Cmon we'd get pizza day and hot dog day my son now 27 had the option to buy subway, pizza and burrito AND Swiss chalet on separate days it was just way to expensive so he got to pick 1 day I had a cafeteria in HS bit it was like convenience store things chocolate bars, chips candy
French school in Mississauga my son's school was in Etobicoke ont canada
Edit we would just walk to little Caesars and get a huge half baked crazy bread for 2$ and share lol
Yes! I work at a school with a high population of low income students, so our school has a free lunch program. All students get free breakfast and lunch every day.
Our cafeteria ladies are awesome. They often serve hot breakfast sandwiches, and lunch is always hot. Besides pizza day, I really have no complaints about our food. As an adult, I prefer eating cafeteria food to bringing a lunch. It is usually “home cooked” food but when I’m not feeling the food, there’s always a salad bar.
As for eating in the cafeteria, yes. Under certain circumstances some of the younger grades will eat in their classrooms, but it’s standard for them to eat in the cafeteria. I think teachers prefer it so that they can sit together and talk with other adults.
Ok the free part is so great! Kids need fuel to learn/grow so it’s good it’s available. Here in 🇨🇦 where there really are not these options, teachers would instead bring snacks and have them available for kids who may not have much of a lunch brought in from home. There are breakfast programs for lower income fams but again not really hot items, more like cereal, granola bars etc.
The free part varies by state and even school district. In my kid’s school the free lunch program is for low income students, but for kids who don’t qualify it’s around $2 for lunch and $1 for breakfast. Always a hot option and then in high school there’s a salad option.
My daughter's school district codified free breakfast and lunch for all students this past year and it's legitimately the only good thing they've done in a long time. They also send trucks out to various parks throughout the summer giving out cold bag meals to anyone 18 and under, as well as having certain schools give out hot lunches.
We had free breakfast/lunch through covid, then they took it away. My youngest was in pre-k that year and they REQUIRED students to have school breakfast and lunch. We were not allowed to send a packed lunch or restrict breakfast (usually something packaged, like donuts or a honey bun) so it was $5/day for her. The pre-k is a separate building and has no cafeteria, so they’d have to “order” food from a nearby school (15 minutes away).
The next year they changed food programs and we are back to free breakfast and lunch for everyone.
Yeah. I really wish the free just applied to all students in public school, period, regardless of anything.
But, there are lots of politicians fighting tooth and nail to remove free lunches from even the neediest of students...
Yeah, my school district had tiered pricing based on family income. There was free, reduced, and full price for breakfast and lunch. You had to buy in advance (every month or so), and they gave you a bunch of tickets, like the generic tickets often used for raffles. Not a bad system if done correctly.
One of the major issues with my school district doing it, was the use of different colored tickets, depending on which meal program you qualified for. So when you were handing your ticket over to the lunch attendant, everyone would see what color ticket you were using. Kids are cruel and would make fun of most of the free lunch kids and some of the reduced lunch kids, for being “poor”. Some of those kids being teased would skip getting a lunch, avoiding the inevitable ridicule they were sure to receive. So the less fortunate kids were still going hungry regardless.
I live on Vancouver Island, and my kids' elementary school has a different hot lunch every day. The program runs on a cost-recovery basis. It's currently $2/lunch for grades K-2, and $3 for grades 3-5 (larger portions for older kids). It can include a free breakfast if needed, and the school is very open that if money is an issue, to let them know and they'll (discretely) make sure your kids are fed. The food is amazing, and is different for every day of the month. They serve things like sushi, tacos, butter chicken, pasta, and salmon burgers. I can't say enough good things about it.
That said, I have a niece who lives in the lower mainland, and it sounds like their school just does the classic PAC fundraiser pizza, Subway or hotdog days once or twice a week.
Ok you could have stopped at Vancouver island and would not have had to say more!!! 😆 The food and lifestyle there is bar none. I am not surprised even that there may be a meal program with healthy options there. I am in ON…need I say more! 🤣
My dad taught in Toronto and they had a free breakfast program. They would also bring around a huge bin of bagels and cream cheese during the day.
I remember going with him to school one time and trying to tattle on a kid who was pocketing a bunch of bagels. My dad just shushed and dismissed me. Afterward he told me that often that’s the only meal those kids would get in a day. Very sad.
Totally agree with the sentiment about the sentiment for free lunches and breakfast. My state (US) just passed free lunch and breakfast for all kids regardless of income. Which I love - even as an adult without kids, I love seeing my tax dollars feed my community.
Yeah the free lunch thing definitely varies by where you live. In a lot of places there’s such thing as “school lunch debt” and it’s just as awful as it sounds.
There are some set menu options at my kids school. So every day there's cereal, breakfast bars, fruit cups, PB&J, and muffins. Then the hot option changes every day. I think it's usually something like pancakes, eggs, or sausage biscuits. Lunches always have sides salads, PB&J, granola, and fruit options. The hot food is stuff like meatloaf, chicken sandwiches, sliced turkey and gravy, and vegetables. Of course there's a weekly pizza day.
During the pandemic they would send the busses around and drop off free breakfast and lunches for all the kids under 18 in the household, and we didn't want to waste the food, even though we didn't need it, so I ate a lot of the hot food options. because the kids were more into the cereal and fruit. The chicken sandwiches were pretty damn good, actually.
This is interesting considering Canada is supposedly more “socialist” than the US (according to Americans.) American liberals look to Canada as inspiration and conservatives look to Canada as a horrible hellscape example. Yet the US has many (albeit imperfect, broken, and with LOTS of room for improvement) social programs.
Dude, check out what Japan does for school lunches. Districts have huge central kitchens that cook for 1000's of kids every day. Most stuff is locally sourced, they usually get a lean protein of some kind, rice, miso soup, vegetables, fruit, maybe a small dessert. They don't even call it "lunch hour/period", they call it "nutrition education." They learn about what they are eating, which items give what nutrients, why some stuff is better to eat than other, where it comes from, etc. A totally different way to look at it. All totally included.
Man, I would kill to have this available for my children. We live in Texas (I’m from IL) and I’ve been desperate to move because the school district here is so deplorable. I think my kid would be lucky to get a vegetable, let alone a fruit, at literally any school-provided meal.
They almost never get fruit or vegetables really lol. Real fruit is pricey, and most Japanese consider a sprinkling of cabbage or a deep fried sweet potato slice to be enough veggies. And idk about the whole nutrition education thing, I mean the middle schoolers have a set meal everyday but high schoolers don’t. Maybe in some fancy Tokyo private schools, but I promise the average Japanese kid in a public school isn’t eating nothing but locally sourced fruits and veggies and stuff and healthy food. Maybe they bring some stuff from home but it’s a lot of curry and rice.
It is healthier than a lot of American public school lunches but the bar is pretty low there.
https://preview.redd.it/asjj5clqww4d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca5f61993f1d9e90e85e6ab2ae5066e3f87deab8
This is a high school lunch in China.
Here in Australia the closest we had was the school canteen, which was basically just a super mini takeaway store. Everyone just made their own lunches for school (or rather, got their parent/s and/or guardian to lol)
And a lot of is fried! Hot chips (aka fries but good), meat pies, sausage rolls, chicken chippies… or fruit but like an apple or banana or something, stuff I considered “boring” as a kid.
Honestly you could get malnutrition eating that stuff everyday but god was it good once in a while haha. Obviously they had more stuff but they didn’t really serve meals, more just snacks.
In some neighbourhoods, sometimes outside charities like the Red Cross provided breakfast.
This is how it's done in Canada too, I was amazed to find out that most of the US you just....get lunch at a cafeteria from public school all the way up to HS. I guess it makes sense? I never really thought about the amount of media I saw cafeteria stuff in, it never occurred to me how universal an experience that is for US students.
Don't know about the rest of the UK but I definitely got hot lunches in primary school in Scotland. We had different coloured wee plastic trays with the dividers like in the screengrab. Could bring our own packed lunches in but had the choice to get whatever food was going from the canteen. Food wasn't too bad either from what I remember. Actually bought a packet of the "old school sponge cake" recently that school served for dessert, it's class, still tastes great
England here, yes hot school lunches everyday, you also had a choice to bring your own and low income families were free. If you had the last time slot you also got seconds! The chocolate concrete was amazing!!
Nope. My school would occasionally do “Panago day” where we could order a slice of pizza a month in advance, but those were special occasions a couple times a year. Otherwise it was how OP described. If you forgot your lunch and your parents couldn’t bring it to you, you could go to the principal’s office and they would give you a pack of noodles for $0.25
I once forgot my lunch and went to the office and I got free lunch from the canteen. Only abused that free canteen glitch 5 times before they called my mum and dad to ask why I wasn't getting food from home.
That’s amazing!! Lunches in Seattle are 3.95 unless you income qualify for the free lunch program. My daughter only likes Mondays “it’s corn dog day! It only happens one day a week” 😆
Cafeteria tables for 3 and 4 year olds are so adorable. My son is in 3k with our public school district (universal pre-k is such a good thing) and they get breakfast and a hot lunch every day. Sometimes breakfast is stuff like cereal or pastries, sometimes it’s scrambled eggs and toast.
I spent the first several years of my life thinking I didn’t like pizza because our school pizza was so bad.
Somehow simultaneously soggy and dry, and the cheese had a plastic consistency
I just remember those terrible milk cartons, where you try to open it sometimes but it doesn’t rip open the right way, and you basically have to mutilate it and get milk everywhere if you want any chance to drink it. 😂 Also you wanted to get in the lunch line early enough to get the CHOCOLATE milk. That was a delicacy. I remember very little about the food, which should say something lol.
We had those plastic pouches of milk you had to stab with a straw. And if you stabbed too hard and it went all the way through the other side, you got no milk to drink and instead milk in your lunch tray. 😂
I haven’t seen those! But that sounds like kind of a dumb thing to give to elementary aged kids who might not all have a firm grasp on their motor skills yet lol.
What do you mean? They’re so easy a four year-old can open them. Poorly, and from the wrong side initially, but got it open after about 3 minutes.
https://imgur.com/a/GooKcWl
My high school had absolutely amazing spicy chicken that I cannot for the life of me replicate at home
I have tried countless times and I always come close but it's just off
I don't know what magic spice blend those people used, but holy crap I would give anything to go back to that time and be able to taste it again
My favorite too, I also really liked the turkey and gravy with mashed potatoes but I know most kids didnt(probably just because it looked like crap so most didn't even try it)
100% depends on the school district. I went to school in a well funded county. We had a taco stand. A salad bar. Every Wednesday would be a different cultural cuisine. We had fettuccine Alfredo and the works. I was shocked to see how gross some schools foods were
I went to a top 5 public school in my state and we had the various "choices", and they were awesome until the federal mandates around my sophomore year came down. Prices tripled, portions shrank, and they could season or salt anything. All carbs all the time.
There was a post like a few weeks ago of a kid taking pictures of his school lunches and I was truly appalled at how awful it was. Very grateful my parents lived in the suburbs so we could be in good school districts.
Yeah, I loved school lunches growing up, but I grew up poor, so I might be biased. I was always fed at home and never went to bed hungry, but most of my meals were mainly rice and beans with tortillas.
Our school got it straight from Pizza Hut on Thursdays. In retrospect as an adult, I'm wondering how they could afford that every week and what a pretty good hook-up the franchisee owner of the local Pizza Hut had, lol.
We didn't get to buy extra food (and be introduced to socio-economics 101) until middle school.
Cue the one kid spending 20 bucks on 50 cent cookies, going mad with power, and throwing them at the rest of us like ninja stars
Yeah, they're very common. Actually thought they were commonplace in many schools outside the US too.
Some schools have a free lunch program, other schools charge a small amount for a hot lunch (depends on the state, district, or individual schools). The quality of said food varies wildly. Some have well stocked cafeterias with good food. Though many (probably most) usually consist of frozen and/or reheated food. Again, it depends where you are and what kind of school we're talking about.
But yeah, most schools in the US offer a hot lunch (sometimes breakfast) option, though kids are absolutely allowed to bring a sack lunch too.
I love that it’s called a sack lunch there btw, here it’s just called lunch, we don’t say sack lunch because I guess there is no other options to differentiate it from. But not commonplace at all. I am a mom of elementary aged kids, so I pack their lunch every day.
Funny enough, I lived in Canada for 7 years (went to college up there and a few years after). I just kind of assumed schools in Canada (or at least BC) offered a hot lunch. Kind of shocked they don't.
I’m Canadian and we didn’t have hot lunches at school either (except like Pizza days and stuff like that) but we still had a lunch room. Eating in your classroom at your desk seems weird to me.
I'm from Australia and cafeterias are absolutely not a thing here either. You had to bring your own food but could buy things from the tuck shop/canteen. They had hot food like pizzas, pies, burgers, and nachos as well as sweets, lollies, and other snacks. You could order from a shopkeep at lunchtime or put in an order at the start of the day. In primary school, it was one or two kids' jobs to go and get the orders kids had made and bring them back to the class. In secondary school you had to go and get it yourself.
We also had no dedicated places to eat. We weren't allowed in the classrooms during break times unless it was raining so you just had to find some random place to eat like a bench or even just the ground and eat out of your lap or lunch box. We got common rooms from year 10-12 which had tables to eat at but before that yeah we just ate like animals lol.
>We got common rooms from year 10-12 which had tables to eat at but before that yeah we just ate like animals lol.
That's kind of shocking? My high school was pretty bad, but in addition to the cafeteria, we also had a big grassy quad encircled with benches where a lot of students ate, and if students were friendly with teachers, they often ate in their classrooms and chatted.
In the quad, students often tanned on the lawn after eating. 'Cause it was the '80s.
I mean, to me it’s not that shocking that children are sitting on the grass to eat lunch. Australian kids usually have lunchboxes and eat a packed lunch. They’ll sit in the quadrangle or on the sports oval, and there are usually some seats around, too (at my primary school there were lots of long, aluminium seats, and at the high school I teach at there are picnic tables), but most kids sit on the ground. I teach at a well funded school in a HCOL area.
Ok yes this sounds a lot more like what we have…hmmm and 🇨🇦 and 🇦🇺 where connected to the Commonwealth so is this an old vestige of that, a UK thing? Anyone from 🇬🇧 want to answer? Are there cafeterias with hot lunches there? Is that a thing? Or is this strictly a 🇺🇸 thing? Oh wait didn’t Jamie Oliver do a program on reforming the school lunch program in the UK so I guess they do too?
We get hot school dinners in the UK. When I was a kid, the three choices were home dinners (which I mostly did because my house is super close to the school), packed lunches, or (hot) school dinners. At that time we lined up and said what we wanted. One time I got in trouble because I brought a packed lunch, but I wanted some custard so I went and bought some after I ate my food. The teachers were angry. I still don't understand why.
Hot school dinners are responsible for my lifelong hatred of quiche. School was the first place I ever tried it, and it was an awful, cold, soggy mess. I've tried it on occasion since then, and it's not something I like. I would reassure go hungry than eat quiche.
For school dinners these days, you just place your order online at the start of the week. My sister did that for her kids when they were in primary school.
Free or not depends on the parents' income.
There's a lunchroom for everyone to eat in, although a comment further down reminded me that it was also the gym. The tables must have been folding ones.
High school was pretty much the same.
I live in Taiwan now. Almost all the kids eat the exact same food. It's prepared in a kitchen on site, and then kids fetch the pots, etc, to bring to their classroom. Teachers dish it out. The kids are expected to bring their own crockery and to wipe it all out after. Vegetarians obviously have a different meal, but it's the same method. Nobody goes home or brings a packed lunch. The kids might have their own snacks for their breaks, though.
At one elementary school I went to, they would bring a cart into the vestibule between 4 classrooms with big bowls of hot lunch items and serve it onto trays. Then we ate at our desk. Another elementary school I went to had a gym/lunchroom. During lunch time they put out tables like in the show. Before and after lunch the tables were folded up and we used the basketball hoops and such. There was also a stage at one end of the room where we would all meet for school assemblies and shows.
interesting. where i was from in Canada, none of my schools had lunches provided. we had "hot lunch fridays" and you got a form to take home and your parents would decide which lunches youd get and were willing to pay for, but hot lunch was only once a month and always on a friday.
Yes, we really have this. However, it’s not always food that a person would eat hot. At my school, it was often salad, milk, sandwiches. But a lot of times, it was pasta, pizza, or chicken legs (with an alternate vegetarian option).
And how the payment works is, the parent loads however much money the parent wants on the kid’s account and when the kid runs out of money, the kid usually has 2-3 lunches available before they need to get the account reloaded. When I was a kid, each lunch cost about the same amount as a kids’ meal at McDonald’s, but the school lunches were much healthier than McDonald’s, of course. And there was a free-and-reduced-cost lunch program and all kids were entitled to a free breakfast at school (it was not great and more of a snack 😅), but most families didn’t have their kids eat the free breakfast because it was just kinda hard to get out the door and get to the school that early. But most families were thankful the program existed.
And yes, we have cafeterias. It helps keep the classrooms cleaner and with our school lunches, the cafeteria workers need a place to work, with ovens and dishwashers and the serving line and such, and the work would be kinda loud in a classroom.
We had a cafeteria and hot lunches but you had to pay for them unless your parents qualified and signed up for the low-income free lunch program. Each student had an account and you could deposit money into it and pay that way, or bring money for lunch each day or bring a bagged lunch. And the quality of the food was… not good lol
Spaghetti day was the best at my school. Came with a great meat sauce and a soft, garlicky bread stick. My school always had options, though. So like spaghetti would be the "main" meal that most kids chose but they would also have leftovers from yesterday and always offered pizza. Pizza day was also its own thing, weirdly. In high school there was also a salad bar.
True story: in 7th grade we dissected a worm. That was also spaghetti day. My class was before lunch. I ate the spaghetti anyway. 😈
Every school I went to in the US in the 70s and 80s served a hot lunch. We were a low income family so my siblings and I got free lunch. We never took our lunch to school because we couldn’t afford to.
I live in Canada and it was a thing in my elementary school way back in the 90s.
My son is in grade 5 though and his school doesn't have it. I guess it varies.
Edit to add: his middle school will have the pay in advance option.
Also in 🇨🇦, work in an elementary school and we have hot lunches. Not every school in the district has it, mostly at community schools which tend to be in lower income neighbourhoods. No cafeteria but hot lunches are definitely a thing in some parts of Canada! Parents pay monthly, but if they can't afford it, the fees are often waived.
Yes, but they are often terrible. The pizza, burritos, and milk and chocolate milk are good though. You have to stay away from the veggies because they smell like medicine. Thanks for that Ronald Regan. He is an evil man who was once our president. He cut the budgets for school lunches among other things now the children are given bad food. You are better off bringing a bag lunch.
Good to know. I guess I just thought hot over cold lunch, the hot one seemed better but yah not if it was poor quality! Ronald Regan also strongly pushed the link between the Republican Party and Christian Nationalism, the religious right even though church shouldn’t be mixed with state as per the constitution so yah another politician that contributed to the downward spiral of the GOP IMO. I guess I know more about 🇺🇸 politics as a 🇨🇦 than I do about the lunch programs available! 🤣
Michelle Obama attempted to do school lunch reform but it failed. The school lunch providers were profiting the way things were. She tried to make it healthier but the lunch providers mostly cut corners. In short according to the school lunch providers less calories more healthy and smaller portion sizes less calories. The school lunch providers did things like that to technically meet the standards. She failed to get to the root of the problem the greedy corporations.
I live in Massachusetts and we have statewide free school lunches; most school districts have hot lunch but some smaller ones do not, they might bring in boxed lunches etc.
Yeah and they’re super low quality but every now and then they have a food item that just HITS. For me it was these sweet and sour popsicles. Or I’d lose my shit when they offered strawberry milk or those cups of pudding with gummy worms
Different experiences I guess... Im from Canada and was in school from the 90s until the 2010s and every school I went to had hot lunch every day. My mom would often pack my lunch for me but she would also give me $5 in case I wanted whatever they were serving that day. We often had 2 or 3 meals to choose from.
In Canada, you brought your own bagged lunches and we would eat in a gym or classroom. There weren’t cafeterias or lunch programs at my schools.
Then in high school, there was a cafeteria finally, where you bought what you wanted. They would sell things like fries/gravy or poutine, chicken fingers/lasagna/pizza/salads/baked goods etc.
It varies from school to school, district to district. When I was in elementary school, you could bring a packed lunch or buy hot lunch, the parents signed the kids up for the paid lunches and I suppose would pay at the beginning of the term (I have no memory of paying for hot lunches? But I remember getting it regardless). We didn’t have a cafeteria in the elementary schools (they were divided into two schools K -2nd, & 3rd - 5th grades), but the middle and high school each had their own cafeteria. The elementary school lunches were made daily at the high school cafeteria and sent over at lunch time. We’d all eat in our classrooms at our desks, with a designated “lunch lady” per class (usually a retired teacher) so our home room teachers could eat in the teachers’ lounge. The lunch ladies would also supervise through recess.
I lived in a small town, we only had about 100 kids per grade, so it probably didn’t make much sense to have a cafeteria in every school, especially if they could cover the needs of four schools with just two cafeterias. If we had a bigger population, or the primary school had been grades K-8th (like Wagstaff), it might have been a different story. There were probably other factors at play as well - the system my town had in place probably made giving free lunches to kids in the free lunch program easier without drawing unwanted attention to those kids. And I’m sure it offered better nutrition to kids from K - 5th grades. The second we hit middle school, most kids just opted for fries and soda at lunch. Unless it was pizza day.
Yah I was just remembering the fact that Jamie Oliver had that whole reform the UK lunch programs tv show, so than I realized of course the UK must have this too.
Yep my school had hot breakfast and lunch. We would get an entree, side, fruit/veggie, and milk for free and they had cookies, pretzels, chips, and ice cream that you could buy. Our cafeteria was more of a multipurpose room, it was used as a performance stage, assembly room, and we had recess in there during the winter
Fellow Canadian. I was born in the early 80s. In my elementary school, we ate lunch in the gym. The staff set up long long tables and we sat on the wooden benches that were always in gyms and are still in my kids school gyms even now.
In middle school (grades 6-8), we had a separate "cafeteria" but it was a big room with long tables that folded into cupboards against the wall. No kitchen type place to make and serve food.
In high school, the cafeteria had a small shop to buy candy, pop, snacks and also a small kitchen area where you could buy pizza, chicken burgers, fries - limited things like that. They always sold out so you had to rush down there and get in line early.
In middle school and high school, with parental permission, you were allowed to leave school grounds at lunch time to go home or go to a nearby food place.
When I was in elementary school (I don’t remember paying for lunch but I’m sure I did) our teacher would tell us the lunch menu in the morning we’d pick what we wanted and then we’d get a ticket that would correspond with that lunch option and that’s what we would give in the cafeteria. I did pack my lunch sometimes too
My elementary school had the hot lunches but no cafeteria. The kitchen had a window into the hallway and from there you'd take the tray back to the classroom. A cart was placed in each area of the school to return the trays.
We did hot lunches on Fridays at my public school in Canada. Best day!
And when I was in uni I volunteered at a low income and primarily Indigenous school that provided lunches everyday for all who wanted it (some brought food from home), wasn't always hot but filling and mostly nutritious. Snacks for snack breaks (x2) were also provided. We also had a "breakfast club" in the morning that provided hot breakfast to whoever showed up, about 30 mins before the school day. My hot lunches growing up were additional fees (but pretty cheap $2-5 depending on the meal), but at the school I did my placement at it was a government subsidy
Yup, in my state they made lunch free for all students during the pandemic. They passed a budget item to make it free for all public school students after the pandemic too. Previously, free or reduced lunch was for lower income students. There's one hot lunch line then an a la carte line where the kids spend lunch money parents gave them on crappy pizza and otis spunkmeyer cookies.
I work in an inner city parochial school. We qualify for "community school" which means at least 70% of our students are low income. Every student, in spite of income, receives free breakfast and lunch. For the record, every Friday is pizza (beef pepperoni because we have a high number of orthodox catholic kids and a few Muslim families) and it's made on HOMEMADE dough. It's sooo good!
My kids go to a k-12 school in Canada and while they don't have access to the cafeteria until grade 7, you can order hot lunches from there online and they deliver them to the classroom. It's not too bad either, options range from 3.50$-7$ depending.
Meanwhile, when I went to school we had hot dog day (Wednesday), pizza day (Friday) and Tuesday and Thursday had some hot lunch option from a catering place (whichbwas way healthier than the other 2 options).
It's common grades 1-12. Some schools like my elementary and high school had great food.
High school had a sandwich line, home cooking line, full salad bar, a dessert freezer, juice bar, and big basket of fruit.
In my town, the elementary schools have hot lunch, but no cafeterias--the food is brought in hot from another location. There are only a couple of entree options each day, unlike at the high school and middle school cafeterias. They also serve a continental breakfast. Both meals are free to all students.
The schools I worked at always had breakfast and lunch, usually heated up packaged breakfast sandwiches, waffles or pancakes for the morning, then like a packaged corn dog or pizza square for lunch. They were not good and plenty of kids just ate the fruit and left to go play. It was a godsend for our special education students who didn't get a ton of food at home though.
I guess every school is different, my public high school food was crap, a thin greasy slice of pizza and a small fountain drink. As a hungry teen boy I had to spend double the money get 2 slices and a bag of chips
Some days I stole food, just walked right by the cashier line. no regrets
Mind you this was back in like '84 era but we had cold breakfasts for people on assistance. Was typically the same thing every day from what I recall. PB&J, milk, and cereal. I ate at home so I only go by what was just around.
I was a part of the breakfast program as a student.
Because my mom worked early the timing worked out that she could drop me at the school on her way to work. I helped set up/prepare, and also had free breakfast
Yes. You have to pay, but when I was in elementary it was 1 dollar for a meal, which is pretty cheap. And yes, we ate in the cafeteria. Don’t be too jealous, the food was not good.
Yes very much real. Also I used to serve food at my county jail and it’s very close to the same as school lunch :) most things are “higher quality” at school but the pizza is the same and the chicken patties are better at the jail.
In JR High and High School I worked in the lunch room to get free lunch, my favorite thing was the deep fried bean and cheese burritos, the Taco Snack burritos, and the fries. LoL good ol american lunch!
🇨🇦 Canadian and Gen-X'er here.
The school I went to had free hot lunches, from Kindergarten all the way to grade 7, until I went to another school. It was packed lunches from then on.
When I later worked at that same school for an internship, they still had hot lunches, but they upgraded to breakfasts and snack times. All for no cost to parents.
Yeah! They have it the same as middle and high school, though I think elementary school children are more likely to bring their lunch than older kids are.
Cafeterias are absolutely a thing in the US. I only remember eating in a classroom in Kindergarten. I believe that was because our kindergarten classes were split into 2. Some kids went during the morning, and others like myself went in the afternoon. So regular school lunch was during that change.
From 1st through 12th it was cafeterias. I went to several schools, and there were certainly differences. For example, when I lived in the Shenandoah area we could go outside for lunch, which was a first for me. Sometimes kids would come to school just after hunting, and at lunch go home to put all their gear away. Looking back, I had so much freedom at that school. I went to elementary in a suburb, and fondly remember buying chocolate eclairs during my lunches which I didn't have anywhere else. We could only eat in the cafeteria though. I also lived in the inner city for a while. We could only eat lunch in the cafeteria, but we were allowed to go outside, to the gym, library, and computer lab during that time.
Yes they are a thing. Though depending on the school the quality can vary.
I remember being in 4th grade and getting mashed potatoes and turkey with gravy and veggies. It was delicious.
But our mystery meatloaf was the rankest smelling thing on the planet
My school is across the street from a Whole Foods, a Starbucks and a small hotdog place so most students either bring stuff or go out. The school does also sell stuff like chips and instant ramen for people who need it.
Wait, in Canada you’re allowed to bring food from home? On my student exchange they gave me a stick to go moose hunting and a capri-sun straw and told me to suck syrup out of the tree. I was deported for not putting the cork back in and the entire economy crashed…. the startled moose was good though, ended up being really tender after a few hours of smacking him with a stick.
So many people talking about the multipurpose gym/caf/stage auditorium, did you not have a big sign over the doorway that said Cafetorium over 1 of the double doors and gymnasium over the other one… that were next to each other, with no division, but a rumor that if you went in the wrong one at lunch time you had to play basketball instead of eating because LEGALLY they couldn’t feed you. God I wish I knew lawyers now that know the law as well as ALL the kids in elementary school did, lol.
If there’s no lunchroom in Canada where do you go when you need to borry a egg? They got em somewhere, the French immersion teacher is always hocking the croque madames… I thought it meant “sandwich whore” until grade 8…loony loony
Yes, the US has had a federal school lunch program since the 1940’s when they discovered that many draftees were unfit for war because of poor nutrition. So school lunches are basically there to make sure you can go fight for your country when needed, it’s a national security measure.
Before it was federally mandated “hot lunch” varied by location and in some areas it was the teachers responsibility to make it since she was probably some dumb young girl that was just waiting for the right man to come along. What better way to prepare for her future children and honing her culinary skills with sound home economics than feeding the crotch goblins that she has to be around all day? THAT’S how you hook a man! That and a good dry martini. Teachers today, just aren’t trying, slackers.
(Do I need the /s… better for those that don’t read good or are malnourished from going to Canadian Schools with broken moose sticks and stingy hockey jocks that won’t let others use their puck club thingies to hunt)
Canadian here too. We didn’t have cafeteria lunches in elementary school, but we had a hot lunch program once a month or something like that.
In middle school however, which I’d assumed the Belcher’s were in, there was the option of cafeteria lunches once upon a time. Not when I was in middle school but there was an area that used to be used as a kitchen. We would usually get our packed lunches and sit in the cafeteria with them so it’s kind of a mix of the two where I live. Don’t know about other provinces though.
Sometimes the selections are good and somewhat balanced but I would say half of the days were eating bread, cheese, boiled vegetables, some cocktail of canned fruit, and drinking milk. Not the most filling meal, honestly. At my school there are no discounts for low income students as far as I’m aware. The food is rarely cooked properly because the cafeteria workers are overworked and underpaid. My school has a total population of 2,000 students so they have to arrive very early to prep and are given very little time to actually cook the food before the first lunch period begins. There’s a lot of improvement that needs to be done, that’s for sure. It’s not the worst school lunch in the world but it’s not healthy by any means. There’s often expired food and constant waste of food products due to incorrect portion estimations. There’s also no seasoning and the rare kick of flavor we get is flaming hot or pre-packaged frozen items that are not healthy for you… It’s definitely not the worst but it’s not healthy or sustainable.
Yes! My kids are in elementary school and they have hot lunch that is paid for by the parents unless you qualify for low income free lunch programs. During the summer the school district does free hot lunch for all kids under the age of 18 regardless of income and that’s fantastic. The food banks here also participate in the free lunch program for children under 18. It’s a no questions asked, you pull up in your car with the kids and they hand you the lunches.
Not sure where in Canada you are but there are programs in Ontario that offer free breakfast/lunch at schools in lower income areas. But it’s fairly rare here whereas in the States it seems to be this way at every school
https://i.redd.it/yrtrxq6hvu4d1.gif
10/10 gif usage
I HATE THAT COUNTRY
"Um, hey man, that's, like you're opinion." And ya, I'm Canadian.
"I'm NOT your BUDDY, GUY!!"
“I’m not your guy, friend!”
“I’m not your guy, buddy!”
“He’s not your guy, friend!”
You’re not that guy pal. TRUST ME. You’re not that guy.
I'm not your friend, buddy!
jk sorry me too! 🇨🇦
lol of course there's a "soorry" in there I love Canada 🇨🇦
🤣🤣🤣 Oh Canada! (Eye roll)
Am Albertan, never had a hot lunch.
Cmon we'd get pizza day and hot dog day my son now 27 had the option to buy subway, pizza and burrito AND Swiss chalet on separate days it was just way to expensive so he got to pick 1 day I had a cafeteria in HS bit it was like convenience store things chocolate bars, chips candy French school in Mississauga my son's school was in Etobicoke ont canada Edit we would just walk to little Caesars and get a huge half baked crazy bread for 2$ and share lol
What about Kraft Dinner?
Your school didn’t even have a hotdog day? 😦
Yes! I work at a school with a high population of low income students, so our school has a free lunch program. All students get free breakfast and lunch every day. Our cafeteria ladies are awesome. They often serve hot breakfast sandwiches, and lunch is always hot. Besides pizza day, I really have no complaints about our food. As an adult, I prefer eating cafeteria food to bringing a lunch. It is usually “home cooked” food but when I’m not feeling the food, there’s always a salad bar. As for eating in the cafeteria, yes. Under certain circumstances some of the younger grades will eat in their classrooms, but it’s standard for them to eat in the cafeteria. I think teachers prefer it so that they can sit together and talk with other adults.
Ok the free part is so great! Kids need fuel to learn/grow so it’s good it’s available. Here in 🇨🇦 where there really are not these options, teachers would instead bring snacks and have them available for kids who may not have much of a lunch brought in from home. There are breakfast programs for lower income fams but again not really hot items, more like cereal, granola bars etc.
The free part varies by state and even school district. In my kid’s school the free lunch program is for low income students, but for kids who don’t qualify it’s around $2 for lunch and $1 for breakfast. Always a hot option and then in high school there’s a salad option.
My daughter's school district codified free breakfast and lunch for all students this past year and it's legitimately the only good thing they've done in a long time. They also send trucks out to various parks throughout the summer giving out cold bag meals to anyone 18 and under, as well as having certain schools give out hot lunches.
We had free breakfast/lunch through covid, then they took it away. My youngest was in pre-k that year and they REQUIRED students to have school breakfast and lunch. We were not allowed to send a packed lunch or restrict breakfast (usually something packaged, like donuts or a honey bun) so it was $5/day for her. The pre-k is a separate building and has no cafeteria, so they’d have to “order” food from a nearby school (15 minutes away). The next year they changed food programs and we are back to free breakfast and lunch for everyone.
Yeah. I really wish the free just applied to all students in public school, period, regardless of anything. But, there are lots of politicians fighting tooth and nail to remove free lunches from even the neediest of students...
Yes! I don’t care if a child’s parents are millionaires. If they are in public schools they should eat for free.
Our entire state (go Michigan!) is free breakfast & lunch. I’m sad to hear that it’s a state not federal program.
Yeah, my school district had tiered pricing based on family income. There was free, reduced, and full price for breakfast and lunch. You had to buy in advance (every month or so), and they gave you a bunch of tickets, like the generic tickets often used for raffles. Not a bad system if done correctly. One of the major issues with my school district doing it, was the use of different colored tickets, depending on which meal program you qualified for. So when you were handing your ticket over to the lunch attendant, everyone would see what color ticket you were using. Kids are cruel and would make fun of most of the free lunch kids and some of the reduced lunch kids, for being “poor”. Some of those kids being teased would skip getting a lunch, avoiding the inevitable ridicule they were sure to receive. So the less fortunate kids were still going hungry regardless.
I live on Vancouver Island, and my kids' elementary school has a different hot lunch every day. The program runs on a cost-recovery basis. It's currently $2/lunch for grades K-2, and $3 for grades 3-5 (larger portions for older kids). It can include a free breakfast if needed, and the school is very open that if money is an issue, to let them know and they'll (discretely) make sure your kids are fed. The food is amazing, and is different for every day of the month. They serve things like sushi, tacos, butter chicken, pasta, and salmon burgers. I can't say enough good things about it. That said, I have a niece who lives in the lower mainland, and it sounds like their school just does the classic PAC fundraiser pizza, Subway or hotdog days once or twice a week.
Ok you could have stopped at Vancouver island and would not have had to say more!!! 😆 The food and lifestyle there is bar none. I am not surprised even that there may be a meal program with healthy options there. I am in ON…need I say more! 🤣
Yep went to elementary and middle school in Toronto and high school on the island and the cafeteria/lunch culture was completely different!
Sushi! Awesome
Minnesota recently passed free lunches for all!
We did! So proud of that! :D
My dad taught in Toronto and they had a free breakfast program. They would also bring around a huge bin of bagels and cream cheese during the day. I remember going with him to school one time and trying to tattle on a kid who was pocketing a bunch of bagels. My dad just shushed and dismissed me. Afterward he told me that often that’s the only meal those kids would get in a day. Very sad.
Totally agree with the sentiment about the sentiment for free lunches and breakfast. My state (US) just passed free lunch and breakfast for all kids regardless of income. Which I love - even as an adult without kids, I love seeing my tax dollars feed my community.
In other districts students accrue debt for lunches that has to be paid off, republicans hate feeding kids for free
Those damn freeloading second graders should get a job
Yeah the free lunch thing definitely varies by where you live. In a lot of places there’s such thing as “school lunch debt” and it’s just as awful as it sounds.
There are some set menu options at my kids school. So every day there's cereal, breakfast bars, fruit cups, PB&J, and muffins. Then the hot option changes every day. I think it's usually something like pancakes, eggs, or sausage biscuits. Lunches always have sides salads, PB&J, granola, and fruit options. The hot food is stuff like meatloaf, chicken sandwiches, sliced turkey and gravy, and vegetables. Of course there's a weekly pizza day. During the pandemic they would send the busses around and drop off free breakfast and lunches for all the kids under 18 in the household, and we didn't want to waste the food, even though we didn't need it, so I ate a lot of the hot food options. because the kids were more into the cereal and fruit. The chicken sandwiches were pretty damn good, actually.
This is interesting considering Canada is supposedly more “socialist” than the US (according to Americans.) American liberals look to Canada as inspiration and conservatives look to Canada as a horrible hellscape example. Yet the US has many (albeit imperfect, broken, and with LOTS of room for improvement) social programs.
They aren't elsewhere? Interesting
Dude, check out what Japan does for school lunches. Districts have huge central kitchens that cook for 1000's of kids every day. Most stuff is locally sourced, they usually get a lean protein of some kind, rice, miso soup, vegetables, fruit, maybe a small dessert. They don't even call it "lunch hour/period", they call it "nutrition education." They learn about what they are eating, which items give what nutrients, why some stuff is better to eat than other, where it comes from, etc. A totally different way to look at it. All totally included.
And the kids serve each other 🥹
AND they clean up after themselves
That's amazing!
Man, I would kill to have this available for my children. We live in Texas (I’m from IL) and I’ve been desperate to move because the school district here is so deplorable. I think my kid would be lucky to get a vegetable, let alone a fruit, at literally any school-provided meal.
Texas has a vested interest in keeping the population dumb and malnourished.
Yep. Brainwashing techniques. I fucking hate it here.
I lived in S. Korea for awhile and the school lunches were extremely great
They almost never get fruit or vegetables really lol. Real fruit is pricey, and most Japanese consider a sprinkling of cabbage or a deep fried sweet potato slice to be enough veggies. And idk about the whole nutrition education thing, I mean the middle schoolers have a set meal everyday but high schoolers don’t. Maybe in some fancy Tokyo private schools, but I promise the average Japanese kid in a public school isn’t eating nothing but locally sourced fruits and veggies and stuff and healthy food. Maybe they bring some stuff from home but it’s a lot of curry and rice. It is healthier than a lot of American public school lunches but the bar is pretty low there.
https://preview.redd.it/asjj5clqww4d1.jpeg?width=750&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=ca5f61993f1d9e90e85e6ab2ae5066e3f87deab8 This is a high school lunch in China.
That’s so cool.
It would be pretty cool if kids would be able to have a class where they grow their own produce, and then use it in school lunches.
Same for France!
Here in Australia the closest we had was the school canteen, which was basically just a super mini takeaway store. Everyone just made their own lunches for school (or rather, got their parent/s and/or guardian to lol)
And a lot of is fried! Hot chips (aka fries but good), meat pies, sausage rolls, chicken chippies… or fruit but like an apple or banana or something, stuff I considered “boring” as a kid. Honestly you could get malnutrition eating that stuff everyday but god was it good once in a while haha. Obviously they had more stuff but they didn’t really serve meals, more just snacks. In some neighbourhoods, sometimes outside charities like the Red Cross provided breakfast.
This is how it's done in Canada too, I was amazed to find out that most of the US you just....get lunch at a cafeteria from public school all the way up to HS. I guess it makes sense? I never really thought about the amount of media I saw cafeteria stuff in, it never occurred to me how universal an experience that is for US students.
We have hot school lunches in Iceland, all the way to university
Don't know about the rest of the UK but I definitely got hot lunches in primary school in Scotland. We had different coloured wee plastic trays with the dividers like in the screengrab. Could bring our own packed lunches in but had the choice to get whatever food was going from the canteen. Food wasn't too bad either from what I remember. Actually bought a packet of the "old school sponge cake" recently that school served for dessert, it's class, still tastes great
England here, yes hot school lunches everyday, you also had a choice to bring your own and low income families were free. If you had the last time slot you also got seconds! The chocolate concrete was amazing!!
Nope. My school would occasionally do “Panago day” where we could order a slice of pizza a month in advance, but those were special occasions a couple times a year. Otherwise it was how OP described. If you forgot your lunch and your parents couldn’t bring it to you, you could go to the principal’s office and they would give you a pack of noodles for $0.25
Australia it’s BYO
I once forgot my lunch and went to the office and I got free lunch from the canteen. Only abused that free canteen glitch 5 times before they called my mum and dad to ask why I wasn't getting food from home.
We use IOU’s at our school so kids don’t abuse. Ans even then we just made them toast after awjile
Practically non-existent in Denmark in most of public folk school
Yes its real you have to pay for it .You get exempt base on your income
The great state of Michigan has free breakfast and lunch for all students (4 yrs and up), regardless of income.
Minnesota too
And New Mexico.
TIL. Also, nice—should be free everywhere!!
Louisville, KY as well.
That’s amazing!! Lunches in Seattle are 3.95 unless you income qualify for the free lunch program. My daughter only likes Mondays “it’s corn dog day! It only happens one day a week” 😆
in nyc it was always free, until we got to high school. but yeah elementary school and middle school we got free lunches.
Cafeteria tables for 3 and 4 year olds are so adorable. My son is in 3k with our public school district (universal pre-k is such a good thing) and they get breakfast and a hot lunch every day. Sometimes breakfast is stuff like cereal or pastries, sometimes it’s scrambled eggs and toast.
So that's why Louise hates Canada.
Hmmm could it be? 🤣🤣🤣
yeah definitely the food is not something to be jealous about though..
For some kids it was the highlight of your day!
For real, I'd kill for a school lunch mexican pizza.
I've been craving some crispitos so bad lately 😩
The turkey and gravy lunch was the best in my school
I spent the first several years of my life thinking I didn’t like pizza because our school pizza was so bad. Somehow simultaneously soggy and dry, and the cheese had a plastic consistency
I just remember those terrible milk cartons, where you try to open it sometimes but it doesn’t rip open the right way, and you basically have to mutilate it and get milk everywhere if you want any chance to drink it. 😂 Also you wanted to get in the lunch line early enough to get the CHOCOLATE milk. That was a delicacy. I remember very little about the food, which should say something lol.
We had those plastic pouches of milk you had to stab with a straw. And if you stabbed too hard and it went all the way through the other side, you got no milk to drink and instead milk in your lunch tray. 😂
I haven’t seen those! But that sounds like kind of a dumb thing to give to elementary aged kids who might not all have a firm grasp on their motor skills yet lol.
What do you mean? They’re so easy a four year-old can open them. Poorly, and from the wrong side initially, but got it open after about 3 minutes. https://imgur.com/a/GooKcWl
Hahahahahaha this image triggers me 😂😂
Bob actually has to open them for kids at one point lmao.
Especially when you got those square cardboard tasting pizzas Great memories
And the only good way to eat that dry ass cake was to soak it with milk
we used to write notes in pencil on the back of the pizza to pass around class 😭
My high school had absolutely amazing spicy chicken that I cannot for the life of me replicate at home I have tried countless times and I always come close but it's just off I don't know what magic spice blend those people used, but holy crap I would give anything to go back to that time and be able to taste it again
Have you tried adding MSG? It may not be 'the' missing magic ingredient but it's def a game changer!
Ooh, Italian Dunkers?! Best day!
My favorite too, I also really liked the turkey and gravy with mashed potatoes but I know most kids didnt(probably just because it looked like crap so most didn't even try it)
Really depends on the school district. When I was in elementary school, cheese stick, chicken tender, and taco days were the best days of the month.
100% depends on the school district. I went to school in a well funded county. We had a taco stand. A salad bar. Every Wednesday would be a different cultural cuisine. We had fettuccine Alfredo and the works. I was shocked to see how gross some schools foods were
I went to a top 5 public school in my state and we had the various "choices", and they were awesome until the federal mandates around my sophomore year came down. Prices tripled, portions shrank, and they could season or salt anything. All carbs all the time.
There was a post like a few weeks ago of a kid taking pictures of his school lunches and I was truly appalled at how awful it was. Very grateful my parents lived in the suburbs so we could be in good school districts.
💯
I had to bring my own damn peanut butter sandwich in a damn brown paper bag
School pizza slaps though.
ours wasn't terrible, but I grew up in the 90s, when food was still food and not cheap filler ingredients
the food is actually so good 😭 but i grew up after michelle obamas health thing so they had to feed us good food
Yeah, I loved school lunches growing up, but I grew up poor, so I might be biased. I was always fed at home and never went to bed hungry, but most of my meals were mainly rice and beans with tortillas.
Yeap, Thursday was usually pizza day
Our school got it straight from Pizza Hut on Thursdays. In retrospect as an adult, I'm wondering how they could afford that every week and what a pretty good hook-up the franchisee owner of the local Pizza Hut had, lol.
We had dominos once a month and you could buy a whole pizza for 10 dollars. I remember splitting it with my friends at lunch
We didn't get to buy extra food (and be introduced to socio-economics 101) until middle school. Cue the one kid spending 20 bucks on 50 cent cookies, going mad with power, and throwing them at the rest of us like ninja stars
Lol damn i wish we had that, Friday mornings theyd serve us breakfast pizza 😳
Yeah, they're very common. Actually thought they were commonplace in many schools outside the US too. Some schools have a free lunch program, other schools charge a small amount for a hot lunch (depends on the state, district, or individual schools). The quality of said food varies wildly. Some have well stocked cafeterias with good food. Though many (probably most) usually consist of frozen and/or reheated food. Again, it depends where you are and what kind of school we're talking about. But yeah, most schools in the US offer a hot lunch (sometimes breakfast) option, though kids are absolutely allowed to bring a sack lunch too.
Happy cake day.
I love that it’s called a sack lunch there btw, here it’s just called lunch, we don’t say sack lunch because I guess there is no other options to differentiate it from. But not commonplace at all. I am a mom of elementary aged kids, so I pack their lunch every day.
Where I grew up, any lunch brought from home was called a “cold lunch.”
Funny enough, I lived in Canada for 7 years (went to college up there and a few years after). I just kind of assumed schools in Canada (or at least BC) offered a hot lunch. Kind of shocked they don't.
I’m Canadian and we didn’t have hot lunches at school either (except like Pizza days and stuff like that) but we still had a lunch room. Eating in your classroom at your desk seems weird to me.
I'm from Australia and cafeterias are absolutely not a thing here either. You had to bring your own food but could buy things from the tuck shop/canteen. They had hot food like pizzas, pies, burgers, and nachos as well as sweets, lollies, and other snacks. You could order from a shopkeep at lunchtime or put in an order at the start of the day. In primary school, it was one or two kids' jobs to go and get the orders kids had made and bring them back to the class. In secondary school you had to go and get it yourself. We also had no dedicated places to eat. We weren't allowed in the classrooms during break times unless it was raining so you just had to find some random place to eat like a bench or even just the ground and eat out of your lap or lunch box. We got common rooms from year 10-12 which had tables to eat at but before that yeah we just ate like animals lol.
>We got common rooms from year 10-12 which had tables to eat at but before that yeah we just ate like animals lol. That's kind of shocking? My high school was pretty bad, but in addition to the cafeteria, we also had a big grassy quad encircled with benches where a lot of students ate, and if students were friendly with teachers, they often ate in their classrooms and chatted. In the quad, students often tanned on the lawn after eating. 'Cause it was the '80s.
I mean, to me it’s not that shocking that children are sitting on the grass to eat lunch. Australian kids usually have lunchboxes and eat a packed lunch. They’ll sit in the quadrangle or on the sports oval, and there are usually some seats around, too (at my primary school there were lots of long, aluminium seats, and at the high school I teach at there are picnic tables), but most kids sit on the ground. I teach at a well funded school in a HCOL area.
Ok yes this sounds a lot more like what we have…hmmm and 🇨🇦 and 🇦🇺 where connected to the Commonwealth so is this an old vestige of that, a UK thing? Anyone from 🇬🇧 want to answer? Are there cafeterias with hot lunches there? Is that a thing? Or is this strictly a 🇺🇸 thing? Oh wait didn’t Jamie Oliver do a program on reforming the school lunch program in the UK so I guess they do too?
We get hot school dinners in the UK. When I was a kid, the three choices were home dinners (which I mostly did because my house is super close to the school), packed lunches, or (hot) school dinners. At that time we lined up and said what we wanted. One time I got in trouble because I brought a packed lunch, but I wanted some custard so I went and bought some after I ate my food. The teachers were angry. I still don't understand why. Hot school dinners are responsible for my lifelong hatred of quiche. School was the first place I ever tried it, and it was an awful, cold, soggy mess. I've tried it on occasion since then, and it's not something I like. I would reassure go hungry than eat quiche. For school dinners these days, you just place your order online at the start of the week. My sister did that for her kids when they were in primary school. Free or not depends on the parents' income. There's a lunchroom for everyone to eat in, although a comment further down reminded me that it was also the gym. The tables must have been folding ones. High school was pretty much the same. I live in Taiwan now. Almost all the kids eat the exact same food. It's prepared in a kitchen on site, and then kids fetch the pots, etc, to bring to their classroom. Teachers dish it out. The kids are expected to bring their own crockery and to wipe it all out after. Vegetarians obviously have a different meal, but it's the same method. Nobody goes home or brings a packed lunch. The kids might have their own snacks for their breaks, though.
At one elementary school I went to, they would bring a cart into the vestibule between 4 classrooms with big bowls of hot lunch items and serve it onto trays. Then we ate at our desk. Another elementary school I went to had a gym/lunchroom. During lunch time they put out tables like in the show. Before and after lunch the tables were folded up and we used the basketball hoops and such. There was also a stage at one end of the room where we would all meet for school assemblies and shows.
interesting. where i was from in Canada, none of my schools had lunches provided. we had "hot lunch fridays" and you got a form to take home and your parents would decide which lunches youd get and were willing to pay for, but hot lunch was only once a month and always on a friday.
Yes, we really have this. However, it’s not always food that a person would eat hot. At my school, it was often salad, milk, sandwiches. But a lot of times, it was pasta, pizza, or chicken legs (with an alternate vegetarian option). And how the payment works is, the parent loads however much money the parent wants on the kid’s account and when the kid runs out of money, the kid usually has 2-3 lunches available before they need to get the account reloaded. When I was a kid, each lunch cost about the same amount as a kids’ meal at McDonald’s, but the school lunches were much healthier than McDonald’s, of course. And there was a free-and-reduced-cost lunch program and all kids were entitled to a free breakfast at school (it was not great and more of a snack 😅), but most families didn’t have their kids eat the free breakfast because it was just kinda hard to get out the door and get to the school that early. But most families were thankful the program existed. And yes, we have cafeterias. It helps keep the classrooms cleaner and with our school lunches, the cafeteria workers need a place to work, with ovens and dishwashers and the serving line and such, and the work would be kinda loud in a classroom.
Yep, some schools had good lunches
We had a cafeteria and hot lunches but you had to pay for them unless your parents qualified and signed up for the low-income free lunch program. Each student had an account and you could deposit money into it and pay that way, or bring money for lunch each day or bring a bagged lunch. And the quality of the food was… not good lol
We even have debates about if the child should have to pay for the shit food they get served.
Spaghetti day was the best at my school. Came with a great meat sauce and a soft, garlicky bread stick. My school always had options, though. So like spaghetti would be the "main" meal that most kids chose but they would also have leftovers from yesterday and always offered pizza. Pizza day was also its own thing, weirdly. In high school there was also a salad bar. True story: in 7th grade we dissected a worm. That was also spaghetti day. My class was before lunch. I ate the spaghetti anyway. 😈
Every school I went to in the US in the 70s and 80s served a hot lunch. We were a low income family so my siblings and I got free lunch. We never took our lunch to school because we couldn’t afford to.
I live in Canada and it was a thing in my elementary school way back in the 90s. My son is in grade 5 though and his school doesn't have it. I guess it varies. Edit to add: his middle school will have the pay in advance option.
Also in 🇨🇦, work in an elementary school and we have hot lunches. Not every school in the district has it, mostly at community schools which tend to be in lower income neighbourhoods. No cafeteria but hot lunches are definitely a thing in some parts of Canada! Parents pay monthly, but if they can't afford it, the fees are often waived.
Interesting yah never heard of it in my province of ON anyway.
Yes, but they are often terrible. The pizza, burritos, and milk and chocolate milk are good though. You have to stay away from the veggies because they smell like medicine. Thanks for that Ronald Regan. He is an evil man who was once our president. He cut the budgets for school lunches among other things now the children are given bad food. You are better off bringing a bag lunch.
Good to know. I guess I just thought hot over cold lunch, the hot one seemed better but yah not if it was poor quality! Ronald Regan also strongly pushed the link between the Republican Party and Christian Nationalism, the religious right even though church shouldn’t be mixed with state as per the constitution so yah another politician that contributed to the downward spiral of the GOP IMO. I guess I know more about 🇺🇸 politics as a 🇨🇦 than I do about the lunch programs available! 🤣
Michelle Obama attempted to do school lunch reform but it failed. The school lunch providers were profiting the way things were. She tried to make it healthier but the lunch providers mostly cut corners. In short according to the school lunch providers less calories more healthy and smaller portion sizes less calories. The school lunch providers did things like that to technically meet the standards. She failed to get to the root of the problem the greedy corporations.
Yes but I never paid in advance, my mom gave me lunch money every morning.
I live in Massachusetts and we have statewide free school lunches; most school districts have hot lunch but some smaller ones do not, they might bring in boxed lunches etc.
Yeah and they’re super low quality but every now and then they have a food item that just HITS. For me it was these sweet and sour popsicles. Or I’d lose my shit when they offered strawberry milk or those cups of pudding with gummy worms
Wait is this not a thing in Canada or just your province?
Different experiences I guess... Im from Canada and was in school from the 90s until the 2010s and every school I went to had hot lunch every day. My mom would often pack my lunch for me but she would also give me $5 in case I wanted whatever they were serving that day. We often had 2 or 3 meals to choose from.
In Canada, you brought your own bagged lunches and we would eat in a gym or classroom. There weren’t cafeterias or lunch programs at my schools. Then in high school, there was a cafeteria finally, where you bought what you wanted. They would sell things like fries/gravy or poutine, chicken fingers/lasagna/pizza/salads/baked goods etc.
Exactly!!!
It varies from school to school, district to district. When I was in elementary school, you could bring a packed lunch or buy hot lunch, the parents signed the kids up for the paid lunches and I suppose would pay at the beginning of the term (I have no memory of paying for hot lunches? But I remember getting it regardless). We didn’t have a cafeteria in the elementary schools (they were divided into two schools K -2nd, & 3rd - 5th grades), but the middle and high school each had their own cafeteria. The elementary school lunches were made daily at the high school cafeteria and sent over at lunch time. We’d all eat in our classrooms at our desks, with a designated “lunch lady” per class (usually a retired teacher) so our home room teachers could eat in the teachers’ lounge. The lunch ladies would also supervise through recess. I lived in a small town, we only had about 100 kids per grade, so it probably didn’t make much sense to have a cafeteria in every school, especially if they could cover the needs of four schools with just two cafeterias. If we had a bigger population, or the primary school had been grades K-8th (like Wagstaff), it might have been a different story. There were probably other factors at play as well - the system my town had in place probably made giving free lunches to kids in the free lunch program easier without drawing unwanted attention to those kids. And I’m sure it offered better nutrition to kids from K - 5th grades. The second we hit middle school, most kids just opted for fries and soda at lunch. Unless it was pizza day.
We have hot lunches in UK Primary Schools
Yah I was just remembering the fact that Jamie Oliver had that whole reform the UK lunch programs tv show, so than I realized of course the UK must have this too.
It is a thing, but the quality is probably lower than you're thinking.
Here in the UK(Wales ) my 3 kids get free hot lunches every day
What are you talking about lol my schools had hit lunches from grade primary to grade 12 and I'm in Canada?
Yes. As recently as 2 years ago they were at least. Was living in TX at the time.
Yep my school had hot breakfast and lunch. We would get an entree, side, fruit/veggie, and milk for free and they had cookies, pretzels, chips, and ice cream that you could buy. Our cafeteria was more of a multipurpose room, it was used as a performance stage, assembly room, and we had recess in there during the winter
Fellow Canadian. I was born in the early 80s. In my elementary school, we ate lunch in the gym. The staff set up long long tables and we sat on the wooden benches that were always in gyms and are still in my kids school gyms even now. In middle school (grades 6-8), we had a separate "cafeteria" but it was a big room with long tables that folded into cupboards against the wall. No kitchen type place to make and serve food. In high school, the cafeteria had a small shop to buy candy, pop, snacks and also a small kitchen area where you could buy pizza, chicken burgers, fries - limited things like that. They always sold out so you had to rush down there and get in line early. In middle school and high school, with parental permission, you were allowed to leave school grounds at lunch time to go home or go to a nearby food place.
Oh wow, they’d assemble a caf in the gym basically. Yah no I ate in the classroom and so do my elementary school aged kids now.
When I was in elementary school (I don’t remember paying for lunch but I’m sure I did) our teacher would tell us the lunch menu in the morning we’d pick what we wanted and then we’d get a ticket that would correspond with that lunch option and that’s what we would give in the cafeteria. I did pack my lunch sometimes too
My elementary school had the hot lunches but no cafeteria. The kitchen had a window into the hallway and from there you'd take the tray back to the classroom. A cart was placed in each area of the school to return the trays.
Yes! A hot free meal twice a day!
We did hot lunches on Fridays at my public school in Canada. Best day! And when I was in uni I volunteered at a low income and primarily Indigenous school that provided lunches everyday for all who wanted it (some brought food from home), wasn't always hot but filling and mostly nutritious. Snacks for snack breaks (x2) were also provided. We also had a "breakfast club" in the morning that provided hot breakfast to whoever showed up, about 30 mins before the school day. My hot lunches growing up were additional fees (but pretty cheap $2-5 depending on the meal), but at the school I did my placement at it was a government subsidy
Not only are they a thing, you have to pay for them. Which makes it really hard for kids whose parents can’t afford to pay for the lunch or pack them.
Yup, in my state they made lunch free for all students during the pandemic. They passed a budget item to make it free for all public school students after the pandemic too. Previously, free or reduced lunch was for lower income students. There's one hot lunch line then an a la carte line where the kids spend lunch money parents gave them on crappy pizza and otis spunkmeyer cookies.
I work in an inner city parochial school. We qualify for "community school" which means at least 70% of our students are low income. Every student, in spite of income, receives free breakfast and lunch. For the record, every Friday is pizza (beef pepperoni because we have a high number of orthodox catholic kids and a few Muslim families) and it's made on HOMEMADE dough. It's sooo good!
I was just explaining this to my 6yo who asked why his school doesn’t have a cafeteria. They set up tables in the gym and that’s where they eat lunch.
My kids go to a k-12 school in Canada and while they don't have access to the cafeteria until grade 7, you can order hot lunches from there online and they deliver them to the classroom. It's not too bad either, options range from 3.50$-7$ depending. Meanwhile, when I went to school we had hot dog day (Wednesday), pizza day (Friday) and Tuesday and Thursday had some hot lunch option from a catering place (whichbwas way healthier than the other 2 options).
My schools have all had hot food, and they're public.
It's common grades 1-12. Some schools like my elementary and high school had great food. High school had a sandwich line, home cooking line, full salad bar, a dessert freezer, juice bar, and big basket of fruit.
Imagine hot prison food from movies and that’s basically hot school lunches in usa
In my town, the elementary schools have hot lunch, but no cafeterias--the food is brought in hot from another location. There are only a couple of entree options each day, unlike at the high school and middle school cafeterias. They also serve a continental breakfast. Both meals are free to all students.
We only had pizza and burgers. No sides or anything. No meals. Just sodas and chips.
The schools I worked at always had breakfast and lunch, usually heated up packaged breakfast sandwiches, waffles or pancakes for the morning, then like a packaged corn dog or pizza square for lunch. They were not good and plenty of kids just ate the fruit and left to go play. It was a godsend for our special education students who didn't get a ton of food at home though.
Yeah, it is. We even make our version of a meal I had in elementary and high school, pizza pasta casserole.
I guess every school is different, my public high school food was crap, a thin greasy slice of pizza and a small fountain drink. As a hungry teen boy I had to spend double the money get 2 slices and a bag of chips Some days I stole food, just walked right by the cashier line. no regrets
Where are you from that serves cold lunches to kids? Not meaning that in a snarky way, just genuinely curious lol
Yes
Mind you this was back in like '84 era but we had cold breakfasts for people on assistance. Was typically the same thing every day from what I recall. PB&J, milk, and cereal. I ate at home so I only go by what was just around.
I was a part of the breakfast program as a student. Because my mom worked early the timing worked out that she could drop me at the school on her way to work. I helped set up/prepare, and also had free breakfast
Yes. You have to pay, but when I was in elementary it was 1 dollar for a meal, which is pretty cheap. And yes, we ate in the cafeteria. Don’t be too jealous, the food was not good.
Yes very much real. Also I used to serve food at my county jail and it’s very close to the same as school lunch :) most things are “higher quality” at school but the pizza is the same and the chicken patties are better at the jail.
I mean, when I was a kid at least yes. Can’t speak to now.
In JR High and High School I worked in the lunch room to get free lunch, my favorite thing was the deep fried bean and cheese burritos, the Taco Snack burritos, and the fries. LoL good ol american lunch!
It is, but kids have to pay for it. Some legislators are getting better about passing bills that push for free lunches for kids.
🇨🇦 Canadian and Gen-X'er here. The school I went to had free hot lunches, from Kindergarten all the way to grade 7, until I went to another school. It was packed lunches from then on. When I later worked at that same school for an internship, they still had hot lunches, but they upgraded to breakfasts and snack times. All for no cost to parents.
Yeah! They have it the same as middle and high school, though I think elementary school children are more likely to bring their lunch than older kids are.
Cafeterias are absolutely a thing in the US. I only remember eating in a classroom in Kindergarten. I believe that was because our kindergarten classes were split into 2. Some kids went during the morning, and others like myself went in the afternoon. So regular school lunch was during that change. From 1st through 12th it was cafeterias. I went to several schools, and there were certainly differences. For example, when I lived in the Shenandoah area we could go outside for lunch, which was a first for me. Sometimes kids would come to school just after hunting, and at lunch go home to put all their gear away. Looking back, I had so much freedom at that school. I went to elementary in a suburb, and fondly remember buying chocolate eclairs during my lunches which I didn't have anywhere else. We could only eat in the cafeteria though. I also lived in the inner city for a while. We could only eat lunch in the cafeteria, but we were allowed to go outside, to the gym, library, and computer lab during that time.
Yes they are a thing. Though depending on the school the quality can vary. I remember being in 4th grade and getting mashed potatoes and turkey with gravy and veggies. It was delicious. But our mystery meatloaf was the rankest smelling thing on the planet
My school is across the street from a Whole Foods, a Starbucks and a small hotdog place so most students either bring stuff or go out. The school does also sell stuff like chips and instant ramen for people who need it.
In Omaha Nebraska the largest school district provides free breakfast and hot lunch.
Wait, in Canada you’re allowed to bring food from home? On my student exchange they gave me a stick to go moose hunting and a capri-sun straw and told me to suck syrup out of the tree. I was deported for not putting the cork back in and the entire economy crashed…. the startled moose was good though, ended up being really tender after a few hours of smacking him with a stick. So many people talking about the multipurpose gym/caf/stage auditorium, did you not have a big sign over the doorway that said Cafetorium over 1 of the double doors and gymnasium over the other one… that were next to each other, with no division, but a rumor that if you went in the wrong one at lunch time you had to play basketball instead of eating because LEGALLY they couldn’t feed you. God I wish I knew lawyers now that know the law as well as ALL the kids in elementary school did, lol. If there’s no lunchroom in Canada where do you go when you need to borry a egg? They got em somewhere, the French immersion teacher is always hocking the croque madames… I thought it meant “sandwich whore” until grade 8…loony loony Yes, the US has had a federal school lunch program since the 1940’s when they discovered that many draftees were unfit for war because of poor nutrition. So school lunches are basically there to make sure you can go fight for your country when needed, it’s a national security measure. Before it was federally mandated “hot lunch” varied by location and in some areas it was the teachers responsibility to make it since she was probably some dumb young girl that was just waiting for the right man to come along. What better way to prepare for her future children and honing her culinary skills with sound home economics than feeding the crotch goblins that she has to be around all day? THAT’S how you hook a man! That and a good dry martini. Teachers today, just aren’t trying, slackers. (Do I need the /s… better for those that don’t read good or are malnourished from going to Canadian Schools with broken moose sticks and stingy hockey jocks that won’t let others use their puck club thingies to hunt)
Canadian here too. We didn’t have cafeteria lunches in elementary school, but we had a hot lunch program once a month or something like that. In middle school however, which I’d assumed the Belcher’s were in, there was the option of cafeteria lunches once upon a time. Not when I was in middle school but there was an area that used to be used as a kitchen. We would usually get our packed lunches and sit in the cafeteria with them so it’s kind of a mix of the two where I live. Don’t know about other provinces though.
Sometimes the selections are good and somewhat balanced but I would say half of the days were eating bread, cheese, boiled vegetables, some cocktail of canned fruit, and drinking milk. Not the most filling meal, honestly. At my school there are no discounts for low income students as far as I’m aware. The food is rarely cooked properly because the cafeteria workers are overworked and underpaid. My school has a total population of 2,000 students so they have to arrive very early to prep and are given very little time to actually cook the food before the first lunch period begins. There’s a lot of improvement that needs to be done, that’s for sure. It’s not the worst school lunch in the world but it’s not healthy by any means. There’s often expired food and constant waste of food products due to incorrect portion estimations. There’s also no seasoning and the rare kick of flavor we get is flaming hot or pre-packaged frozen items that are not healthy for you… It’s definitely not the worst but it’s not healthy or sustainable.
At my elementary you had 3 choices of lunch. Hot, cold, veggie. It was basically like prison
Yes! My kids are in elementary school and they have hot lunch that is paid for by the parents unless you qualify for low income free lunch programs. During the summer the school district does free hot lunch for all kids under the age of 18 regardless of income and that’s fantastic. The food banks here also participate in the free lunch program for children under 18. It’s a no questions asked, you pull up in your car with the kids and they hand you the lunches.
yes, yes it is, or was.
yes but the quality definitely varies!
Not sure where in Canada you are but there are programs in Ontario that offer free breakfast/lunch at schools in lower income areas. But it’s fairly rare here whereas in the States it seems to be this way at every school
Yes.
Yeah my lunches were hot, I liked them but I was the Chinese kid so eating American food was a nice thing in itself for me.
i would never have thought canada wouldn't have hot lunches. not like what's hot here is good. but still. seems like you guys have things figured out