Are School Lunches Really That Bad? 

ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-UzYdyWpvLPw.html From my favorite childhood game :)

@@dreamyjellies do you Support schools putting bleach in food to prevent obesetie

@@dreamyjellies omg thanks! It gave me some weird homey nostalgia while listening to the video

@@dreamyjellies I think this was in a different Sims game too. I recognized it, but I def never played any version of this one.

@@dreamyjellies why did you ignore that fact that Obama wanted to ban all vending machine with junk food or soda but that Conservatives (both Democrats and Republicans) fought against it. The act that was passed was an empty shell because it still allowed school districts to get soda machines and such. Something Obama wanted banned in schools.

What did you tell her ?

@@oceanexblve884 I said I liked it, but I'm sure it didn't matter much in comparison to the ~100 other students who were too afraid to even try it.

That reminds me of the one time in high school they had sushi. I'm pretty sure I'm the only person who ate it... They never had it again.

@@vincentdambrosio7511 Well if a school can only serve raw meat, might as well do sushi! lmao

My school did something really similar with a black bean burger. They added everyone who bought one in an email and sent us a poll to take, only about 20 of us out of 3500 kids...

I'm in California and it's so bad here when I was in school about 20-30% of my friends weren't getting enough food at home entirely counting on the free lunch program and begging for fruit to survive

Yep, at my middle school over half the kids (myself included) were on the free/reduced lunch program. My parents also had food stamps, so I ate very poorly back then

it's me im the student who barely eats when not at school

I didn't eat well at home and my mother was too prideful to let me sign up for the free/reduced lunch program. When I was going to school they forced us to go through the lunch line and get a full tray of food whether you could afford it or not. Every day I had to fill up a tray, walk up to the lunch lady, watch the visible annoyance on her face as she let out a deep sigh upon looking at my balance and noticing that I _still_ hadn't brought money, and have her take my tray and throw it away in front of me while she called for a replacement meal to be given to me. Every day, it held up the line and made everyone stare at me. Every day I was given a stale, half frozen, sometimes moldy sandwitch that consisted of discolored bread and a single slice of cheddar cheese. Not only was the food I received barely edible, but was humiliating and even insulting. What was the point of such a ritual? I couldn't even eat those sandwiches half the time without risking getting sick. This is another scenario no one talks about. It might not be as common but it happens, and there are a plethora of issues that could be fixed to make it better that relate to other negative experiences, as well.

Part of the reason I love my home town is because they catered those students. During the summer, they would open the cafeteria for two to three hours a day to ensure students could get lunch if they had a rough home situation. It's a huge deal and those cafeteria workers are horribly underappreciated.

During the pandemic they stopped charging for school lunch. In my old school, you could charge infinity dollars on your account and still get lunch but eventually, you were switched to the nasty cheese sandwich lunch. At the high school I go to now if you don’t have the money they take your lunch. One day I couldn’t eat lunch because I didn’t have money in my account and they took it. I’m pretty sure they threw it away afterwards so they could’ve just let me eat it😢

@@blackqweenmars that's fucked up :c

My lunch in elementary was always free

Some people don't want to pay to feed your 5 children

Kind of on the fence with this one as I would never like the idea of a student going hungry (I work as a teacher) and have paid for snacks/lunches for students and campers who needed it when I worked at a summer camp. However, some parents abuse the system. When I was a kid they had what they used to call "humanitarian meals" . If you didn't have a lunch or money they just gave you a pb and j sandwich apple and milk at no charge (this was before the days of using a card or id number for lunch). I think maybe once a school year if that I had to ask for one because I forgot my lunch at home (It happens especially when I was in first grade). Many schools ended these because parents were sending their kid to school without lunch every day and not signing up for the federal lunch program so the school could get some money to cover the cost of the lunches since the parents weren't paying.

I wish they had that at my school growing up. Money was kinda tight for several years and my parents drilled into me and my siblings the importance of not being wasteful. I hated seeing perfectly good fruit/veggies going into the trash because kids didn't want them but they were mandatory

I remember the share boxes

We had those too. And in middle school there was just a table where you put unwanted food, and my friend almost threw up after taking and eating a string cheese from there.

My high school has this. It’s always filled with apple juices and carrots.

My school had something like this but it was a table and people could take stuff from it. I remember there was like 50 carrots on there.

Bro fr just the other day my breakfast LL asked me to take a fruit so fucking kindly.....never before had i want to eat a school banana more

@@randomyoutubeuser2424 I swear they're all like surrogate moms. I never understood the trope of them being mean!

@@jammies1431 ong bro

once a lunch lady chased a kid to get a piece of fruit and then the kid was mad and threw it in the share bin

@@fruitlikerw oh.....thats new

my elementary school had something similar except it was in paper bags hidden in the cafeteria somewhere and you had to ask for it as if it was some secret thing nobody was supposed to know about those paper bags always had the good non-expired snacks.

@@stormofdogzThe school I went to doesn't even have a cafeteria lol you gotta bring your own food and snacks

My elementary school had these back in 2004! Never chose them. We always had pizza and chik-fil-a tuesdays.

My school had that option too and half of the students would take those bags because it was safer than the school food. One time, the school served expired milk with chunks in it and chicken that was bright pink on the inside. I'm really glad I never got school lunch

Lucky you, never had that and I'm 23 so my experience is sour.

WTF? how did they let that slide through?

What did you eat that made you sick?

@@marylizakowski706she didn't eat anything she fainted

In my muddle school, sometimes the menu would say something like "Mozzarella Sticks" when half of the time it was literal cheese sandwiches.

I used to do that too.

⁠@@Danube-TV In my elementary, they would call mozzarella sticks “stuffed crusts” and give us a piece of bread that was hallowed out and it had a cheese stick in the middle.

@@gogo_18 ouch, that gotta hurt

I REMEMBER THOSE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL LUNCH CALENDARS! Though I wasn't packing my own lunches yet in elementary school-my mom packed my lunches until the COVID shutdowns in March 2020 had me doing college over Zoom.

like subway tuna

@@ProfessionalBugLover Wasn’t subway tuna just made with a cheaper type of fish?

@@Minelove423It also had chicken in it

@@Minelove423 Thought it was a cardboard like substance

I bought Boca burgers "fake meat" and it gave me nastolgia about my school's chicken sandwiches. I think it wasn't real chicken either.

Your mom sounds super sweet

@@mememologies7363 She passed away unexpectedly a few years ago but so many of the people she kept an eye on came to say their goodbyes and still thank me for her help to this day.

@@morticiax540 I’m sorry about your loss. It sounds like she was greatly loved not just by you but by a lot of people

@@morticiax540 My mom was the same, only the good die young :(

I forgot my lunch money one day and my account was empty, so one of the lunch ladies took me aside quietly and whispered that she would be back. She came back with a cheese sandwich and told me not to tell anyone. I didn't realize it then, but she would have gotten in trouble if they found out she didn't ring it up to charge my account into debt. Any debt on a student's account in high school would literally stop you from graduating if you didn't pay it off. I also had teachers make me food or lend me money so I could eat. Every adult in that school understood how absurd it was to let students go hungry just for being unable to pay. Even when they were focused on feeding their own families, they ALWAYS asked if I had eaten. My favorite teacher made really great home made vegan meals for me to try. I still think about him.

Philippines too especially if you go to very upscale private schools with what’s sold in them minus the pricing

I sadly have to suffer with the American school lunch

​@@BsbshdhBahshshshshshsheh Same, my oranges... THE ORANGES WERE DRY... I ATE IT THINKING IT WAS FRESH💀

@@SillyCraziyou think thats bad, the orange juice cups were brown at my school not orange. and had weird specs floating around and crossed out expiration dates? like is that illegal💀

@@ImWithIdiotone of the reasons I bring my school lunchbox 💀

😅 12:19

There’s no excuse for people that think a child doesn’t deserve to eat when there is access to excess food and an issue with excess food waste. That’s genuinely evil.

I never had to go through that, but it always breaks my heart to hear people tell others to suffer like this. I'm sorry to hear that this was told to you. :(

At my school you literally be called werid so I just never ate lunch (at my school everyone was toxic)

​@@caiuswalter-smith3385what?

teh GOATed lunch lady

Elementary-middle school was mid then highschool was decent. Now I’m in college n the food regular

My lunch people at school didn’t memorize the number or faces so people would go in 4-6 times until she noticed (they used different kids numbers that were absent)

I’m %99 sure she’s technically not allowed to put the codes in for them, she could probably get fired for that

there was a lunch lady who ran the snack line (where we got all our junk food at) and I got the same thing almost everyday so when I would go up there she would have my "order" and number memorized. i was so sad when she retired bc she was so sweet

Was like that in elementary school. 6 through 12 lunches were actual bloody food. The pizza actually looked like pizza and didn’t taste like shit, the spicy mayo was the cheese back in Sophomore year, and the chicken sandwiches were decent at best

At my elementary school, "pizza" was a whole grain flat brick with mistery yellow plastic as cheese and mabey garlic, I don't recall it haveing any sauce

@@rllycldg_3633 and the milk was always a crap shoot. Either you got milk that you could drink, or you got the perfume flavor. that you had to throw away and either ask for a new carton and hope they don't have you pay for a replacement, or go without milk or pay a 1.50 for either a water, sobe vita water, vita water, powerade or a soda. And that's if they have those in the vending machines.

I remember the pizza growing up was just okay. I looked forward to it because the rest of the food was so bad. Then the Obama Nation attacked, and the pizza became basically inedible to me. I remember throwing it away for the last years of my time at school.

@@donaldpaccerelli198 oh i remember the perfume milk, first time I thought about it in years. I swear I could taste it right now lol

I know that my middle and high schools probably allowed soda to be brought from home, but I actually don't remember if my elementary school allowed soda to be brought from home or not-it certainly wasn't served in the cafeteria of any school I went to. It might have been, because I remember thinking it was so cool and fun to bring a can of juice or soda to school as part of your lunch-when I was a kid, my parents NEVER kept soda at home, and even in restaurants and at family gatherings we were only ever allowed to have maximum 12oz, the size of one standard can, of soda per day/evening. By the way, restricting anything like that after your kids have developed a taste for it is how you get kids who go hog wild on it as teens/adults-until like 3 days ago I was drinking like 50+ oz of soda most days because I could afford it and my parents didn't intervene, and doing that made me prediabetic. It has not been fun having to retrain myself to eat/drink much healthier, but my body needs me to do it so...

There was a point where my middle school sold things like mountain dew and regular chips but one school year it switched to all sparkling water and baked chips with matte wrappers.

My middle school had a vending machine for soda that only staff/faculty had access to, and guess what? It was right in the cafeteria. Where EVERYONE could see it. Unrelated, but in 4th grade, after recess me and some other people saw the lunch ladies carrying in some Casey's (gas station/convenience store chain here in the Midwest US, their pizza is fantastic) pizza boxes. They won't even eat what they serve!

I used to like our milk when they used to be in pouches in kindergarten. They changed around intermediate school

Bones of steel over here 🦴

yeah fr, seeing that some schools had big ass dessert sections is insane to me. we had prepackaged shit like scooby snacks and a few other things but never any worthwhile desserts or anything compared to the parfaits and cakes shown in the video

just bring a sandwich

My middle school had a desert freezer section but I couldn’t get any because I was in the free lunch program. When you’re in the free lunch program, you can only get the main dish and sides. You couldn’t get chips or deserts. I still feel like I miss out a bit. The only way I could get those stuff is asking people I knew.

Children shouldn't be given sweets daily. Look at all the obese people.

in elementary school we could spend like 50 extra cents for ice cream or chips, i wish we had that in middle school too

I live in Germany, so the cafeterias at school are different, but I adore the two people that work at my school. The lady that works there is super sweet and even gifted me cookies as they had way to much that day and I was always so polite. And the cook is also really sweet. We share a love for renaissance fairs so there is a lot to talk about. And sometimes I get a bit extra XD

I understand where it comes from in my country, because the school lunch system is very different, at least for children aged 3 to 10 years old, approximately. Basically, it is considered that at that age, children are too young to be responsible from their own diet, and that it is the school's duty to provide them with balanced meals, so that they eat well, but learn what a healthy meal look like by example. So for young children, it does not operate as a self service, but every child has their seat that has been assigned at the beginning of the year, goes sit there, and the lunch ladies bring a dish for each table, for the very young children they serve them and cut what needs to be cut, the older kids serve themselves under their supervision, then they eat, the lunch ladies take out the first course and bring dishes for the main course, etc. So there is a single meal for everyone (with variations for the common restrictive diets, as specified by the parents at the beginning of the year, children who don't eat pork will generally have chicken instead for instance, a child that is allergic to strawberries will get another fruit/flavour, etc. for more complicated restrictions such as diabetes or a milk/gluten allergy, or multiple allergies, usually they ask the parents to provide the meals for their kid), the meals are planned for the month by a dietician following strict guidelines, and the lunch ladies are there to make sure that children eat as intended. (It doesn't mean much for the quality of the actual food, which can vary from "reheated industrial crap" to "mostly prepped on site with fresh ingredients" depending on where you live, but no matter where you go, you'll have roughly the same ratio of vegetables to carbs to dairy products) So if you don't like salsifies or beef tongue, they'll make sure you at least taste a couple bits, even if you say you've already tasted three months ago ; if you are being disruptive with a friend, they'll separate you and you'll be eating far from your friend for the rest of the meal (or year, if it happens too much) ; if, on fruit yoghurt day, you are fighting with another kid over who gets the strawberry yoghurt and who gets the apricot one, they're the one who will arbiter the entire situation (and obviously, as a kid, you'll remember more the decisions that weren't in your favour than the ones that were) ; they're also the ones that make sure that the kids with diet restrictions don't switch food with kids that don't, which is obviously the right thing to do, but as a kid who doesn't necessarily understand things, it can get frustrating as well. In the end, the poor lunch ladies just suffer from the fact that they are the responsible ones among children who don't really want to be responsible. And contrary to teachers, they don't have that much time to bond with the children when they're not dealing with a crisis.

Not my experience, most lunch ladies and teachers were just there for the check, and only a few teachers were really cool. Unfortunately I never met a nice lunch lady, just despondent or kinda rude to kids, granted kids suck so I cant fault them.

Mmm yeah lunch people were always nice at my schools😅

At least you got stuff you wanted to eat! I remember in middle school they didn't care if you ate or not, and my classmates would often just skip the line and sit down. Either that or buy some ala-carte items, (which, if you got free lunch, you couldn't get them, unless you had money in your account. Chips, Rice crispy bars, mini donuts, etc) but, i brought my own lunch. Better than reduced fat Doritos! I got real Doritos!

it depends on the high school. at my school anybody was allowed to leave as long as their parents had signed a permission slip and they were accompanied by a senior with a drivers licence or another exception. Side tangent My sister actually tried to get me to ride to school with her because I was disabled (not physically but I had sensory issues) and she found out that if she took me to school she could park in the staff parking lot, hich was wayyy closer and use the staff entrance and have an extra 20 minutes for lunch if we left the school because of my accomodation. but she drove like she was on crack or some shit when she was a teenager so it was a biggg pass for me.

LMAOOOOO

Holy s*** that's awful 😰

Wow that's horrible

Damn that's rough

also btw I do feel very bad for you, it was just too funny not to comment how funny the fact it even happened, schools need to get better food and stuff like that

I'm also 21 and I stopped drinking milk after 2nd grade because my school served me 2 week expired milk that was chunky and I got food poisoning from it. Only time I consume milk now is if I know for sure it's not expired and it's being cooked into something

I remember when they were pushing those food pyramids in elementary school so hard we had like a rally every now and then or a little event about it but then have over-processed foods for lunches. I get schools be on a budget but with the money they used for those trinkets/keychains for eveyone that says eat healthy they could have had a day or a few of healthy food in the cafeteria to promote it. Got bad food poisoning from an expired corn dog I bit into and ate that was literally green inside. As an adult I wish I could have done something about it back then cause I wonder how many other kids got double-ended projectile vomit(probably should have gone to the hospital it was nearly that bad dehydration all day cause I kept eating the corn dog not paying attention til like 2/3 eaten and noticed the bad meat) from their food or I was just the only unlucky one.

fat isn't bad for you

Because kids aren't the ones making the money

speak for yourself lmfao, it's not slander.

Same, I got reduced lunch in a very poor school so everyone got the same crap

It's because they care more about the younger kids. They are considered more valued meaning they get better treatment

The program's gotten worse over time, too.

Back in my old grade school(before moving to the charter grade school), the food tasted pretty good.

not in my district. the elementary school got all the food the high schoolers did, while middle school got a whole nother (better) supplier. even when i had food in middle school, i still coughed up $5 for chicken tenders & grilled cheese.

Only good food was when you're in preschool

Sounds like my canadian (southern AB) public high school's culinary arts program! Right down to supervision from the culinary arts teacher (super nice guy, he played sax for the jazz band once.) Only complaint I had was having to pay for lunch, and having ADHD meant forgetting to bring change. I wouldn't call it restaurant quality, but it was always decent, at worst "not my thing", and I could survive off baked goods or sausage rolls for the day.

That sounds amazing 👏 I wish that could be implemented in the us since I think we'd prefer to cook our own food then eat mystery meat 5x a week 😂

same in my country in europe, also we be complaining about our food, but damn… this made me realise that we have great system of food lunches and never heard of a kid who couldn’t afford school lunches, it was always the least expensive lunch option

this is super unrelated but im writing a book about a fictional high school and.... this.

Mine too, on Vancouver Island

That's scary wtf That principal sounds nice... slightly more empathy than those "lunch monitors" that walk around telling people to put their phones away and when complained to about the food, say "it looks delicious! go on, eat it!"

​@@thepeasrolledoffthecounter7552I had an experience with one of the school staff where I mentioned that the milk was likely bad, and they just shrugged it off.

​@@thepeasrolledoffthecounter7552I've never had them in my school, but that sounds annoying

Childhood is when you see the lunch ladies as evil Adulthood is when you become the lunch lady

Some of the lunch ladies at my elementary school were vile, but for the most part they were just overworked and underpaid grandmas.

Half mine were evil Half of them wouldn’t let us play outside or let us go bc we were “talking too loud” (aka 2 gossipers whispering)

@Celestial :) i had that with my school but if we shut up, and they considered whispering screaming at the top of your lungs with a megaphone, im not even exaggerating

@Celestial :) I feel like that was sarcasm But I still think the food one was worse, especially how the food in cafeterias are atrocious

thank you for this comment, it's exactly what went through my head when I saw people in the comments blaming the lunch ladies for making kids pay for their meals, not monitoring what the kids ate more, etc. They absolutely have a responsibility to watch after kids to the best of their abilities but they can only do so much bc they're literally working but mainly bc the system is the issue, not the lunch ladies. They have to do their job (that definitely doesn't pay enough) and not get in trouble. Lots of corners are always being cut to save money w American school lunches too, so they really don't have any say in what goes on. also your experience about trying Michelle Obama's food is so funny bc I had a similar experience when Obama actually came to my middle school and talked to us for like 20 min and then left 💀 It was cool for sure, but also like....okay but why?😂

hi just boosting this up

chocolate cube

Im from Germany and it’s similar here. I also find it strange how there’s not only milk but CHOCOLATE milk in almost every picture here :O

God, you are so damn lucky, the lunch at my highschool is absolutely garbage *and* potentially the leftovers of the other schools in the district! (also, one time one of my friends had a thick, sticky film of God knows what on his food)

Dang, that sounds really nice

@@moonmeadow Yep, most people love the chocolate milk. Personally, I think it tastes like cold hot chocolate and I don't like cold hot chocolate. I actually don't like plain milk at all haha

YOU'RE ARE FROM SPAIN AND YOU GOT FREE HEALTHY LUNCH? bro, i was born and still study in spain and they never gave me lunch and I had to bring it from home and the only things you can buy is when you go to the first year on secondary school to a mini shop to buy chips or pizza, nothing else

a burrito bar?? that's actually really cool😅 do you mind me asking what state/city this was in?

@@Natasha-bf6yk We got restaurants for lunch. Panera, McDonald's, etc.

Oh and local pizza places. (This is Chicago after all.)

@@UseYourBrainPlease. WHATTTTTTTTTTTT PANERA FOR SCHOOL LUNCH?!?!??!

@@cpeugh123ad yea, rich School.

I have the same situation as college and uni selling unhealthy food for money making but in highschool rn

It's Potato Buds, a specific type of industrial reconstituted mashed potato. (I worked in a nursing home dietary establishment in the 2000s, essentially like a school cafeteria setting for elderly people)

Non-Ratio

FUCKING W

You Earned Some Good Karma That Day. Helping The Lunch Ladies

W + Ration’t + Unbozo + We care + Someone asked + Madlad + Hope you get a spot in heaven

Sounds like a plot to porn

Omg I remember my highschool freshmen year 2020-2021 school year they would send kids home with those meal kits and I love the bigger uncrustable PB&J sandwiches and I’m sad you can only find smaller ones in the store

The lunches you had in China sound amazing! One of my friends growing up's parents, grandparents, etc. had immigrated from Vietnam and her mom was a SAHM, so my friend mostly had these downright delicious-looking leftovers in Styrofoam containers for lunch. Sometimes her mom brought her McD's to school at lunchtime.

what a genius plan. instead of buying fresher, higher quality vegetables and fruits, how about we make tasteless burgers made of soy and other mysterious ingredients!!

@@thebininabin4410 I agree. It is sad that we can see other countries do it so well and make it taste good. Fresh fruits and vegetables, and herbs are more common in other cultures. We just make whatever is cheap and mass produced.

the american gov subsidizes the cheese industry.. they lit have a massive supply they have to get rid of.

god bless ‘murica 🦅🦅🦅🦅

Same but I’m not lactose intolerant, just really hate cheese and milk, schools gotta chill out on the dairy products

I have a similar story. so I'm in 7th-grade rn, and I am vegan and palm oil free and have allergies. (btw palm oil is in most shelf-stable food. aka all school food). I get to school "lunch" every day. it normally consists of 1 apple, orange, or pear. most days, they are so bruised, they are not even edible, so I'm just like (in my head) "well, shit my lunch is bruised" and eat it anyway bc I have to be at school until like 5, and I show up at 7 30. (I have after/before school activities) and I get hungry easily. Thank god lunch is free for all students at my school because there is no way in hell I would be paying 1-3 dollars on a bruised apple/orange/pear.

I’m guessing there’s so much dairy because the us government is constantly giving bailouts to the dairy industry. Do yourself a favor and look up the government cheese vault

This is why I hate school so much. I know this is an isolated thing, and I hope and pray that this isn't a common experience, and I hope you are doing alright. But jeez man, schools are so bad, and they only get in trouble for this garbage a small amount of the time, and they let this thing happen a lot. I hope you are doing alright.

And did everyone clap at the end too?

@@Twiggo_The_Foxxo 🙄

Dude.. wth

I can't even describe how horrible that is.

I remember this in early elementary

So you were in the 8th grade 10 years ago? But for real, it was your school district’s fault. This never happened at my high school, and we are one of the poorest in the State of Illinois. Maybe ask your school district board why they did that to y’all

....Yall had hot breakfast in the the 10s? In the early 90s mine only had cereal as I think thats when giving student's breakfast started being required or at least offered. Lunch was still terrible tho, that has seemingly stayed the same.

Whwn the michelle obama lunch program came through when i was in early high school all they did was change the brand of fried chicken sandwiches we got and got rid of the fries so it was just chicken sandwiches and milk. They were so dry if you didn't have milk you couldn't eat them. Mississippi delta schools are crazy.

@@levig6375I was in 4th grade when it happened and I remember being so distraught and sad because they removed my favorite strawberry milk, gogurts, and stopped serving cookies, pudding, and jello for dessert. They stopped serving small fried chickens and good quality fruits/veggies. Now, we have apples that taste like acid, oatmeal cookies, bread that is solid enough to make dents in the table, and stale pizza that has cheese falling off of it. People would also be unable to get any food if they didn't have money for it. We would have to put ourselves in debt to pay the lunch ladies and would get in trouble for not paying, despite making getting lunch mandatory... I never ate much of the desserts back then but now I'm regretting it 😞 My school is in Texas btw. I really miss that strawberry milk.

that's a weird scenario. I remember i qualified one semester for free lunch and they required us to get more food. it was more expensive to get the main meal plus a side. i remember having to get a fruit and a milk on top every time. the only thing not allowed for free were chips and snacks which makes sense

Even school teachers can make better meals than lunch ladies.

I remember literally EVERYONE being pissed about taking away nacho cheese. Absolutely awful

​@@Bombman297they didn't cook it it was premade frozen stuff I remember watching them make it they just shove shit in the oven

My school reduced their food options! They got rid of the snack bar, and we barely ever had any options to begin with which sucked. I remember one of our meals of the week was “bosco sticks” and it was the cheap mozzarella sticks and you only got two for your main meal, which already isn’t a lot but halfway through high school they took away one of the sticks so they would serve a singular long bosco stick… not very filling when the only other thing you’d get would be a weird apple

Brit here to agree! The school lunches were always kind of gross to ME because I had massive problems with picky eating (probably a neurodivergence thing too, but unconfirmed so far lol) and I hated having to eat everything I was given, but it was always pretty good quality stuff. As I remember, they shipped in the ingredients daily or nearly daily, and made it on-site. The cottage pie was great and the roast dinners? 🤌 we had them every thursday and they were amazing, lmao. They always had vegetarian options and catered specially to kids with allergies. High-school had some weird incidents- someone found a piece of string in their spaghetti once, and another kid found a STAPLE in their mac-n-cheese- but other than that, those meals were pretty damn good. They had extra salad options for free too, and you paid with a school-specific card, so you could go into debt if you had to and pay it back later. Now I'm at college too and the food catering is done by an independent company, so it's really nice but very expensive. You can still get a bursary for food if you need one. Most kids just head to the nearby supermarket for their meals, lol. Much as we complained about school meals, I don't think we really grasped how good we had it compared to... whatever the hell the stuff in this video is. It's wild, too, because I'm studying sociology and we've learnt about the failings of free-school-meals programs and the kids who slip through the cracks- but it seems like in a lot of american schools, *most* kids slip through the cracks! I feel so bad for anyone who's had to eat literal mouldy or rotting food, that's absolutely wild

Ngl that makes no sense, there are literally some bacteria species that survive stomach acids in enough numbers to pass on to the intestines and cause infection, like salmonella. Shame it happened to you.

Yeah same I have drank like 2 expired mills in one week my school is trying to reuse fruits/vegetables because so many kids have thrown them away because they have been rotted or heavily bruised which Is bad cause there’s a reason it’s getting thrown away

JESUS CHRIST That’s literally awful I didn’t realise that schools could be that bad For your own health please just move school if you can

In my elementary school, a lot of the fruits were rotten, as well as the milk and most of the the lunch ladies were toxic and mean, same for middle school except they now have a mean security guard who was so picky about what you do, my friends were singing Sophia the first quietly and she yelled at us even though most kids were in there phones ( we weren’t allowed to) and she would yell at us for me to loud before lunch ( I went to a certain school and due to us getting there before 3rd hour would end, we had to wait) and said “ how would you like it if the 300 kids were being loud while you are in class, like Bruce there was prob 80 kids there and the classes were not near the lunchroom. And lol, once I got a burger with no bun??? I was one of the only kids who got no bun-

I don't drink the milk😮‍💨😮‍💨

wow! that seems crazy to me. what happens to children with lower in comes? no school lunch for them i guess

@@Lucailey yeah!!! There's often a "feeding scheme" in place where kids who can't afford tuck shop food get shitty little squished peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. At least that's what happened at my school. Hopefully other schools provide better food for those kids

it's exactly the same in new zealand (and australia i believe). we even call them tuck shops too.

The cookies In my school are weirdly hard, maybe not stale, but hard so that I think I had to knaw through 1 or 2

Ya'll had deserts? Damn, I had black wrinkled old fruit when I was lucky

You had desserts at all? 😨😨

i wish my elementary school had cookies it was just ice cream for desserts and it would melt the second it got out of the freezer

WHAT WHERE DO YOU LIVE?? CAN I COME

In my country it’s very common the kids bring lunch made at home by their own parents. And since the schools here are not like full day, you choose if you want to study at the period of morning or evening (like 7am-12pm or 1pm-5pm) so everyone go to school without the need of eating a full meal

This sounds like a legit utopia, WHERE IN THE WORLD DO YOU LIVE??

Idk what country are you from, but in Poland it's pretty much the same. The only thing that was kind of weird in my school was that kids in 1-3rd grades had to eat at least one ladle of soup.

My sisters school is very similar, as a german It's always interesting to see the american experience :D

yeah I feel like high school lunch was much worse than elementary school lunch. I don't remember anything bad about elementary school lunches and the high school ones in the same school district were so shitty I ended up just making my own most of the time.

Ngl all my lunch ladies have been chill. But there's always that 1 where if you disrespect her of the cafeteria floor you'll be read,roasted and burned like you just showed your parents a report cards full of F's

What kind of food do you have in Russia these days for lunch? 😊

@@meowsha not russian but eastern european, we only have dinner its usually just a normal dinner with random tea (everyone has to eat the same thing no picking here) some schools also had optional soup i remember that just a concept of being able to pick what you want to eat was so cool and interesting to me and many others but many eastern european schools have their own shops inside so you can get ice cream, candy and maybe hot dogs from a microwave but idk if russia also has this sort of thing and also some schools will have the american type of pick for yourself style of lunch but its usually richer or private schools that do that

@@rock-cb3hl in American schools the lunch is typically one main menu item that changes everyday and then they’ll have the option of pizza or a salad everyday. Also I’m curious, has your opinion of American school lunches changed after watching this video?

@@meowsha I'm also from Russia, iirc in my school there were free but limited lunches (and breakfasts) for grades 1-5 and payable lunches with at least some variety of choices for evereone else including the teachers, and also a snack bar with sweets like snickers bars or cookies and muffins baked by lunch ladies. So the free segment usually consisted of some kind of porridge (oatmeal, rice, wheat and others) with a piece of butter on top and a piece of a whole grain bread with cheese or butter on it for breakfasts, and some kind of soup and/or either mashed potatoes, macaronies or again wheat porridge with some sort of meat, usually cutlets made from questionable meat or truly artificial sausages for lunch. And sweet tea or (not) hot cocoa-like drink. While not that bad, you may notice that there are barely any veggies or fruits. Additional payable options included things listed above plus pizzas, pigs in blankets, fish pies, stew, beef liver, roasted chicken or pork fillets usually coated with mayo and cheese, sometimes with tomato slices, mushrooms or even pinapples. I have to mention that my school was somewhere in the upper-middle rank and there are stories across the country about moldy food, insects and spoiled products. As for my school, generally it's pretty good compared to the contents of this video, never had food poisonings from school lunches. But sometimes I would still grow sick from poor quality of the dishes (they were always quite oily, some pieces of meat were unchewable, macaronies were always overcooked and almost slimey) or just the lack of veggies and prefer to bring something with me or not to have a lunch at school at all.

@@LizaMonstrik thank you so much ❤️

hey genuine question but doesn't going to school in japan require paying a bunch of fees to attend that school could be why you had actual decent food

@@lionheartt15 no, tuitions for primary, and secondary schools are free in japan

@@gear-zoluI didn't know just heard that it costs to go to school in japan

@@lionheartt15 it only really costs money for high schools and colleges

Thankfully now the schools don’t force you to eat everything, just try it. At least that’s how my son’s Japanese public school does it. We pay a lunch fee once a month, and it’s about 4500¥ (and the fee is income-based). The lunches are really nice.

Hey! I’m also Mexican and I was through kindergarten till 9th grade in Mexico, so I also remember the cafeterias and puestecitos. My mom would always pack me lunch, so if I had spare change I would buy like some junk food to accompany my lunch, what’s funny is that I remember always being amazed by the idea of school lunches that I would always see in American series, it wasn’t until I started high school in the US that I experienced it myself, and it was okay, I didn’t like all the cafeteria food, but most of it was decent, I would have 1 or 2 meal options per week that I would really like, for example my favorite were when they would serve nachos with curly fries or orange chicken with spring rolls, those were so good

@@moonie6368 *bump fist* Puestecitos are the best

Really is fun going to school and being autistic. I can't force myself to eat stuff if it's Bad to me (taste, texture, whatever - and this is suddenly a realization on why I lost the "you need to finish this plate of vegetables or you can't have dessert" thing that one time when I was like 5, wow) so if I chose the wrong thing at lunch... I would just be hungry! :D Now I'm in college and oh my god it is so important that I can just get my own food whenever. It really does feel like prison looking back (which checks out, schools are built by prison architects and fed by prison food companies, from what ive heard.)

The first time I had cafeteria pizza I legitimately thought it was covered in plastic so I can relate

@@wusstunes Yeah omg theres so many times where the cheese on those things felt like straight up rubber. How do they manage that.

My elementary school's lunches were so disgusting to the point where even just looking at them or smelling them made me gag. There was absolutely no way I'd be putting those nasty school lunches into my mouth and I'm glad I was able to being my own lunch from home daily instead.

Going through school with autism was hell for me. I really struggled to learn and I could barely speak until around 3rd I started communicating better. The cafeteria was so loud I had to sit outside (even in the rain or summer heat) with just my 1 on 1 aid that never left my side. I will say I would have never gotten as far as I did without her she was just so kind and patient

I don't even think every high school in Ontario even has cafeteria service. The high school I went to had only just started to provide cafeteria service 2 years prior to me going there (for context, I graduated 2 years ago). In my experience, there were kids in high school who did use the cafeteria service frequently (such as me since I usually didn't have time to pack my lunch in the morning, plus my book bag was constantly full, so I didn't have a lot of room for my lunchbag) but there were also kids who just brought their own lunches from home. There were also quite a few kids who would just go out and buy something from nearby restaurants too.

Same - my school didn't have a cafeteria and the expectation was that you'd bring your own lunch. This is in Alberta, around the same time period of the 2000s. We did, however, have "hot lunches" every Wednesday, where we could optionally buy some not particularly healthy food. Depending on the week, it was Mr. Sub sandwiches, Taco Bell soft tacos, Little Caesars pizza, or hotdogs (which didn't have any branding on them.) The best one, however, were the hamburgers, which also didn't have any branding on them. They were pretty greasy, but tasted amazing. I actually liked them enough that I asked around at the time where they were from, and the answer I repeatedly got is that they were from Costco, which is perplexing to me because they taste nothing alike. They tasted closer to something from Burger King or Carls Jr., but with a thinner patty. Like in the video, when I was in grade eight they passed legislation to try and solve the issue of child obesity. The law now required that teachers were not allowed to give students candy, schools were not allowed to have vending machines, and that hot lunches had to be healthier. This resulted in the bread being replaced with whole wheat - which I didn't mind so much - and with the hamburgers getting replaced by Booster Juice smoothies and wraps, which I did mind. I stopped ordering the hot lunches at that point. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind smoothies or wraps if they're done right, but Booster Juice smoothies are too tangy and the wraps were super plain and bleh.

@@tomysshadow I’m also from AB and went to school around the same time! I totally remember the forms for Little Cesars Pizza lunches and how you had to pay in advance for it. I remember there being bullying for kids who had “weird” (usually cultural) type foods that they’d bring to school and the fighting that happened over the microwave in the classroom. I also remember the flex of the kids who were “lucky” to get McDonalds for lunch, though in hindsight I feel bad for their long term health. I was lucky to go to high school in a major city with a really good student culinary program so our hot lunches were usually pretty next level and varied. But it was still definitely a rare treat type deal for a lot of kids. I also remember the cafeteria not being very well used, most people at my school ate elsewhere or went off campus for lunch if they didn’t buy the hot lunches. It’s really interesting how different the US school lunches were!

I go to a school in Ontario Canada as well. My school had an amazing cafateria and I was a “spoil urself with cafeteria food” person as I did bring my own lunch but my schools French fries and cookies where addictive. I miss the cafeteria but since Covid it hasn’t opened. I remember being in grade 9 and being scared of highschool cafeteria food and just being shocked that my caf was so nice and loud but in a homey fun vibe.

@@realsadegg7246 Yes, the wonderful yellow slips that decided if you were getting Cheese or Pepperoni. I think they were in Comic Sans? Everything was in Comic Sans... I avoided using the microwave if at all possible. By the time the line was up, the lunch break was almost over and I'd barely have time to eat anything. Instead, I'd pack things like bananas, oranges, Goldfish, Kraft Dinner crackers (during their brief existence,) ham sandwiches (couldn't be peanut butter because peanuts weren't allowed,) fruit bars, Bear Paws, chocolate pudding, granola bars, Harvest Crunch and other such food that didn't need to be heated. It's possible that kind of bullying was going on at my school but I wouldn't have known because I was always the type who preferred sitting out and eating on my own instead of eating at the lunch table. What I know didn't happen was anyone getting McDonald's, because I would've been supremely jealous. Everyone would've been. There wasn't a McDonald's within walking distance, but even if there were, heaven forbid anyone walk an inch off the school grounds. What we did have just across the street in front of the school was a Husky convenience store and the high schoolers would often go there for slurpees (or "cold sucks" as Husky so eloquently called them.) But everyone knew that if we tried to go there, we'd be in big trouble. Even stepping on the sidewalk in front of the school was risque. It just sat there right across the street, within view from the playground, taunting us. Teachers were not unaware that this was desired, though. One year, they told us about a new rule that would allow us to go to the Husky to get Slurpees on Fridays. It came with a catch, however: it was a reward for good behaviour, so only a handful of students would actually get to go. Some of my classmates were quite disappointed in this idea because, to be blunt, they were loud and obnoxious and knew they weren't getting any rewards for good behaviour. I didn't mind as much, but it didn't matter because ultimately the new rules were never put into practice, and were gone as quickly as they were proposed to us. Why exactly I don't know - maybe parents complained, maybe they re-evaluated and decided it was a bad idea, or maybe they just forgot. I pretty much forgot about it for the rest of the year after my initial excitement at the idea of getting a slurpee during school faded away. We were just already conditioned to it being an impossible thing.

Jesus Christ that’s really extreme

Honestly, just say fuck it and let the parents raise there kids.

What country do you live in?

@@MrFishio its county

@@capnsteele3365 ah ok

Cooking class is slowly being phased out of high schools.

@@QUBIQUBED well that doesn't make any sense for the school i went too: it was not only merged with a school that was all about preparing people for the world of work: but it also had programs for people with disabilities so they could help them prepare for living on their own! If they just removed cooking class they would not only completely be unable to prepare students for an entire work industry, but also be unable to help teach some students how to feed themselves!

@@Fighting.Flower yeah I wasn’t talking about your school, I was talking about a growing trend in the average American public school

@@QUBIQUBED oh...

@@QUBIQUBED blast to the past

They got rid of the strawberry milk but they kept the chocolate milk as if it was healthier😭 my school still gave us strawberry milk from time to time

@@PaolaRodriguez-rd2qi honestly😭😭

Oh my god the strawberry milk sends me back I remember the one day I had decided I wanted to try it it was gone lol

@Angel Rodriguez 4 me, we had strawberry milk4 like 1 month. Then they had chocolate milk and white milk* *milk milk

Youre in Texas and the lunches are free?

my high-school had vending machines in our cafeteria however they had hours set on them so you couldn't purchase during lunch or breakfast time

I wonder how much the income level of the districts affects this disparity? I know my kids school is not affluent and the things I hear from my mom (who works as a lunch lady there) are not great. Especially regarding portions.

We had vending machines outside the gymnasium but they were off all day while school was in session and only turned on after school hours.

We weren't generally supposed to use the vending machines at our school because they barely worked and often just stole your money. Eventually they just gave up and removed them because they couldn't be bothered to maintain them.

My school’s drink vending machine just had Dasani, Powerade, and 5 calorie Minute Maid lemonade (which I’ve had a few times). So technically they still had a contract with Coca Cola but without actually serving sodas. Ironically the snack vending machine was a little more lenient on junk food, at most some of the snacks were low-cal versions but even then I think most of it was just the regular stuff aside from candy.

Good thing they never force me to take one of those fruit cups/ apple sauce.

I hate wasting food!!

That was a school district issue. That was never a thing at my school.

glad im not the only one with the booger milk problem

in high school some kid a my table´s milk had the consistency of cotton candy, it was so nasty

That description genuinely scared me

So she knows that but does nothing about it? I smell a lawsuit coming

@@Averaage_Commenter The school probably made them serve it, although it is terrible

I’m severely lactose intolerant and my elementary school would still force us to drink milk. My parents had to talk to the school, and their solution? They made me drink CHOCOLATE milk. Makes no sense.

@@C.K.Productions ah yes chocolate milk comes when you milk chocolate there’s no lactose its not from a cow

@@TOTU as a U.S. citizen I can agree but the government needs to get out of school Lunch wise and education wise but in my high school we had a lot of kids eat off campus and we had pretty damn good food nothing nasty or gross during my schooling years. Every time I hear these types of stories it makes me happy am out of there and I got good food. We feed prisoners better than our own kids sometimes but in all honesty parents need to take there kids out public school especially nowadays the schools are awful and got worse after Covid now and am 24 now graduated 2016.

⁠@@adrianjuarez1162 sounds like you were just in a better place than most. I’m 28 and the school lunch I had was often straight garbage…

The school lunch line being horribly long is why by middle school my mom was packing me a lunch to bring every day. Thank you so much, Mom!

This is literally my experience, it used to be much better when I was in elementary, but by my middle schools years the portion sizes where tiny and the food, with few exceptions, was nasty.

I had the same experience. It was fine in elementary school, but by the time I was in junior high, the school just stopped caring. Our milk usually tasted horrible and you could tell something was wrong with it. I told an adult about it one time and they just shrugged it off.

Lol

it's the same way here, except we could pick and choose what we wanted from a daily menu. it would change every day, and we would pick from several options.

US here- Had choice of meal, salad bar, or pasta bar to start. Then Obama happened. Salad was cut, too many vegetables. Menu items were mostly removed beyond inedible replicas of the older ones. Pasta bar started tasting like watery ranch over a plate of paste.

I've been to several public schools in the USA and I never got a choice. You got what you got, which was usually moldy sludge. And you were forced to eat if you wanted to go outside for recess. It really felt like school was a sample of what prison was like. I've also been to a lot of public schools in Brazil. The school lunches in Brazil are infinitely better. I couldn't believe my eyes when I was served freshly made rice, beans, chicken and a salad. Everyday I'd run to be the first person in the lunch line.

I honestly wish I could too, I do live in the US but we get the same thing every day.