[HN Gopher] All Praise to the Lunch Ladies
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All Praise to the Lunch Ladies
Author : gmays
Score : 86 points
Date : 2025-11-14 19:54 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (bittersoutherner.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (bittersoutherner.com)
| lighttower wrote:
| This is a well written piece about how government regulations
| driven by budgets and less lobbies have enshitified school
| lunches.
| mc32 wrote:
| A big sarcastic thank you to G Dubbya for taking us down that
| road to perdition..
| cpursley wrote:
| American school lunches were big-ag industrial complex
| garbage well before Dubbya was in office.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Indeed.
|
| Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given
| to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing,
| made from scratch.
|
| These lunch ladies are the ones fighting to be allowed to do the
| same things for the children in their communities in the USA. But
| getting ham strung by the whims of federal politics and the
| crippling fear that someone somewhere might be given something
| for free they could have paid for themselves.
|
| More power to the Lunch Ladies.
| Animats wrote:
| The view from the other side: NeverSeconds.[1]
|
| Each day in 2012-2014, a middle school girl in Scotland took a
| picture of her school lunch and wrote a review on her blog,
| including number of hairs and insects. The headmaster of the
| school told her to stop taking pictures of her lunches. So she
| published a note, "Goodbye". That got some small publicity.
| Then the local town council backed up the headmaster. More
| publicity. Politicians became involved. National press
| coverage. Coverage in Wired. "Time to fire the dinner ladies"
| article in a Scottish tabloid. Worldwide press coverage. BBC
| interviews. Girl wins "Public Campaigner of the Year award".
| Headmaster in trouble.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeverSeconds
| jancsika wrote:
| Wikipedia: "number of hairs"
|
| You: "number of hairs and insects"
|
| Citation, please?
| dpark wrote:
| So this is interesting but I would hardly call it "the other
| side". This isn't a battle between lunch ladies and students.
|
| Even here the girl was not asking for them to stop serving
| the food. Rather she said they should serve _more_ and also
| improve it.
|
| > She added: "I'd like them to serve more, and maybe let some
| people have seconds if they want to ... and not serve stuff
| that's a wee bit disgusting."
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20240418175610/https://www.teleg.
| ..
| Coffeewine wrote:
| Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section:
|
| > In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so
| states to offer free school meals to all students, regardless
| of family income. Dillard supports free meals for all students
| with an emphatic, "Yes, yes, yes!" Food should not be based on
| income, she says: "It should be part of the school day. Your
| transportation is of no charge to students. School books are no
| charge to students. School lunch should be of no charge to
| students. ... It's just the right thing to do."
|
| On one hand, that seems like an excellent argument to use for
| free school lunches. On the other hand, it feels like school
| busses are like libraries, accidents of history out of step
| with the modern world. If this became a rallying cry there'd
| probably be a strong pushback to start charging kids to be
| taken to school.
| tstrimple wrote:
| Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries
| if they hadn't grown up with them. The panic and hysteria
| they would generate over the idea that people could access
| books without paying for them! Communism! You're making
| authors into slaves!
| ryandrake wrote:
| Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why
| shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable??
| Government should be run like a business!"
| michaelrpeskin wrote:
| We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The
| idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la
| carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if
| you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own
| packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything
| else away.
|
| The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where
| you can put anything you don't want so that someone else
| could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could
| assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch.
|
| My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line
| multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing
| the rest away because they don't want that.
|
| Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year
| because the free lunches were more expensive than they had
| planned. Wonder why.
| 64756salad638 wrote:
| If you wouldn't mind sharing, what school district was
| this?
|
| I'm curious to research and learn more! What accounts for
| the budget overrun? Are there stats on how many free meals
| were taken per student (especially if this was broken down
| on a per-day basis, this could back up the "pizza"
| explanation)?
| Spivak wrote:
| I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the
| way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this
| case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be
| minimizing the amount of waste--cook literally anything
| where the kids will clean their plates _then_ try to nudge
| toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low.
| Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune
| dishes kids either don 't take or leave behind until you
| have a menu.
|
| Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on
| the priority list than making sure they eat the "right"
| things.
| devonbleak wrote:
| As someone who lives near a school I can say school buses are
| very much a necessity and they are getting modernized. I see
| an electric one consistently going through the neighborhood.
| And I much prefer them to hundreds more cars or pedestrians
| going through the neighborhood (people drive like maniacs
| through the residential streets here).
| supportengineer wrote:
| In California where I live there's no school buses. You're on
| your own to get to school, fortunately there are so many
| neighborhood schools that almost everyone can walk.
|
| I _love_ that my tax dollars are being used to feed kids at
| school.
| jimbokun wrote:
| Today, libraries are more amazing and more necessary than
| ever.
|
| With online services constantly changing what is or isn't
| available, having a library with physical media, books, and
| even their own services for borrowing audio books and other
| online media, can be a real asset when trying to watch a
| specific movie or TV show or listen to a particular song the
| streamers decided to stop offering, or moved to a different
| service you're not subscribed to, etc.
| ryandrake wrote:
| "Someone somewhere might be given something they don't need."
|
| Sad and incredible how much of US politics is summed up with
| just that one statement.
| babyshake wrote:
| The rhetoric you see in some places about how social
| assistance is used on hair weaves says something about the
| underlying reasons for much of this concern.
| krapp wrote:
| Remember the only reason we have school lunch programs in
| the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free
| breakfast program for black children in the 70s and the
| government wanted to undermine the political and propaganda
| power the Black Panthers had gained through that and other
| social programs. So the government created its own, then
| Reagan underfunded it.
| opo wrote:
| No, that is not true. The first school lunch programs
| started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first
| major federal program for student lunches was the
| National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946. That has
| since been updated several times: the Child Nutrition Act
| in 1966, the Child Care Food Program in 1975, etc.
| roenxi wrote:
| If the political process gives unnecessarily, then it has
| also taken something from someone unnecessarily. So while it
| is a very accurate description of politics it doesn't really
| surface _why_ that is at the root. The whole question being
| debated is what is necessary. That is what people are arguing
| over - are the wealth transfers actually required.
|
| Eg, "oh no, the billionaires might get enormous handouts that
| they don't need!" is a rallying cry that should get people
| moving. If the option is there they will take it. If the idea
| that there doesn't need to be an accounting of why takes hold
| that is exactly where the US Congress will take it. And, in
| fairness, that mindset did take hold and the handouts to the
| wealthy is what then happened.
| rkomorn wrote:
| > Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches
| given to children in many European countries. Nutritious,
| appetizing, made from scratch.
|
| Man, comments like these compared to my 10+ school years in
| France really make me wonder wtf happened in my 3 different
| schools' cafeterias.
|
| My 3 and change years in 2 US schools definitely had tastier
| food.
|
| IDK if my expectations of food in France (my home country) were
| just higher and harder to meet. I don't think that was the
| case.
| dpark wrote:
| The quality of food is probably extremely variable across
| schools even in the same general region. I've seen some
| pictures of really appealing lunches plucked from European
| schools. But how many different schools are there in Europe?
| rkomorn wrote:
| I'm guessing a bigger consideration is whether what appears
| online is subject to selection bias (especially when the
| context is "look how much better the food in European
| schools is").
|
| Maybe it's also changed a lot. My anecdata is admittedly
| not recent since I am also "not recent."
| mikeyinternews wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VY14zcUM9SI
| ge96 wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v97Z17qxK9M this lady's laugh
| bluedino wrote:
| It was a while ago but all of our lunch ladies were laid off and
| "eligible for re-hire" with SodexoMAGIC when they took over the
| cafeteria contracts for our district.
| cpursley wrote:
| Having a school lunch in a "poor" former eastern block country as
| a guest was really eye opening. It was actually good, fresh made
| borscht, veg dishes that tasted good (wasn't steamed)! Like, I
| would order and enjoy it at a restaurant level no-bad. Who knew
| that was even possible? From what I can tell, a non-crappy school
| lunch is the norm all over Europe. Why can't America have that?
| klooney wrote:
| You can't afford to have people cook food here, just reheat it.
| jplrssn wrote:
| "can't afford" in this case is a choice to spend the absolute
| minimum possible on school lunches.
| bgnn wrote:
| Unfortunately it's far from the norm in Europe.
|
| In the Netherlands there's no school lunch available. Families
| need to provide it to their children. The norm is just bread
| and cheese sandwich and milk, doesn't matter how rich you are.
| That's what most adults eat for lunch too.
| Baeocystin wrote:
| I used to get the poor kid's meal when I was very young. They
| made us stand as a group aside in a line and let all the other
| kids get their full-sized meals first, then would give us our
| half-sized shitty sandwich after everyone else walked passed and
| stared at us.
|
| Fuck every single adult involved in that kind of cruelty.
|
| That being said- the bit of light in this story is the lunch
| ladies who went out of their ways to sneak us extra when it was
| available, even though I know they got in trouble for it. I
| managed to give one a hug once, and the strength she hugged me
| back, I knew she meant it. I have nothing but love and gratitude
| for those women.
| gausswho wrote:
| Whoa that is very different than my experience decades ago.
| Whether your lunch was free, discounted, or full price, that
| happened at the cashier. Everyone waited in the same line. Your
| experience is way too early to introduce kids to how bad
| capitalism. Let them dream!
| ryandrake wrote:
| Implementation of free and reduced-cost lunches varies
| considerably across the US states. In many places, it's
| discreet and private, but also in many places, the process is
| deliberately designed to 1. call attention to and shame
| people, and 2. make it difficult to use and easy to be
| denied.
|
| And yes, you can probably easily guess which kinds of places
| focus on the cruelty, and which kinds of places focus on the
| helping.
| ilamont wrote:
| Growing up near Boston, my public elementary school built in the
| 1920s didn't have a proper kitchen or even a cafeteria because
| kids at one time always brought meals from home and ate at their
| desks. Indeed, we did too, bringing metal lunchboxes or brown
| bags, until the mid-1970s.
|
| At that point, something changed and we all ate together in a
| repurposed room in the basement, eating the same unhealthy and
| unappetizing meals that were heated from frozen tinfoil platters
| in a towering steamer that a few harried lunch ladies managed.
|
| One particularly gross option was the "pizza burger," literally a
| rectangular cheese pizza with a tired looking hamburger patty on
| top. There were no fresh vegetables. Everything hot came out of a
| can or freezer. We did get apples, but they were mealy Red
| Delicious or Macs that most kids threw away.
|
| Around the same time, we began to get free milk in the mornings.
| I know this because we would hang out at the loading dock in the
| morning and beg the delivery driver for small boxes of chocolate
| milk. There might have been some sort of breakfast item too, like
| a pastry or small box of cereal.
|
| If I were to hazard a guess at what was happening, someone
| correctly determined that many kids weren't eating healthy food
| or had unequal access to food. Subsidies were granted for
| providing free healthy meals, and children were forbidden from
| bringing meals from home.
|
| The problem was the school and the staff didn't know how to
| provide such meals, and the city had a mix of schools ranging
| between 10 and 70 years old, mostly with limited kitchen and
| cafeteria facilities. I believe they took the easiest way out -
| put it out for bid, and chose the cheapest and easiest option to
| implement: little red cartons of milk in the morning, frozen and
| canned food for lunch or maybe a sandwich, and a checkmark on a
| government compliance form.
|
| My kids attended the same school system starting in the 2000s.
| They had gotten rid of elementary school lunches for everyone. My
| spouse who comes from another country insisted on better quality
| lunches, which we would heat up and place in a thermos or bento
| box-type thing. Families who needed help with lunch were still
| provided with them I believe through SNAP or a similar program.
| brians wrote:
| And now every kid in Massachusetts gets free lunch--funded
| through the millionaire's tax. Unfortunately, the food is in
| general pretty gross. It has to conform to Federal guidelines,
| which means low fat, low sodium, high sugar to hit calorie
| targets.
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