20 School Cafeteria Lunches That FADED Into History! 

Everything is said to be unhealthy. We didn't care. We had plenty of time to run it off outside.

When I was in elementary school (1970s), our school lunches were made from scratch. No premade processed food. We had a divided tray with an entree, two veggies, fruit and a homemade roll and milk, all for 50 cents!

I remember the lunch menu from my old schools. Yes, we have pizza, sloppy joes. We also had baked chicken, shredded chicken in gravy over mashed potatoes (one dish I make for my family) mac and cheese, baked fish and we always had a side with a veggie. Corn, beans, salad. We had soup and sandwiches too. There was a vending machine for fresh apples in the cafeteria. You could buy a fresh apple for a nickel. A farmer put it in. Most of the food was homemade. It was a full meal complete with milk, a dinner roll and dessert. Our old lunches were awesome. and all for 99 cents.

I vividly recall Mom giving me three pennies to buy a container of milk each day to go along with the brown bag lunch she would make.

My grade school kitchen lady was the mother of Cincinnati's famous quarterback, Roger Staubach. That woman could cook! Did not even bother us that she extended the frosting for her cakes with mashed potato flakes, because they were amazing! She made the most awesome fat rectangular pizzas. Slightly burnt around the edges. And on spaghetti day, if there was leftover garlic bread (made from regular bread slices)she would put it in a big roaster pan. The kids would grab a slice as they headed out to recess. She was amazing and I've used her "extending" tricks when times were tight for my family.

When i first started school, they actually cooked meals. Made from scratch biscuits, potates, pizza, greens, etc. Now, the food is processed and frozen biscuits.

I don't recall ever being served any type of salad with my school lunches. With the exception of the tomato, pickle chips and lettuce for the hamburgers which was listed on the school menue as salad. That must have been a regional thing.

I loved the rolls

Where did they get these prices??? Milk was 5c and then went up to 10c. They say everything mostly was $1-$2 per serving. School lunches were 75c. These prices are ridiculous.

Our lunches were 30 cents & milk was 5 cents. A lunch example was fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, dinner roll, dessert, and milk, all for 30 cents. If you brown bagged it, you could buy milk for 5 cents and milk

These prices are higher than my kids lunches today. On top of that, almost everything in this video is absolutely still served in school.

We had turkey and gravy over mashed potatoes. We called it Turkey Slop for so long they eventually named it that on the schoolwide menu. Kids used to beat each other up in line to get seconds so they started only serving it on the 3rd Thursday of each month.

Regardless of the high fat and carbohydrates in those old lunches. You have to factor into your equation the fact that kids back then, in general, were much more active than most kids are today. So we burned off most of the calories and fat that we were consuming. Me personally. I couldn't seem to get enough to eat as a kid. My metabolism was like a furnace that simply consumed every available calorie and left me perpetually skinny and hungry.

Some of these meals remind me of my school years (1978-1990). I remember the square school pizzas. In my high school, they served chalupas. These chalupas consisted of boat shaped taco shells with mystery meat and melted cheese. At the end of our lunch line, there was a pump bottle of hot sauce.

I went to Catholic School, and we lived for Wednesdays, as that was sloppy Joe day. They were twenty-five cents. They came with either brownies or cupcakes.

I loved the grilled cheese sandwich 🥪 when I was in school

When I went to school, lunches were all standardized. That is, all the lunches throughout the county were the same for every school each and every day. In fact, te different lunches were announced on the radio every day. Finally a full lunch also only cost $0.35. An extra half pint of milk was $0.02.😵‍💫☹

Those rolls were heaven.😍

i miss carrying my charlie's angels lunch box most of all, but those pizzas and cookies were my fav part of the hot lunch... the 70/80s were the best!!!!

My school food was garbage, until I got to a brand new middle school (1993 or 94-ish) They had a pizza bar, taco bar, salad bar, sub bar, deep fried French fries, candy and ice cream, it was glorious! My daughter went to the same middle and high school as I, but the food was not the same, at all.

I believe we had the best lunches in school for what the cafeteria girls had to work with! My school used government surplus food, which was pretty much similar to what you got once a month for us low-income families. You know cheese, flour, etc, and I loved the stuff. It's much better than starving. Man, where are these lunches from, sunny California. My lunches were less than a dollar a meal, not per item. And I grew up during the decade your using in video.

This video implies that it's a miracle that most baby boomers, including me, didn't blow up in a massive coronary by the time they were 45. I'd eat any of these foods tonight. I miss them.

From what I have heard that school lunches have actually gotten worse since my kids were in school. I remember most of what you showed here for school lunches. Our fish sticks were the patties used in fish sandwich. I loved the pig in the blanket.

yet , not alot of fat kids , played hard at recess and home after school, no phone to just look at

I was a picky eater. They always had pnb& jelly as another choice. My nickname was pnb patty!

Had to pause your video for a minute. My Mom was the cook at Fillmore Elementary School in Fillmore, Ok. And she was the best cook Fillmore had. Our pizzas were frozen individual cheese pizzas and we'd have pears from a can. And we didn't have Popeyes salad either. Gonna get back to your video until the end. We had goulash and pigs in the blanket and peanut butter cake. My Mom was the cook there until August '90 or '91 when someone burned down the school. Fillmore school was the oldest school in Oklahoma that was still in use. I helped my Mom in the lunchroom from '83 to '87. I graduated from high school in '83. She'd always make the rolls and they were the best. Thanks for the memories! Really enjoyed your video.

Chocolate milk was 6 cents 5 for regular milk 1978 third grade.

I can think of at least 6 of these items that are still served in many schools, just under different names.

Chili with peanut butter sandwiches and tomatoes soup with grilled cheese sandwiches

Oh ya, love me some Mrs. Paul's fishsticks. Add some tartar sauce and you're good to go. My Catholic elementary school served them every Friday for lunch. Yummy.

I remember something called "PORK ROLL-UPS" at E. Rivers Elementary in the 1960s. You didn't have to be Jewish to want to pack your lunch that day.

Frito pie can also be made as a casserole, and that's what some schools served in the lunch line. Frito pie in the bag was-and is-common at stadium concession stands, from Little League baseball to Friday night football.

We had a lunch card. When you went to lunch, you got your card punched.

The mystery meat on your pizza (which was never thick crust) & the beef in your sloppy Joe were probably the left of burgers the day before. Oh btw, health conscious was never an issue in school lunch programs. It was affordability.

I remember chipped beef on a scoop of mashed potatoes and turkey on mashed potatoes. Square pizza and fish sticks on Friday. When I was in school, especially, elementary years we got a full meal with a little carton of milk for about 45 cents

I grew up in the 60s and 70s our school had a really great meatloaf they use oatmeal eggs and butter and I am telling you it was great and the chipped beef was good better than l have ever tasted the peanut butter sandwiches were thick and rich with flavor and the ladies really cared about you they remembered our names and if you forgot your lunch money you didnt starve

YEAST ROLL WAS 5 CENTS, RECTANGLE PIZZA WAS 50 CENTS

2:00 hamburger pizza 😋

Wednesdays was a glob of room temperature tuna salad on a warm, wet lettuce leaf with chocolate milk. Most disgusting thing ever.

A lunch room memory. The lunch room at the school where I taught was in an older building, and heated through a large floor register everyone crossed when going through the line. One of my senior students accidentally dropped a butter pat that slipped through the register into the nether regions of the heating system. The room slowly started to smoke up, and everyone eventually had to evacuate the building until the issue was fixed.

❤❤❤❤❤ I LOVED THE SCHOOL LUNCHES AND MISS THEM 😢😢😢

My school lunches from the 60s - 70s we had chicken Al king on toast we called xhit on a shingle, when we had sloppy Joe’s we new the next day was spaghetti with left over sloppy Joe mix on top fish sticks on Fridays (catholic) didn’t eat meat on Fridays, hamburgers, franks & beans. everything was cheap you could fill up on $1 sometimes I miss those days.

My favorite food in school back in the 60's and 70's was the thick starchy spaghetti they served, it made great spaghetti sandwiches between slices of buttered bread. That was when school foods were good before US first lady's decided to stick their noses into what our kids ate in school.

Friday was (square) pizza day for us in grade school (early to mid 1960s). It was our favorite!

we still had many of these when I was in school in the 90s and early 2000s though there were days lunch wasn't served I.E. the last day before Christmas/easter break or last days at end of year

Through 8th grade there were no school lunches. It was either bring a lunch box or a brown bag. I didn’t get cafeteria food until high school. Then in 10th grade I started buying a Hostess pie for a quarter and keeping the remaining 75 cents to buy reefer.

Couldn't hardly wait for open faced pizza burgers day on Fridays sometimes at my elementary school (Clifton Hill) back in the late 70's & early 80's & the creamed turkey over mashed potatoes was the thing back then too... Burrito with chili, Oven fried chicken were off the chain

It seems that everything was "beloved" but nothing was "the healthiest option". Few of these were ever served at my schools in the 60s and early 70s.

Fish stcks rule!!

I’m on the Mac and beef part of the video, hoping this video does not leave out the frozen juice on those pyramid shaped cartons or the hamburger gravy on mashed potatoes 🎉

My lunches were 30 cents per day. Yeah, we got pizza once in a great while and on rare occasions we got a hamburger and baked French fries. Everything was made from scratch. We got a protein, green veggie and a starch. Milk was included and a small desert. No processed food and it all tasted good. We had 3 lunchroom ladies that provided about 300 meals a day in elementary school. Prices soared to 50 cents a day during high school...

I love this channel and the nostalgia it offers. Please , do a video on school breakfasts. Pancake and sausage on a stick or cheese bread please? 🙏🏽

In the 50s most all the food was cooked. We had pizza, turkey on white bread with mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, creamed chicken on white bread, homemade rolls, hamburgers, hot dogs cut up in pork and beans, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, jello in cups, rice pudding in cups, various puddings, apples, oranges, homemade cake in square pieces, etc., etc. Maybe the choices were not that healthy, but not as much was known about nutrition back then.

In elementary school in the 1950 's it was fish sticks every Friday ; ok with french fries and chocolate milk.

In the 1970’s &1980’s pizza wasn’t considered unhealthy since it had 4 food groups (schools rarely served just cheese pizza) and was definitely under $1 per slice.

Most of you are saying here is just not Correct.

You know I was never fan of the square school pizza.

When Wooley Mammoths went extinct it was all over.

also, back in the 70s, the black panthers fought for us to have breakfast in school and i used to love those chedder cheese grits they made....

I lived maybe a quarter mile from School as the crow flies we cut through a lot of yards to do that, but I can remember walking out the back door of my house when it was chilly day cause you could smell chili and cinnamon rolls all made from scratch. 15 years ago I worked for a Catholic school as a lunch lady. I loved it. It was a lot of fun but we made none of our baked goods were from scratch cookies were frozen little hockey pucks cinnamon rolls, same way yeast rolls, same our main entrée usually was from scratch except pizza day because Domino’s delivered a school specific pizza.

My school served big rolls made like cinnamon rolls, and you got two of them. Many called them buns.

I only remember getting a school lunch once and it was a turkey sandwich, sold the turkey for a quarter and ate the bread with ketchup..

We loved getting the Menu every month, we ate homemade everything but NY schools had better pizza than pizzerie anywhere in the state so we’d circle those days. Same with bagels so we could put butter and a bag of Wise BBQ chips on them. Oh and sheet cake. Haha. I’m hungry :)

They don't have cooks in schools nowadays they have people serving pre-made lunches.

I loved tomato aspic. I still do.

You got your prices wrong..When I went to school 1956-1967 lunches were about $75-$100 for an entire lunch

I used to make "ghetto tuna casserole" by adding a can of tuna to a box of macaroni 'n cheese.

I remember the breakfast pizza..it was good lol

We still serve mac and beef, mini corn dogs, pizza, canned peaches, PB&J, and now its walking tacos using Doritos. Everyday is some kind of breaded chicken. Salad, fruit, fruit juice, white or chocolate milk, strawberry is not a big hit anymore. With the veggy of the day. Still under 3.00 dollars. Not the best but not bad for the money.

I'd say this video is typically affordable between a dollar and two. 😉

i still make sloppy joes and manwiches, hubby loves them! - we never eat pizza anymore, i miss it so much. - we dont get yeast rolls, ever. - i havent had fish sticks in awhile, because there is no fish in them anymore. just breading. - ive got corndogs with chili and cheese for my special saturday meal. - are you kidding me, PB&J still my favorite snack at 58. sugar free of course! - i dont remember having mexican pizza, but i sure remember tacos! -

I took it for granted, i should have eaten the breakfast and lunch now im always hungry....

Im making sloppy joes tomorrow after work after watching this

My favorite part was when he explained exactly how to make the sandwich 😂 I get it now

I had a hard time believing that corn dogs back then cost the school one to two dollars each. That seemed quite high for back then. So I looked up what Sonic drive-in menus showed. Sonic was selling their corn dogs for $.50 each. So you have to figure that they only cost Sonic wholesale less than $.25 each at most. And I understand that Sonic had bulk buying power. But I remember corn dogs being very cheap everywhere back in the 70s. Well under a dollar.

This is probably when food was food and not artificial food loaded with chemicals.

I remember the "pizza" with hamburger meat and cheese with grease floating on it. I ate school food for my kindergarten year and that was enough. I took my lunch for first thru eighth grade. Highschool had much better food to pick from.

I'll take the school lunches from decades ago over today's "healthy" moldy junk any day...

This extends over decades of elementary school kids and regions. I don't recall ever getting a Sloppy Joe at school. Nor does my son. Yet we love them when we make them. Messy as heck, but why you serve them with steak fries. 😉

Sloppy joes!!

I really do not think they have clue about school lunches, prices are way off and everything is said to be unhealthy. Most schools in the 60's and 70's made food fresh. was not till the 80's that school lunches were all processed.

You mean school food was identifiable at some point 😂

Milk was $.03 when I was a kid . But then, I am 70 now.

People bully you nowadays if you drink milk. It's crazy how woke everyone is. I can't believe even people's eating habits are woke 😂

I'm tired of hearing him say it was unhealthy... the majority of anything served in our cafeteria would be unhealthy, but as small of portions we got, I'm not sure it made a difference.. plus, our cafeteria didn't have much of these items.. we had hamburger gravy, creamed turkey or chicken, fried, or baked chicken, hot dogs, spaghetti, sub sandwiches...

Baloney sandwiches were only given to kids who forgot their lunch and didn't have money to buy the regular lunch or kids who could never afford the lunch.

Out of this whole list, only mexican pizza and frito pies never showed up in my school cafeteria.

The prices are all wrong! You paid a dollar and you had the whole meal. Toward my graduation year in the Mid90s, it was two dollars. For the whole meal! And, maybe it’s because I grew up in Texas but, we didn’t have beef macaroni. We had chili Mac! Much better! I miss a lot of these. I understand the reason they’re gone is because of one Michelle Obama. We thought our lunches were bad. I feel sorry for what my kids eat at school. My son tells me they give him kale salad. Senator Kennedy of Louisiana, somebody I very rarely agree with, actually described it accurately when he said that kale taste like “I’d rather be fat.”

"Usually 1 to 2 dollars." My whole MEAL in the 70's was $2.50 and milk was 5 cents. Where are these ridiculous prices coming from?

I forgot that school was the first place i had Mexican pizza.

My school lunches never looked this good our square pizza looked like cardboard with cheese..and I was a kid in the..80s and 90s and our lunches were always..50¢-.75¢ and they never went to a 1-2$ till I entered highschool..and they still weren't this appetizing looking lol

From what I remember of my school cafeteria lunches I’m glad they faded into history. The food that they had in the M*A*S*H TV series was always said to be bad so I’m convinced that the food that my school had was shipped to the 4077th!!!!🤣🤣

Don't know where they got the prices per serving, but I can tell you they were a fraction of what this video implies. Today I could come up with a menu that to produce would cost about $1.50 per person. We're not talking about making lavish lunches for kids plus when I went to school they always added fillers where ever they could like Meatloaf, spaghetti, goulash plus the government sent flour, eggs, cheese and believe it or not, horse meat. That was rare but happened. Any beef was canners and cutters or select grade. Same with chicken and another meat. Same stuff they fed the military at the time. Now schools feed kids choice grade meats and fruits and vegetables made whatever way they can stretch. 7 years ago my kids school lunch was $5.00 to $7.00, I can't imagine what it us now. They got deals from local Domino's Pizza on pizza day and I'm sure that cost the school at the most a buck a slice and charged $6.00. When we got it, the pizza was on a sheet pan, in house crust, and they made sauce from number 10 sized cans of crushed tomatoes and seasoned hamburger and cheese. Maybe 10 cents per serving. This video says a bologna sandwich is a buck or 2? On what planet? Anyway, poor research on the producers part

It seems you think affordable means $1 or $2, Back in the day we had entire meals for 50 cents.

They keep talking about how unhealthy those old foods were but kids weren't fat... so they weren't unhealthy. They were actually made with real whole foods. Look at kids now...

Interesting for an Australian to know wish we had them as a kid. usa and uk had cafeterias ,we have canteens you line up for or order a lunch order.we had to eat out side in bad weather . In the1990s they took out all things to sweet or said unhealthy. Than thay banned kids bringing foods to school if they called it unhealthy aswell ,yeah your not allowed to eat banned foods in school.

I think the problem with jello is it doesn't taste as good as it use to I was always good on an extremely hot day you could really make a one pan meal with it it was a favorite of the 4-H kids and home EC clubs

no pizza in my day, 1950's

In the DC area we called Sloppy Joes….a Manwich Sandwich

Are these things no longer served? I was in high school a couple years ago and all of these things were still being served. I went to a school in Iowa