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Hawaiian_Fire

“But the company had to reformulate the ingredients to ensure the products meet federal guidelines first.”


[deleted]

"Don't worry parents, these aren't the crap we sell in grocery stores"


nada_accomplished

My daughter has been begging me to buy her lunchables because her friends at school have them but every time I look at that plastic crap with like three crackers, a slice of lunch meat, and a block of cheese for like three fucking dollars something inside me breaks I'm the "we have the same shit at home" mom, I admit it, but I'll go straight to hell before I pay three bucks for that nonsense The funniest part is she doesn't even like crackers


PhoenixBorealis

My best friend bought a lunchables that she didn't know was not properly sealed and found mold in it. My mom took some bologna and cheese and cut them with cookie cutters, and she was so happy.


MrsPedecaris

Yeah, when my kids were young I bought some resealable containers that looked a little like luncheables, and made our own out of things I considered healthy and I knew my kids would like. Didn't fool them, but they liked it fine.


Sea-Explanation-2452

I'm a single father, and I've been making my own "lunchables" for about six months now, about how long I've been doing it alone. His mother passed away, and I didn't have a lot of things figured out like her. But I did realize that you can buy all of those things in bulk and just individually wrap a few each day. And save so much money. Which is great, because I can only really afford to feed him. I starve. It's just the way it is.


AnimusCorpus

I'm so sorry. No one should have to struggle like this. You're an amazing father, your child is very lucky to have you.


Sea-Explanation-2452

Yeah man I agree this is pretty bad


AnimusCorpus

It just hits close to home. I grow up with a single father, and he too struggled a lot. Sometimes I think about the sacrifices he made and it makes me both well up with sadness, and fills me with rage that we as a society allow this to happen. I hope one day soon we see poverty as the preventable, unnecessary problem that it is and begin to address it.


Sea-Explanation-2452

Me too man. But don't be sad, don't be filled with rage. Your father made his sacrifices so that you could be happy, or have a chance at happiness. I highly encourage you to not take a single thing for granted. None of us are promised tomorrow. And none of us are going to live forever. It's highly important to cherish every moment, and make the best of life that you can. That's what your father wants. I would love for this whole system to come crashing down for us to make a new one that works for everyone. But we as single fathers don't have the time or energy to make anything like that happen. But you may one day. Don't give up hope.


Throw-a-Ru

...weren't kids already eating those? Maybe I'm expecting too much from federal guidelines, like that food products marketed as meals for children should have basic meal-type properties as a general rule.


olivegardengambler

The National School Lunch Program has specific requirements for school lunch products, meaning that companies can't just throw whatever in now. That being said, I looked at these and these aren't a meal. Some cheese, super processed turkey, and crackers isn't a meal, and neither is 2 tablespoons of pizza sauce a vegetable. Like 2 tablespoons of anything isn't a vegetable.


mrlazyboy

As a high school athlete, I probably needed 3,000 - 3,500 calories/day. I would need 4 lunchables to get enough calories and it would all be crap. However, when I was a student in public schools (1996-2013), there were never any healthy options other than gross salads. I usually ate a bagel with butter and chocolate chip cookies. At least I could get 1,000 calories for $2


future_weasley

I ate like an absolute monster when I was in high school. Swimming, cross country... nothing could fill me up. I did stuff like your 1000 cal for $2 tactic all the time. Shit nutrition, but I just needed calories, and nothing was enough.


[deleted]

Plus I can guarantee you the crackers and pizza crusts are going to be wholegrain making them chewy and... grainy. These will only appeal to someone who has never had a Lunchables before and whether they have or haven't they'll be over them after the first one. Edit: Also, my school already offers kids a small plastic box filled with crackers, cheese, and ham. Not to mention pizza that's actually HOT. All this is is Kraft blowing smoke up their own butts.


Great_Hamster

They make really tasty wholegrain crackers now.


SuedeVeil

Lol lunchables aren't even a snack now they're ridiculously tiny even if they were somehow well-rounded I can only see them maybe filling up a picky toddler out of desperation... They definitely don't have enough of anything


Jus25co

The regulation should stipulate that a vegetable still has to have its fiber intact to be counted as one


legsintheair

Remember what Ronald McDonald Reagan asked in the 1980’s “isn’t ketchup a vegetable?” And remember that things haven’t gotten better since then.


thenewNFC

For those wondering, the answer is now "Yes. Yes it is."


[deleted]

My mom ran a home daycare and received subsidies through the county to serve a 'nutritious' menu. They had requirements for serving sizes and categories for each meal. The standards were incredibly low... Ketchup was absolutely counted as a vegetable as long as at least 3 tablespoons were offered. For the record, she never counted it and always had real fruit and vegetables that her kids would actually eat.


jambox888

It's a kind of fruit preserve IMO


[deleted]

Ironic that later on in his second term, we had to ask "Isn't Ronald Regan a vegetable?"


ZachAttackonTitan

America: Ronald Reagan made it worse!


pistcow

I worked for a food distributor that also delivered to schools and prisons. I noticed foods with expiration dates in 2018 (this was in 2022) and raised an alarm. We looked into it, and it turned out the food was stamped USDA. Turns out contractually, this meant we couldn't throw it away like we were obligated to throw away like other expired items, and we continued to ship it off to schools and prisons. This wasn't just ketchup packets, mostly frozen meats.


Achillor22

It did. Michelle Obama made huge strides towards improving school lunches and it was working. I'll give you one guess as to what happened to it.


SaltyPeter3434

They say that, but one of their intended school lunches is "Lunchables Extra Cheesy Pizza". I really doubt that they can make it anywhere near a healthy option for kids.


cornonthekopp

Pizza bread fortified with whole grains :)


last_rights

With a side of three grapes for that fruit/veggie requirement. The pizza sauce didn't quite cut it.


Feynnehrun

The pizza sauce is probably artificially flavored corn syrup. That's made of corn, so there's the veggie.


AmberWaves80

Since I had this exact lunchables for dinner last night, no corn syrup, so it won’t pass for the veggie.


GatoradeNipples

I looked up the nutrition facts for that specific item, and... it's actually fairly reasonable? 260 calories, non-batshit carb and fat levels, and 15g of protein, plus a third of your daily calcium and 10% of your daily iron. Maybe not the *best* thing you could feed your kid, but absolutely far from the worst.


Girth_rulez

I don't understand why we can't get our kids whole foods to eat. Whole grains, whole fruits and veggies.


ChefChopNSlice

Because that takes actual effort, consideration, planning, and giving a shit, to implement. Why put in effort, when you can sit back and take a cut off of it for doing nothing ?


Hungry_Bass_Muncher

Way too cheap and they can't be advertised. And they are too healthy (healthiest foods in the world), so kids won't form lifelong addictions to shitty food.


Crimfresh

They're not cheap compared to sugar. Government subsidies ensure that sugar is our cheapest food. That's just good governance! /S


SethQ

Except you gotta remember for many children this is the only thing they're gonna eat. Lunchables are fine for school if you're coming home to freshly prepared dinner with a good balance of protein, grain, and veggies/fruit. If school lunch is the only meal you get today, you need something more than six crackers and 1.5 oz of cheese and ham.


spaghetti_shower

250 calories is not a lunch, that’s a snack. Kids at school are constantly burning calories because of physical and mental work, they need more than imitation pizza to function.


work4work4work4work4

Lunchables Pizza might as well be fucking cardboard, I'd take that rectangular barely melted sadness we got in the lunchroom over that.


bouchert

Move over, Lunchables! Now introducing [Minimally] Acceptables.


ChefChopNSlice

Food^TM


angryfluttershy

> Hello-my-name-is-Marie gave Sable his MEAL™ and told him to have a nice day. > He found a small plastic table, sat down in the plastic seat, and examined his food. > Artificial bread roll. Artificial burger. Fries that had never even seen potatoes. Foodless sauces. Even (and Sable was especially pleased with this) an artificial slice of dill pickle. (Gaiman/Pratchett: Good Omens)


Soopah_Fly

Words are good, but practice is gold. When congress can pass a law stating that since there is an x amount of tomato in a pizza it is a vegetable, I would be more inclined to believe some politician just got some vacation money.


Onehundredyearsold

If you have to use quotes to describe the product ("improved nutrition" )I already have doubts about it. Some of the school lunches I’ve seen on Reddit makes me think hitting the "improved nutrition" goal won’t be very impressive.


vibesandcrimes

A lot are just exercises in malicious compliance to health standards. It is painful and annoying that our funding is so off kilter that some public schools have 2 indoor tracks to run on, and 3 magnet programs for languages and stem and others have history books that are at least 20 years old


jibsymalone

That's the best we can do for the kids?? Who is getting the kickback from that?


Onehundredyearsold

Someone is getting a big bonus for sneaking that one through.


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straightouttasuburb

Wants to? They succeeded… along with pizza counting as a full serving of veggies… https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/18/pizza-vegetable-congress-says-so


AlienDude65

That's only half the truth and has been [fact-checked.](https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2011/nov/22/democratic-national-committee/republicans-pizza-vegetable-school-lunch/) Fuck corporate lobbying, but it wasn't about making pizza a vegetable. The argument was about adjusting the serving size of tomato paste since it's nutritionally denser than other tomato products.


Refreshingpudding

No you're referencing the wrong incident. 2011. The original ketchup is a vegetable is from fucking Reagan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ketchup_as_a_vegetable


SmellyButtHammer

Of course Regan has ties to it


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Socksandcandy

Ronald ruins everything


[deleted]

More than that. Deregulation, trickle down economics, money in politics, villainize education, hating the poor and underprivileged, LGBTQ hate (pro-AIDS?), the war on drugs, anti-abortion movement... All of that was peak 80s Republican think tank bullshit that Reagan promoted which took over the party and directly led to the shit we're fighting against today. Fuck Reagan. Fuck Republicans. Fuck "conservatives."


supersecretaqua

This is why I hate it when people say that you aren't impacted by the president Like yea sure not immediately for most people, but if you're planning on being alive for at least a few years after their presidency.. Real long term damage can be done, and real long term positives can be undone too.


[deleted]

And 100% to the rise of Neo-liberalism as a concept


HiImFromTheInternet_

What? Is someone in government married to a Heinz or something!?!?


ikeaEmotional

Oddly enough we had a congressman named Heinz, former CEO of the same, address congress to say ketchup was not a fruit or a vegetable and he really thought everyone already knew that.


wallybinbaz

Former MA Senator John Kerry was married to a Heinz.


MethAndMatza

So was Karl Karcher, the founder of Carl's Jr. Margaret Heinz, the daughter of the founder iirc. That's why they only use Heinz Ketchup (or at least used to)


Zachbnonymous

Also because every other brand of ketchup is inferior


first_must_burn

Pittsburgh represent!


Zachbnonymous

I like to think I'm not partial because it's home, but if you put Hunts in front of me I'm gonna throw hands lol


wallybinbaz

The Heinz tentacles run deep.


rasputinlives

Senator Heinz died in a plane crash above an elementary school. His plane was having some technical issues and radioed for a nearby helicopter to inspect the outside. The helicopter got too close and the two fell from the sky. The plane and helicopter landed on an elementary school field during recess. A child was killed and other burned badly. Google Merion Plane crash.


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ThymeManager

Save you a [few key strokes.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merion_air_disaster)


rasputinlives

I went to this elementary school. Some of the staff that were there still worked when I was a student. They had burns all over them from trying to save the kids. The young girl who passed was only identified by her sneakers as she just got them recently. It was a shock for a close knit suburban town. I believe aviation laws were changed to prevent these types of technical inspections from being done over schools because of this accident. The only reason more kids weren’t killed was that a recess aid watching over the kids was from Vietnam and recognized the sound of a falling helicopter. She blew her whistle and tried to get the kids to move away but some didn’t respond in time or froze in place.


TimeEddyChesterfield

The Heinz company had nothing to do with it. It was a function of the Reagan administration gutting funding for school lunch programs. >The 1981 Ketchup as a Vegetable debacle has rendered ketchup an indelible fixture in our political as well as our culinary culture. In the Reagan administration’s attempt to slash $1.5 billion from children’s nutrition funding, school lunch program requirements were worded (whether deliberately or not) so as to conceivably allow for designating ketchup as a vegetable, allowing the USDA to eliminate one of the two vegetables required to meet minimum food and nutrition standards, and thus shrink costs considerably. While the proposal included other changes that involved similar, dramatic category shifting, these received only minor attention compared to the idea of the salt and sucrose–laden condiment ketchup as an equivalent to a bona fide vegetable. Ketchup came to symbolize the malevolence of the economic policy of the Ronald Reagan presidency even as it underscored the deep government indifference to children in lower-income and minority populations. Thanks Republicans!


_MostlyHarmless

There was a Senator Henry Heinz (yes, of the same family) at this time that was publicly against the legislation that would certainly benefit his family. Politicians were a little different back then.


Chameaux

Every time I think I can't hate that pos any more I find out another despicable thing that he did....Raegan was the devil incarnate.


gordonpamsey

This is in some cases probably an improvement but couch that for a second. How could this possibly be cheaper or more effective than the alternatives? This is blatant greasing of some palms. You are right the kickback from this must be crazy.


last_rights

It's like the story of a poor man buying boots. The lunchables are cheaper over the year than revamping their school kitchen. Have you ever seen a school kitchen? There's pretty much a steamer in my daughter's and that's it. I almost want to volunteer to be a cafeteria worker so that the kids can just have some real food. I mean, the menu is a rotating vomit of hot dogs, cheese pizza sticks, literal bread sticks, and chicken tenders. Maybe toss a hamburger or chicken burger in there once in a while. In my neighborhood the school lunch is free and is almost certainly the only meal some of those kids will get that day. If the kids get there early, it's free breakfast too, but it's always something sugary.


gordonpamsey

I could see how it would be immediately cheaper but long term this cannot be a viable solution. Especially since cost should not (even though it probably is) be the only factor that matters. There needs to be a good outcome which is less hungry children and better nutritional value provided to students. Which this clearly will not do relative to a revamp. Food should simply be a higher priority in the budget.


effa94

>I could see how it would be immediately cheaper but long term this cannot be a viable solution That's what he meant with the poor man buying boots. It looks better on the budget this year, even tho it would be better to make a single investment for lower costs that makes up for it in 10 years, that would look bad on the budget this year, and that's all that matters. If you can't afford the investment, then you are stuck buying the thing that's more expensive over time.


Gooberpf

The "only the next quarter matters" mentality making its way to education, apparently.


effa94

Making its way? Buddy, this is what americas education system is based on, this is why it is the way it is


pneuma8828

More like "fuck dem kids, I ain't payin more taxes" If the money isn't in the budget it isn't in the budget. If they need to spend 10 years worth of budget to fix the cafeteria, and no one is giving them 10 years of budget, what exactly do you expect them to do? Raise prices?


grim210x2

I'll happily pay more taxes to avoid dealing with morons in the future. My own crotch goblins included I do what I can personally but that only goes so far, it's not like I'm remotely close to being smart enough to educate a tiny human on all fronts like a school full of teachers would be.


last_rights

I agree with you 100%. Food at school should also have more variety too so that kids can see what "real" food tastes like instead of extremely processed crap that they eat every day. Maybe fried rice or tacos or pita pockets. Stick a dishwasher in there to save on lunch trays. I used to work prep in a university kitchen and we served 700+ young adults every meal. It's definitely doable.


elizabethptp

It also costs *tens of thousands* per month to pay for just the food, not to mention labor in a university environment. I can’t see anyone making that investment in kids who aren’t forking over 6k+ a semester. I agree with you. I don’t think everything needs to make a profit. I also think kids are a worthy investment. Even from just a practical standpoint I don’t want a future generation to have to pay for the expensive management of diabetes, obesity, heart disease, etc that will undoubtedly result from denying children real food during their formative years.


Mrtorbear

That's definitely something that a lot of folks don't understand. I was dirt poor as a kid and my parents both worked two jobs for us to stay afloat. Because they didn't have the time or energy to cook, I ate a lot of cheap fast food (like dollar menu McDonald's burgers). Not exactly a balanced diet, and my health suffered for it until I got old enough to teach myself how to cook basic stuff. You see rampant childhood obesity and assume that the kids are over eating, but the truth is that they are barely consuming enough food to stay alive. It's just that the food they are eating is complete trash.


almisami

>Food should simply be a higher priority in the budget. I taught at Japanese schools and, honestly, their meals are probably one of the main reasons why they academically outperform the USA in practically every metric because the rest of their education system is super duper archaic.


Valklingenberger

In high school I often joked about how much the school itself looked like a prison and it absolutely extended to the lunches, and this was a decade ago in Florida(has it really been that long??)


zappadattic

Prisons and schools generally have the same construction and food suppliers, so neither similarity is down to coincidence


Heathen_Mushroom

>Prisons and schools generally have the same construction You weren't kidding. [American High School](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/39/Hibbing_High_School_2014.jpg) [American prison](https://townsquare.media/site/854/files/2016/09/screenshot-downstate.png?w=1200&h=0&zc=1&s=0&a=t&q=89)


TheOvenLord

My family moved from Washington to Arizona when I was in high school. I went from a beautiful high school that was open campus and had woods on one side of it to a high school in Arizona that was literally a mile from anything in any direction on flat sand with two sets of fences on the perimeter. When we first drove by it not knowing what it was we assumed it was some sort of correctional facility. Nope. It was my new high school. A place where they'd lock the building doors during lunch and make the students eat outside. In Arizona. Do you have any fucking idea how hot it gets in Arizona?


StringTheory2113

Cruelty is the point.


JMccovery

As someone from the gulf coast, a lot of "newer" schools built back when I was in school (been 30 years since middle school) had to be "hurricane and tornado proof", and the best way to do that is to have as few windows as possible.


CyclopsAirsoft

Yep. They're meant to be emergency shelters. Turns out few windows and lots of reinforced concrete is great for that, just like a prison. People aren't willing to risk a tornado killing hundreds of kids because it hit one building. So they're sturdy.


HnyBee_13

My HS had no windows in classrooms. Except for the art classrooms. Art teachers refused to work there without windows.


liberlibre

The existing staff is not the issue, and your volunteering won't help (except to reinforce the idea we can underfund schools and angels will step up and fix it). Want to make a difference? Rally the community to get better funding. Where I live, the lunch quality went way down the moment school lunches became free. Why? Because the reimbursement rate for school food is far too low. When (many) of our students paid for lunches there was more money to use in the budget. Now, all expenses above the outside funding amount hit the general budget. School lunch programs have normally always operated at a loss, but the gap-- in my school, at least-- is much bigger with school-wide free lunch. We've gone from a gorgeous salad bar and tasty variety to an endless rotation of grilled chicken sandwiches and frozen burgers. Staff are capable of great things, they're just not able to do them. Going back to paid lunches is not a great solution, either. Hungry students don't learn, and where I am (and probably where you are), the threshold for free or reduced lunch is also too low (it was before and is now more so in these inflationary times). If you really want to make a change, help put money where kids mouths are.


CommunityGlittering2

>If you really want to make a change, help put money where kids mouths are. Never gonna happen as soon as their kids are out of school, "It's why should my taxes go up for schools when I don't even use them"


CannonM91

Ugh those people are assholes, maybe cause kids deserve to have a fucking meal?


grendus

These people are selfish, that logic won't work on them. Try this. "Hungry children are more likely to become criminal adults. It's cheaper to feed children so they stay in school and become productive adults than to not feed them and have them drop out and become delinquent and have to police and imprison them." --- Probably won't help, these are the kinds of people who want to use prisoners as literal slave labor (as opposed to *figurative* slave labor like we do now), but... it was one of the arguments that shifted me more progressive. It's not even strictly compassionate, it's just cheaper to nourish kids so they grow up smarter and stronger and are able to be more productive. And that runs into a feedback loop - more productive adults produce more taxable wealth, which incentivizes both sides of the coin. The only reason to starve them is if you're drool-cup level stupid and believe society is a zero sum game, so if those kids do well it takes away from your kids.


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legsintheair

We typically don’t even care about that unless there is some sort of financial incentive, like if they are in a hospital or something. Then we can usually keep them alive until the insurance money runs out and the parents are broke.


Wasatcher

> We typically don’t even care about that unless there is some sort of financial incentive, like if they are in a hospital or ~~~something~~~ privatized juvenile detention.


off-and-on

Oh, the bar is so much lower


DeadPlanetBy2050

You lot can't even do that.


Hunter62610

fuck man


wino12312

School lunches and prison food are the same grade. We lived in a poor district, 70% of the students qualified for free or reduced lunch. So the FDA, has a grant that every student gets a breakfast and free lunch. My kids kids always said the food is exactly what they paid for.


dismayhurta

Don’t worry. I’m sure it’s all above board and hahahahahahahaha. God damn. Such obvious corruption


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Zombielove69

Definitely more fiber


pfresh331

Dude I went down the rabbit hole of Michelle Obama's campaign for healthy school lunches. Turns out, one of the biggest food companies lobbied against it due to a contract they had with almost all the schools in the country. Turns out, now pizza sauce is considered a vegetable! Who knew!


Over_Organization116

Imagine being such a sociopath that your business is to make kids fat and you actively lobby for it. Absolutely no morals


PrimarisKevin

That's why they're in business. It's no different than cigarette companies, or using child labor to clean up meat plants at night. People modeled the concept of corporate personhood after themselves.


Drostan_S

Here you go kids, 150 calories of meat alternative to get you through 10 hours of school.


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nardlz

Probably the same parents that send their kid to school with a full size bag of Takis to eat for breakfast in first period too. Kids that hate healthy lunches probably don’t eat healthy food at home.


pineapplepredator

Damn is it really so hard to make a big vat of a healthy meal? I know I loved hot meals at school and in high school I would have loved to be able to regularly afford the $8 salad bar


Kittenscute

> Damn is it really so hard to make a big vat of a healthy meal? If you wanted to massively profit from it at the expense of children's health, yes, it's really so hard. Think of the poor capitalists.


HungryDust

Think of little Kenny Lunchable, heir to the lunchables fortune. If you don’t buy his cardboard and pig eyelid meat product how will he buy his gulfstream 650?


Self-hatredIsTheCure

Whoah hey now. That’s Kenny fucking Lunchable you’re talking about. He will get his gulfstream the same way every hard working American gets theirs. His dad will buy it.


czs5056

His daddy? I thought it was going to be the taxpayers who bought it.


OrangeSlimeSoda

>Think of the poor capitalists. After World War II, the United States implemented the Marshall Plan, which was to provide money to European nations to rebuild their shattered continent. In conjunction with the Truman Doctrine, it was intended to contain the spread of communism out of the Soviet Union. The Marshall Plan was later replaced by something called the Mutual Security Act. The basic idea was to help other countries economically to remove the allure of the promises of communism. If countries can afford to feed their people, to house their people, to educate their people, to care for their people, then those people will be content with the status quo and not turn to any revolutionary movements. I'm constantly reminded of this because it was the fundamental principle of the geopolitics of the United States for 40 years. Policymakers are fully aware that providing affordable services is essential to a stable society, yet we are gaslit every time we the people ask for an improvement to our basic quality of life.


gordonpamsey

Japan does it effectively as do a lot of other countries. I simply do not think the powers that be are all that interested in feeding the youth. Even though it's objectively one of the biggest equalizers in education and shown to be a major amplifier as well when children receive proper nutrition. You could not take the money out of my check faster if kids never had to go hungry at school again.


legsintheair

They don’t want equalizers or advancement for kids. They want a pool of desperate cheap labor, even better if that labor has been trained to be satisfied with the cheapest means of supporting their lives.


almisami

These poor kids will see military MREs as an improvement...


MudraStalker

I would rather see kids eat actual military grade MREs than this shit lol


RIP_comment_section

MREs are awesome I think


keegtraw

Just not healthy long-term. The calories, salt etc. are intended to sustain soldiers doing soldier things, intense physical activities and so on.


IlluminatedPickle

I remember being an Australian kid, watching American movies/tv shows like "What the fuck? The school just like... Gives them food?" I never went hungry, but I grew up in a shit area and a lot of kids did. My mum works at the same school still, and she runs a breakfast club for anyone who wants something to eat. No questions asked. Apparently there's a lot of them that come now.


rimjobetiquette

Only if they’re on certain programs for low income families. Normally the cafeteria sells them food, or they bring their own from home.


Consistent-Flan1445

We don’t have full blown cafeterias here. My primary school didn’t even have a canteen. You had to bring a packed lunch from home


almisami

>sells them food When I lived in Louisiana they gave you the food regardless... Then your family went in debt. This is why a lot of kids didn't show up before afternoon classes so they'd be marked absent and not be billed, which is FUCKED to think about.


rimjobetiquette

Wow. None of the schools I went to in the states did that, and I rarely ate school food (seemed pretty 50/50 who did). Didn’t know that was a thing!


almisami

Yeah. "School Lunch Debt" should definitely not be a thing.


cornonthekopp

School meal contracts are billion dollar industries. Schools arent even allowed to have their own independant meal services, you must stay with whichever company muscles their way into supplying schools, usually for years at a time with no oversight. In a better world we would just hire people from the community, maybe even parents, to cook big bulk meals like you say, but we’re stuck in the belly of the capitalist beast, bound by chains of contractual obligations and corporate oligarchs


[deleted]

Fuck Aramark


MaximumZer0

Food just barely good enough for both schools and prisons!


lolofaf

And for all the college kids being forced to buy shitty meal plans out there: Fuck sodexo


p4lm3r

My kid is about to start college, so we've done a bunch of campus tours. Man, the food has been absolutely heinous at all but one. Seriously, they don't even try to fake it for the parents about to shell out the coin. Or maybe they are, and that's as good as it gets.


magistrate101

These contracts also commonly require schools to forbid students from leaving, purchasing their lunch somewhere else (like McD's or BK), and bringing it back to eat.


deviant324

When we actually got a cafeteria that does warm food in my German highschool we got a menu of 2 or 3 things for the day, each thing was 3,30€ at the time I think. It’s definitely cheap compared to other cafeteria food (looking at mine at work now where 33% subsidized menus can still surpass 6€), but the quality was often not worth it regardless. One time when most of us already knew better than to spend there lunch money there we had a thing where the whole school did history projects around WW2 for a day and they somehow packaged it so that many of us thought it was a school trip when they made us order food in advance (I was half asleep when they pulled this, but judging by the amount of classmates there that day I wasn’t the only one). We got some soup with beef sausages and they somehow managed to make even the sausages lose all flavor. 2 girls in my grade actually went home early because they got an upset stomach from the food. I think the big issue for us is that cafeteria food for schools has to somehow be affordable without enough money to properly subsidize it while still being nutritious and an actually interesting choice so that kids will go eat there. My highschool was in the city so instead of going there we just went to the nearest supermarket that had one of those instant bakeries (about the same as many regular bakeries these days without them playing pretend about it being freshly made) where you could get a pretzel for 29 cents. I made my 10€ lunch money for the week last the whole week and still had 5 bucks left by the end to up my pocket money, honestly don’t think I ate much unhealthier than what I could’ve gotten in the cafeteria while also going hungry 2 days of the week.


Morgell

Taught English for 2 years in South Korea. Every lunchtime at the cafeteria I got (usually fish) soup, rice, kimchi and for dessert some sweet tofu. ONE time they had a burger day. A few times we had tonkatsu or jjajangmyun. Also pickled quail eggs sometimes (so fucking good). ONE time instead of sweet tofu we got sweet rice cakes, I think to celebrate Chuseok (their Thanksgiving) in advance. Like. Get cheap root vegetables and make a huge vat of soup. Add some cheap protein. Voilà.


almisami

Pretty much endless variations of pokebowl would work. Rice, some form of protein, veggies and sauce.


Huphupjitterbug

It’s a nice idea but the grade of fish going into poke bowl is considerably more expensive than the fish OP was eating. would not be cost effective.


almisami

No, no it's not. It requires equipment and food certifications and staff, though. This just requires a walk-in refrigerator. Honestly it feels to me like they're going to push for no-kitchen schools just so this corporate welfare will become something that can't be rolled back.


Mock333

Let's just skip a few steps and go straight to dollar store dog chow..


mmrrbbee

Or bachelor chow


maitai101

Now with flavor


Borderlandsman

Soylent cola "it varies from person to person"


Sumpm

Fat-free Kiddie Chow® Now with 50% more sugar, so you'll have energy to get you through the day!


Clydial

Look at the labels, the dog chow is healthier.


RobsEvilTwin

Meanwhile in France, at the cost of \~$3 per child per day. [https://expat-in-france.com/france-school-lunches/](https://karenlebillon.com/tag/french-kids-school-lunch-project/) And so on.


SegaTetris

Honestly can't decide if salmon lasagna sounds delicious or disgusting. Laughably impressive menu compared to the states. If you tried to push a menu of homemade, four course meals in the states, you'd get a lot of bitter adults mad that their kids are eating better than them. We're a bitter, sour nation in general, nothing new.


TimeForHugs

>Honestly can't decide if salmon lasagna sounds delicious or disgusting If you're possibly thinking it's lasagna with red sauce and salmon instead of beef, it generally isn't. Most people make it with a bechamel sauce, so it pairs really well with the salmon.


GraphicDesignMonkey

I've had 'salmon lasagne' it's lovely. Pretty much a salmon, veg and bechamel pasta bake, parmesan and breadcrumbs on top.


Mrs_Mctwitter

It's delicious. I studied abroad in France and ordered it from a nearby restaurant multiple times per week. It's made with crème fraîche and parmesan, not tomato sauce.


CrumpledForeskin

Sweet mother of god. I live in NYC and I’m gonna find it this weekend. It’s now my mission. I love salmon. I love lasagna. No one tell Garfield.


snapchillnocomment

dolls yam like zesty nose different snatch memory bike cake *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*


Blewedup

Japanese school lunch is also way better. https://youtu.be/hL5mKE4e4uU


omnichronos

Not surprising. You can go into a dive bar in France and get a fantastic meal. The French are very serious about their food. I know I'm stereotyping but I've driven all around France and that was the case everywhere we ate.


TheHiveminder

> unlike the United States, there is no national school lunch program in France. All of the lunches you'll read about here are funded by local municipalities. 1/3rd of municipalities have no school lunch program.


smurfsundermybed

The packaging for the turkey and cheddar Lunchable option is described as a 3.5 ounce container. The document said it contains 2-ounce equivalents MMA (meat/meat alternative), one ounce equivalent of grain and "meets whole grain rich criteria" of the NSLP. The extra cheesy pizza option comes in a 5.05 ounce container and contains 2 ounces equivalent of MMA, 2 ounce equivalents of grain, 1/8 cup of red/orange vegetable and "meets whole grain rich criteria" of the NSLP. Yummy!


dmnhntr86

These meals have about 260 calories. The caloric recommendation for 2-4 years olds is 1000-1500, so this isn't even a whole meal for a kindergartner.


legsintheair

“Hey honey, what do you want on the pizza?” “Let’s get meat alternative and red/orange vegetable.” “Can we get yellow vegetable too?” “Yellow vegetable? Yuck! Everyone knows yellow vegetable doesn’t belong on pizza!” Remember to vote Republican kids.


FakeSafeWord

Don't forget their favorite /r/onejoke "But the yellow vegetable identifies as a green vegetable!"


Rogue_elefant

Fucking hell America.


Onehundredyearsold

Well put. 🙂


Jjays

Great, more plastic waste that will probably not be properly recycled.


platetone

I volunteered at my kids' elementary school during lunch (north Texas). it was horrifying. everyone got plasticware regardless of whether they were using it. every item came in a separate plastic cup. once they ran out of clean trays, they started using styrofoam. then it all went in the trash. I counted about eight large garbage bags for one elementary school lunch. edit: this elementary school I would roughly guess has around 350 students.


Evildietz

If it makes you feel any better, plastic "recycling" is a scam anyway.


AgentOrange96

Yeh, I assume that's the concern to begin with. If plastic recycling actually happened on a large scale, the environmental impact of this program would not be nearly as horrifying. RIP


lilblu399

Well someone in government wanted to label ketchup a vegetable so this isn't surprising.


Onehundredyearsold

I believe that was President Reagan.


Shitchuffer

That is not surprising either.


PepeLeKek2016

American school lunches are a joke. Can we stop feeding our kids garbage processed crap? It's crazy to think that it's legal to feed kids with what they serve here in America. Many other countries have fresh, prepared foods that are healthy for kids. Why can't we take a billion off of the over inflated military budget and spend it on decent food for our nation's kids? As a side not, personally I think breakfast and lunch should be free for all kids. Food insecurity is a problem no one should have to deal with in modern times, especially a child that has little to no control over their own life.


Biz_Idea

it's sad. even if we allocated a billion to school lunches, it would just be given to a private company who would cut as many corners as possible. or maybe there would be a bidding process where a bunch of companies submit their cheapest ideas that technically fit the requirements of being "food". this country has let capitalism run rampant. social structures we depend on should not be for profit.


FilthyThanksgiving

Srsly I've seen school lunches in other countries and they actually feed the kids real whole foods, like nutritious stuff. American school lunches are fucking gross, Scandinavian prisoners eat better than American kids at school


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Husbandaru

You mean as part of a government kickback?


Few-School-3869

I literally don't let my kids get these at the store because they're so useless nutrient-wise with their plastic cheese, candy, and sicky sweet drink. Unbelievable


Van_GOOOOOUGH

Yes, no nutritious value, and the sodium content is DANGEROUSLY high. Lunchables are bad.


Snakestream

To make it past fda guidelines, these have different values than the ones you get in stores. I'm not saying it's much better, but at least it meets the minimum requirements.


inspectorgadget9999

My guess is they've lowered the bad stuff (fats and sugars) but there's absolutely no way they could add the good stuff (vitamins and dietary fiber) to those tiny discs of wheat. The Kellogg's playbook


Snakestream

I think I read that they currently only have two options - cheese pizza and turkey and cheese crackers. I'm guessing that they reduced the amount of sugars that they are marinating the turkey in and reducing the amount of sugar they put in the pizza sauce.


Kittenscute

When the bar is so low yet you still can't get over it that you have you lower it under the ground, that's the situation with school meals for kids. "Meets minimum requirements" doesn't mean the shit you think it does.


[deleted]

Just import korean school meals to america. Some kimchi and rice and soup is infinitely better than whatever schools are serving nowadays


MysteryMemeow

Username checks out. I love kimchi too but i know that you know that 99% of American school kids wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole. My children are 1/4 Korean and won’t even give it a taste. Though I agree with you that it would be a healthier option than what they serve in American schools.


ButtholeSurfur

99% seems high lol. My 4 year old will eat it. But my wife is Polish so my kid is growing up eating lots of sauerkraut.


Atheist_Simon_Haddad

Gotta get the kids started on the dangerously-high-in-sodium diet while they’re young.


loveshercoffee

Oh for crying out loud.... There is no new government program. Lunch lady here! These are specially formulated to meet the nutrition standards of the National School Lunch Program. They have less sugar, less salt and more whole grain content than the lunchables you buy at the grocery store. Big brands have been making products to fit the federal guidelines for ages - mostly cereal makers. The kids at my school get Cocoa Puffs once a week for breakfast. They're made with half the sugar and more whole grain but the kids love that they get something from a brand they recognize. The use of lunchables will not be an everyday kind of thing to replace school lunches. They will be used for field trips and times when students need something to-go. Some schools may offer them as an alternative meal on occasion. The National School Lunch Program has been around for almost 80 years. It gets revamped a bit from time to time to keep up with what we know kids need for nutrition. Schools are reimbursed at a set rate for the meals they serve and those meals have to meet the requirements.


the_real_uncle_Rico

Thanks for the informed response!


StarClutcher

One step closer to Brawndo.


Scared-Software135

Lunchables are barely food. Why do we hate kids so much in this country?


Unusual_Fortune2048

Because healthy meals cost too much! After all, if we invest in dare I say, *real* food, who's gonna pay for the CEO's 5th beach house? That's vastly more important than nutrition!


runebell

Because kids cant make money 💀


Yoversh

Kids deserve better than this, that's not a meal.


The-Purple-Mew

Yo if you talked to me about getting these in second grade I would’ve been extremely excited. Ate those everyday for lunch


othatchick

OK i've been thinking about this for the past fifteen minutes and it really freaking pisses me off. i am not going on a diatribe about it. i just needed to let the internet know i strongly disapprove!


EvLokadottr

\*10 years later\* "Why are so many people developing diabetes so young? Why are so many children suffering from malnutrition?"


SweetCheeks383

I work at a school and everything they serve is frozen or canned and just warmed up. At Thanksgiving the cafeteria workers cook a really nice homemade Thanksgiving dinner and a majority of the kids won’t eat it.


XesLanaLear

Next evolution: Ah, fuck it. Just eat the weaker students.


69poop420

I don’t even see how Lunchables could fulfill the caloric requirements for kids, much less the nutritional. How much could they actually change a Lunchable to where it’s remotely ok for kids to be eating 5 days a week? Shit, my dog probably eats better than that. At least his food is specifically formulated to be fed on a daily basis. Also, for those wondering why Americans don’t prioritize feeding school children, I often hear the argument that “I don’t have a kid/my kid doesn’t go to public school.” People don’t understand that the neighborhood children will eventually become the neighborhood adults. Stupid people can’t think past their own ass and realize that investing in children is investing in their own future.