Fed up with School Lunch

[abejita]

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

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.

[BleeckerSt_Girl]

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.

[channlluv]

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

[bmccasland]

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.