[HN Gopher] All praise to the lunch ladies
___________________________________________________________________
All praise to the lunch ladies
Author : gmays
Score : 257 points
Date : 2025-11-14 19:54 UTC (1 days 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?
| theoreticalmal wrote:
| Cmon dude
| 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.
| ..
| gusgus01 wrote:
| I think this girl has a better understanding of lunch time
| dynamics than you. It's almost an objective, base point
| that any food is better than no food, which is why she
| would advocate for serving more and also improving it. A
| huge emphasis on improving it.
| lelandbatey wrote:
| The blog in question, right when posting seemed to pick up:
| https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/
| zdc1 wrote:
| The comparison school lunch from Finland looks lovely. It's
| a shame that many school lunches are meals that we wouldn't
| pick for ourselves.
|
| It's a simple test: would I want that for _my_ lunch? For
| most of the photos, it 's a no.
| Aeolun wrote:
| Hah, this is great to read even now. It's nice that these
| little bits of the internet are still up 11 years later for
| me to enjoy.
| 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.
| pxc wrote:
| Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in
| this case-- a good nanny would likely take the same
| approach you describe here: meeting the kids where
| they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better
| along the way instead of making food just for it to be
| thrown away.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every
| army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into
| developing field rations that are palatable enough for
| infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I
| can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school
| children is going to be any easier.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > The US military (hell just about every army on the
| planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing
| field rations that are palatable enough for infantry
| sections on the move to eat in it's entirety.
|
| Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone
| to like everything they have, you can't do that without
| letting them trade away the stuff they hate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Why?_
|
| You don't want the dude trading away everything for
| desserts kapooting midway mission because his bowels are
| in uprising.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| So what? If you think that problem exists in the first
| place, you still have no choice but to address it by
| doing something that is possible to do.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _address it by doing something that is possible_
|
| Yes, a military study was conducted that found it
| unproductive to do the impossible...
| chris_wot wrote:
| Hey, the U.N. recently wrote a report that most U.N.
| Reports aren't read. It happens.
| somerandomqaguy wrote:
| From the horse's mouth?
|
| >The CMNR reviewed many of these studies when they were
| initially completed and noticed that underconsumption of
| the ration appeared to be a consistent problem.
| Typically, soldiers did not consume sufficient calories
| to meet energy expenditure and consequently lost body
| weight. The energy deficit has been in the range of 700
| to 1,000 kcal/d and thus raises concern about the
| influence of such a deficit on physical and cognitive
| performance, particularly over a period of extended use.
| Anecdotal reports from Operation Desert Storm, for
| example, indicated that some units may have used MREs as
| their sole source of food for 50 to 60 days--far longer
| than the original intent when the MRE was initially field
| tested. > >There have been successive modifications of
| the MRE since 1981. These modifications in type of food
| items, diversity of meals, packaging, and food quality
| have produced small improvements in total consumption but
| have not significantly reduced the energy deficit that
| occurs when MREs are consumed. This problem continues in
| spite of positive hedonic ratings of the MRE ration items
| in laboratory and field tests. The suboptimal intake of
| operational rations thus remains a major issue that needs
| to be evaluated.
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25121269/
|
| Or to summarize it; soldiers weren't eating the full
| MRE's in Desert Storm, and it a widespread problem.
| Soldiers that weren't meeting their caloric intake
| requirements were suffering cognitive issues while in
| combat operations. Bit of an issue when you've got two
| groups of people trying to kill each other and not their
| own side.
|
| So they figured the best option to get the soldiers to
| eat their rations was to keep improving and updating
| until soldiers were more inclined to eat the whole damn
| thing. I don't know if they've succeeded per say but they
| have been updating the menus pretty consistently since
| the 90's. I think only the beef stew and a few other meal
| items have stayed consistent over the last 30 years of
| MRE's.
| komali2 wrote:
| Whenever I watch a video about American military
| nutrition, the only takeaway I have is "are these people
| incompetent?"
|
| Sailors in the USA navy get fat after their first
| deployment, common knowledge. Why? Because half the time
| their food is frozen chicken nuggets, frozen tater tots,
| etc, chucked into the oven, served bulk at mess.
|
| 2025's most well funded army, that's the best they came
| up with? Why not just freeze non deep fried chicken
| breast? Why not use lentils for carbs? Why not fast-
| freeze dry vegetables?
|
| In any case I don't see the relevance for schools. Hire a
| chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does -
| find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan
| meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals.
| krapp wrote:
| >Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef
| does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and
| meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and
| direct meals.
|
| Who's going to pay for all of that? Not the American
| taxpayer, who would consider it theft and waste, and not
| the poor kids who actually need school lunches, and
| probably not their parents.
|
| You'll wind up with a Macdonald's kiosk in every school
| cafeteria, and vending machines full of Monster energy
| drinks.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I found a twitter thread years ago that talked about how
| the author had gone to school with a lot of (US) mafia
| children, and the school had unsurprisingly provided
| lunch via a local vendor with mob connections. Presumably
| some of the money wound up going to the mob.
|
| But, the thread pointed out, since high-level mafia
| officials sent their children to _that school_ , they had
| no interest in skimping on the lunches. And the lunches
| were excellent. After a big FBI bust, the mob-affiliated
| vendor was replaced with a major interstate school lunch
| vendor, and the quality of the food was rock-bottom.
|
| I've tried to find the thread again, but I can't. If
| anyone else wants to dedicate an unreasonable amount of
| time to it, I'm pretty sure I originally found it through
| a links post on Marginal Revolution.
| scrps wrote:
| _faint sound of fading laughter from a US SSBN_
|
| If you want a successful lunch program (and rations if
| you have a to-go bag) look no further than the US Navy's
| sub program.
|
| Given the environment and danger (and having a bunch of
| humans in close proximity, deep under the ocean, with
| nowhere to go, hangry, is not going to inspire unit
| cohesion) they get really, really good food. Which is
| probably not a bad thing to give people tooling around
| with enough firepower to take out a few dozen cities.
| gishh wrote:
| The sub nukies I know would disagree with this. The few
| weeks before they would get back to port they just eat
| whatever they can find.
|
| Storage is a big deal on a sub.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > literally anything where the kids will clean their
| plates then
|
| Feeding kids sugar and hen nudging them to eat slightly
| less sugar while still providing inherently unhealthy
| meals seems suboptimal. Them cleaning their plates is not
| an inherently a good thing. Rather the opposite.
|
| > making sure they eat the "right" things.
|
| Certainly better than feeding them the wrong things?
| though.
|
| It's not like starvation or malnourishment is the main
| issue when a significant proportion of children are
| overweight. Them eating crap is...
| Spivak wrote:
| It's always a treat when the exact problem I'm describing
| shows up in the replies. Yes feed them sugar. Children
| have a significantly heightened sweet tooth until
| adolescence where it slowly declines and they develop
| more complex tastes and a tolerance for "adult" flavors.
| When I bake for kids I have to make it cloyingly sweet to
| an adult palate and it gets snarfed down. And it's also
| why Funfetti cake doesn't hit like it did as a kid
| because your tastes have changed. Trying to impose adult
| standards on kids is native at best and futile in
| aggregate--you can only serve it, you can't make them eat
| it and they won't.
|
| You understand how moronic it sounds to prepare and serve
| food that kids won't eat in the hopes that they eat less,
| right? Plus free lunch programs are to deal with
| malnourishment and to make sure kids get at least one
| full meal a day.
|
| My elementary school, which was a private school and so
| wasn't beholden to any government meddling, followed this
| formula and it worked out great. Every meal was carbs,
| protein, and sugar, and everything was sweet. It wasn't
| an apple, it was fruit cocktail in syrup, the pizza had
| sweetened bread and sauce, vegetables were sweat peas,
| carrots, and corn. Every student was put on a rotation to
| clean trays so I got to see first hand what the waste
| situation was. And it wasn't zero but you didn't see a
| tray full of food minus pizza coming back.
| komali2 wrote:
| As an American if I paid the same taxes but the half that's
| spent on building -b2 bombers- fine, substitute for
| "devices used to kill people I'll never meet in countries
| I'll never see," instead went to giving kids so much food
| they threw half of it away, I would be ecstatic with this
| change in the distribution of my taxes.
| simmonmt wrote:
| They stopped building B2 bombers 25 years ago.
| mylies43 wrote:
| And now we build B21s
| 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.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what
| all those many countries around the world without good
| public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious
| about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the
| developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a
| library or a paid streaming platform.
|
| In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but
| it is easy to see that momentum in the USA for sustaining
| them has slowed: on American-dominated forums people often
| view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly
| homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.
| i80and wrote:
| > on American-dominated forums people often view public
| libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to
| hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.
|
| I think this says far more about your specific forum
| bubbles than anything else, to be honest.
|
| At worst I see a perception that libraries are for
| children.
| HeinzStuckeIt wrote:
| If you do a DDG search site:news.ycombinator.com
| "libraries" "homeless", you find some such discussions
| from this very site. But as I said, you can also find
| this across the internet when forums are dominated by
| Americans and it's certainly not limited to obscure and
| dodgy venues.
|
| I suppose it is the big-city Americans who are
| complaining about the social problems. But it's also
| common to see from small-town Americans that opening
| hours at their local library have been slashed, which
| also speaks to declining support for them.
| nathan_compton wrote:
| > on American-dominated forums people often view public
| libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to
| hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.
|
| Don't get where you are coming from. I'm american and
| everywhere I've ever gone into a library its been great.
| Everyone I know with kids (including myself) visits the
| library all the time, often daily, at least weekly.
| pxc wrote:
| The university I went to did start restricting hours
| (requiring student IDs for more of them than it used to)
| during my time there, apparently to try to divert some
| homeless people away at night.
|
| But I've never actually been to a library that didn't
| feel safe, clean, and comfortable when I was there,
| including that one. I certainly never saw any signs of
| drug use, or anyone browsing pornography.
| pxc wrote:
| I also want to add that being homeless isn't the same
| thing as being disorderly, frightening, unfriendly, or
| smelly.
|
| Over the years, I've had friends who were homeless
| (depending on the person, before or during the times that
| I've known them). Sometimes they have a lot of difficulty
| getting bank accounts, jobs, or apartments in part
| because of documentation issues or bureaucratic tasks
| that they need internet access to solve. Libraries are a
| lifeline that helps homeless people rebuild stable lives.
|
| Libraries should be sanctuaries and feel safe for
| everyone, including the most precarious people in
| society.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| You should stop believing that you can learn what America
| is like by reading about it online or in the media.
| Homeless scum making libraries unusable is _extremely_
| rare in America, if in fact it ever happens at all. I
| regularly visit libraries everywhere I go and only a few
| times did I ever see anything even like that and it was
| limited to one or two street people wandering around in
| the lobby or hidden off in some corner. Even in Seattle
| where the number of street junkies sprawled out on
| sidewalks was far too high for my standards of decency,
| the public library downtown was absolutely pristine. You
| might sometimes see a bum in the ground floor going for
| the toilets, but that 's it. They otherwise avoid the
| library, it has nothing for them. Porn? They have phones
| I guess, I've never once seen a computer room overflowing
| with street coomers. I'm not saying it never happened
| somewhere at some time, but it's not a regular thing.
|
| Also, I don't just visit big flagship libraries in big
| cities. Libraries in metro suburb areas and also
| libraries in small rural working class towns are places
| I've been to many times without seeming anything like
| what you've described. All across America, libraries are
| clean and designed to be safe and inviting places for
| families of all ages.
|
| Of course what I've written is just a other online
| account which you shouldn't blindly believe. You
| shouldn't have beliefs one way or the other about
| American libraries unless you've actually visited
| American libraries yourself. If you aren't even American,
| then the status of American libraries shouldn't be
| something you pretend to be informed about. It shouldn't
| even be something you pretend to have an opinion about.
| It's like my opinion on Luxemburg supermarkets; I have
| none! I've never been in one and they're far from my life
| so I can't just walk into one. I have no opinion on them,
| have no reason to pretend to have an opinion, have no
| reason to believe I can form meaningful opinions about
| them by reading about them online. Somehow people can't
| manage this when it comes to America.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| It seems odd to me that anyone would need an argument in
| favor of free school lunch. School is mandatory between
| certain ages and it's free. Let's just make meals free as
| well.
|
| And I'm not sure how school buses are out of step with "the
| modern world." What are you proposing? Uber or something?
|
| For the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we
| sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing why we shouldn't
| spend money on social causes.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| The argument would be that parents have an obligation to
| feed their children. That's the least you could expect of
| them.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _school busses are like libraries_
|
| I'm reading a book from my county library right now.
|
| They also have a library of things, which means I can borrow
| _e.g._ a sewing machine or laminator, as well as an area
| where we can use a laser cutter, 3D printer and soon, a micro
| mill, all for free. (You bring your own materials.)
|
| Whenever I'm in there it's packed with adults and students.
| They also have a terrific lecture series, the most recent of
| which was by a local homebuilder describing new bioconcretes
| she's been using.
| 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.
| komali2 wrote:
| What you're saying doesn't contradict the argument that
| the goal was do outdo the black panther lunch programs.
|
| Certainly I'd like to read more about the idea before I
| buy into it, but it does make a lot of sense - schools in
| black neighborhoods are chronically underfunded and the
| black panthers were first and foremost a direct action
| and mutual aid group, and furthermore the USA government
| viewed them as a huge threat to government authority and
| did many things to attempt to undermine the black
| panthers... Including outright assassination.
| maxlybbert wrote:
| > [Original, emphasis added]: 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_
|
| > [Response, emphasis added]: 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_
|
| Are you saying that the government started trying to one-
| up the Black Panther school lunches 30 years before the
| Black Panthers started offering them?
|
| Is it possible that the people in charge of school
| lunches in the 1970s viewed the Black Panther program as
| some kind of competition? Sure. Was the 1970s Black
| Panther program "the only reason" the US started a
| national school lunch program in the 1940s? I don't see
| how that would be possible.
| komali2 wrote:
| > 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
|
| > 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
|
| How does the existence of a food program in the 1890s, or
| 1946, automatically invalidate the notion that the
| promulgation of the food programs into 2025 is due to the
| efforts of the black panthers? Similarly, one could
| attribute gun control laws in California to the black
| panthers focus on arming black neighborhoods, rather than
| some kind of liberal anti-gun attitude.
| pqtyw wrote:
| > automatically invalidate the notion that the
| promulgation
|
| Goes the other way around too? Regardless government
| continuing doing what they were already doing for the
| past half century seems reasonable. Without any
| additional evidence that seems like an inherently much
| more valid argument that attributing it to the Black
| Panthers. So equating them seems disingenuous...
| 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.
| zem wrote:
| even sadder, it's often not "don't need" but "don't deserve"
| 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."
| bittercynic wrote:
| Absolutely. I work at a school where the food is OK, but
| just, and the school across the street has very good food.
| One of our students used to sneak into the other school in
| the mornings for breakfast. He made the mistake of bringing
| the food back to our school where people asked questions,
| and pretty soon the other school knew he wasn't their
| student and banned him.
|
| Something seems really off to me about different kids
| within a couple hundred feet of each other getting
| drastically different quality of food.
| em500 wrote:
| In the Netherlands no elementary schools have any cafeteria,
| kitchen or lunch area at all. Kids bring their own lunchbox,
| with usually some sandwiches, fruit and water, and eat inside
| the classroom.
| morningsam wrote:
| Same in Germany, and not just for elementary schools but
| also secondary schools. At least that's how it was decades
| ago when I was a student, maybe it's different now.
| expedition32 wrote:
| In the Netherlands we eat bread for lunch. Many Southern
| Europeans have been brought to tears when they were invited
| "for lunch".
|
| The classic cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. So remember
| it can always get worse.
| rkomorn wrote:
| Cheese sandwich and a glass of milk sounds genuinely better
| than extremely overcooked, watery pasta with watery slices
| of pork.
|
| If you solely looked at my schools' menus on paper (or
| arguably even in pictures), sure, it would've seemed good.
|
| Side note: I lived in the Netherlands (but went to school
| in Belgium, so I have zero experience with school meals) as
| a young kid. I do remember chocolate sprinkles on toast
| being a thing, though!
| no_wizard wrote:
| Truly American affliction, a crippling fear that the government
| does something for its citizens that doesn't have any strings
| attached
| thunky wrote:
| > These lunch ladies are the ones > getting ham strung
|
| Nice.
| 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.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| And despite spending basically nothing on that lunch, _we
| still charge kids for it_
|
| The public blamed the "lazy" lunch ladies of course but the
| public was the one voting down the school budget to
| actually pay them to cook. The actual people doing food
| service have as much agency over the menu as the teen
| behind the counter at mcdonalds. Those exact same women
| WERE cooking real food a decade ago. That's how long they
| had been doing that job.
| 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.
| cpursley wrote:
| fwiw, bread and cheese in the Netherlands kicks the crap out
| of what is often called "cheese" in the US. However, the
| situation has at least improved over the past decade if your
| budget allows it.
| renewiltord wrote:
| The usual truth is that labor costs more in the US than it does
| anywhere else. A lot of things are just what you get if you
| have cheap labor. As an example, all over South Asia you can
| get top-notch personal cooking and cleaning on a daily basis.
| In the US you cannot. It's because everyone is rich in the US.
| The embodied cost of labor in everything you get is quite a
| large fraction.
|
| The median household income in Poland is a quarter that of the
| US.
| sharts wrote:
| The labor costs more because other assets cost more --
| namely, housing, food, clothing.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Indeed. And wet roads cause rain.
| 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.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It reminds me of a similar discussion here around overdue lunch
| fees, graduation, and how ridiculously small the amount ends up
| being for an entire school at the end of the year (I think the
| article was about the person just walking in and paying it
| all).
| 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.
| DrewADesign wrote:
| The school I attended as a child not too far from Boston was
| rather unusual in that they chose to get the government-issue
| ingredients (government cheese, powdered eggs, etc) and pay
| cooks to cook scratch meals with it rather than using their
| funding to pay a food service company for heat-and-serve things
| like the hockey puck pizzas. Place was a redneck hellhole aside
| from that but the lunches were actually pretty nice. There were
| some garbage of course... like when the brownies went stale,
| they'd just douse them in cheap chocolate syrup. Fresh baked
| hot rolls every day, though. Glad I didn't go to high school
| there.
| em500 wrote:
| Elementary schools without any kitchen or cafeteria, kids
| bringing meals (bagged sandwiches) from home and eating at
| their desks, is still the standard in probably 95%+ of the
| elementary schools in the Netherlands in 2025.
|
| It's not clear to me if there is any problem to be solved here.
| slfnflctd wrote:
| The problem to be solved in the US is that a disturbing
| percentage of school-aged children's parents are too poor,
| too busy or too incompetent to pack a lunch for their kids.
|
| In many areas, without schools providing food, the kids would
| simply go hungry for the entire school day. I and many other
| people find this unacceptable.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Alternate theory: their parents are too lazy to actually
| prepare proper food for them.
|
| Healthy food actually costs less than pre processed crap.
| But it does take a lot more time and effort to prepare.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| And here we are, back to the poor people are lazy
| argument. That didn't take long.
| wtcactus wrote:
| Well, some of us refuse to indulge in this permanent
| complete lack of accountability for one's choices and
| actions, that people like you try to push.
| rafabulsing wrote:
| Regardless of what you think of the parents, it's
| certainly not the kids fault their parents failed to
| provide them food, for whatever reason. I don't care if
| the reason their parents couldn't afford the time or
| money to pack a lunch is because they spend it all on
| collecting nazi memorabilia and kicking orphaned puppies.
| I still want their children to be appropriately fed.
| wtcactus wrote:
| You are right it's not the kid's fault, and that they
| should be properly fed by the state since their parents
| are bad parents, but that doesn't mean you can't blame
| and call out the parents.
| Tyrubias wrote:
| I refuse to indulge in the false fantasy that a household
| where each parent(s) works multiple minimum wage jobs is
| "lazy" for not preparing homemade lunches for their
| children. Also, in the US, many lower-income households
| are in "food deserts", where there is a lack of grocery
| stores selling fresh food and a preponderance of
| convenience stores selling processed foods. In a country
| where the top 1% of households possess a third of the
| country's wealth and the bottom 50% of households only
| possess 2.5%, poverty, malnourishment, and undereducation
| are choices made for the poor by the rich ruling class.
| wtcactus wrote:
| There we go again.
|
| USA is the richest country in the world, people there,
| even the ones at the bottom of the work ladder, have
| access to riches that for most of the people on the
| planet are only dreams. You have no idea what it is to be
| poor or to live next to actual poverty (even I have no
| idea, and I live in a country that's poorer, and that
| when I was younger _much_ poorer than the USA).
|
| 94% of adult Americans drive a car. Anyone there can go
| to a store that sells vegetables and raw meat, buy it,
| and prepare a proper meal that's cheaper than some deep-
| fried, frozen processed crap.
|
| Enough with the performative virtue signaling. It's all
| so tiresome. Nobody in the USA goes hungry unless they
| really choose too at every single step in their lives.
| throwawaysoxjje wrote:
| Regardless of whatever _hypothesis_ you want to use, the
| point is the kids don't have food.
| Loudergood wrote:
| Time isn't free.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Just want to note that The Bitter Southerner ran two seasons of
| an absolutely outstanding podcast that sadly went defunct in
| 2020. Truly it's one of the best podcasts I've listened to, and
| I'm bummed that they quit making it.
| watersb wrote:
| I didn't consciously notice the source URL, yet I thought "This
| would be a great article for The Bitter Southerner".
|
| I strongly suspect I actually read the source location. Whatever.
|
| The point is that "The Bitter Southerner" is a fantastic
| magazine. They sell subscriptions.
|
| This is where I grew up but it's a different planet for my kids.
| "Let Everybody Sing" https://bittersoutherner.com/sacred-harp-
| let-everybody-sing
|
| Just looking through past Hacker News submissions is worth your
| time.
| onecommentman wrote:
| Embarrassed by the HN comments here. Lunch ladies, along with
| other low-status government workers, are as close to an Absolute
| Good as you can get. Co-opting the warranted praise for these
| heroes to attempt to score political points for any side is
| pathetic. Such commenters should be forced to prepare and serve
| lunches for hundreds of hungry children while also being forced
| to listen to screaming political rants through taped-on
| headphones. The lower middle class, my native land, gets too
| little applause for their contributions.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| My whole family was working poor at best and I was (at best)
| most of my life too. I've always liked this Barbara Ehrenreich
| quote about the dynamic.
|
| "When someone works for less pay than she can live on -- when,
| for example, she goes hungry so that you can eat more cheaply
| and conveniently -- then she has made a great sacrifice for
| you, she has made you a gift of some part of her abilities, her
| health, and her life. The 'working poor,' as they are
| approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of
| our society. They neglect their own children so that the
| children of others will be cared for; they live in substandard
| housing so that other homes will be shiny and perfect; they
| endure privation so that inflation will be low and stock prices
| high. To be a member of the working poor is to be an anonymous
| donor, a nameless benefactor, to everyone else."
| UncleSlacky wrote:
| > The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in
| fact the major philanthropists of our society.
|
| Hence the title of this book:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ragged-
| Trousered_Philanthr...
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| > Co-opting the warranted praise for these heroes to attempt to
| score political points for any side is pathetic.
|
| The sentence "Lunch ladies, along with other low-status
| government workers, are as close to an Absolute Good as you can
| get" is itself an attempt to score poltical points for a
| poltical faction. As is calling them "heroes".
|
| Specifically, this is a leftist poltical argument associated
| with the Democratic party in the united states, suggesting that
| it is good for the government to be in charge of running civic
| institutions that are legally obligated to serve all citizens
| in exactly the same way, in order to dissuade people from
| spending their money on services they prefer which might be
| better than those poorer people can afford; and also that the
| government employees who do the frontline labor at these
| institutions are laudable and morally superior people. There
| are ideological associations here with official Soviet
| propaganda lauding the worker in the abstract.
|
| Someone who didn't like their public school experience or the
| way the lunch lady there did their job might resonably grow up
| to take political stances that reject the idea that low-status
| government workers are as close to an Absolute Good as you can
| get.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| It varies so widely across the US.
|
| I went to school in several States, and it ran the gamut from
| unhealthy corporate slop (e.g. multiple schools in California) to
| delicious food prepared daily from fresh ingredients by local
| grannies (Nebraska).
|
| The latter was amazing and wasn't even generic American food, it
| reflected the predominant ethnicity of the people that lived in
| that locale (because grannies doing home-cooking). This was
| decades ago and the area has hollowed out, so I don't know if it
| is still a thing there.
| bellboy_tech wrote:
| School Bus drivers should be one of the highest paying jobs.
| Start there.
|
| Everything is so upside down. The children's caregivers,
| teachers, etc. should be the best people society can produce.
| From there greatness will be incubated.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Well, if we had much better school bus drivers than we have
| now, what benefits would we realize from the change?
| komali2 wrote:
| We'd have more since it was a higher paying job. Man
| districts lack enough drivers resulting in longer routes,
| which takes time away from the kids to have a life outside
| school.
|
| Also we'd have happier kids and drivers which is great. The
| driver is part of the social worker aspect of a school,
| breaking up post school fights or noticing if a kid gets out
| to walk into a dangerously degraded housing situation. Would
| be nice to have very well paid, well trained people doing
| that job.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| Why?
|
| My mom drove school bus. It allowed her to work a part time job
| and stay at home with us kids when we were young. The drivers
| seemed split between people like her and older people that
| probably already had the right license, and it was a nice part
| time job for them too.
|
| I don't disagree we should have better teachers by paying them
| more to widen the potential pool but that would need to go hand
| in hand with actually being able to fire poor performers.
| zamadatix wrote:
| It varies by region, but a lot of areas have a difficult
| shortage which results in really long routes or troubles when
| a bus breaks down/several drivers are out. Different
| states/areas also have different laws on when that means bus
| service just isn't available. There is, of course, a floor
| for the requirements of a driver, which drives these to get
| worse when salary (and therefore job interest) is lower.
|
| Half a lifetime ago now, my bus route in high school took
| 1.5-2 hours to get me ~4 miles from the school after some
| route consolidations (I got stuck on the end of the combined
| route where they were about to return to the bus depot -
| depending on the year that meant either getting up really
| early or getting home really late). If the weather was good I
| could just bike it, but that certainly wasn't always the case
| in Michigan.
| AstroNutt wrote:
| Great read! I sent this story to my girlfriend who works as a
| lunch lady in a small West Texas town for the last 10 years.
|
| She said they are still able to provide nutritional food for the
| kids. Her mother had an aunt that worked at the same school in
| the 50's and 60's and they made everything from scratch.
| Vegetables were bought locally too.
|
| She also mentioned the kids hated the whole wheat pasta and
| breads when Michell Obama implemented, "Let's Move". They wasted
| lots and lots of food because the kids wouldn't eat it. She
| specifically mentioned the whole wheat Mac and cheese with no
| salt.
|
| I've tasted the food the kids eat there and it's really good,
| compared to the nasty stuff I had to eat at my schools.
|
| It really pisses me off that schools don't get more government
| funding. Nutrition plays such a huge role in young developing
| brains and bodies. These are the kids that will be taking care of
| us all one day.
| AuryGlenz wrote:
| I will never understand why Michelle Obama's plan included low
| salt. It's not like kids have major hypertensive issues.
| speed_spread wrote:
| Because it conditions your expectations of tasting salt
| everywhere, which is what industrial food provides. Good food
| should taste great even if it's low on salt.
| poink wrote:
| It feels like you're using "industrial food" as a
| pejorative, but the best chefs in the world also do not
| skimp on salt
| sevg wrote:
| > the best chefs in the world also do not skimp on salt
|
| Chefs use lots of salt to optimize for taste rather than
| health. (And restaurants don't have to declare how much
| salt was in your meal.)
|
| That's why it's a bad idea to eat out and/or get take-
| away every day. Your salt intake would be extremely high.
| userbinator wrote:
| Look at the graph of life expectancy vs. average sodium
| intake by country, and you may be surprised.
| sevg wrote:
| Read this and you may be surprised: https://en.wikipedia.
| org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_cau...
| userbinator wrote:
| That's exactly what I'm implying.
| bitdivision wrote:
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33351135/ Correlated with
| life expectancy
| userbinator wrote:
| Thank you, that's a newer study but the same conclusions.
| poink wrote:
| Are we pretending that optimizing for taste is a bad
| thing?
|
| It's obviously bad to eat super salty "ultraprocessed"
| food all the time, but it's not like the salt is the
| primary problem
|
| To take OP's example, I'd much rather kids eat generously
| salted broccoli that is "optimized for taste" rather than
| unsalted mac & cheese, regardless of whether they just
| throw it away (which I probably would, too)
| sevg wrote:
| > It feels like you're using "industrial food" as a
| pejorative, but the best chefs in the world also do not
| skimp on salt
|
| Your first comment that kicked off this sub-thread missed
| the context. We're talking about school food kids eat
| every day, not occasional restaurant meals. So the appeal
| to authority of "best chefs in the world" doesn't make
| sense here.
|
| My point wasn't that taste is bad, it's that when you
| optimize solely for taste like restaurants do (using high
| salt, high fat etc without disclosure), you can create
| health problems when consumed daily.
| margalabargala wrote:
| > My point wasn't that taste is bad, it's that when you
| optimize solely for taste like restaurants do (using high
| salt, high fat etc without disclosure), you can create
| health problems when consumed daily.
|
| Your implication is that high salt in meals causes these
| health problems. It does not. You might as well say high
| vitamin, high nurrient meal.
|
| Don't conflate the effects of eating ultraprocessed foods
| with the effects of eating salt just because one often
| contains the other. What you're doing is complaining
| about the health effects of water, having observed that
| soda is mostly water.
| sevg wrote:
| Nice strawman. I didn't mention ultra-processed foods :)
|
| If anyone else is reading this and wants to do their own
| reading about the effects of salt, I can point you to the
| WHO, the NHS, the FDA, one of many highly cited studies,
| and wikipedia:
|
| https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/sodium-
| redu...
|
| https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-types/salt-in-
| you...
|
| https://www.fda.gov/food/nutrition-food-labeling-and-
| critica...
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/267338249_Global
| _so...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_salt
|
| Though, margalabargala, if you don't believe in science
| then I can't help you :)
| margalabargala wrote:
| You're right, it was someone else mentioning
| ultraprocessed foods, I didn't track usernames.
|
| Are you aware that you are being a condescending asshole
| with the way you wrote that comment?
| scns wrote:
| > unsalted mac & cheese
|
| Cheese already contains loads of salt.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| The best chefs in the world generally don't make healthy
| food, they make food that tastes good. High end
| restaurants usually use a lot of salt and butter.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| An enormous amount of traditional food from around the
| world has a lot of salt in it. Salt is not a modern
| invention.
|
| For example, humans have been eating olives for tens of
| thousands of years. Olives contain and require prodigious
| amounts of salt to taste good, usually in the form of
| seawater.
| buu700 wrote:
| High salt intake is only an issue on a high-carb diet or
| with inadequate hydration. Otherwise, consuming adequate
| salt/electrolytes can actually be a bit of a chore. Like
| saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized in the
| course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary
| standards.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Salt pills were a thing for people working in hot
| climates. The military requires electrolyte augmentation
| in such conditions. These days we use fancier electrolyte
| blends but it is still largely salt. If you are on a
| multi-day fast it is the primary thing you need to
| replenish aside from water.
|
| I do some pretty serious backcountry trekking in the
| summer. You can feel when your electrolytes are low after
| several hours, the signs aren't particularly subtle.
| Fortunately, you can slam a few grams of electrolytes and
| you're back to normal in a matter of minutes.
|
| Our bodies can handle it, humans largely developed in
| regions where electrolyte depletion was a risk. The
| amount of salt you have to consume to regulate your
| electrolytes in environments with high electrolyte loss
| dwarf what you are going to consume in typical food,
| processed or not. The idea that the average human is
| hyper-sensitive to consuming too much salt is
| preposterous. Even animals gravitate toward salt licks.
| buu700 wrote:
| Agreed. The idea that salt is merely a flavoring with
| negative side effects has always struck me as indicative
| of an unhealthy relationship with food. It aligns with a
| broader Calvinistic tendency to view pleasure and harm as
| inherently linked, which is fortunately at odds with
| reality.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| _Pre-Industrial Societies: Anatomy of the Pre-Modern
| World_ observes that even in relentlessly
| noncommercialized societies, robust markets existed in
| two commodities: iron and salt. They were traded on the
| market within villages that otherwise had little use for
| markets, and they would make their way by international
| trade routes to even the most isolated cultures.
|
| For iron, that trade would have mostly been in tools. For
| salt the only reason is that salt is a vital nutrient and
| if you can't get enough of it, you die. (Though I think
| it's worth observing that iron is a vital nutrient too.)
| seer wrote:
| The idea came from linking salt to heart failure, but
| last I checked the link was a confounding variable - e.g.
| bad diet leads to problems that themselves lead to high
| cholesterol. It was not the salt in the food but the
| quality of the nutrition itself.
|
| However blaming salt was quick and easy so that's what
| the people with money did.
|
| Historically speaking salt has been such a scarce and
| valuable resource. I have read accounts how in the
| balkans people would resort to selling kids to slavery
| just so the family could have enough salt to survive
| (sacrificing one kid to save the rest).
|
| When I started reading about how salt was bad for you it
| never made any sense.
| onraglanroad wrote:
| No, excessive salt causes high blood pressure. It is
| definitely a problem. Limit your intake to 6g a day or
| less. That's plenty for flavour.
|
| Source: https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/eat-well/food-
| types/salt-in-you...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Like saturated fat, salt has been incorrectly demonized
| in the course of propping up ill-conceived modern dietary
| standards.
|
| The history actually runs in the other direction - step
| one was that someone decided that salt was bad, and step
| two was that a bunch of dietary standards were created to
| express the revealed truth that salt was bad. The
| demonization is the beginning of the process and was done
| for its own sake.
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| OMG I ate an olive off a tree once in Italy because I was
| stupid. _Never, never do that._
| collingreen wrote:
| I'm intrigued. Please share more details!
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Natural olives contain a chemical called oleuropein[0]
| which has a strong nasty bitter taste that renders them
| inedible. Soaking olives in a strong brine removes the
| oleuropein from the olive, turning them into the edible
| olive people love.
|
| Most people don't know this. It is a common prank to
| convince people that don't know better to eat the fruit
| off the tree. As the other poster said, don't do that.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleuropein
| collingreen wrote:
| I had no idea! Thank you!
| wincy wrote:
| Olives are extremely bitter until they're brined. My wife
| still can't handle the brined ones she says it tastes
| terribly bitter.
| rkomorn wrote:
| This reminds me of lupins which also need quite a bit of
| preparation before being consumable.
|
| I'm always kind of bemused by the "necessity is the
| mother of invention" aspect that gave us various food
| preps and conservation methods.
| almosthere wrote:
| What most people don't get is that if you're salting food
| during the cooking phase it requires a crap ton.
|
| If you just sprinkle it on after it's cooked, it's so much
| spicier and takes so much less. Cake and eat it.
| khannn wrote:
| It takes something like a week to acclimate to lower salt
| intake. Not hard at all, it's like coming down on caffeine
| or weed. Salt is very important in pasta to keep the shape
| of the noodle. Whole wheat pasta alone is a giant step up
| in health outcomes, especially considering school kid's
| famous preference for McD's, which has a ton of sodium. I
| also want to link the John Stewart rant about Olive Garden
| not salting the pasta, but can't find it.
|
| Ever wondered why hospital food tastes bad? It's cooked en
| masse without salt so that people with a sodium restriction
| (heart healthy) can eat the same meat as everyone else. The
| sodium denaturizes the meat and affects flavor greatly.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's hard. Salt is kind of magical. My night time snack is
| some vegetable, air fried with some salt, olive oil and
| some lemon. It's not too much salt but I would have a hard
| time eating it without the salt.
| forgotoldacc wrote:
| Ideally it should taste good. But elementary school lunch
| isn't exactly fine dining. Some shortcuts are taken and
| kids are often picky eaters. Salted vegetables are a step
| up from dinosaur shaped nuggets and pizza, so it's a better
| middle ground than unsalted food that goes straight to the
| trash.
| jader201 wrote:
| > Good food should taste great even if it's low on salt.
|
| - Good
|
| - Low salt
|
| - Cheap
|
| Pick two.
|
| (For the most part. There are exceptions, but not many,
| especially when it comes to school lunch food.)
| chongli wrote:
| _Good food should taste great even if it 's low on salt_
|
| Said no chef ever. The first thing any chef will tell you
| is to season your food correctly. Salt activates our taste
| buds. Without it everything tastes bland.
|
| They used to _pay soldiers in salt_. That's the origin of
| the word _salary_. Cities were founded near salt mines.
| Wars were fought over it. Salt is essential to the function
| of neurons and kidneys. Salt is life.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > They used to _pay soldiers in salt_. That's the origin
| of the word _salary_.
|
| Note that the amount of evidence supporting this claim is
| zero. There is a Roman source that makes the claim, based
| on the resemblance of the words, but at the time of
| writing, no one was paid in salt, and there is no record
| of anyone ever having been paid in salt.
| chongli wrote:
| That Roman source is Pliny the Elder, one of the earliest
| scientific historians and author of the world's oldest
| surviving encyclopedia. Much of what he wrote has been
| confirmed through archaeological evidence. The fact that
| we haven't been able to find physical evidence to back
| his claim about salt (which may simply have been common
| knowledge at the time) is no reason to doubt him as a
| historian.
|
| It's also important to note that prior to the invention
| of refrigeration, salt was vital as a preservative for
| meats. Soldiers on the march were perfectly capable of
| hunting any game they came across but the meat would
| spoil if they had no salt to preserve it. Giving every
| soldier a regular salt ration (a form of payment) is an
| extremely easy way to help them feed themselves.
| hollerith wrote:
| You are not making much of a case.
|
| For one thing, I severely doubt wild game would have been
| plentiful enough to meet more than a very small fraction
| of the nutritional needs of a Roman army. There is not
| enough wild game in the US for example to feed more than
| a quite small fraction of the survivors of a nuclear war
| according to a calculation I saw -- and the survivors in
| that scenario have the luxury of remaining spread out
| over the countryside and of ranging around without
| incurring the risk of running into a superior number of
| enemy soldiers.
| chongli wrote:
| We're talking about soldiers stalking the wilderness of
| Pliny the Elder's past, not the present-day United States
| where game populations have declined dramatically.
| Furthermore, the population figures are way out of whack
| as well. The city of Rome in early imperial times was at
| best half a million people. Pliny the Elder's hometown of
| Como in northern Italy might have housed up to 10,000. An
| army drawn from that city would have been a few thousand
| soldiers at maximum.
|
| Armies in ancient times did NOT have the highly
| sophisticated logistics networks that we have in the
| modern day. Subsisting on hunting and gathering was a
| major part of the soldier's life [1].
|
| [1] https://acoup.blog/2022/07/29/collections-logistics-
| how-did-...
| hearsathought wrote:
| > That Roman source is Pliny the Elder, one of the
| earliest scientific historians and author of the world's
| oldest surviving encyclopedia.
|
| Pliny was not "scientific" nor a "historian" in the
| modern sense of those words. He didn't write an
| encyclopedia as we understand it to mean today.
|
| > Much of what he wrote has been confirmed through
| archaeological evidence.
|
| Define "much".
|
| > The fact that we haven't been able to find physical
| evidence to back his claim about salt (which may simply
| have been common knowledge at the time) is no reason to
| doubt him as a historian.
|
| It's no reason to doubt him? It's every reason to doubt
| him.
|
| > Giving every soldier a regular salt ration (a form of
| payment) is an extremely easy way to help them feed
| themselves.
|
| Or romans could pay the soldiers with roman
| coins/currency? Of which we have ample evidence all over
| the roman empire.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_currency
|
| No evidence of salt currency. Tons of evidence of roman
| money. And yet you choose to believe the one without any
| evidence.
|
| Let me guess, you believe in monopods like pliny "the
| scientific historian" did?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopod_(creature)
|
| Lets say you have 10000 soldiers. Is it easier to pay
| them each with a pound of salt or a coin weighing an
| ounce?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| This is... a shockingly credulous take. Try not to be
| like this if your opinion ever matters.
|
| Here's Pliny the Elder in full, Loeb translation (I'm
| including quite a bit more surrounding context than is
| relevant, just to make clear that this is everything
| relevant):
|
| _Moreover sheep, cattle, and draft animals are
| encouraged to pasture in particular by salt; the supply
| of milk is much more copious, and there is even a far
| more pleasing quality in the cheese. Therefore, Heaven
| knows, a civilized life is impossible without salt, and
| so necessary is this basic substance that its name is
| applied metaphorically even to intense mental pleasures.
| We call them_ sales _(wit); all the humour of life, its
| supreme joyousness, and relaxation after toil, are
| expressed by this word more than by any other._
|
| _It has a place in magistracies also and on service
| abroad, from which comes the term "salary" (salt money);
| it had great importance among the men of old, as is clear
| from the name of the Salarian Way, since by it, according
| to agreement, salt was imported to the Sabines. King
| Ancus Marcius gave a largess to the people of 6,000
| bushels of salt..._
|
| https://www.loebclassics.com/view/pliny_elder-
| natural_histor...
|
| It's worth noting here that the glosses, "(wit)" and
| "(salt money)", are interpolations by the translator;
| Pliny doesn't gloss _salarium_ at all. We can trace the
| gloss "salt money" for _salarium_ all the way back to...
| the 1700s. And we should probably note that _there_ it 's
| conceived of as money that the soldier could use to buy
| salt, not as money that is made of salt.
|
| So, there is no source relating the word "salary" to the
| concept of being paid in salt. There is a source relating
| the word "salary" to the concept of salt, and, if you
| really want to read into it, to the concept of Roman
| foreign service.
|
| But there are many more problems with your comment.
| Pliny's authority as a _historian_ has no relevance to
| this question. You 'd want the opinion of a _philologist_
| , and you'd want it to be supported by something, which
| as you can see Pliny doesn't do.
|
| > his claim about salt (which may simply have been common
| knowledge at the time) is no reason to doubt him as a
| historian.
|
| And here you show an amazing ignorance of how reliable
| common knowledge of the origin of words is. The norm is
| that it's made up out of whole cloth. You can find gamers
| right now explaining that "meta" developed from the
| expression "most effective tactics available" or
| feminists explaining that "mankind" developed from a
| sexist preference for males over females. Neither idea
| has anything to do with reality.
| chongli wrote:
| Try a different translation [1]:
|
| _All the amenities, in fact, of life, supreme hilarity,
| and relaxation from toil, can find no word in our
| language to characterize them better than this. Even in
| the very honours, too, that are bestowed upon successful
| warfare, salt plays its part, and from it, our word
| "salarium" is derived. That salt was held in high esteem
| by the ancients, is evident from the Salarian Way, so
| named from the fact that, by agreement, the Sabini
| carried all their salt by that road. King Ancus Martius
| gave six hundred modii of salt as a largess to the
| people, and was the first to establish salt-works._
|
| The rewards of successful warfare, _including salt_ ,
| bestowed on soldiers. That is payment! King Ancus Martius
| also used salt as payment.
|
| [1] http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:
| text:19...
| izacus wrote:
| Are those the same chefs that say everything needs to be
| bathed in butter and then deepfried with copious amount
| of oil?
| hexbin010 wrote:
| I'd have eaten way more salad as a kid if my mum didn't treat
| salt as if it were the devil itself. There is nothing
| enticing about raw cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes on the side
| of a plate.
|
| A pinch of salt and pepper, small amount of olive oil,
| oregano and lemon? Now we're talking.
| tenthirtyam wrote:
| > raw cucumber, lettuce and tomatoes on the side of a plate
|
| Jeepers, I love a plain salad - no salt, no vinegar,
| nothing at all added is fine. Maybe a little olive oil but
| no problem without it. It's all about what you're used to.
|
| We (self, wife, children) stopped adding salt to our
| cooking years ago - pasta, rice, potatoes are cooked
| without salt and they taste fine. As you might expect, when
| some people eat at our place I stare in impolite amazement
| as they empty the salt shaker onto their plate and, on the
| other hand, when I eat elsewhere the food is sometimes so
| salty as to be barely palatable for me.
| hexbin010 wrote:
| What made you go without salt? Have you seen any major
| health benefits?
|
| We don't have the best-tasting product here in this part
| of north west Europe unfortunately, so things do taste
| pretty bland. And if you're trying to get your kid to eat
| more veg, a tiny bit of dressing is worth the trade off.
|
| Even the Italians and French love dressing salads despite
| much better tasting produce. I tend not to disagree with
| what the Italian and French do when it comes to food :-)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > It's not like kids have major hypertensive issues.
|
| "Low salt" was a fad in the 2010's, it cropped up everywhere.
| It's not particularly her fault for going with the mainstream
| of the time.
| trollbridge wrote:
| Low-salt was a fad for a while in defining what "healthy
| food" is, much like low fat, low saturated fat, and high-carb
| were for quite a while, and "plant based" still largely is.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > It really pisses me off that schools don't get more
| government funding. Nutrition plays such a huge role in ...
|
| True. OTOH,
|
| - You could expand that "Nutrition plays such a huge role..."
| logic into saying that schools should also provide broad
| medical coverage for the students, and clothing, and de facto
| parenting, and ... In practice - meals are a limited remit,
| it's relatively obvious if it's being done poorly, kids eating
| together is socialization (obviously part of a school's job),
| and "hungry children" pushes enough emotional buttons that
| subsidized school lunches are _relatively_ well accepted.
|
| Though I've seen quite a few stories about modern-day public
| school teachers being quietly expected to serve (suffer) as
| "whatever it takes" unpaid social workers / therapists / family
| counselors for their students - basically because "somebody
| needs to", and teachers are convenient victims for social
| pressures and non-classroom problems.
|
| - There is far too little connection between "money goes to
| schools" and "schools are competently managed". Modern
| education attracts _way_ too many well-intended ignorant
| ideologues (Mrs. Obama was merely one of an endless host),
| "consultants", "experts", grifters, and worse.
|
| Vs. interest in competent oversight of schools seems nearly
| non-existent. When was the last time you saw detailed local
| press coverage of how well a school board was managing the
| students-and-teachers basics of education?
| suchoudh wrote:
| Almost all schools in Indore, MadhyaPradesh, India have breakfast
| and lunch provided by school.
|
| The food is really well cooked and nutritious. Most other cities
| in India the bf and tiffin needs to be given by parents which
| makes mornings very busy.
| jsmo wrote:
| What about the dinner ladies of the UK?
| constantcrying wrote:
| The modern bourgeois obsession with valorizing the easiest
| unskilled jobs, done by people with zero abilities and ambition,
| is so bizarre.
|
| No, putting food out for kids is not a glamorous or praiseworthy
| job. It is one of the easiest jobs in the world, requiring no
| skills or education or even any particular amount of effort. And
| because you live in the richest part of the earth you get
| comparatively extremely well rewarded.
|
| I don't fault people for doing jobs like this, it obviously pays
| and you can go home and do something else after it. But praising
| them for it seems utterly ridiculous.
| chris_wot wrote:
| So Trump literally took food away from children. Those funds are
| already allocated, and were being spent on locally produced food.
|
| But, tariffs, ya know!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This is a fun walkthrough of the lunches in school every 10 years
| since 1900.
|
| The 70s-00s were wild!
|
| https://youtu.be/uiLUDJjQrhw
| mythrwy wrote:
| When I was in elementary school in the early 1970s I went to a
| very rural school in a remote community in the Western USA that
| had 2 rooms, 3 grades for each room. The whole school might have
| had 40 or 50 kids tops. The building was built in the 1800s and
| even had the bell at the top.
|
| Anyway it was the best lunch program ever. Everything was made
| from scratch and there was an old lady soup Nazi that ran the
| kitchen.
|
| One of the things that made it really special is the older kids
| did all the work under the supervision of old battle axe soup
| nazi. You would have assigned days to work the cafeteria and wash
| dishes etc. And let me tell you, that lady made sure things were
| done to food safety standards and this was before corporeal
| punishment and grabbing a kid by the ear was prohibited.
|
| Working the cafeteria was actually one of the most educational
| things I got from that school. I learned how to really wash
| dishes properly and fast and that lesson has served me well over
| the years.
| paradox460 wrote:
| When I was a kid in Los Alamos (relevant later), my school didn't
| have a de facto school lunch program. So we brought our own
| lunches. Eventually I learned of a local lady that would come in
| and make hot lunches, and told my parents about her. She was a
| local librarian, and charged something like $2 a day. Switched to
| her for lunch, and got a nice steady diet of things like baked
| potatoes, chili, lasagna, all homemade, all delicious.
|
| A year after I discovered her, some bright soul in the school
| board decided to piggyback on the LANL concessions contact, and
| we started getting Aramark provided lunch. She was told by school
| she couldn't provide the homemade lunches. The quality of food
| dropped immediately, with the nadir being Lunchable cheese and
| crackers on Wednesday (the short day). So back to bag lunch,
| sandwiches and thermoses full of soup
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