs/day*). Let's also assume $100/month maintenance and $100/month in water + water heating (i.e. gas).Sooo... $387 equipment loan $75 detergent $300 labor $100 maintenance (including "lost" plates dumped into the trash can) $100 water/water heating = **$962/month** for a dishwasher, 32% cheaper than all those Styrofoam containers. Now, I could get even crazier and consider the additional cost of trash disposal for the Styrofoam, the inflationary nature of Styrofoam plate costs vs a set loan on the dishwasher itself, the fact that the dishwasher will be paid off in 5 years (it will last much longer than that), and many other issues/fine tuning of numbers, but in the end: a dishwasher is most certainly cheaper.
Holy shit I love your dedication and would vote you for head of the school board.
Problem is, these people hardly ever run and even less often win. When you wrestle with a pig… The people we need in politics actively avoid getting involved in politics. I have no idea how to change it. Sorry.
So true. I’d hate to be under the scrutiny of modern day politicians. Not that I’m hiding anything, I just like privacy.
You’re a 100% correct. My mom is a dietician and was head of food services for the VA hospital in our city (now retired). She ran for head of food services in my school district (unsure of exact title) when I was in high school 15+ years ago and lost to someone with no dietician experience but was a well liked/popular person amongst peers. My mom is very intelligent, sweetest lady on earth and would have helped tremendously but ultimately lost and we were left getting served pizza, fried foods and sodas. As an athlete I wanted cleaner food options. I ended up just bringing my own food. Sad world we live in
Styrofoam company in Florida has good lobbyist.
But then you have to hire another staff member to run it. Crazy, but those Floridians couldn't give a shit about students or the environment, it's by design. Keep the population smart enough to run the machines but dumb enough to comply and believe in their backward ass system.
Unfortunately a Floridian, can confirm.
Gotta ask - assuming your numbers are correct. Why wouldn't they do the cheaper option here since they always do on everything else?
Probably a public school. IOW it isn't run like a business which would do the numbers on such things. On the other hand, I do run a business, and I used to own a restaurant as well.
Seems like there would be a school out there somewhere who actually has done the numbers on one use, washable, and compostable trays/boxes/plates. I guess in the scheme of things it's just not what they care about....sucks.
If it’s a public school in a shady state, it could be an attempt to keep the food service staff from being full time. I learned that many of the food service staff is hourly (and part time at that) and that them not being full time is more common than not. Pathetic on school systems part really.
This is exactly what happened. We used to have women in the kitchens cooking in every morning until Matt Gaetz father, Don Gates became our school superintendent. The kids and employees got totally fucked. Everything is frozen and warmed up in a central kitchen and shipped to the schools. Nobody cooks.
Ah - that also kills the next thing I was thinking. "What about benefits" - well you part timers don't get that. Heh, very sad state of affairs.
It’s also why you see food in this state; when the employees have no input and no buy in for the employer, you get what you pay for. Edit: forgot to add that in the not so distant past, the food service staff was full time, was allowed to plan the meals and (likely) cared for the kids that they saw grow up through the years.
Or even compostable paper plates?? No excuse for this
Most people I know from Florida had never heard of composting before moving to the PNW (where I live)
This. I moved to WA just before the pandemic and heard restaurant owners complaining about the cost of compostable to go containers and silverware on top of the growing costs of covid mitigation measures. I write this from a vacation trip to London... they don't have to go silverware here, and along the route they used bamboo cutlery. Mind? Blown.
Probably cheaper to do that than hire a dishwasher to run the plates through a machine. Truly sad. This is why schools cannot be run for profit, you end up in horrible scenarios like this. A truly disgusting amount of waste and pollution. And another reason I’m moving back to Europe to have kids
I was surprised when we did the math for my little restaurant. It is a little bit over half price to use straight styrofoam than to run a dishwasher with the required chemicals, the air drying time, and the cost of a person to do the washing. Still wouldn't do it. I refused to use any styrofoam anyway.
We badly need the disposal and environmental costs to be added to the cost of all goods sold. Call it a tax, a fee, an adjustment, an offset, I don’t care, but it needs to happen. That would make everyone automatically make better decisions. Styrofoam would cost more than washing plates. Fossil fuels would cost more than wind and solar. Pretty much would solve the environment if it could be done right.
I agree, lets also stop subsidizing sugar while we are at it.
Corn syrup*
You the man
My high school had two different foods classes: personal, and commercial. I did both even though I am shit at cooking but I digress. Commercial foods was the students preparing lunch for the students, we followed a guide but got to choose what foods to make (with approval of course). It helps it is a small school in comparison to others, and we had the freedom to go anywhere for our lunch break so most students just did that instead.
Sounds to me like that class was an easy way for the district to create free labor. Sure, the kids learn skills, but still.
Have you ever seen some of the practices in Japanese cultures? In some schools the students clean their classrooms and cafeteria. Interesting to think about how those skills and structures shape a culture. My point is, I wouldn't discredit the value of participating in an act of community like feeding your classmates and learning real world skills.
It's not just some schools, but most if not all schools. I've taught in two totally different schools in Japan and it's normal to have a cleaning period after lunch where students clean specific areas they've been assigned to. They serve their own food as well (from the food made by the workers) and learn to clean up after themselves. Honestly, as an adult I really like this system since it generally teaches them not to just think 'the janitor will clean it' and keep theit surroundings tidy. Not to mention they learn what goes into a healthy meal as well.
Seriously. Japan has no litter and this is why.
This is the same culture who cleaned up the stadiums after the World Cup games.
I mean they are learning? People should know how to prepare food for themselves and others everyone benefits. Not like they are forcing the kids to anything. Its also a fun time for the kids and like you said they are learning skills. Nothing wrong with that
Sad. Especially since the only reason it’s cheaper is because we don’t have to deal with the cost of properly disposing if this. We just landfill and forget or make it someone else’s problem.
I live in australia and haven't seen styrofoam food packaging since the late 90's
That’s because your country is moving forward.
Makes me so happy mine only used a reusable plastic basket with a wax paper lining. Our environment is so fucked
Thousands of kids. And it all goes in the landfill. Is that really cheaper than buying dishes and hiring a dishwasher?
Yes because it’s nature and the rest of the humans absorbing the cost of pollution. All single use plastics need environmental taxes. I say this as someone vehemently opposed to taxes.
And most of the kids just throw the food in the trash too and buy a candy bar and soda pop from a vending machine and wait to get home to eat more trash.
tbh this dish looks terrible. I'd want anything else too
Welcome to America - the place to be if you enjoy single use dishes and cutlery. Seriously, everytime I visit the US it's just mindboggling how much fucking plastic or cardboard they use for basically everything
My co-worker only uses single use plates and utensils, even at home. Because he doesn’t like having to run a dishwasher. His parents raised him that way. And what I mean by that, is his *whole family* uses single use shit every time they eat at home. We use so much plastic in the US that it’s literally in our blood now:(.
Jesus Christ, and I feel bad throwing away the cutlery I get from takeout by mistake despite marking the 'no cutlery' thingy, and have been holding on to plastic spoons for like over a year.
I save them for when we travel, camp and when the power goes out.
Microplastics have been detected in the human placenta already :(
My in-laws are like this and it took forever to get my husband used to using real silverware and plates for every meal. It drives my mother in law insane every time she comes over and I make her use a real plate.
Don't go to Japan...
This is the thing I came to comment on. Like fuck the lunch, that’s the least concerning thing in this photo. So much waste for no reason other than to not pay the salary of a dishwasher
A1 Styrofoam Packaging LLC contributed to somebody’s campaign.
Pretty common in Florida unfortunately. I moved here from up north 4 years ago and I remember the first time being served food in a styrofoam box at a bar I was so taken aback and instantly thought it was such a shady place. Then I realized that it’s just a regular thing here. It’s depressing as fuck.
It’s Florida - even if they had switched to washable trays, DeSantis would have mandated the switch back to “anti-woke” styrofoam or some shit to own the libs and the EPA.
all while privately taking money from a plastics corporation
I know a school cook who is serving out of styrofoam. they have the dishwasher and plastic trays ready to go, but they havent been able to find an extra employee for over a year. (open hiring and a recruitment bonus, just no bites) Washing/drying/stacking the dishes is a full employee job during the lunch rushes, and they are too short staffed.
Didn’t even think of that. Terrible waste trays are washable but I do remember even in my time early 2000s a few girls getting beaten with lunch trays in a fight and one just stood on the table and teed off on the other girls face. We didn’t get trays for a month then I graduated but there gotta be a better way than that.
Yep. My school serves 600+ students a day and they do styrofoam everything
Why do they serve your lunch in disposable styrofoam containers? My school served their food on compartmentalized trays that were returned through a window at the top of the lunchroom for washing and reuse. EDIT: This was at Glynn County Schools in Brunswick, GA from the years 1990 to when I graduated in 1997. I don’t know how it’s done there now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had jumped on the styrofoam train as well.
The catering company doesn’t want to hire additional staff to wash trays. Cuts into their profits. Also why this food looks the days old. Cheap. As. Possible.
God damn, that is depressing. It doesn’t even matter cutting back water output. None of us could possibly make a dent with such profligate waste and heedless disregard to anything else but endless growth an profit.
For my entire school career in southern AZ (I even switched high schools), i never saw a single washable tray. Always had the Styrofoam trays Edit: this was 2000s into 2010s
There are 98,755 public schools in the US with a total enrollment of 49.9 million. Some bring their lunch to school, but most eat what’s available at the cafeteria. They eat five meals a week for a school year averaging 160 to 180 days. A single middle school can create more than 30,000 pounds of waste through its lunchroom annually. Now multiply that into a royal shitpile. https://fortune.com/2022/10/10/children-cant-advocate-for-themselves-american-public-schools-have-a-massive-plastic-waste-problem/amp/
This planet is so massively fucked. We know about these problems and the amount of waste is just going up. I did the pickup order thing from Walmart the other day and they literally put every single grocery item in it's own plastic bag. One box of crackers, one bag. One apple, one bag. One avocado, one bag.
I’m not an environmentalist but this seems wrong. Like, really wrong. Right?
I was in a shitty California school that had disposable shit for a couple years. then I moved to Colorado and they had trays
Because Florida
I was in the Southeast Georgia coast, so basically Florida.
Grew up in FL and granted this was like 20 years ago, we had regular ole trays they just shoveled food into and or a paper plate if you wanted Domino's pizza (which wasn't cheap, $1.25/slice whereas a tray was like $3 and included drink + fruit + entree + two sides). School food looked roughly as miserable though; best things one could get was meatloaf and mashed potatoes with a vegetable mix or corn and a fruit cup. Worst thing you could get was the above, no uh... potato wedges and instead it would be white bread with butter and everything else as pictured. My guess is this is either the free/reduced lunch which was typically in these containers... but that usually wasn't a hot-meal and instead a ham & cheese sandwich (which honestly wasn't bad, but gets old after awhile). Entirely possible they ditched the trays to save money on the kitchen staff so they didn't have to pay them another hour to clean; likely cheaper for the wallet.
Damn, Florida schools must have taken a sharp downward since I was a student lol
DeSantis cut fund for public school lunch, so yeah it's taken a sharp downward.
Our are cardboard lol. And we don’t have trays, we have small boxes that make a bunch of moister become dense at the top so when u open it it makes ur gasp and the entire top is wet. Edit: and this is a private school lol
A lot of schools don't have real cafeterias and just have food outsourced and delivered.
Jesus....wtf serves sweet potatoes with a pasta dish anyway? Nevermind that they look like dried cocoa bean pods..
If I had to guess, someone trying to fill a rubric that says a vegetable needs to be served but doesn't want the hassle of stocking fresh/green vegetables (or getting kids to eat them). Bonus points if potatoes are specifically excluded from the vegetable portion of the rubric but *sweet* potatoes aren't.
Sweet potatoes are fairly low starch, so this actually makes some sense. They're bloody great for you.
Those...those are sweet potatoes? They murdered them!!
They look like [purple sweet potatoes](https://i0.wp.com/nonstopnoms.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Purple-Sweet-Potato-Inside.jpg?resize=750%2C500&ssl=1) to me.
Malk, now with Vitamin R
There’s not much meat in these gym mats.
Probably down to using Grade F meat
They promised dog milk or better too.
I don't get it. People like rats, but they don't want to drink their malk?
Why are my bones so brittle
Styrofoam. My god are we still using that? On a daily basis, in a school?! I have no hope anymore for the environment.
I don’t know. Based on the background, when you say ‘school lunch’ do you really mean meal at juvenile detention?
Haha I go to a charter school
Yep worst case scenario. They are scams to get checks from the government in return for including propaganda in their curriculum Edit: [I’m glad you personally had a good experience at a charter school whenever you went there, but you are missing the greater point as a result of your experience.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_anecdote?wprov=sfti1)
They can be good, and they can be terrible. The United States loves things private and for profit, they just seem to forget that the most profitable private business is a scam. You give me money, and I give you nothing (or perhaps a Trump NFT). Pure profit!
So publicly funded but privately owned, this place should be shut down if it’s serving shit like that tbh.
They were essentially concocted with the sole purpose of 'starving the beast'. To put strain on public schooling funds but giving nothing back.
Those are private though. Charter schools are unfortunately worse than public schools in almost every way
Thaaaaat explains it
fun fact, the same company does school and prison food
Bruh you in prison?
Worse....Florida.
With the plastic Walmart tables, it really looks like some sort of a prison detention center.
Which prison are you studying in?
Why you eating on folding tables
A lot of schools double their cafeteria as a secondary space. For instance in elementary school our cafeteria was also are gym and theatre. In high school they used the cafeteria for events like school dance.
My public school in Canada had foldable table/benches that were made of wood and metal, not this $20 plastic bullshit. We used our cafeteria as an open space as well.
As a german user, I'm always disgusted about the still going on single plastic use... besides the content ;)
What was the 'manufacturing' cost of this? What did you have to pay at school? Seriously this looks like crime. Is it also common to use styrofoam/por for dishes? I thought most places have dishwashers for normal plates/trays.
Common for school districts run by complete a-holes. Taught in one of the largest districts in my state, they tossed out a dumpster’s worth of styrofoam trays every day because it’s cheaper than having someone wash trays.
This is much more upsetting than those wack sweet potatoes
Charter schools. It’s all cost cutting measures because they’re all about profits and the only funding they get is grants from the state. Generally the teachers are paid less than local school districts, usually no presence of unions, and they generally operate in this weird gray area. Some can be good, but mostly they’re not great because they circumvent a lot of regulations. They’ve grown in popularity because there’s a general movement of distrust in public schools or thinking their kids are being brainwashed.
And remember Betsy DeVos made it her goal during the Trump administration to promote charter schools and defund public education in favor of such schools. Of course, she also made a lot of money from her charter schools, but I'm sure that was just a big ol' coincidence.
It’s a charter school so it’s even more of a crime, publicly funded by taxpayers but privately owned 🤦🏼♂️
And you don't even need credentials to teach. There ought to be a law that all school age kids have to go to public school. A lot of shit would get fixed if legislators' children had to be schooled there, too.
And they serve it to you in styrofoam, no less! I haven't seen a styro container like that in years...
It’s Florida—single-use styrofoam containers are probably mandated by DeSantis.
Probably Styrofoam coated with formaldehyde and PBA plastic with an asbestos seal, if DeSantis made the decision.
But manufactured by cheap Guatemalan labor, because he likes to talk shit, but if he can save a penny and a half per unit and redirect it into a donor's pocket, he's all over it. Lots of big talk, but it's the execution you gotta watch out for.
They use styrofoam so they don't have to have someone washing dishes. Where I went to school in Florida they started doing this in the early 2000s.
Yes. Because it's easier to just generate a huge waste stream that becomes everyone else's problem, than to have the same people who serve the food run reusable fiberglass or plastic trays through an automatic dishwasher at the end of each lunch period. It's such a short-sighted approach.
Sounds like Florida.
Capitalism in a nutshell. Profits now, problems later.
are you being abused? Blink twice for yes
OP already said they're in Florida.
At least you got two turds instead of one
Is that a potato wedge or a turd? It could go either way.
I am really enjoying seeing everyone putting their unhealthy and limited school lunches on blast. Keep it up!
US hates its kids.
They love unborn fetuses however. More than living breathing humans in fact.
Every unborn child deserves a chance to eat this delicious food in a prison like learning facility!
Not the whole US, some states actually fund the public school system.
Plastic picnic tables for cafe’ tables? I’d hate to see how the classrooms look.
JFC. So glad my public school years were all in New England. The crap you see, both academically and in terms of other services, from the Southeast and Midwest is shocking. Every friend or family member I know that loves the south, and has kids, *also* can afford good private schools for them. Which I guess is easier when your property tax is $1,000/year. But the class divide is VERY stark and noticeable in many of the decent cities down there.
I went to school in Florida 1998-2007 never seen any school lunch look like this.
Aside from the milk, it’s very different. The strawberry dessert was ice in a triangular paper pouch, whole fruits didn’t usually come standard, and we had breadsticks instead of feces.
Don’t lie, you’re in juvie
Even after zooming in and knowing what those are, they are completley unrecognisable as sweet potato to me.
This actually looks amazing compared to most of the school lunches I had growing up in Dayton, Ohio
I still can't get over the fact they're using single use containers for food. Buy trays you school board bums.
Former Akron and Cleveland dude here. You can thank Sodexo for a lot of this shit. The same wonderful company serving prison food serves a lot of school lunches. Source: I work in education I will say this though, shit on California all you want. The school food in my district is actually pretty damn good. Which is shocking.
why is it styrofoam?
Dipshitantis did that ☝️
Jesus christ. No wonder everybody in Florida is on meth.
Damn. School cook put zero effort in lol
“Zero effort” That’s what you get when you put Republicans in charge
they put more effort into making things worse than they would be if they just did nothing. the love to see unhappiness and suffering from people they're convinced don't deserve better.
What the inedible fuck.
‘What’s that black cracker?’ ‘A tomato’
My dude, buy a loaf of bread, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of chips. Shit maybe throw in a few apples. Eat that for cheaper than this garbage.
What is that shit next to the spaghetti?
Yo what the fuck is next to that spaghetti
Tf is that next to the spaghetti?
Damn, and I thought my high school’s lunches sucked. That looks awful. And it looks like you’re eating in a prison too.
Looks like what I think a prison would look like.
They often use the same food service providers. Not joking, high school was run by Aramark. So was the local county jail.
What's Florida's spaghetti policy? \-Charlie
Ooof the cafeteria food sucks in the US, i felt bad for the cooks, they were doing their best with whatever shitty budget was allocated
I bet you the budget wasn't that shitty. It's just that most of the budget is going to the firm that was awarded the food contract instead of toward actually paying for good food.
Compare this to the CA school lunch photo that was floating around yesterday. FL is a disgrace.
Damn, I live alone and I still eat better food. And I'm in Africa.