Fed up with School Lunch

I came across this blog and I thought that some of you might be interested. It is written by a woman who decided to buy and eat school lunches for a whole year.

In particular, this passage hit home about how the food we eat effects our body:

When I think about my bloodstream, my heart, my brain...they are all created with molecules from the school lunches I have eaten all year long. Shooting through my veins right now are molecules of beef that was treated with antibiotics (29 million pounds of antibiotics was fed to animals in 2009), apples with pesticide residue, vegetables including potatoes grown with chemical fertilizer, whole wheat buns that might not be as healthy as I thought, high fructose corn syrup in the ketchup, and maybe a dye or two. I don't know all the specific ingredients that are in the school lunches, but now they are now my body's ingredients, my fuel, my problem.

Our school lunches cost $2.50 full price. Nearly half our student body (and we're not a "poor" school in my town) receive free or reduced price lunches - $.80.

Even at $2.50, those lunches are getting subsidized with tax dollars. If you want them to be made in a more healthful way, taxpayers need to cough up more money.

Veronica

I heard a story once on NPR about school lunches in France - made with locally purchased fresh ingredients - I want to eat school lunches there!

I'm not sure that rural districts can do now what was done when I was in school - the local game warden would donate fresh road kill or illegally harvested game. I remember looking through the slats into the kitchen in my HS to see a deer on the floor. Venison chili was on the day's menu. :p

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Originally Posted by bmccasland

I heard a story once on NPR about school lunches in France - made with locally purchased fresh ingredients - I want to eat school lunches there!

I'm not sure that rural districts can do now what was done when I was in school - the local game warden would donate fresh road kill or illegally harvested game. I remember looking through the slats into the kitchen in my HS to see a deer on the floor. Venison chili was on the day's menu. :p

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That's both kind of gross and kind of awesome.

Ours were $2.50 or $2.75 when I graduated. I think the price has gone up since. Fries were a staple. And they were handed out...rather generously.

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Originally Posted by abejita

In particular, this passage hit home about how the food we eat effects our body:[/B]

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Mmmmmm....better living through chemistry!! :p

HS school "lunches" (mmm...chocolate chip cookies and Pepsi, anyone??) are where and when I learned to brown bag it. I do to this day.

On school lunches that I see, the meat especially is so processed that I'm pretty sure my grandparents would not have recognized it as food.

We were lucky if we got mashed potatoes with no flies in them, and a roll with no hair.

I'm serious.

I'm so happy to have brown-bagged it through all of school. We would BEG our parents in high school for money on pizza day (Domino's!) but usually lost the battle.

Though with all of the restrictions now on what foods you can bring into schools, I don't know what we would have done. I loved (and still love) PB&J and we had cookies and soda or kool-aid fairly regularly.

my school lunch cost 35 cents and it was not subsidized (I should say, i wasn't on the "special" program!!!) who knows if it was subsidized then?!

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Originally Posted by Veronica

Our school lunches cost $2.50 full price. Nearly half our student body (and we're not a "poor" school in my town) receive free or reduced price lunches - $.80.

Even at $2.50, those lunches are getting subsidized with tax dollars. If you want them to be made in a more healthful way, taxpayers need to cough up more money.

Veronica

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You are exactly right. It is like everything else...people want more for less, which of course let to stores like walmart and the like.

When I was growing up in NYC in the early 1960's, we were very poor. I qualified for free school lunches at my public school. I was thrilled to get the canned peas, instant mashed potatoes, franks&beans, canned peaches, Salisbury 'steak', milk, sometimes an apple. Sure there was a high proportion of canned and processed food, but often it was my only meal for the day, and it was usually was the only fruit and vegetables I had access to. i ate every molecule, plus the stuff the other kids were going to toss away. It tasted wonderful to me because I was actually hungry.
When my own children went to public school, I was horrified to see giant vending machines selling Coke, candy bars, and potato chip in the hallways, and frozen pizza offered as the main lunch item.

I don't remember how much school lunches cost, but I went to high school in Alabama, where ketchup was considered a vegetable. I'm not even kidding. Early 1980s.

When I was very young in elementary school, our school lunches had these great sugar cookies and peanut butter cookies and they were just like the cookies I got at home from my great-grandmother. I thought all cookies were like those cookies. I was actually surprised when I ate a different kind of cookie - some vanilla lemon sandwich thing from a package - because I'd never had any other kind of cookie. Come to find out the school district used my gran's recipes for cookies. Ha! Small town, what can I say.

I make my DD's lunch every day. Usually her favorite PB&J on whole grain bread or tuna salad or turkey or ham and cheese, a piece of organic fruit, maybe some whole grain chips, and usually a Z-bar or Clif bar for snack. It's starting to get cool now, so I'll start giving her warm food in a Thermos after the holiday break.

Her school lunches consist of iceberg lettuce with processed meat cut up on top, or a big honkin' white bread sandwich roll with a little piece of processed turkey meat and maybe a slice of processed cheese. When she started 6th grade, they had lunches brought in by Revolution Foods - for $4 a day, she got organic veggies and roast chicken or some such yumminess. I happily paid up. When they cancelled that program and switched to the school district's in-house lunch program (processed, nutritionally vacant food-like substances) for $2.50 a day, I started making lunches for her. Might as well, I make us both a hot breakfast every morning, too.

Roxy

Let's start with the confession - I went to elementary school in the mid 1960's

But I can relate to Roxy - I went to a small elementary school (one class of each grade) in Louisiana, and I thought the lunches were great! I couldn't understand why people complained about school lunches. We had home cooked food, fresh rolls, and they'd make great desserts - like coconut pie. The lunch ladies were good cooks - when schools actually employed cooks, and not people who could heat things up. Then I moved to Michigan - to a smalll school district (two High Schools in the entire county). Again, we had COOKS. Like I mentioned above, sometimes fresh meat was delivered, and someone in the kitchen, or in the school knew how to dress a deer. Most of the county was rural.

And then we moved to Tucson, Arizona - there were several high schools in the district - and then I finally understood why everyone would complain about "school lunches". I think the difference was if the district was small enough and could make independant decisions on how to work the budget. Then again, a district has to have a budget to work with too.