What’s in a School Lunch?

An overall revamping of our entire food supply should be included in all the health care talks going on right now. If that’s too much to ask, and I realize that it is, then improving school lunches should at least be given some attention.

Actually..I don’t think the soft pretzel as an entree is all that uncommon anymore.  I have seen it on the menu at the schools of each of my younger sisters at least once a month.  Also last semester I interned at an elementary school and they frequently had that as an entree.  I too remember lunches being similar to what you described, but like I said, from my experience this lunch actually isn’t uncommon now.

Always good to see the topic being brought up! The issue has been bugging me for a long time now, basically ever since I started to understand something about food back in my school days – as a kid you don’t make food choices yourself and, unfortunately, not all adults care to provide what’s good for you in the food department. Nice infographic too!

The issue here partially has to do with cost, both of the basic ingredients and of time to prep. Schools often times have to make a meal for a child that cost less than 1 dollar for all the contents. Sure they get subsidized foods due to large volume, but that only saves so much. Additionally, labor is not free. Though I too am dubious of a pretzel being an entree, I will use it here anyway…but if a school can get many pre-made pretzels, that require no labor, it saves them money over having to make or even reheat quesadillas, per this example.Unfortunately like in many cases, funding or lack there of, really constraints choices.

If you are at all curious to see what is in a school lunch menu, go to ‘adams12 lunch menu’.  You don’t have to log in.  Keep in mind that when you see “pretzel with cheese” and “chicken patty” that this is either/or NOT and.  The pb&j are the pre-fab frozen ones, the pasta w/ meat sauce uses a small! ice-cream scoop, the chili is beans and water.  It’s also not fruit and veggies; there is only 1 available per day.  I could go on.  I know because this because this is my kids’ school district.

My son is in elementary school and at least 1 time per month a large soft pretzel with cheese sauce is the main entree of the day. Another disturbing entree is “Nacho Naturals”-nothing more than a small bag of nacho chips again served with warm cheese.  They are typiclly also served a fruit choice-either juice or a canned fruit of some kind, and a veggie-like carrot and celery sticks.   I find that on the days that these nutrition poor foods are served, my son is starving when he gets home, is in a grumpy mood and on occasion has had a not so good day at school.  I think the school systems should be ashamed to feed our children these foods. 

I have never seen any of the schools my children go to offer a pretzel for lunch. I have seen mozzarella cheese stick and yogurt as a main dish. Here is a few of my girls’ lunches for this week:Hot ham and cheese, corn, pineapple-choice yogurt and string cheesechili and corn bread, celery, mandarin oranges-choice hot ham and cheeseBLT, cottage cheese, french fries, broccoliThe kids only get a cookie or pudding cup the day before thanksgiving and Christmas. Now, they give the kids a hot ham and cheese without the option of having cheese on it. My youngest does not like cheese so her choice on the first meal would be to eat yogurt. 2nd- the corn is DISGUSTING. I eat lunch with my kids all the time and the corn is a mushy mess. I don’t blame any kid for not eating it. So all my youngest will eat that day is yogurt and pineapple. So much for $2.10 lunch.Most of my kids will not eat chili (I know many parents have issues trying to get their kids to eat beans) and it doesn’t help that the school can not properly prepare chili and the greasy, slimy, mushy mess is not eaten by the bulk of the children in the lunchroom. And the choice is ham and cheese, wonderful. $2.10 spent on celery and oranges.Two of my kids will not eat mayo. Three will not eat cottage cheese. None of them will eat broccoli.  $2.10 (per child)spent on french fries. Kids are picky. I know it’s not just my children not eating their school lunches, most of the kids in the cafeteria are not eating the food given to them. The food is not seasoned and cooked properly. After last years wonderful array of lunches my kids now pack their lunch. Club sandwiches, PB and banana sandwiches, apples, bananas, strawberries, peaches, baked potatoes, celery & carrots with ranch to dip in, a sugar free pudding cup and flavored water. I know my packed lunch isn’t as nutritious as the schools lunch but when it comes down to it my kids are not coming home hungry and that is what the schools need to look at. WILL THE KIDS EAT THIS?

School lunches are meant to feed children who will not eat when they go home.  They are aimed at providing enough calories to sustain the children throughout the day.  And having gone to an exceptionally poor elementary school, I assure you, the caloric content that these meals provide is just enough for children who go hungry.When the school lunch program was developed, most children went home to bread and beans for dinner.  High-calorie lunches were okay.  Children both burned the calories and weren’t taking in many calories at home.  The program continues to operate on the understanding that children will not eat large dinners, eat small breakfasts, and are active after and during school.Pair that with a desperation to keep costs as low as possible.Most assuredly, neither of these meals is representative of a typical school lunch.  Watery “chili” with grease floating on top, macaroni and cheese and prepackaged pizza are far more common.

Being a teacher in Texas, my issue is not so much with the school lunch as it is what the parents bring the students to eat if they do not like what the school is serving.  Granted, the lunch at school leaves much to be desired, the parents bring VERY unhealthy lunches and snacks for their children.  We need to educate the parents on what a healthy snack or lunch is!  Pizza three times a week for lunch is not what I call a healthy meal, not to mention the bags of potato chips and candy they send!

I work in the kitchen at my 2 youngest childrens school here in Maine. We started a new “Healthy Start” food program last year which consists of only using whole grain breads, pastas & tortilla wraps. Our pb & j sandwichs are fresh every day as an alternative to the hot lunch for the day, and the guidlines call for 2 ounces of peanut butter, which is equivalent to a large ice cream scoop. We also offer another sandwich choice that changes weekly, ranging from pb & fluff to bologna or ham & cheese, or chicken salad that we make there. Also as part of our new food program, we use baby spinach now instead of lettuce, offer butternut squash, corn, mixed veggies brocolli & cheese as veggies. Everthing is made fresh daily, cooked to the USDA guidelines, and kept at temps of 141 degrees holding. We also have sweet potatoe fries, which no, most of the kids dont eat, but it is our responsibility to give them these healthy foods. We do have pizza, and burgers etc. but there is always 1 serving of fruit, 1 serving veggies, we cover all of the food groups. There will always be the picky eaters, who either barely touch their lunch, or bring in their own from home. But I can leave work every day knowing that we served nutritious lunch to 200 + kids that day. My kids have gone to this school for 3 years now, and not one time has the hot lunch for the day been a pretzel! I’m not sure where that data even comes from. Thankfully our head cook is very  diligent about feeding these children good nutritious meals day in and day out, because she does realize some do not have the healthiest dinners at home.

We also serve roast turkey with all the fixings and shepards pie. Again everything is prepared right at the school each and every day, fresh. Breakfast alternates hot and cold. Hot breakfast may be french toast or pancakes w/ bacon or a hash brown. Maybe omelets. Cold is cereal, yogurts, fruit, granola bars etc. There is always a few choices for the kids, but they are 99 % of the time healthy choices.

Dang. Looks like my school’s already turned to this “alternative” lunch. It tastes as nasty as it sounds too. Forget which one’s healthier, if you were a kid would you want to be eating the spinach quesadilla crap in the alternative lunch or would you want to be eating a pretzel with some nice, warm, cheese with dried cheese skin on the top?Yum. Both are very appetizing, but when I’m faced with decisions like that in the lunch line…I promise I’m choosing the pretzel. And then I can drink down some warm milk since our school doesn’t have bottled water.We kids are so lucky to have nasty school lunch.  I hope they don’t make it worse by changing to even crappier “healthier” lunch. They already took away our open campus lunch and they won’t let our parents bring in anything. We’re high school kids…come on.

Wow some of you are very lucky to not have a Pretzel w/cheese be a school lunch choice. My kids have been offered that for about 8 years. One just graduated last year. My kids may eat the quesadilla but not the rice. Brown rice w/spinach, please. I understand the caloric intake reasons for school lunches but we still have thousands of kids throught America that a school lunch is the only meal they get. Instead of bringing down the calorie count why not get kids off thier lazy butts and into a PE class on a daily basis. PE classes have diminished in schools and then kids go home and do nothing but sit on the couch watching tv or playing video games. Physical activity is the best cure for obesity. I get tired of my kids coming home and telling me they didn’t have enough lunch becuase by the time their lunch period came all that was left was some nasty greasy rubbery pizza that you can bounce the cheese off the floor.  They say that the average kid needs 1600 calories a day. They must mean the average lazy kid, because 1600 calories a day for my active kids is not enough.

Ed: I just graduated high school last year. And yes. The do serve us single pretzels. but yes they serve fried boneless chicken drummies, which is chicken meat blended and mixed with bread and milk and then pressed in a machine to make it look like a drumstick and then fried. School lunch was awful. I packed my lunch most everyday and I dreaded those days that I woke up late and couldn’t pack a meal. 

This Article:   Further Evidence that we should be doing everything in our power to enact School Vouchers!Not, just to improve the quality of our education for the children.  But also for thier health!

Take heart Corinne, you are not alone as a nutrition worker in a school.  I have been working in an elem. school for 5 years now, and we serve anywhere between 600 to 700 lunches a day.  For a couple years now our district has been working hard to give the children healthy nutritious meals that might include brown rice, wheat bread and/or buns, etc., We have never served, and in all the 20 years that I have had children in school, I have never heard of or seen a pretzel offered for lunch.  However, gone are the days of desserts or the high fat lunches I had when going to school.  The cry for healthy lunches has resulted in the schools serving some foods that are foreign to the children, not to mention the meals that the children are eating at home do not include healthy real food that did not consist mainly of something from one box, or didn’t go directly from the freezer to the oven.  The result is that they won’t eat it, and then complain.  We also serve at least one ethnic lunch a month now.  This month is a native american lunch which will include a flat bread taco (using a native american recipe), wild rice, baked black beans, dried cranberries and a blueberry honey cupcake.  This menu is nutritious, balanced and will be good tasting, but to much will go in the garbage untasted.  And the main reason will not be the taste, the reason can be explained by two facts.  Fact number 1; when we serve corn dogs, pizza, hot dogs…things of that nature, the children are very excited and the lunch count will be high, and as I am serving half of them will say it’s their favorite, and sadly, many say they had it for dinner the night before.  No wonder they don’t want to eat the good, healthy food if they don’t normally eat well.  Fact number 2; The schools want you to send a midmorning snack with your child everyday to school.  How can a child possibly be hungrey if they just had a snack an hour or so before lunch?  I would also like to mention that I think the school lunches are good, after all we kitchen workers have to eat it too. As for not letting parents bring in fast food from outside for thier children at lunch time.  I wish they would prohibit that in our district.  We work so hard so provide a the healthy lunches that the parents say they want their children to have and then bring in fast food for them?!  Not to mention…when was the last time you went to one restaurant, bought your food and then brought it to another restaurant to sit down and eat it.  (even asking for condiments and use thier dishes and flatware) honestly where has common sense and curtesy gone.

This is an outrage! No, really. That food looks 9000% better than what I had to stare at… and throw away. I’m talking of course about the “it” meals. In Maryland I’ve eaten square cardboard pizza that isn’t fully cooked or that was extremly obliterated in the oven, seen hairy taco beef with cold tortillas, mucky sloppy joes and grilled cheese sandwiches, and some alien meat in the hambergers being served (also to mention scary fries) that individually came to $3. I’ve seen things at McDonalds that has much more quality than the cafeteria foods at each and every previous public school I’ve been to (k-12). At college a week ago I even ate the scariest looking hamburger, went home later, threw up and had a temperature of 101 the next morning.I honestly must say, pretzel sounds terrific: but as long as it’s edible. If you want to complain about nutrition, how about overall food quality in thousands of public schools across the nation. Plus between diet and exercise, rather being concerned all about nutrition how about encouraging more fitness related activities in the youth. I was quite fortunate to have relatives in the fitness and wellness feild to teach me while other students aren’t quite aware of how to exercise, right? I’ve actully have meet plenty of students who don’t know what the *blank* is a depth push-up or even hammer curl for that matter or even what cardiovascular exercises are. Still nutrition is a part of the pie but of all things I’ve endured, nutrition? Sometimes nutrition can’t accomodate the kids that are what they call underweight, I am and to pay 9 dollars to achieve any sort of satisfaction off of diet food or even the food served currently is rediculous. Besides, I’ve forced myself to not even get close to the foods from outer space before and lead me to starvation, then I feel sick and had to eat it anyway to feel better but got sick still because it isn’t quality food. Actually I do like that phrase… “Foods from outer space”tm. That’s mine fool, eh hehe. Really I think everyone needs to focus on the big picture:-Meals accomodating for a variety of diets-Fitness education-Edible foodTake it easy and thanks for reading.p.s. I’m serious about the tm, I like that phrase I came up with and it’s awesome

De-Regarding your last sentance:  I just sold my restaurant 3 years ago after 5 years in business.  I could not believe the (High) number of people that would buy food at one of the other nearby restaurants and then sit at my place and eat it (even asking for condiments and dishes).  This does not happen only at school cafeterias.  And Yes, I agree common sense and courtesy are lacking.

The following will not be popular with many parents…but…I love living on the edge. The major problem is not with school lunches, but with parents who raise their children with the mistaken impression that food is always served restaurant style…each child orders what they think they want to eat (…and each child in the family often picks a different food…3 children, 3 different dishes to prepare)and then picks their way through the meal, not eating anything they decide they don’t want. Then they get to have dessert and later they can have other snacks like candy, cookies, chips, etc..  Instead,  starting right from the time you first begin to introduce solid foods, you simply feed a balanced diet with appropriate calories and in an eye appealing manner.  This will start them on the right road.  No between meal snacks  beyond some fresh veggies and fruits…no candy, pudding, cake and frosting, cookies (you get the idea), “dessert” being yoghurt with berries, fresh mixed fruits raw or in a warm compote, even mini crepes with fresh or warmed fruits with a dab of yoghurt or a low sugar, whole grain, cinnamon, raisin and nut bread/cake..If they choose not to eat because they decide to reject the food offered, I guarantee they will gobble up the next meal even if it is the same foods offered the first time around. Children raised with a balanced and nutritional diet will willingly eat what is presented unless they are ill.  Some days they will have a better appetite than others…just as we do.   A calm parent who does not dissolve into hysteria when the child has an appetite lag, will have a healthy child who will, over the space of a week, eat an adequate amount of calories and will ingest the appropriate nutrients needed.  Kids can be involved in shopping for items for school lunches, packing their lunches, and will even get a big kick out of being able to grow some veggies and fruits to add to their meals.  I know of no child, consistently presented with this type of diet plan, who ever starved to death or became ill…in fact they are healthier, will develop hearty appetites, all the while developing good eating habits.  Limiting sweets or empty calories as children grow, will give them a much better foundation as they begin making independent choices at large. Naturally as they get older they will want to join in with friends in indulging in less desireable foods, but by then they will have a tendency to gravitate toward the healthier choices the rest of the time.  Parents need to engage their brain as regards the diet of their children, starting at the time of birth and not fall into the habit of catering to the child just because it is easy…good parenthood is frequently not easy or pleasant, but it is your responsibility to follow the higher road and choose to do what is necessary for good health for a lifetime.

my job is to get  healthier food into cafeterias. It’s a challenge to say the least. The whole pretzel thing is a fairly recent, lazy attempt to pass this little morsel off as the required “grain” portion of a school meal. 

Where were these school lunches taken from?  In Georgia I don’t know anyone that serves a pretzel and calls it a main dish. Maybe a whole grain one with reduced fat moz cheese inside with some marinara to dip it in…  I have worked in school nutrition for 10 years and know we don’t serve that wierd stuff in the examples.  Corn casserole!?!?  Who does that?  Yes, we serve pizza–with a whole grain crust and a skim mozzarella cheese and reduced fat peperoni.  We use a turkey hot dog on a whole grain bun, lean deli ham that we shave ourselves and offer at least 3 choices of veggies and at least 2 choices of fruits in all our schools everyday. We limit fried foods to once a week and usually bake our chicken nuggets and meat items.  On a 3 week menu rotation with 3 choices of entree every day looks like everyone could find something they like.  And by the way, 75 of our 87 lunch ladies are ServSafe certified.We use the MyPyramid as the basis of our menus and really try to find things kids like while making sure they are nutritious choices.  You might get chicken nuggets, but they are not McDonalds. We portion control everything.  I get out into classrooms and survey students, teach them nutrition and have taste-testings regularly.  The thing is, in Northwest Georgia we are not unusual.  All the counties around here do the same thing.  Like the poster earlier said, when parents drive through for supper or teach their children from an early age to pick and choose what they like, they will have picky eaters.  I’m not saying all school lunch is perfect, but we stretch our tax dollars as far as they will go and really try to use the lunchroom as a learning laboratory to teach nutrition.  Unfortunately, we think it is great to fund education but neglect teaching nutrition to kids.  Think–when was the last time you used algebra?  When was the last time you ate?  Which should we invest in–something you use infrequently for the rest of your life, or something we do daily?

Well, let’s see all of us use algebra every day.  You simply don’t talk about in the formal.  Go to the grocery store.  How much will 3 pounds of apples cost at .99/lb?  is in algebraic terms 3 * .99= x That ‘x’ is your algebraic term.  or 10 oz of tomato soup at one price or 28 at another.  How much per ounce to determine the better deal?  That’s algebra.And the other, all these ‘lunch-ladies’ that are bragging about how great their lunches are and “can’t imagine where the others come from”…get over yourselves.  My kids wish they could get those things at school; my 9yr old’s favorite food is spinach! You want to know where they come from then go look at other menus around the country.  Try Metro Chicago, Denver, NYC; they aren’t going to have those great, little bistro meals you’re serving.  I know, I’m from one of those big cities.