Is school cafeteria food in America trash?

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨CmdrGraves@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨[deleted]⁩

In my country, there’s no US style cafeteria (instead it’s a canteen where it’s up to the student if they want to buy anything) some bring their own lunches (home or leftovers) to cut costs, so why do American kids rely on cafeteria food instead of bringing their own lunch?.

I mean, is cafeteria food across American schools that bad? It depends on where one resides or if they attend a public or private school. In my case I went to a private (Catholic) high school and the food there is actually good (& cheap when converted to USD).

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

Flyzeyez@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
Former american student here. Yes, absolute garbage. Same as prison food.

source
- CmdrGraves@lemmy.world ⁨55⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
  
  Same as prison food
  
  It’s manufactured & supplied by the same companies, that’s why.
  
  source
daggermoon@piefed.world ⁨35⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
I recall it being quite bad.

source
IWW4@lemmy.zip ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
It depends on where the school is, and even then it is still an industrialized large scale service.

source
FudgyMcTubbs@lemmy.world ⁨52⁩ ⁨minutes⁩ ago
My teenaged kid’s school has free lunch for all students. I often offer to pack a lunch for my kid, but they decline. If they don’t want me to, I won’t, and I like that my kid taking a lunch defuses the stigma of “poor” kids taking a free lunch.

Broadly, there is a lot of food insecurity, especially in big cities, so cafeteria food may be the only meal some kids get. In the US, many school districts also send home backpacks stuffed with nonperishable food for the holiday breaks, and summer lunch programs are offered. The decision to close school for inclement weather also involves deciding if some kids wont get to eat that day. So fortunate is my family that we dont have to worry about that.

source
slowtrain33@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago
American dad here. Yes, it’s trash.

Moved to Japan for my son and the difference is night and day. People here are shocked and disgusted when I tell them what I ate for school lunches as a kid.

source
southsamurai@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Ignoring private schools, it really depends on locale. Most schools are run by a combination of local and state guidelines. So each state has its own minimum standards, which are then implemented on a district level.

However, in some districts, the budget isn’t equal between all schools.

So you can have varying quality within the same school system, and even more between different systems.

The good thing about school meals is that they aren’t usually super expensive, don’t require packing only foods that won’t spoil or be gross by lunch time, and there’s usually some kind of budget for free reduced cost lunches (sometimes breakfast too) for those in need. It makes sense that most students will choke down even the bad options instead.

Some schools do damn well though. The bulk is usually going to be supplied by one of the industrial food distributors, but most of that is similar to or the same as what you’d get in terms of ingredient quality as chain restaurants.

So the staff of the cafeteria can make a huge difference in quality right there. Knowing how to turn fairly meh ingredients into something tasty is a great thing.

When schools supplement with fresh produce, it can be damn good food. Local farmers out in rural areas often contribute. Some high schools have agriculture programs where they grow stuff that gets used in their own school, and may be distributed to others. Our closest high school supplements their own cafeteria, plus the elementary schools, and part of the jr high schools (some of those have their own gardens, so they tend to handle their own). My kid was very happy with the high school’s food, unlike the food at their jr high in another state that they hated.

I ate at the high school a couple of times. Waaaaaay better than when I was a student there, and the agriculture program was starting up back then. Mind you, the lady that ran the cafeteria was doing a great job with what she had. The supplies were just crap back then. All canned shit for veggies if it wasn’t grown local, mandated recipes on a schedule set by the county, so you could only do so much to improve things. She ran a damn good kitchen though, so even when the food was bad, we knew the cooks were doing their best.

And that’s pretty much the problem with school food. It just isn’t a nationwide priority.

source
Gerudo@lemmy.zip ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It absolutely depends on where the funding comes from. I know someone who works student nutrition for a school district that doesn’t receive state funds, it’s all county school tax funded. They chose to contract out to a company that provides the food. Usually this is a recipe for disaster, but they actually provide high quality food. All fruit or vegetables are fresh, not frozen or canned. All food is prepared fresh daily, no microwaves. Their food is so good, every employee that she knows, eats the food too. This is in stark contrast to prison food level quality found in many districts.

source
- OwOarchist@pawb.social ⁨5⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  
  This is in stark contrast to prison food level quality found in many districts.
  
  Very literally prison food.
  
  Public schools in the US often contract with companies to provide the school lunches, and the companies fulfilling those contracts are often exactly the same companies that provide food for prisoners in the prison system.
  
  source
  - Cevilia@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    This is a false equivalence. The same company providing food for two different markets might be providing two different menus. Like a cake company which makes different cakes, and also some bread products, maybe some biscuits… you wouldn’t open a box of biscuits and find a cake inside. Except maybe Jaffa Cakes. What was I saying again?
    
    Oh yeah, faulty logic, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some mix-and-matching going on. Capitalism gotta capitalise.
    
    source
    -> View More Comments
schwim@piefed.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
When the government allowed corporations into the schools with soda and snack machines in exchange for a kickback in the 80s, any hope of a bureaucrat looking out for the kids’ health was dead. Once they could use the excuse that most kids weren’t making use of a subsidized nutritious lunch(very loosely using the phrase) because they were bringing their own or eating their lunch from the machines, they didn’t even need to try any longer.

https://www.nuvending.co.uk/news/history-of-vending-machines-in-schools/ (Ironically, a post from a corporation installing the vending machines points but it makes the necessary points)

source
harrys_balzac@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Schools are run by cities, counties, with oversight and regulations divided between every level, all the way to Federal.

There are minimum standards set for nutrition but many kinds of schools are exempt from providing meals or meeting the minimum.

Some schools go above and beyond, providing nutritious breakfasts, lunches, and snacks that the students can take home. Others, on the other hand, see it as a hassle and do the bare minimum.

Many US schools are misfunded, with many layers of unneeded bureaucracy and testing added, pulling resources away from the classroom and cafeteria.

source
- slackassassin@piefed.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Yep. Like most answers to all encompassing “in the u.s.” questions the answer is “it depends”.
  
  source
Jaegeras@piefed.social ⁨3⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Nostalgia kids would have you believe that it was always good. However, I would say it was maybe 15% of the time that it was good. It wasn’t like you had a plethora of options as to what to eat. Some of the options did suck for the week and that was all you get, too bad if you are wanting something else.

In High School, it was slightly better with the access of vending machines and the ability to sometimes buy food but then again, that involved money. Whatever provided to you, was marginally better, but still the same odds at the end of the day.

source
Nemo@slrpnk.net ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
It varies a lot by school. My highschool was okay, but I still preferred to pack a lunch from home. My kids’ elementary school found is awful and if I don’t pack lunches for them they just won’t eat.

source
disregardable@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
it’s really terrible from an adult’s perspective. like frozen food dinners but worse, because it’s only for kids. but kids don’t actually know any better. they will actually look forward to some of it, even though as an adult you wouldn’t be able to enjoy it.

it’s not up to the kid though. it’s up to the parent. in the US both parents work, so if mom is too exhausted from work, you’re going to have to buy food.

source
- ButteryMonkey@piefed.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  I looked forward to canned green beans in school lunches. We only had frozen growing up and the canned were just a whole different thing.
  
  Fortunately that hankering didn’t last very long, because canned veggies are so so much worse than frozen in every way.
  
  But we mostly brought our lunches from home, until halfway through high school when we started buying our own food for lunch with after-school-jobs money.
  
  source
wreckedcarzz@lemmy.world ⁨4⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yes. My schools eventually offered a ‘snack bar’ which was decent food for more money, if you didn’t want the garbage the cafeteria line served. We also, in high school, got pizza delivered and sold by a nearby restaurant every day. I ate a lot of pizza during that time.

The hs cafeteria fries with seasoning was actually really good though. Though it’s not very hard to cook a batch of fries…

source
Feyd@programming.dev ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago

some bring their own lunches (home or leftovers) to cut costs

Students bringing a lunch box is very common in the US

source
- hydrashok@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  At least anecdotally, we’re on the other side and almost never see kids bring food beyond things like allergies and such.
  
  Our state also pays for all kids to get breakfast and lunch as part of their education. The only thing lunch accounts are for anymore is à la carte items in the high schools. No “reduced” lunch bologna sandwich shaming. It’s great.
  
  source
givesomefucks@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Most kids still pay for the shitty standard cafeteria lunch tray…

Sometimes in later in like highschool they’re given more options. But it’s pretty much comes down to capitalism.

The vast amount of parents won’t pack a lunch and will never even see the quality of food.

What’s fucked up is healthy food is actually insanely cheap at that scale and dependable need. We’d spend just as much feeding kids a healthy high protein/fiber low sugar/fat meal as we do giving them ultra processed garbage.

There just would be profit margins for contracting companies if we did that

Likeost things in America, no system is designed to be the best or most efficient at anything other than making money. Anything that doesn’t make money, the wealthy are constantly trying to privatize.

That’s the whole “late stage capitalism” thing people always say.

source
FuglyDuck@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Late 90’s, early 2k’s, it was far more disgusting that just “trash”. It hasn’t changed any since then, either. The food is all microwaved, deep fried or baked; all from frozen. And you might be inclined to think baked stuff wouldn’t be so bad. But the only thing that came out of an oven was the pizza - and I’m pretty sure they’d have fried that too, if they could.

The closest any of that came to decent food is when the delivery truck passed by the grocery store.

One time, a friend had grabbed strawberry milk, and ended up gagging on a gelatinous rope that some how came out his nose. (You know the pasta trick? In the mouth? Out the nose?)

It came out to jiggle on his tray like pink snotty jello from hell.

The only reason people ate that crap is largely because they didn’t have a choice.

source
solrize@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
In my day the food was never good but it was usually reasonably edible and that’s all anyone expected from it. It’s probably worse now.

I still remember “Turkey 2-Hydroxy Tetrazzini”.

source