Jamie's School dinners

Yes. And what's really bad is that the food at home is often just as bad. Nothing but yellow food, as far as the eye can see...

I always thought my school lunches were great back in the day, but of course, by great I mean terribly unhealthy. My favorite dish was served every other Friday. It was called a chimichanga. It was really just dark chicken meat and about a pound of yellow cheese inside a darkly deep-fried tortilla. It was served with sour cream and guacamole. We offered pizza, burgers, and fries every single day of the week. The salad bar contained only iceberg lettuce and the fattiest dressings.

Yep - they sell a package of 2... and have a toaster in the common area. OR you get a sticky bun (prepackaged, full of fat, and gross). OH but they serve milk or juice if you want, so its totally healthy, right?
It's a sad statement that the government won't provide the money (they always say there just isn't enough of a budget for fresh, healthy foods.... in fact, our kitchen isn't even a working kitchen... the food is prepared somewhere else, and the high school just heats it up for serving). It's no wonder we score so badly on state tests (which, is a whole different conversation..LOL)

I interned at a school in Minneapolis that didn't have a kitchen either! Everything was prepackaged in little plastic boxes, talk about waste! Even the orange slices were in a plastic box with a pull off plastic wrap top.

I have my daughter in a small private school with a very limited kitchen. They in turn serve "hot lunches" that they go and pick up, which the parents have to pay extra for. Subway, pizza, one meal some lunch person makes once a week generally consisting of hot dogs or something similar, and PANDA EXPRESS!

Now my daughter has food allergies so we bring her lunch and supply her snacks (or she'd be eating those nasty orange "cheddar" cheese cracker packets) but it pisses. me. off. that they serve this stuff. Being a private school with many parents on the BOD it surprises me that parents aren't in an uproar about the food that is served.. but I am the only one I hear complaining.

It definitely starts at home, parents have to teach their kids how to eat...but it surely doesn't help that the kids are getting served horrible food at school too. And they wonder why kids have ADD, too tired, can't pay attention to the lessons, etc.

I get so upset by the school food programs at most schools. This food tastes just like fast food and trains the tastebuds to want this type of food.

It just makes me angry to see Michelle Obama out there "fighting the war on obesity" while our school food programs are a joke and don't even get me started on the USDA.

We have an actual chef who makes everything from scratch (her kids go to the school--she used to work at a fancy Washington DC restaurant before she had kids). Sadly, more than half of it ends up in the trash, too, unless it's spaghetti or chili day!

I usually pack lunch for my kids and at this time of year I feel so out of ideas for my picky little ones!

Yep - they sell a package of 2... and have a toaster in the common area. OR you get a sticky bun (prepackaged, full of fat, and gross). OH but they serve milk or juice if you want, so its totally healthy, right?
It's a sad statement that the government won't provide the money (they always say there just isn't enough of a budget for fresh, healthy foods.... in fact, our kitchen isn't even a working kitchen... the food is prepared somewhere else, and the high school just heats it up for serving). It's no wonder we score so badly on state tests (which, is a whole different conversation..LOL)

I agree 100%. My daughter has been trying to do something to make a change. You know it's not good when kids think what we consider junk food choices are yucky too. I really feel for those who are dependent on free or reduced lunches (including my own kids) because it's almost better to let them be hungry than force them to eat such crap.

She was trying to watch her sugar and log her food for about a week. She couldn't do it because everything was prepared and had no labels nor information and the staff was even less helpful. They just put it out there, they don't care either. Not like they HAVE to eat it.

Soon as their support money comes through - my kids are brown bagging it from now on. Makes me insane to think that all the hard work I do at home keeping crap out of their diets is undone (if they eat) at school.

I also don't understand why in elementary school they try to get the kids to pick one item from several groups (ie. dairy, grain, meat, vege) and if you don't have everything you can't use the free/reduced plan to pay for it. It's wasteful in one aspect if the kids aren't eating it but it's good in another in that they're trying to get them a sort of balanced meal. They stop doing that in middle school and let them get whatever they want and it doesn't matter if they only grab half of what the meal is planned to be.

I agree with the other poster who said it's why the test scores are so low. My daughter eats their breakfast (trying to find the highest protein option available) and suffers a carb crash within an hour. Not to mention their bookbags are way too heavy. They should be serving protein shakes not energy drinks full of sugar and caffeine.

Oh and the salad bar is a joke too. Certainly not fresh and definitely not healthy. I'd rather eat off the produce aisle scraps and rotten pile. I didn't have a salad bar in school in the 80s in NJ. We didn't have vending machines or soda either. We didn't eat unless it was served there for lunch or we brought it from home. There was no breakfast offered we had to eat before we got on the bus or hold out til lunch. I never bought school lunch and was lucky to get a milk. I brought everything with me everyday until the end of high school when I had a job and some spending money of my own and even then I usually brought my food from home.

I had Turkey Twizzlers at school until Jamie's School Dinners!

Haha, but yeah, the stuff is awful. I just don't think schools can afford to have that many healthy options.