So “crap” for the poor?
One effect of this would be that middle class parents would have more of a stake in what schools are serving, improving things for everyone.
Nope nope nope nope nope. My kid is a fairly picky eater, and even stuff he does like has to generally be made the way I do it. Add to that an underweight problem where every calorie every day is important? I couldn’t have the possibility of losing lunch calories every single day.
My college cafeteria was amazing. If it could be that quality, with fresh items, a deli, and a couple options of special entrees? Maybe. But you can’t have that kind of private-college variety in a free elementary school. Plus I really like the feedback when I get the lunchbag back at the end of the day, seeing what got eaten, asking why that didn’t get eaten. Does he still like it? Was he not feeling well? There are some issues in my school where some people claim the kids aren’t getting enough time to eat. An uneaten lunch coming home at the end of the day helps me stay on top of that.
It’s possible things have changed since I went to school but in my experience the middle class kids mostly bought the lunches the school provided. There were a few kids who brought their own lunch but the majority of them ate what the school provided. Those kids who were poor were able to take advantage of the free lunch program.
Have things changed?
I’ve never encountered any local schools that have a sit-down cafeteria, let alone provide lunches to kids. You can buy stuff at the tuck-shop or get a lunch order but that’s it. Other than that you get kicked outside, sit under a tree or on a bench seat and eat with your friends outdoors.
There is a school breakfast program which is a twice-a-week thing but AFAIK it tends to be a toast and weet-bix/porridge sort of deal and is aimed at kids who have to get to school early because both parents work and both leave early to get to that.
If they did introduce something here, and if it was actually healthy I’d be happy to take part (and pay a few $ extra on the fees to cover it) but I don’t like the idea of it being mandatory.
I can see why they want it that way as it makes the logistics of the exercise a lot easier - if you know you’re cooking for the same number of kids every day it simplifies things a lot and (possibly) reduces waste.
My wife spends a lot of time and effort providing our boys with good packed lunches and it would be nice to have that time in the morning back for other things. Both our boys would be OK with the menu but the oldest is far more picky if the same things are on offer constantly so the school would need a lot of variety on its menu.
The problem with the lunch program isn’t them offering lunch, it’s with them banning students bringing their own lunch. The poll asks whether packed lunches should be banned, not whether offering a lunch is OK, but it sounds like some people are answering the second question.
This is a very good way of looking at it.
Vorlon Jr, who just escaped high school, eats dammed near anything.
He drew the line at the school lunches.
My first thought upon reading the OP was that maybe the mandatory lunches aren’t very healthy.
Perhaps someone would care to scrutinize the typical lunch my dad would fix for me to take to elementary school:
-a peanut butter sandwich
-an apple
-a juice box
-a few carrot sticks and celery sticks
I never felt underfed, and while I’m no dietician, I’d wager that my sack lunch was healthier than that butter pie. Mr. Kobayashi’s link also indicates that this proposed meal plan includes a side and a dessert (a chocolate cookie with the butter pie). Dessert was not normal in my family when I was growing up; it strikes me as too rich to have with every lunch.
Slight hijack…
Please please don’t (however inadvertently) shame him for his lack-of-weight, or take every opportunity to dump more food on his plate, or constantly find opportunities to passive-aggressively remind him that his physique is displeasing to you… especially while also simultaneously telling him (and parents/guardians may find themselves splitting these actions between them) that he doesn’t need to care what anybody else thinks about him, superficial things don’t matter, etc.
If I ever encounter my brother treating his (prematurely born) son like that, I will die inside. Apples falling from trees, and all that.
FWIW, that juice box could possibly have contained more sugar than a cookie. Juice is discouraged these days. Dieticians say it is better to offer a piece of fruit so they get the benefit of fibre too, and stick to plain water to drink.
That’s the point that people seem to keep missing in this thread. School lunches in the UK are already catered by professionals, already regulated by standards imposed by government - this isn’t a move to invent school dinners from scratch.
(I’m not sure I agree with it, but we might as well talk about what it actually is)
There’s no way this would fly in the US. The right wing is already up in arms that Michelle Obama is telling them what to feed their kids (which she isn’t doing).
And how dare she have a garden at the White House?
This sounds nice, but do you have any evidence of a plan like this working?
Seems to work in the many, many countries where quality school lunches are the norm.
So you have no evidence of a system improving because middle-income people were brought into it. Interesting.
BTW, my own experience with school lunches indicates that they can be fairly bad even if everyone in a mixed-income school is on them.
That seems a little unfair. An example of something that works elsewhere isn’t a valid model unless it also includes the transition/introduction? Nothing would ever get done.
To be fair, it has happened in the US, but on a school by school basis, rather than an entire state or (to my knowledge) even an entire school district. At least one of the Chicago public schools banned lunches from home several years ago and after much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the media, people got over it.
Of course I’m cynical enough to think that maybe people got over it because that school is full of poor brown children, and were it one of the paler schools, things might have gone differently.
Your use of the terms “tuck-shop” and “porridge” suggest to me that you live outside the United States.
In the U.S., I’ve never seen a school that doesn’t have a lunch room with sit down tables—it might also double as a gymnasium or auditorium/assembly hall when the tables are folded away.
When I was in school we were prohibited from leaving the school grounds during lunch, so there was no opportunity to go buy lunch elsewhere. Either you had brought it with you at the start of the day or you bought the subsidized cafeteria lunch.
Many schools also prohibited eating outside the lunch room. So no going out and sitting under a tree for lunch—although if you had time you could sit under a tree after you had finished eating.
One of the schools I went to didn’t. We had to eat in our classrooms and we weren’t even allowed to sit in other seats than our assigned ones during lunch! That’s really neither here nor there, but I can’t pass up an opportunity to complain about Catholic school.
So you think middle class parents get a say in this but somehow not poor parents? Not seeing the logic here.
What improves things for everyone is freedom to make the appropriate decisions for one’s child without interference. If parents want to feed their own children then that’s their prerogative and no amount of mental gymnastics trumps that.