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They always throw the apple and orange away too! Our janitor began collecting them and taking them home to feed his pigs. But then admin didn’t like it so back into the garbage went perfectly good fruit.
It would help if the apples weren't the USDA Grade Q worst dry flavorless chalky "Red Delicious" that may have actually been salvaged from fallout shelter barrels from the 60s.
When I was a kid I was convinced that I "didn't like apples" because of those disgusting cheap shitty chalky dry "Red Delicious" lying apples.
Turns out, I fucking love apples. Easily one of my favorite fruits, one of the best snacks ever, gimme some peanut butter to go with some apple slices??? Nothing better. So good.
It was those garbage tier Red Delicious apples that were what I didn't like, and still don't.
Same! I would ask my mom to buy other kinds of apples, and she refused. It was always the red delicious, which were anything but delicious. Now that I am an adult – questionable – I eat an apple every single day. I absolutely love them.
The stupid thing is that Red Delicious apples aren't significantly cheaper than other varieties so you can't even chalk it up as a cost saving measure. They just shouldn't exist.
It is a cost-saving measure, though. Red Delicious were bred to be very STURDY apples. Not tasty, but STURDY. When you think about the sheer quantity of apples being shipped to schools, you need a sturdy apple to limit spoilage.
Yeah, like sure ones like Honey Crisps can be a little more expensive, but let's be so for real about the price difference. Honey Crisp at my Stop and Shop website is $1.61 right now, current on SALE for $1.19
And red Delicious are fucking $1.53
How much REALLY is anyone saving by ordering the dog shit chalky dry tasteless apples? And those are individual retail prices, they drop to like pennies when you buy in bulk. Surely schools can get delicious apples for nearly nothing? Fucking Capitalism.
I love Macintosh apples and those are generally the same price or cheaper than Red Delicious. The only drawback is that they don’t seem to last as long in storage as other apples.
The federal government sends surplus to school meals because children aren’t consumers and therefore their disposal of surplus goods doesn’t impact market rates like if they gave every American adult a bushel of apples.
Red Delicious apples still exist because it is hugely expensive and time consuming to convert an apple orchard. Many popular modern apple varieties are also limited to specific clubs you have to pay to join to get access to the genetic stock. So there are a lot of Red Delicious apples grown every year that still need to go somewhere while a farm slowly converts to other varieties or until it’s sold to developers.
Federal money for school lunch is also extremely limited. Your entire budget comes from meal reimbursement so those extra twenty cents or whatever a pound adds up extremely quickly. And the school can’t just shop weekly at the regular grocery store either. They have to be able to prove the supply chains for many foods in case of recall AND foods have to have paperwork proving they meet certain nutritional guidelines. That paperwork is so vital there is an entire lobbying office in DC dedicated to getting more meat alternatives approved for school lunch because it’s been such a hurdle.
Yep, capitalism. The suppliers of the apples are also likely suppliers of commercial businesses as well. Want to keep your commercial customers? Make sure they don’t get tasteless, imperfect products. No, save those products for government subsidized institutions (school, prison, etc). Beggars can’t be choosers. It’s gross but it’s true. Well according to the lunch ladies anyway.
Red Delicious are bred for two things: appearance and shelf life. Flavor hasn’t been factored into their breeding profile since some point in the 60s, and for some reason it all ties into a desire for uniformity in supermarket culture.
They can sit in optimal storage for 3 to 5 months, and look pretty as a picture reminiscent of coke bottles in shape and color. That’s it. That’s literally their entire purpose.
To force them on children is a cruelty perpetrated by the USDA in exchange for subsidy money. They’re cheap and bad, but they keep longer than nearly any other fruit.
I used to have a Red Delicious tree and they were actually delicious when ripened on the tree and eaten freshly picked. Not as strong a flavor as a tart Granny Smith or something, but still quite delicious as the name implies. I'm always very disappointed when I get a store-bought one, there is no comparison.
Other apple varieties are at least close in flavor to home-grown, so I don't really understand why Red Delicious are so different from the store. I have a Granny Smith tree now that is wonderfully tart, but the store bought ones are pretty close. And other store-bought apples taste good although I've not compared them to freshly picked ones.
Favorite variety? I've become addicted to cosmic crisp.
Honey Crisp for me, I personally don't think Cosmic tastes that different and they're a little thicker to find, like not all stores have them in just a giant bin like Honey Crisps.
I also really like Braeburn and Pink Lady apples.
For a fun website, check out applerankings.com, informative and funny reviews of every apple varietal. Whoever does the reviews for this site describes Red Delicious as "coffee grinds in a leather glove" lolol
I’m irrationally excited about the opportunity to give Red Delicious apples a negative review on the Internet.
My favorite are Jonamacs, but I can only ever find them at orchards. Pink Lady apples are usually my go-to.
My favorite are Jonamacs, but I can only ever find them at orchards
The internet says that they were overshadowed by other apples and "disappeared from commercial production" and therefore you can only find them in small local quantities at local orchards that still grow them. Might want to invest in some Jonamac seeds!
I’d love to plant one! We have a really old apple tree (Gravenstein, I think) that will probably need to come out in a few years, so I might put a Jonamac in its place.
If you like the flavor of Macintosh but not the mushiness, they’re great apples!
Just a side note, but I love that I'm having a fun apple discussion with a couple different people as a result of this thread lol
Apple trees don't work that way! Every single apple seed is a different varietal of apple. Plant a seed, there's a really good chance you'll get a tree that produces a bad apple (either in terms of taste or texture). When we get a good apple tree, we take grafts of it to clone that varietal. Thus, every Janomac is the same tree. Any seeds that come from the apples will be different.
Fun fact - red delicious were delicious originally.
Then they were bred to have exactly 5 bumps at the bottom and be very red.
I also wonder if they were more delicious in the 1800s when they won that award, or if they were just more delicious than the existing apples of the time.
That’s true. The type of apples served in school have turned generations of people against apples.
It's crazy how different apples can be from one type to another. You can spend an extra few pennies per apple and get something that's wildly better. I can't think of another fruit that varies so much. Maybe pears?
I actually remember a day in school when the Apple was crispy and good. I was younger than 12 at the time. So… a 40 year memory of a good school Apple.
That was me as a kid with pears. I thought they were awful because that’s what we got at school- awful, unripe, mealy pears. When I had one as an adult, it was revelation.
I hated pears as a kid. They were hard, flavorless mealy. Turns out ripe pears are a delicacy. I could eat 3 or 4 in one go, standing over the sink.
Ours has a machine that slices the oranges, the kids eat them when they’re sliced, don’t when they’re not. They’re the oranges that are hard to peel so kids avoid them.
My husband won’t eat oranges unless they’re sliced or I peel them for him. He tried school oranges and was convinced he just couldn’t do it without a knife. He’s still convinced the only reason I can is because I have nails.
LOLOL I love this.
You should get him a citra sipper. They're wasteful but after reading how many people can't peel oranges I see where they came up with the idea.
I'm a cafeteria monitor. I see the waste every day. At our school, they sell ice cream for $1. Every kid that buys ice cream stops eating their lunches and the ice cream becomes their lunch. I wish parents knew this. The ice cream brings in money, so it's not going anywhere. They used to let a man get the leftovers for his farm and we could take leftovers for pets. But now everything goes in the trash.
I usually send in a lunch for my kids, but like to leave some money in their accounts in case we’re running late and I want to have them buy lunch that day, or for an ice cream treat.
They used to have separate accounts - whole school lunch was on one, individual treat items (chips, frozen treats, etc.) the other. It was a great way as a parent to maintain some control and help them understand budget.
Well now the provider only has one account per kid. I’ve talked to my kids about what’s allowed and I can see what they buy after the fact, but I don’t like the loss of control as parent. My 8 year old with impulse control issues won’t always remember he already got his weekly ice cream two days ago when the rest of the table is getting it today.
The other system worked much better.
Did they give you a reason for throwing the leftovers in the trash. That’s so Grapes of Wrath.
I'm not the one you asked, but probably the worry that someone is benefiting from the waste and someone may possibly throw out more food than is necessary to get more for themselves. So, to keep that small possibility from happening no one can use the waste, it's just wasted instead.
My uncle worked at a store in the 70s where any excess or damaged product was thrown in a dumpster. People would dumpster dive and get those no-longer selling or salable products for free. The store didn't like this "loss of profit," so instead of allowing this thrift that didn't cost them anything they had a new policy where they had to make the products unusable, throwing paint all over them and breaking them for example. It's so wasteful, but how dare someone profit from their trash.
Government entities, like schools, have so much bureaucratic oversight I'd imagine the rules on this would just be worse. But, it's so stupid to rather have "decent" food be thrown in the landfill rather than being used by people or animals who could use it.
“Brings in money”?
Nothing like seeing budding MBA mentalities in places in which it has no place at all; like all schools…
Omg, are you at my school? Our custodian went through the exact same thing- so infuriating!
It really is. If the fruit wasn’t good I could understand but when it’s perfectly good? It’s such a waste.
Well, that's another thing. I've seen a startling amount of inedibly underripe produce in cafeterias. Honestly, it only would have been fit for livestock.
Ours tends to be overripe.
Well that at least has developed sugars. Enterprising folks could jam it or something.
More often than not the fruit is underripe and not very good. Think green bananas that are a bitch to peel, rock-hard pears.
During covid I would collect all the extra food and take it to the homeless shelter, but I finally got caught and now it gets thrown away.
This infuriates me. Instead of buying food the kids enjoy so it minimizes waste, they get butt hurt when the wasted food (“food we’re paying for”) is going to a good cause. It’s hard to trust leaders when they lack morality.
It's more the liability, I think, not to say there couldn't be a process in place that benefitted everyone.
A colleague and I tried to set up something similar with our extra food, and we got shot down hard by our admin and our food service company. It was so frustrating.
Ugh I hate that
This just shows more incompetence from admin. They are our enemies a lot of times. They don’t support in many ways.
I wish my kids would’ve thrown the fruit away when I worked in a title 1 middle school. They threw it at the floor or each other. Literally exploded Apple bits all over the hallway within 10 minutes of the school opening every day.
Same at our school. I collected it and had it in a basket for kids during the day. Then the cafeteria manager got hot and cited state law (which did not exist) so it’s back to the trash.
But then admin didn’t like it
what in God's name was their problem here? any explanation?
Fwiw (and I completely am against this) it might be a state law that the food must be disposed of. That's what's been going on in our district.
Ours too. We used to have a share bucket in the cafeteria for uneaten fruit and unopened packages of things (apple chips, bars, etc). Our state nutrition licensing shut it down.
Just look the other way when somepne bringa it home to their pigs... or elsewhere
But honestly: what hapoend jere is one of your colleagues being envipus and ratting you out to admin. There is always one person who simply cannot stand anyone else geting anything for free.
I saw/read something about this a bit ago. It isn't illegal anywhere in the US, though it is a popular myth. In fact many states have explicit liability protections for unused food going to food pantries, homeless shelters, etc.
You've got me interested so I will take a look through my state's food laws and see what I can find.
EDIT: Per the Washington State Retail Food Code:
Line 03372: Except as specified in subsection (2) and (3) of this section, after being served or sold and in the possession of a CONSUMER, FOOD that is unused or returned by the CONSUMER may not be offered as FOOD for human consumption.
The subsections refer to food which are not time or temperature sensitive or in their original, unopened packaging. I do think that based on what I read that fruits and non-leafy veggies should be exempted from this, so I guess I learned something today!
At the elementary I used to work at, all fruit and veg that was unwanted were thrown into a basket to feed the chickens. We had a chicken pen outside.
Same with my class, I also have that basket. But then I’m conflicted because the things in the basket are still packed with sugar! I’ve basically stopped putting the prepackaged cinnamon buns in the basket, and ask the kids to bring their fruit options back for the basket. The milk thing drives me crazy! And of course, it’s always chocolate, never plain.
Why aren’t more people shouting from the rooftops about this?
Are you reading the packaging? I know at my school they have things like cereal and honey buns for breakfast sometimes but they aren’t the normal versions of those things, they are made to meet the states’ nutrition requirements. So while it looks like we are sugaring these kids up to the Max the sugar levels in these foods are actually way less than the same packaged foods from the grocery store.
I never realized it until my 6th graders complained about how the school versions taste way worse.
I don’t disagree that school food should be way higher quality and healthier, I’m just saying it might not be as bad as it seems health wise.
Lunch Lord here, you are correct. All items, even snack-type foods, are a special version approved for sale in schools. Chips and baked items are all whole grain. Drinks are all sugar free.
Healthy choices are offered, it is the child that decides what they eat.
I’m sure we are not in the same state. If there are healthier options offered, it’s not during the same meals.
The argument of “the kids choose” wouldn’t hold any water. There’s a reason we have minimum ages on alcohol and tobacco. There’s a reason kids don’t decide on what is taught in their curriculums. You cannot expect a child to pick an apple over a bag of Doritos.
Doritos are never even an option at our schools lunches. Only lays chips 1-2x a month on hot dog days. But not daily or even weekly. We don’t have soda or vending machines allowed in our state in CA. If kids have crap food, its because their parents packed it. And it drives me insane. Id rather these kids just eat the school food and not bring their own. Oreos for morning recess snack? Taki’s and prime in the Pm? No thank you. I just am amazed at what these parents pack!
The breakfast cereals -- in particular the fruit loops -- are absolutely disgusting. None of my kids would eat them. One year at the end of the summer of free br/lunches, we had 80+ individual cups of those Mf'ers. The other flavors were tolerable. But I didn't realize HOW bad these were until I tried one in July. We threw all of them away. I couldn't even give them away on marketplace.
This is a good point too! They do have guidelines.
Yes: bars advertised as healthy have 42% sugar added, crasins have 42% as well for a 110 calorie pack. There’s many more, but I’ll leave it at that.
Look at Ocean Spray’s explanation of their crasins.. no mention of added sugar.
They note things that aren’t important, such as “no color added” or “fat free”. It’s marketing.
I think a lot of people have tried to complain loudly about this, and they get shot down. People are always told that the system that picked these lunches is wiser and better than everyone else's choices.
Remember the incidents a few years ago where several parents complained that the lunches they provided from home were added to or subtracted from because school admin decided that the lunches were inadequate?
You just know Big Milk is behind this too. It’s nonsensical and imo disgusting that milk, usually chocolate, is being fed to teens like its something they should be having multiple times a day. Corruption, waste and illusion of choice. Capitalism 101
I always thought it was ridiculous that milk is the only option seemingly, and has been for as long as I can remember.
Milk with pizza. What a combo
As a kid allergic to milk protein, I would have preferred water…I used to let a friend drink my milk, then go rinse and fill it at the water fountain. They wouldn’t even give me a cup to fill up. I guess they thought I was lying because I didn’t go into anaphylactic shock, I just got a runny, stuffy nose and sore throat when I drank milk. Still do.
I temporarily managed to decline the milk in the 80s for allergy reasons, but they made me pay for an alternative. I have a teenager who hasn’t drank milk since she was weaned, don’t have a clue what she does with her milk at school. I have eaten a lot of lunches in different schools a few are actually good, I’ve even seen nice salad bars and jalapeños available with the condiments.
I had a student many years ago that was lactose intolerant and qualified for free lunch. She was forced to take milk every day because the documentation she had from her doctor wasn’t good enough for some reason.
Yep! My daughter wouldn’t drink the milk that came with her lunch and would get a water instead. We had to pay extra for water.
Some crafty charter schools actually got around this by cooking their own lunch and installing milk machines. They pass cups of milk and water and kids can take one or both. They also offer soy if you have a doctors note.
Every school should be able to do this, even if they just had prepackaged soy or milk alternative. They don't, but they should be able to.
Actually that is the government. The federal government subsidizes dairy farmers because they were going to go bankrupt. That is why school lunches almost always has milk and cheese.
If you don’t believe me and wonder why US cheese makes everyone sick but not foreign cheese…look up the dairy caves
My mom gets SO MUCH milk from meals on wheels. When she asked to have it taken out, they said no. So it just expires in the fridge while she tries to pawn it off on other family members.
Dairy farming hasn't turned a profit in the United States since the end of the war. The First world war.
Tbf the dairyphobia of diets isn't as justified as a lot of people like to put out though, it's kind of a relic of the 2000s fat terror. There's even, hilariously, evidence that ice cream might be good for you.
School knew I was lactose and celiac, still made me take milk and bread (contaminating everything else on the tray...) I was poor so I really relied on free lunch for my meal for the day. It sucked.
I have a spot too, any leftover food that won’t keep, I’ll take home and compost. Say apples/bananas
While I'm not thrilled with what our kids have for breakfast and lunch, and the amount of waste (and the $$ that adds up to daily) of otherwise perfectly good food absolutely sends me, it IS a balanced meal. I've questioned it a few times in the past (several years ago), when the kids were getting pop tarts and honey bun types of foods for breakfast, but was told that, despite outward appearances, all meals were "balanced". The district's food supplier is required to maintain specific amounts of calories, carbs, fats, etc. for each meal.
But for many years now, the meals have been much more appealing and kid-friendly. Seeing my elementary kids grab a salad or yogurt parfait or get excited about a particular "main" lunch they're having (weird, right?!) is reassuring. Breakfast is a prepackaged cereal, muffin, nutrigrain bar, or yogurt and comes with a small snack like unsweetened apple sauce or cinnamon graham bears, and a juice.
One of the breakfasts, a granola bake, comes from a woman-owned company (Cooper Street). They are free of nuts, dairy, soy, and artificial ingredients. They've got whole grains, flax, quinoa - the good stuff! Do the kids care? Nope. But they like them (the bars are delicious!), and it's good to see that, at school at least, they're eating some healthy foods... even if I'm still not totally certain what a few of those lunches are. LoL.
THE CRAISINS! They will not eat the craisins, but they are in every breakfast. All of them are thrown away. Not to mention all of the plastic waste. Individually wrapped items wrapped in a plastic bag.
Then craisins we offer have 42% of sugar added to them to taste like other fruits lol
You must work in my district. Fucking craisins every day!
I usually collect breakfast leftovers and then give them to my kids in the after school program. They may not want their muffins at 7:45 am but they will at 2:15 pm
Nurse here. The plastic garbage we throw away daily makes me want to gag.
IV Tubing, procedure trays, medication wrappers, pill cups, water cups, everything.
Dunno what to say except that misery loves company.
For anyone wondering, it all has to do with food and safety standards. Let’s say a meal consists of a muffin, an apple, milk, and juice. A kid takes the muffin and juice. Even though he didn’t touch the milk or apple, since it’s considered part of the meal, it has been “served” to that student. Food health and safety require that previously served foods cannot be served to another person. Consequently, it has to be trashed. But I, like many teachers, would hang on to the extras and leave them out so kids could grab them if they were hungry. If they didn’t take the fruit by the end of the day, I’d grab them and use them in a smoothie.
I do the same thing- keep a bowl on the counter for whatever fruits they give us.
Milk is really gross.
I’m at a Title 1 school, so free breakfast and lunch is provided and they have to take milk for both. 75% of them throw the milk in the trash.
I really wonder how many of my kids throw it away because they are lactose intolerant.
I'm at a majority minority school with primary African American or Hispanic students. 80% of African Americans and 50-80% of Hispanics are lactose intolerant.
i have a girl who would complain of a stomachache almost every day for the first two or so months of the school year. after some conversation with her i found out she wasn’t eating breakfast at home so she could make the bus, then she was hungry all through the first half of the day which made her stomach hurt, then had milk and something cheesy at lunch which also made her stomach hurt. she stopped wanting to eat and i had to get the support team to figure out what was going on. luckily mom and dad were super responsive. now they send her with a granola bar in the mornings and pack her a lunch—with no dairy.
Our school offers alternative milks (lactose-free, almond) but the parents need to sign up for it with documentation that they can’t handle regular milk.
I've never heard of this for my district but now I'm going to see what I can find.
At one high school, the lunch ladies started making iced coffee drinks which used an entire carton of milk. Milk consumption went way up.
As for the waste, some teachers keep non perishables in a basket for hungry kids to eat later. By the end of the day, our middle schoolers are starving and will usually eat all of it.
Making a special iced drink sounds like a great idea (though labor intensive as I assume you would have to have a whole new prep). I feel they could also do non caffeinated milk drinks they can make large batches of. Like strawberry banana smoothies with all the left over bananas would be a great idea with some frozen berries. Or even “peach” smoothies by freezing and blending the leftover canned diced peaches.
I worked at a school that regularly had smoothies in the free lunch. I thought it was a great idea. You can sneak a lot of healthy stuff into a smoothie.
My school had the lowest cafeteria numbers in the district, which I guess impacts their funding. In order to increase breakfast numbers, they started offering iced coffee, only if they got a breakfast tray. Most of them toss the food immediately, but at least they are slightly more awake.
The high school was basically putting a minuscule amount of coffee in there, a shot of sugar-free flavored syrup, ice and milk. It got so popular that the high school students started paying money so they could have more. But no, I don’t think they were eating all their lunches either.
To be fair, my school provides a really healthy breakfast and lunch with lots of options and they’ll still just have Gatorade and Takis every day 😂
I hate this! Takis for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And I love a Taki, don’t get me wrong, but I’ll have like 8 of them with my otherwise healthy lunch, not an entire bag with 15 servings in it before 9 AM.
And the sharing, ugh, these kids are licking their fingers (that were already dirty,) reaching back in the bag, eating more, then dumping some into a friend’s hand that have their dirty finger germs and traces of saliva on them. Wtf?
These kids and people who eat nothing but junk food like hot Cheetos, Takis, and Gatorade or soda suffer from non-starvation malnutrition. It’s a thing, and definitely messing up peoples brains and health. I think it’s the reason for some of this behavior where kids(and adults) can’t self-regulate either.
I have no idea what the fix would be. The breakfast my school provides are all processed: packaged cereals, donuts, muffins, French toast sticks, pancakes…..
Lunch is usually carb heavy and weird combinations (taco in a bag with fried rice last week??). The vegetables are mushy and overcooked from sitting in heated bins for hours. Plus there’s always dessert (which I am 100% a dessert with lunch and dinner person, but I don’t eat a bunch of processed food for the lunch and dinner as well lol).
We tried Michelle Obama’s health food initiative and so much went in the garbage. The kids seem to like fruits but it’s basically apples and oranges every day. So if you don’t like those, you’re out of luck.
People always say that eating healthy foods doesn’t have to be expensive, but considering all schools buy is processed food that only needs to be heated up is proving otherwise.
Healthy food isn't necessarily expensive but storing, transporting, and ultimately cooking it for an entire school is.
This is the best point here. My wife works in a school that serves 1300 kids in 2 hours. Lunch starts at 1030. They have a decent staff but it’s a lot if work, and if they had to prepare more “real food” or bfast it would take more staff.
For breakfast, elementary kids pick and go, they only have a few minutes between drop off and class so what ever they have has to be easily heals and carries by a kiddo as little as first grade.
You need to have the staff to do this. These jobs are generally part time, low paying, no benefits and hard, physically demanding work. It’s hard to hire and keep people in these positions. As for the food choices… it’s all about what they can get for the lowest price possible.
And we wonder why everything is falling apart
Yes, and they say they don't have the money. However, I would be happier funding more cafeteria staff than central admin staff. I bet better food would bring up test scores, too.
It's almost like we could improve the kids quality of life and health, and add jobs by splitting up a breakfast and lunch crew. People already want a 32hr work week, so having two 6 hour shifts in the day is far more doable. Hell, with how many kids have food insecurity, lunch shift could also produce an afterschool meal, even if it's just a brown bag. Sadly, this would require elected bumpkins to actually care about children.
They aren't easy jobs. And when a school district needs to make budget cuts, they always start at the bottom. Cafe staff work hard, and are underappreciated.
This is all true. And all reasons why schools struggle with this. You can put unused, prepackaged food back in the freezer. You can’t do that with fresh food.
This is 100% the problem, but my cry is, why is the alternative to doing it the right way, the wrong way? Answer: because it’s cheap.
It's not as if Michelle Obama was out grocery shopping each day for their lunches. Her work established guidelines, which I imagine were informed, at the least. The real problem was that school corporations were allowed to "fulfill" their obligations with the help of the lowest bidder.
Healthy food is not a bad idea. Buying the cheapest food you can is a bad idea. Blaming Michelle Obama for corporate greed and the institutionalized theft of tax dollars is weak.
You took that way too politically lol I was simply naming the initiative because I couldn’t remember it’s actual name, not blaming her lol. I’m all for healthy initiatives, but yes, the way it was done didn’t actually work out. Especially when somehow ketchup was labeled a “vegetable” lol (Edit: It was apparently relish and as far back as Reagan - obviously we have been struggling with the school lunch issue for decades…..)
However, maybe the guidelines should have had more expectations regarding how they were to be fulfilled. Schools will also choose the lowest bidder so we have to ensure the lowest bidder isn’t allowed to give us gross, mushy food options that kids will dump right in the garbage.
The ketchup one is definitely a boogey man. I heard that one back when Clinton and Bush were in office too
It goes all the way back to Reagan apparently- but was actually relish. So my bad lol
I thought it was ketchup, so kids could be served a hamburger and French fries, which is about as American a meal as they make.
I’m surprised they didn’t count the French fries as the vegetable.
Money plays 2 parts here.. staffing and product. The other factor is having to accommodate dietary and religious needs.
Money is the main factor is why every school decision goes awry.
In regards to the ketchup thing you might also be thinking of the tomato sauce on a slice of cafeteria pizza being counted as a serving of vegetables in one or another initiative more recently than Reagan.
Yes! That too! It only had to be a couple tablespoons, I think. I’m pretty sure tomato sauce companies advertise that still. Isn’t there one that says “a whole serving of vegetables in a serving/half cup”?
And it’s not necessarily wrong about the tomato sauce, but many are full of added sugar and we really shouldn’t teach kids that pizza/pasta sauces “are vegetables” lol
The fix would be actually having a populace that is willing to pay taxes and a government that is willing to spend those taxes on something other than wars.
My issue with increasing taxes is the massive amount of misuse of taxes that already happens. My husband was in the military and saw how much “prices” for basic items were insanely inflated. I think we can all agree that increases in “educational spending” don’t seem to make it to our classrooms (that’s why we all have to apply for grants and beg on Donor’s choose….)
If the government can prove to me that they can appropriately use the taxes they already receive, then we can talk about increases.
Yeah I don’t disagree, that’s why I threw that second part in there.
Our school has items heated in plastic, waffles, pancakes, sandwiches etc.
My district switched to this during covid and its all disgusting I feel horrible for the kids who only have this option.
The "fruit and veggie" choices they give these kids is abhorrent. Super green bananas. Tiny little hard green deer apples or those terrible red delicious. Nasty fruit cocktail or whatever from a can. Boiled to death broccoli or dried out carrot sticks. Nothing really compliments the meal or makes sense being served together. No seasoning. And kids growing up thinking they hate fruit and veggies and won't eat that stuff because honestly, what adult would want to?
Some have probably never had a really good fresh fruit salad, or fresh roasted vegetables done just right.
Instead we give them so much disgusting, processed, over-sugared crap that has no nutritional value. We feed them absolute garbage and they act like garbage.
tbf this one is also sort of an America problem. America is almost, but not quite, unique in that there's an expectation that kids will eat different things than adults [exclusively fried, processed, sugary stuff too, with mild flavor]. In most countries children are expected to just suck it up and finish their channa masala or rice and beans or whatever and enjoy it.
My local elementary school would use the industrial ovens to roast the broccoli and cherry tomatoes. Gave it a nice texture and the tomatoes caramelize and become slightly sweet. The kids loved it. They don’t even salt and pepper it. Kid’s palates are weird. You wouldn’t catch me dead as a 10 year old eating broccoli and cherry tomatoes.
Right. Red Delicious apples are the worst. They taste like tree bark and dirt. They should be fed to farm animals, not humans.
State legislators should be forced to eat student breakfast and lunch once a week. In every bite, they will taste the tax dollars they steal for themselves rather than spend on our children.
Most school food is garbage, unfit for human consumption. There is no effort made to educate young ones as to the importance of proper nutrition and healthy eating; worse, their parents feed them much the same at home. This is why so many young children are weak and morbidly obese.
Sadly, state legislators will have to face a traumatic reckoning before any good can ever be realized by the constituents they are bleeding dry.
On a similar note, I think school board members should have to sub once a month.
That’s a solution I always want to try. Principals should teach a class a year, one hour a week. Then tell us 30+ kids in a classroom is realistic.
This is the best solution to all of this nonsense. Admin and/or Board needs to be confronted with this suggestion in a public forum. And when they stammer and refuse to answer, that response should be published in newspapers and on social media. Because in reality there’s no good reason that a principal or board member can’t “sub” for a few hours. I mean the requirements are a person with 60 college credits. That’s it. I feel like hearing their stammering excuses if what would maybe really get people paying attention to the nonsense going on in schools today.
School lunch is a federally funded program through the USDA
The Reagan administration slashed that funding. School lunches were actually pretty decent before then.
I was talking with a cafeteria worker at my previous school years ago who told me she went to a convention for people in food service. She approached a distributor at a booth and began chatting. He described how the food quality is tiered for different parts of the industry. High end restaurants and hotels get the freshest, best quality (and most expensive) foods. As you go down the list from there it just gets more processed and less expensive. Want to guess which group is at the bottom of the (literal) food chain, just below prisons? Yup, public schools. And elementary is at the lowest tier within that system. Captives who aren’t old enough to advocate for themselves. I refer to the food as sugar and glue with a dose of pink slime.
This is it, 100%. Our director of food services is very transparent with us, and after a month of absolutely garbage produce he told us we are getting the absolute last picked fruits and vegetables.
We have a state provided budget, that is only able to be used to purchase bananas that stores, hospitals, and prisons have rejected.
The food is not good enough for them, but perfect for our kids.
This is a deeply systematic issue.
That distributor and/or cafeteria worker wasn't telling the full story. School lunch budgets are typically under $1.50/lunch. A carton of milk and six chicken nuggets takes up $1.20 of that. Not to mention school lunches have far more restrictions than any restaurants or hotels. Increase budgets just 20% and kids will eat very well. Double them and they'll eat like kings.
A few things that have helped our school cafeteria reduce waste: - Salad course was converted to a salad bar so kids can take what vegetables they like - Main meal portions are small, but kids are encouraged to get second or third helpings - Dessert is only served after they are finished with mains so less temptation to skip the healthy stuff - they have a little survey machine with smiley faces by the door (like what you see in airport bathrooms) so kids can vote if they liked the meal or not and then they adjust future menus.
The kids must have more than 15 minutes to eat!
Yes, they get 30 min + 45 min recess after so they can stay and eat longer (although you can imagine most eat quickly!). Reality is you’re never going to please 150 kids, at least once a week my son still comes home saying he hated lunch - but I think these steps help reduce the waste.
THIS IS A SOLUTION!
One of my favorite books I read in grad school was Fed Up with Lunch that discussed this exact topic. It started with a teacher blogging about her experience eating school lunch every day.
Gonna look into this!
That reminds me of Noellelovessloths on YouTube. She’s a teacher who eats the lunch and films them.
Our lunches are some form of processed chicken every day. Nuggets, popcorn chicken, chicken patty, chicken patty sandwich, etc.
Tyson Foods has massive contracts with some states to provide super cheap heat & eat processed chicken.
Students in my friend’s classroom (special education class) were just on the news for the food waste program they started! At lunches they ensure students are throwing perishable items into specific buckets labeled “food waste”. They then take the food waste and put it in a dehydrator and it eventually becomes fertilizer that is being sold at local garden stores! The profit goes toward creating social and recreational activities for people with special needs. It’s really cool to have something positive come out of school lunch!
I love this! So awesome!
Lunch lady here! So I just pass the lunches out, but it is cooked at a main kitchen at the high school a few blocks away and transported in warmers(most sites are going to be main kitchens at the start of next year).
We offer the kids a fresh salad bar rotating weekly options and it can include- fresh strawberries and blueberries from local farms, a mixed salad, jicama, mandarins, peppers, etc. There is of course some canned applesauce and mixed fruit once in a while. There’s pasta salad, coleslaw, and broccoli salad.
As far as the taste goes- I try every lunch and I don’t think it’s bad at all. There’s not much seasoning, but I still think it’s pretty good and we have teachers come by and get lunches for themselves.
And while it may look like we’re giving them sugar and processed carbs, all the stuff is different versions of it. There’s certain levels of nutrition that must be met with every breakfast or lunch.
I think a big problem is parents sending their kids to school with full sized bags of Takiis or flaming hot Cheetos- and not just the older kids. Some kids in kindergarten and first grade come in with chips and candy to add to their lunch.
Our kids also love jicama! And fresh bell pepper strips, they go nuts for those!
Honestly it sounds like OP comes from a wickedly underfunded or understaffed kitchen. Some of us do care and work hard to provide at least the best of what we can. It's hard with the tools we're provided, sometimes.
I do hope you're able to become a main kitchen! I love cooking and am tickled pink when the kiddos give me kudos.
You're doing a great job!
Give me my packed lunch any day. School lunches are not really a thing in Australian schools (except for an onsite canteen or tuckshop but they're more for a special treat than everyday). The kids I teach generally have pretty healthy lunches brought from home, I would be as horrified as you if they were eating what you described.
I have a few kids that eat lunch in my classroom. The other day walking tacos were on the menu but the cafeteria ran out of beef so they just gave the kids extra rice. No protein with their meal at all.
So wrong.
Walking tacos, when done right, are awesome. But the names they give the food, like “crunchy chix stix” and it’s a soggy breaded piece of “chicken”…. Come on!!
One of our teachers takes the extra apples and oranges to save them from being thrown out. Particularly the apples, end up being thrown out eventually. They’re the worst apples with the thickest skin on them and taste like mush
Red delicious apples suck. I hated when I worked in a school cafeteria and we had to serve those.
They were created for storage and transportation ease
It all depends on if you have a fully staffed kitchen with all the necessary cooking equipment. The small-town and rural schools I’ve worked at all had full kitchens in each campus, and while they were EXTREMELY poor and lacked many resources for the classroom, those cafeteria workers could work magic with a few cheap ingredients. Another factor is how the federal government (NOT an anti-government rant here, just how it has been explained to me in the past) and states regulate and limit the way they spend taxpayer money on school feeding programs. The agri lobbies (especially dairy) have influenced congress and past administrations (FDA, etc.) who have then mandated that so much be spent in certain categories and have a list of approved vendors that can be used. It’s all ripe for corruption and directing money toward the pockets of politically connected big agricultural interests in my small, Red state.
I went to school in France briefly while in high school. Every student got free (or super cheap) lunch together. It was AMAZING, and clearly planned by a chef. Everyone ate it, it was delicious. Fries, chicken fingers and burgers were never on the menu. Not once . Water with every meal. Real dishes and cutlery.
Check out these two links:.
Yup. I teach French, the students are so envious of lunches and amount of time
Yes! I worked with a woman from France, and she described this to us! It sounds amazing.
I teach French, and my students are so envious of the lunches in French schools. French culture values different things, and eating good food together and socializing is one priority. I think this is possible to do in the US if districts and governments valued and prioritized putting money towards lunches.
I remember school lunches in the 90s were so gross... but my school had a pizza or hotdog option also available each day, so I got that instead.
Every once in a while on reddit people post pics of school lunches from other countries and it makes me so sad that we can't take care of our own kids that way. With healthy food that TASTES GOOD.
Ronald Reagan slashed the food lunch program in the 80s. Prior to that the food was actually pretty good, balanced, and nutritious.
The amount of waste is disgusting. Students are required to take certain items (milk, one veg, one fruit)- most of which end up in the trash. Who wants to eat a rock-hard pear or green banana? For awhile we used to do a “share table” where kids could put those items that they didn’t want, so other students who were still hungry after finishing their lunch (our kitchen manager made us physically check that they had eaten everything on their tray) could grab something else. Don’t even get me started on THAT policy- like, if someone doesn’t like the potatoes and there are extra packets of craisins that were just going to get tossed anyway, why does it matter? But then we hired a new cafeteria supervisor after Covid who put a stop to the share table because “it spreads germs”. 🙄 So now another lunchroom supervisor does it covertly, she grabs extras and puts them in the reading tutor room which is right off the lunchroom, and the kids know they can come in and grab a snack for their backpack.
Editing to add- we only put prepackaged items on the share table. Milk, applesauce, craisins, string cheese, crackers, etc. The fresh fruits are either tossed (sadly) or brought home for compost by one of the teachers.
Just for that I'm glad I'm teaching in France.
Meals are good, 4 courses, highly regulated and meals plans are prep by a dietetician with some rules to follow:
- only water to drink.
- 50% of every meal (60% of meat and fish) have to come from a "durable and quality" production (one that doesn't use too much of nature's ressources, with no added chimicals and product locally)
- 20% of every meal have to be organic.
- at least 2 options for every course (starters, main course, cheese/yogurt, dessert
- very limited amont of added sugar
- the meal must provite 20% of daily apport of a sain diet.
- no more than twice per months sugary junk food (ketchup, frieds stuff, pizza, cake...etc)
- no more than once per month the same meal
(food vending machine are prohibited in schools and most school won't allow lunch bag if it's not for allergy reasons)
People pays accordingly to their income, from a few cents to 7 euros. Same meal no matter the price.
I eat the same lunch that kids once per week and it's good even if kids, bein kids, do complain (they would love to have more junk food options sometime!)
In my school, they made a new system to reduce waste (more and more popular in schools) and it's great : kids are served their main course (meat or fish + veggies + grains) then can help themselve for starters (cold veggies/salads) and get refilled as much as they want of this. Then cheese (cheese and bread or yogurt) and dessert (most of the time a fruit but sometime a pastry).
It helped a lot even if the system isn't perfect, we still waste a lot.
We have no breakfast option (very very rare in France).
Some other rules to follow (government guidelines):
eating time have to last at least 30min (without line waiting time)
Lunch time have to be a moment of relaxiation, socialization, discovery, learning new habits, and enjoyment.
kids can't be forced to eat but can be forced to at least try a bit of everything.
the variety of meals have to be wilde (it's normal to eat rabbit, lamp, salmon, pork, shrimps, etc while I've heard in the USA it's mostly chicken)
Wow…. Lamb at lunch? Salmon?! Ha! Man we are so so ghetto in the US. Lamb lol. Lamb is expensive and the avg lamb dish can cost one person 45 bucks at my local steakhouse. The local Turkish place charges $37 for 3 lollipop chops and rice and the French serve lamb at schools?! Must be nice. School food is barely better than prison food it seems. My kid refuses to eat lunch bc of this. lol the politicians cutting budgets clearly give no shits about the welfare of our youth.
Oh, yeah, the school food is not healthy at all. Off brand lunchables, frozen pizza. They get breakfast as well and it’s just as bad. Fruit loops, powdered donuts, Scooby snacks. In a bit of irony, teachers aren’t allowed to give treats at all (including cupcakes or whatever for birthdays, or candy as a reward) unless it’s sugar free.
As a school nurse, this drives me crazy. Beyond the nutrition aspect, kids generally hate what is offered so they just don't eat. Then they're in my office saying they have a headache because they haven't eaten since dinner the day prior. Or they have a stomachache because breakfast was poptarts and lunch was pizza. Or my 6' tall seniors ate both meals but they're hungry because they get the same portion that a 2nd grader would get.
Now they're missing class to come eat a snack in my office which is a waste of everyone's time (and also isn't nutritious- I have saltines and graham crackers!)
It's exhausting. Obviously we need more funding for better ingredients and more staff to cook, but that's never happening.
Unless you can reduce the cost to less than the processed stuff they eat, you won't be able to make much difference. All you can do is focus on your own diet and avoid shameing kids for the only option available to them. One school in our area found a solution with a huge grant to get a flash freezer and they take the "waste" from the local farmer's market and buy the overages from a few local farms. It gets prepared and then flash frozen to use through the year. A lot of time it gets pureed and added to stuff so the kids are offered sneaky options. Mac and cheese has pureed cauliflower, sweet peppers, carrots. Pumpkin/zucchini/banana bread. Tomato soup and veggie stew are staples. It took about two years for the kids to catch on to the foods. However this school has less than 300 kids prek-12.
Just to throw this out there. I worked at a preschool and all our food was donated as a way to cut cost. So breakfast was maltomeal cereal, nutrigrain bars, muffins, milk, fruit cup. Lunch was whatever meals on wheels provided. It saved enough money we were able to provide a safe place for 20 kids a year, with free or reduced tuition. So there may be a bigger picture here then just processed foods.
I usually walk by an elementary school on my way to the park. The amount of pears and unopened milk I see in these garbage bags is insane! I graduated high school in 2015 and remember when these new rules were implemented around my sophomore/junior year. All of a sudden you couldn't leave the line until you grabbed 2 fruits and a milk. Created a ton of waste...
Our school seems to have a thing for broccoli. It's boiled until it is a grey/green mass and then slopped onto a tray. I don't think I've ever seen a kid eat it. The next day, it's turned into broccoli-cheese soup and the kids don't want that, either.
Ours has broccoli or cauliflower cooked until grey for 3-4 lunches a week. It’s gross looking and smells awful. It’s paired with everything including waffles. I supervise kindergarten lunch and a few will eat it but most throw it out.
Seeing what passes for food in these schools blows my mind. We had lunch ladies who cooked actual food for us. Now everything comes prepackaged and heated up. I bring my own food, I'm not eating that.
The teachers I work with tell the kids to not throw away the fruit. The teachers keep baskets where the kids will put the fruit they don’t want. Kids who want a snack during the day know they can grab a piece of fruit. Any fruit that is still there by Friday goes to the teacher who has a farm of rescue animals. It helps her be able to take on more animals.
Wtf are they feeding kids in the US? Most of the breakfast items aren't even breakfast food but really is desert.
Exactly, cereal bars are candy. Powdered donuts, sticky buns, energy bars.
Student here, but my school district does the same. For our “fruit” they have to give us a juice box. Even if we take an actual piece of fruit that they set out. And of course there are a bunch of extras, so students (sort of accidentally) set up the “juice locker” in a broken locker, a “take a juice box, leave a juice box” kind of thing. And it helps… until a teacher goes through and throws all of the juice boxes away. The amount of food waste that my school encourages while simultaneously teaching us about environmentalism and the world around us is… disconcerting.
This IS avoidable. My district provides a great lunch. I’m at the high school, but have friends whose kids are in the elementary school. I don’t go down for breakfast, but the lunch options always have a salad bar, a deli station, a panini station, and then the main course which is rotates, like baked potato, chicken nachos, General Tso’s chicken, etc. A fair amount is processed, but there are plenty of fresh options, too.
There are better programs out there, but I’m sure it depends on state laws and funding. Our breakfast is free in CT but lunch has gone back to being paid. (It was free during Covid) Our cafeteria uses Sodexo.
Highly processed shit. And we pay out the ass for it. It's sad and pathetic.
I am a lunch lady. I was mortified by all of the food waste. Also we have no say in the menu, as the “chef” who works for the district creates it. We try to give him feedback from the kids, but it doesn’t go anywhere.
Does your school have “Dutch waffles” for breakfast? Mine does. That’s what they are called, but they are FUNNEL CAKES! Can you believe that? Fair food for breakfast. It makes me sick.
The Obama administration spent a lot of time in this issue but goofball states like Texas interfered. We understand the problem Texas what do you offer for solutions?
This has everything to do with cutting the school cooks to save money. It used to be a full time job with benefits. Now they are only paid to show up when the truck gets there.
I get that school lunch isn’t great. And that it needs to be changed. But I also hope that you don’t talk crap about it in front of students. For many students school lunch is their only option. They don’t need to be hearing about how awful it is when they don’t have any other choice to get fed.
Jamie Oliver did a show some years ago, to raise awareness about this. He actually filled a school bus with tons of sugar to show people how much added sugar is in school lunches. In the end, nothing changed.
The school I’m at, the cafeteria workers make homemade tamales and things like that everyday. It all looks delicious.
And the school I was at previous had like delicious snack packs with humnus, fresh fruit, carrots and crackers. Or for brunch they had this yummy “uncrustables” with this chocolate allergen friendly chickpea filling.
Our school does similar, but we do have a large bin for unopened snack items and another for fruits. Kids can grab from them and stash them away for later (we have a lot of food insecure students, and they were collecting from the trash, so this helped), and they are put out at recess time as well, along with a bin full of the unopened milks that were denied at the counter. Anything left is put out for the after school clubs/ programs. This was all implemented last year when it was noticed that kids were scavenging, and some were being picked on a bit for it, so we just made it all openly available. The items were already paid for and budgeted for. We had them. It was a liability to have kids going through the trash- there could be sharp things or spoiled items. Only school issued items can go in the free bins. Most of the items are being used that way. There is no shame. Kids can eat, and can therefore concentrate. Seems to be working well enough.
We also have lactose free items (milk and juice) and veggie items (mostly sun butter sandwiches, a few wrap type entrees, used by Muslim and Indian students quite often) available for those who have documented needs.
Nothing better for a growing kid then a stale pizza made of processed meat and cheese st 10 am
I send my kids' lunches for exactly this reason. If you ever watched the documentary Fed Up, you would be horrified at what the food lobbyists have accomplished in our schools. I do let him buy the cereal in the morning because the Cinnamon Toast Crunch (school version) is like 50% less sugar than the kind you can buy at the grocery store.
Just another example that schools are run like prisons.
It’s the same at my school. The food is poor and the waste is astounding. Some days breakfast is pop tarts. Even those get thrown away. One morning they were served moldy pastry. We have snack time during the day. If a kid brings a snack from home, school says it must be healthy ie: no chips, candy, sweets. Please. 🤦🏽♀️
Before Covid, the school I worked at served great hot breakfasts. There were eggs, pancakes, hashbrowns, sausage, and breakfast sandwiches. The breakfast sandwiches were so good that I bought school breakfast on sandwich day. Once Covid hit, they switched to prepackaged meals that included cereal, cookies, juice, and chocolate milk. Even though everything else has gone back to pre covid procedures at school, they still serve the same crappy breakfast food.
Corruption at work. This is how 'pizza is a vegetable' because it has two servings of tomato paste. Follow the money.
Compare school meals in Sweden.
The food industry is like the modern day version of the tobacco industry.
My MIL works at a smaller rural school. The school was going to have to close which meant the kids would have to be bussed about 30 minutes away one way to another county. So they stripped everything down and that meant doing away with the food program and lunch workers to use the funds for teachers. The town now sponsors each meal. A local business will take the cost of a days food and then the next day a different one will take it.
The kids get breakfast, lunch, and a take home dinner every school day. It's all extremely good food. Most of it wouldn't be out of place in a restaurant or cafe. They include the teachers and other staff too. I get handed her take home dinner often so I can have it for lunch and I look forward to most days.
The main menu ( they have separate options for allergies and dietary restrictions) last Friday was:
Breakfast - scrambled eggs, sausage, biscuits, fresh fruit salad, milk and juice.
Lunch - grilled chicken, smashed red potatoes, steamed mixed vegetables, rolls and butter, chocolate chip cookies, milk, tea, and lemonade.
Dinner - cheese stuffed manicotti in meat sauce, steamed broccoli, garlic bread, salad with dressing, a slice of chocolate cake, an apple, and an orange. They also send home a milk and a tea or lemonade.
It was provided by a local construction company as per the flyer in the bag. It's worked well since 2018. The businesses also tend to supply school supplies, hygiene items, back packs, and the like. A reality company did costs, gloves, and socks last year for each student.
School lunch is big business if you can get the contract. Free lunch is even more profitable as taxpayers will pay for it. So cutting corners to maximize profits is going to happen.
Schools in Japan and Korea know how to do it.
But those countries have different customs. They eat healthier already because of their culinary culture.
The WASTE! It makes me cringe everyday. My 2nd graders eat breakfast in the classroom and I have a basket for unwanted, non-perishable foods. If someone is hungry throughout the day, theyre welcome to grab something from the basket. It’s usually empty by the days end. I’m at a Title 1 school, so free breakfast and lunch is provided and they have to take milk for both. 75% of them throw the milk in the trash. It’s awful.