Perception Of School Lunches..

[Caretaker]

I don't see how a school can make a rule about not bringing your lunch?

Out of perverse curiousity, I decided to go to Google....

 

Apparently, high schoolers in New York City could conceivably hide razors or other weapons in a lunch brought from home.

 

http://www.worldinfozone.com/features.php?...n=PartnersLunch

 

I still think that is bullshit.

[LadyFeline]

Out of perverse curiousity, I decided to go to Google....

 

Apparently, high schoolers in New York City could conceivably hide razors or other weapons in a lunch brought from home.

That's also the reason my old school gave for banning book bags, purses, baggy clothes, and wearing jackets in the classrooms (even though the heater at that school almost NEVER worked, even AFTER they replaced it, so every classroom situated on the outer walls was FREEZING during the fall and winter. But nooooo, no jackets or zipper sweaters because we might be hiding a GUN! OHNOES!)

[Skankboy]

I had free lunch my entire life (read: VERY POOR) and other than they used to put WAY too much clove on the ham, I can't really complain...

[white_raven23]

I think the schools I went to had the same food program as Ladyfeline's, sorry to say.

 

The smell of the square pizza 'slices' was so vile, I wouldn't touch it, but friends did report it was much like dry and chewy cardboard hidden under a glob of lukewarm to cold cheese.

 

I had a few of those bean burritos too, and despite having to chew forever, you were better off "peeling" the tortilla-like wrapping off and eating that, and leaving the bean innards on the tray.

 

I was always one to follow my nose....and the general scent and appearance of the "food" was enough to make me brown-bag it most of the time.

 

Only thing the cafeterias managed to not fuck up were the potato products. Fries and Tater wheels. Once I hit jr hich through high school, you could just buy single items......so yeah....lunch was sometimes just fries or tater wheels (you wanna tell me THAT is healthy?).

 

And are you actually calling those squishy flavorless oranges 'fruit'? Ick.

 

My mom had worked in school cafeterias, and she wasn't the least surprised that I preferred making my own lunch to paying for that swill.

 

And....funny enough, in early grade school mom would make my lunch at home, never once suggesting I try the school lunches.....I didn't eat a school lunch until fifth grade. And mom had once worked as a lunch lady.....hmmmm. I rather doubt that is a coincidence.

[Guest Neo-Agnostic - Vulgaris]

My school lunches weren't bad at all... they were like low quality frozen food from the regular grocery (like Tony's Pizza, canned ravioli), but they weren't anything as bad as what LadyFeline suppsedly had.

I went to the same high school as LF.

 

She's not kidding. The crap they served us was garbage. Filler dogs, soy burgers, chili that was runnier than my mother's and nowhere near as awesome, rectangular pizza with mysterious "meat" on it that I would eat around if I ate at all, and stuff I don't even wanna think about.

 

The only thing I'd ever eat was the burritos, and that was just for the fun of cracking into them. By the time I graduated, I was halfway through writing a story about a secret agent character of mine who got one of those and tried to use high-powered weapons and explosives just to open the damn thing.

 

I was lucky enough to be on anti-hyperactivity medicine through most of this, and it just happened to be a high dose of the same stuff they used to put in Dexatrim. Thus, I was never hungry when I was at school. Funny how well that worked out for me.

[Lizard]

The school lunches we had could hardly be called nutritionally sound. lots of white pastas, white potatoes, corn, white rolls, pizza. These things are all simple carbs and incredibly bad for you if you are carb sensitive. We ate this stuff and were very sluggish about an hour later.

I'm amazed..and shocked too, I guess. I thought all schools followed the same programs.

 

We use whole wheat flour for breads (except french bread, which just wouldn't work).

 

Our menu for this week is:

Chicken nuggets (kids fave, lol)

Spaghetti (awesome sauce, with mozzy cheese in the sauce)

Beef and cheese nachos

Pepperoni pizza (triangle shaped with round pepperonis)

Hamburger on a bun. Yes, the burger has soy in it-not alot, but its a filler like we use bread crumbs in a meatloaf so it doesn't fall apart.

 

Personally, I have no objection to soy burgers. On hamburger day, I bring my own-boca burger, 100% soy

 

We also offer the following alternate lunches corresponding to the meals above:

Baked potato w/cheese

Chef salad

Yogurt plate (with goldfish type crackers)

sub sandwich plate (with deli turkey or turkey ham)

Lunch muncher..which is sorta like those commercial lunchable things, only we put sliced cheese, sliced turkey ham, carrots and grapes/oranges/kiwi. (depends on what we have with the fruit, like right now, grapes are too expensive)

 

As an aside, we also eat the food we prepare. The only days I will have something different are the beef/pork days, as I eat neither of those things at any time, anywhere. An example: beef and cheese nachos become bean and cheese nachos for me.

 

I still wish y'all could come have lunch with me..

 

As to nutritionally sound, they are geared for children, the carbs are higher than adults would normally need. But, white flour breads are on their way out. Unfortunately, white bread is what children like best.

 

Oh! Speaking of potatoes..we get small red potatoes in a farm to school program. We make them into garlic mashed potatoes. Freaks out the kids, cuz the peelings are still in there and they would prefer the plain, instant ones..but, they are really good.

[greygirl]

I think a lot of my issues with food have roots in school lunches. When I was in elementary school, the teachers took turns monitoring the cafeteria. Every child had to clean their plate before they were allowed to go to recess. The students had no control over their own portions, there were no choices or alternatives, and the monitors did not care to hear any excuses about being full or not liking something. I was forced to eat until I threw up on several occasions, as were several other students.

 

By the time I got to jr high and high school and finally had some choices, very few students were eating anything like a nutritionally balanced lunch. My high school had Pizza Hut delivered , and most students ate that every day. There was always a mad rush to get to the cafeteria after class, because once the pizza ran out, all that was left was the swill the cafeteria workers had cooked (or poured out of cans). It was bad enough just having to stand next to that stuff while waiting in line. No one wanted to eat it. It wasn't at all uncommon to find that the baked chicken was still raw in the middle, or that the burgers had been charred into something that was more like a thin hockey puck than anything resembling food. The fries were translucent with grease. Vegetables, regardless of variety, were mushy and grey.

 

More recently, I worked in a state-run school for disabled children. The lunches were brought in by truck every day, and usually at room temperature when they arrived. The classrooms had microwaves, but they weren't used to reheat student lunches. One of the "perks" of my job was that anyone in the building could order a lunch, free of charge, any day they wanted to. Adults eating what was being fed to the students was incredibly rare, even though it was free. Most of it was just what I remembered from when I was in school, only without the heat. Mushy, greasy, under or over-cooked, and with a stench that could make you gag. Calling any of the school lunches "nutritionally complete" would be quite a stretch. I don't know about the rest of the country, but in Utah, ketchup is still considered a vegetable for the purposes of school lunch.

[Lizard]

That is so sad, greygirl!

 

I hate mushy veggies..frozen and fresh ones are hard to keep fresh looking for long, so we make them in small batches.

[Beowulf]

Lizard,

 

I really admire all you and your colleagues do to provide food for our students. In our district, we also get complaints about food from students and sometimes from parents, but that's always going to be the case.

 

One thing folks need to remember is that often, the meals provided by the school are the only decent meals a child gets.

[Flyby Stardancer]

Ugh. As far as I know, the school foods at my public schools were never horrible. I only really ate them in elementary... Even then I was so picky that I brought lunch most of the time. Middle school I only ate school lunches when I was helping to serve (Elementary and middle school always had students doing the actual serving--shifts were rotated between different students. We even got to handle the money in middle school!), and even then it was pretty much always the curly fries. High school I only bought food from the Dominoes cart we had the last couple of years when I was there. And in all three schools we had indoor 'cafeteria' seating, and benches outside. The cafeterias weren't large enough to hold all the students at once...