[Kmal]

The lunches my schools presented to me were disgusting. They tasted bad, made you feel bad, and most if not all of it came pre-packaged and frozen. Not once did they make anything from scratch. The chicken was ground chicken, formed into nuggets (of course) and had little pieces of gristle in it most of the time.

How was your school lunches? Any horror stories? Decent lunches? Some that were actually good? Opinions?

[Autumnleaf]

Pizza and fiestadas were good. The rest was not.

[Booko]

The food is poor quality and the nutrition a joke.

There is some movement to improve school lunches, and I heartily approve.

That said, even a piss poor excuse for a school lunch is better than no food at all, and that's what too many children in this country face as a choice.

---------- Post added 09-26-2010 at 02:10 PM ----------

	Originally Posted by Kmal To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	How was your school lunches? Any horror stories? Decent lunches? Some that were actually good? Opinions?

I don't think I can compare, because I was eating school lunches in the 60s when they were still doing real cooking. It wasn't terribly tasty, but there was still some food value there.

People then would have laughed at the idea that "ketchup is a vegetable."

Moms still cooked real food then and wouldn't have put up hearing such arrant nonsense from school or other gov't officials.

Now people think a frozen lasagna from Wal-Mart is a high-quality nutritious meal.
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[Commissar]

At the high school I went to, the only edible food was pizza and hamburgers. The "salads" were god-awful and the other food they offered were often stale or dripping with grease.

If I ever have children, I'll pack them lunch every day because the food offered at schools is atrocious.

[Warrior]

Originally Posted by Kmal To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.

The lunches my schools presented to me were disgusting. They tasted bad, made you feel bad, and most if not all of it came pre-packaged and frozen. Not once did they make anything from scratch. The chicken was ground chicken, formed into nuggets (of course) and had little pieces of gristle in it most of the time. How was your school lunches? Any horror stories? Decent lunches? Some that were actually good? Opinions?

It was that way through the late 70s and 80s. There were a few items that tasted good, like the pizza and chicken sandwiches, but there were many more things that didn't. What nutritious items there were tended to be the least tasty, so they were the least likely to be eaten. Still, I know for some kids their lunch at school was probably the best they got.

I eat lunch at school now with my kids a couple time a year. From what I can tell, things haven't changed a lot. At least the school kitchen when I was in school was an actual kitchen with stoves, grills, and other items you might expect to see in any large corporate or industrial kitchen. The one in my kids' school is hardly any bigger than the one in our house. It has one stove, a lot of microwaves, and a drink cooler (like you find at a convenience store) that they roll out with milk and juice.

[Brittle]

We never had state supplied school lunches. We had canteens if we wished to purchase lunch (pies, baked bean jaffles, pasties, soft-drink - all of which has now been banned, it's fruit juice and salad sandwiches all the way), but generally we would take a packed lunch.

Of course, our government is now trying to step in to tell parents what they can and can't pack into their children's lunch-boxes and teachers will actively vet them for "illicit substances" like cup cakes. Argh - so much for living in a free society.

[elizabeth lover]

it was pretty much saturated fat and simple carbs on a tray.

[Booko]

	Originally Posted by elizabeth lover To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
	it was pretty much saturated fat and simple carbs on a tray.

What, no sugar? I can't imagine calling it a serving of "fruit" when it's fruit coctail in heavy syrup. Might as well give the kiddies a chocolate bar. I don't envy the teachers having to deal with them after lunch. First they'll be hyper and then they'll snooze. Neither is very good for learning anything.

I used to sent our kids to school with their own lunch. They hated the cafeteria lunches, and when I went to look at them I could see why, both in terms of taste and food value.

[Mogura]

Ah... American school lunches... the root of my impassioned hatred for all things Jell-O and chicken-fried steak....

[Asinine]

It was bland tasteless crap for the most part. Spaghetti that was just boiled noodles with undrained ground meat on top. Chili was ground meat and onions. The pizza was much the same. I don't think I ever saw any hint of a tomato other than the ketchup packets and the rare salad. The veggies where just served straight from the can other than being heated.

The rolls where fresh, and the barbecue was good, however. Those where made fresh from local recipes. The lard cooked french fries tasted good.

[OhTheHorror]

For the most part, they're pretty good. On the health aspect, of course they're terrible.

[katrin]

I have memories of my best friend and I joking about how we were once again eating the "orange food group" due to all the foods we'd selected being orange. Orange juice, carrots, mac-n-cheese... what else? Our math teacher would stop by our table in his violet sweater and comment on our orange foods. Our foods harmonized nicely with his sweater. I don't remember much else because I'm old and my memory is a sieve.
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[Silverity]

We made our own but during middle school you could get chicken fingers and potato wedges and a small thing of chocolate milk. It wasn't that bad, likely low in nutrition, but it wasn't poor quality (not scraps of meat formed together).

[WyohKnott]

I never actually ate school lunches, or had the "opportunity" to do so, but I'm appalled by what I've read about them. I started reading a blog a while ago - perhaps you've heard of it -- by a teacher who decided to eat the lunch at her school every day for a year, which is where I've gotten most of my information, directly and indirectly, about them.
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With all the money spent (at least in my area) on new computers and other technology for students, you'd think we could afford to make kids a decent healthy lunch. I'd be willing to bet that that would affect learning progress a heck of a lot more than having expensive computers in every classroom.

[ktgrey]

Truly awful. My lunch generally consisted of a cookie (these were quite good, seemed to be freshly baked), a Twix bar, and a cherry water because the lunches were so awful. Often one of those crust-less peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in the plastic wrapping which somehow has a long shelf life through some miracle of preservatives. I deemed this far superior than trying to eat their excuse for food.

[Zappus]

Lunches in my school were pretty damn good. Most of the times it was very tasty. Almost every day me and my classmates were visiting the chef to give us some extra. The year i left school it got canceled coz chef quit. I was very lucky.

[everlost]

My friends thought I ate too slowly, so they were all like "COMMON HURRY UP!!" and sometimes they just left me to finish alone.

The food was good though, but then, I had the good fortune not to be born and raised in the USA.

[TigerL]

We were poor enough growing up that I qualified for free school breakfasts and lunches. So I was grateful for the meals and ate what I was given.

This was during the 80s but the lunches were fair. The schools still had kitchens. My favorite items were chicken chimichangas, spaghetti, fruit bars (cookies with jam), and spice cakes. The oddest things were 'pacman hamburgers' where they cut out a wedge of the burger to simulate pacman and St. Patrick's Day milk, when they dyed the milk green!

Nutrition could definitely be improved but where I am now, one of the nearby public school districts (rich neighborhood) has a caterer do their lunches with organic produce. My cousin, who is involved with the Vancouver BC school district lunch program, helps schools in that area introduce more salads and fruit into their lunches. Interestingly, some polls of high schools show that students want more healthy choices in their cafeteria.

[SAnnBR]

I once found a screw in my roll. I never ate school lunch again. (not that I particularly liked it anyway) Fortunately, I always broke my bread before I ate it. : )

[Kricket]

I was a picky child and refused to eat school lunches. If I forgot to bring a lunch, I went hungry for a day or scraped together some quarters for a candy bar. The worst thing I ate consistently was Lunchables (pre-packaged) pizza- the nutritional value of a cracker with red sauce and plastic cheese is probably low, but I loved them.

At my high school they had a cafeteria, but you could also buy slices of pizza from a local pizza chain, or a big square loaf of white bread ($1? $0.75?). Seeing people stand in line to buy loaves of bread always weirded me out.