I feel the author needs to visit a larger selection of states and school districts. As a veteran of the academic trenches for 37 years, I always tried to eat lunch with my students and to eat what they were served. Part of this was to get to know them on a more intimate level, when they weren't being "students" but themselves. Another part was to show them that the food they were served had a name and it was edible. During those 37 years, we moved away from a home-style menu to a fast food one. It is true that there is a salad bar and the children were required to take something from it, and then a choice of two entrees, unless they ran out of the more popular one. Corn dogs, hamburger, pizza (even for breakfast), repeat. And don't get me started about the prepackaged food , all wrapped nicely in plastic that gets served. A lot of the food went uneaten and directly into the trash. The reason a mother should pack a child's lunch is because it lets the child know that their parent(s) are taking care of them, and as we all know, Mom's cooking is the best (usually). Moms know better than anyone what their child will eat and what they will not touch. It's the power of what we knew first. Children are more likely to eat a home lunch than a school one. I've seen it happen year after year after year.
381
@Marmylady I'm a school board president in a small elementary district. For over 37 years food service did deteriorate. But that's turning around. In ours, we cook food from scratch. Most don't. But that can change, with will, common sense, and participation. Parents are selfish, rightfully so. They want what's best for their kids, before everyone else's. But what's best for your children is probably to share meals with each other, not pack your own special thing.
79
@Marmylady I'm amazed that I didn't graduate HS at over 200 lbs considering all the junk food our cafeteria offered. Perhaps it was because my parents were reluctant to dish out the necessary cash every day (there were no accounts, you paid at the register).
I suppose it was just that we were young and resilient. Still, I remember as a HS freshman being AMAZED that my high school offered pizza EVERY DAY. In middle school, it was only once a week.
Of course there were fruits and vegetables, but it would have been nice to have a salad bar as opposed to per-packaged salads from the outside. While soups can contain a lot of sugar/carbs, if from-scratch organic soups could have been available, I think that would have been a tasty and pretty healthy option.
But the main dishes were all the usual suspects--burgers (and who knows the quality of the meat), fried chicken and breaded chicken patty sandwiches, pizza, french fries, etc.
I'm also amazed at how much garbage is available in HOSPITAL dining facilities!
Anyway, perhaps another factor in favor of my HS buddies and me was that our school emphasized sports (in a healthy way, we were pretty bad in football and basketball, but the school emphasized the health factor and the teamwork factor more so than simply "winning") and I'd say at least half of the student body was involved in a sport, at least the freshman and junior varsity level.
Memories . . .
19
@Brian Are your school cafeterias serving those meals made from scratch on styrofoam plates? I hope you aren't. If you are, you are contributing to the destruction of the environment. Please tell us.
21
I attended elementary school in the 50's, It was a Catholic school with no lunch program. Each student brought a lunchbox to school with a thermos of milk -- no plastic, no styrofoam. There were no reduced price lunches or breakfasts. We ate breakfast at home, usually hot cereal with fruit. In the public high school there was a hot lunch program but I didn't like the lunches so I brought a sandwich to school every day and bought a small container of milk at school. Students do not need hot lunches -- they don't work on farms. Parents these days, even those on food stamps, are lazy so taxpayers have to pay for many of the student breakfasts and lunches. This breakfast/lunch business should be the responsibility of the parents, not the taxpayers/the government.
17
@Carol
A hungry child has a hard time learning. If I want my tax $ to have the greatest effect, I'll pay for school meals.
28
You’d get mor value from your taxes going to free contraceptives.
17
I love Spanish weddings for not offering a vegetarian option. I’ve been to many including my own and if you don’t want meat or fish you simply put them on someone else’s plate. This makes me chuckle compared to peanut allergies and all the hysteria always coming out of the U.S. Americans have to be high maintenance about everything.
16
Boy - food really brings out the scolds.
16
When visiting schools in Finland I learned that one healthy meal was served to everyone in the building, staff included. No money exchanging hands. The same menu was offered in gluten-free, vegan, and lactose intolerant versions. Since I have celiacs I was greatly appreciative and had the first fish cake I had enjoyed in years. The food was hot and delicious. One menu, no charge. So simple and humane.
586
@Mary T mentioning Finland or any of the Nordic models has now become a Democratic Party internal sore point cuz Bernie would like to emulate Finland.
19
@Mary T my son attended a German school as part of an exchange program. Very similar — trained cooks who were a valued part of the school community prepared fresh, tasty meals. My son looked forward to eating there, as opposed to his school here.
130
@Mary T You and your fellow parents are certainly free to build a school that follows that model. No reason to keep your kids in the state-run schools. Gather up your fellow parents, start out homeschooling, and serve the food you want.
If the model makes sense, you will be able to build a charter school and eventually out-compete the state-run school.
This is America, we can do whatever we want. If you want the Nordic model, stop waiting for someone to build it for you and make it yourself!
25
As Ms. Gaddis noted in her middle paragraphs, the quality of school lunches is about to deteriorate. Why? Because the GOP believes the marketplace should determine what foods should be available to children, not "the government". Left to their own devices, children will naturally choose fatty, sweet, and salty foods over ones that are nutritious. Those instagram-worthy school lunches pictured in the article will vanish in September 2020 to be replaced by the burgers and fries.
321
@WFGERSEN
What would the comments section be without the automatic blame game against the GOP?
17
@WFGERSEN I can provide a more accurate perspective of what's happening.
The proposed change will give districts more flexibility: for example, the youngest students won't *have* to be served a whole cup of fruit. A lot of waste was happening, and that's bad for many things, including the environment.
It's complicated. The Obama changes, which moved away from the well-loved pizza and potatoes in favor of low-calorie veggies, have been a big problem for all the teenage boys, for example (my HS son has to buy "double lunches" now). Learning is a challenge when you're hungry.
Obama's changes have not been a good thing for everyone. Some tweaking is appropriate.
16
@WFGERSEN Our kids always chose healthy foods. Faced with options of cookies, cake, candy or cut up fresh fruits and vegetables, they'd choose the latter every time. We taught them to choose foods that looked like they came from the farm rather than the factory, and that early lesson really stuck. I don't think the problem is 'kids being left to their own devices'. I think it's kids being taught early on to choose unhealthy foods. Get them involved in the 'food versus factory' mentality early on and they might surprise you.
9
It’s a shame to see a carton of cow’s milk on every tray. Cow’s milk is for baby calves, not humans. The dairy industry has brainwashed people for decades to make a buck— it does not make humans healthy. There is no value or benefit for people to drink the milk of a cow. School administrators and educators: do what is best for children, cows, and the planet. Eliminate cow’s milk from school menus now! Replace it with any of the plant based milk options or healthier beverages that exist. This is not difficult.
Dairy cows are continuously violated through artificial insemination to produce ~100 lbs of milk per day, 10x more than she would naturally. They are forced to endure painful, inhumane and gut wrenching conditions and treatment. Their newborn calves are whisked away within hours or days after birth to ensure every drop of the precious milk is shipped for human consumption. Only money hungry executives running the dairy industry, or lobbyists getting kickbacks benefit. We are better than what they’d have us believe and do. Time to think for ourselves.
On top of all this, Dairy products are a leading cause of food allergies, which plague many school children. These statistics and more are readily available to anyone willing to truly learn. Start by watching cowspiracy on Netflix.
12
Well. IF your school is offering a good, healthy lunch, shortly they won’t be with the Purdue/Trump rollbacks is Michelle Obama’s efforts to make it both nutritious and delicious. Have to wait for the next democratic administration that won’t tell you how to behave on private, but won’t poison your kids, either.
5
I thought the point was to have kids pack their own lunches, as my three did--under supervision.
7
I don’t think the author has spent a lot of time in average schools. I am in Austin, where apparently we could have grass fed beef if we all started to buy lunch, and the food is shameful. Chips with cheese sauce? That’s not lunch for a small child - that’s a ticket to obesity. I used to get the school lunch with my daughter on pizza day and would always get the sides. They were not palatable. There is nothing good about cold, overly steamed broccoli or cold sautéed chickpeas...and on what planet do chick peas go with pizza? Most of the food that is served is overly processed and unappetizing, and while it is cooked, at our school, it is seldom warm. There is a salad bar, though very few kids eat from it, and fresh fruit is forced upon the kids, but what can a kindergartner do with an unpeeled orange? They go right into the trash because the kids “can’t get the fruit out.” This article was a joke. I’d also like to point out that many of the kids that are served by the free lunch program don’t have access to good quality food at home and so healthier choices are foreign and therefore less palatable to them. As with everything in education in this country, this seems to be a race to the bottom. Your kid eats garbage so mine should to? No thanks.
33
The long waiting lines to get cafeteria food leaves elementary students with only 5-7 minutes to eat, and with so little time, they wolf down significantly more food than when they have ample time to eat. If more students get the cafeteria food, there will be longer lines, with more rapid eating, and more overweight children.
See: Zandian, M., Ioakimidis, I., Bergström, J. et al. Children eat their school lunch too quickly: an exploratory study of the effect on food intake. BMC Public Health 12, 351 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-351
11
Just when we thought unnecessary sexism had been routed out...here comes an article that works extra hard to turn this into gender issues.
4
You are right. I should stop packing my kids lunches. They should pack it themselves.
19
According to my kids, most of the healthy stuff — all veggies and some fruit — ends up in the trash. In with the burger and trash for the carrot sticks.
4
Sad that the author implies that participation in school lunch programs ought to be the default position for families.
If school lunches need increased funding, provide it through taxes rather than shaming others into participation.
12
Using leftovers from evening dinner for packed lunches the next day is a great way to make sure that food is not wasted and that kids have a healthy lunch. It also saves money. I understand the author's points about supporting public lunch programs. But, I am a firm believer in teaching kids to waste not want not... with respect to both food (eating leftovers) and packaging (reusable containers/utensils rather than throw-away paper and plastic at schools).
15
I'm 62. When I was a kid my mother packed our lunch until at some point - I don't remember the age - we had to make our own or purchase the school lunch out of our own pockets. This was not because she had a problem with the nutritional value of the school lunch, but because it was cheaper to bring our own. On those occasions when I was given money to buy lunch, I considered it a huge treat!
7
A few things missing from this:
- Did you ask kids what they thought? No
- Did you ask parents why they want to pack lunches for their kids? No
- Did you sample the range of lunches available? No
- Did you factor in the waste that comes from school lunches? No
You assumed much in this opinion piece. And the generalization that women do all the cooking is categorically false. Every family has a division of labor. It's unfair to think that women continue to do all the cooking and housework. A sample of one - I mostly cook dinner and my wife packs the lunches in the morning. And we are happy to say that our kids have never had a hot lunch - even though we've offered and asked many times. Why - because they don't want to wait in line.... ha. They'd rather use their time eating with friends.
17
The byline refers to the author as an expert on school lunch POLICY. She is apparently less expert on school lunches themselves. The ideal of school lunch described in the article sounds great, but it is a long way from the reality my children and I have experienced in three well-intentioned and generally well-run New York City public schools over the last 10 years. In all three schools the lunches have been vile, minimally nutritious, and almost universally disliked.
17
Maybe if school lunches honored healthy choices and didn’t serve carcinogenic meat, I wouldn’t have to send my kid to school with an ethical, healthy vegan lunch. Even the vegetarian options are loaded with cheese. We have no choice but to pack our own.
6
A home-packed school lunch consisting of sliced bologna on Wonder bread, bag of Cheetos, banana (high sugar fruit) and a Twinkie is being replaced in many nutrition conscious Pinterest-following families by sliced turkey/sprouted bread pinwheels, vanilla yogurt, organic blueberries/strawberries & bell pepper strips. YouTube & other social media has had a POSITIVE effect on what we feed our children. YouTubers present wonderfully creative & nutritious ideas for school lunches, healthy budget meals, grocery hauls, shopping tips, etc. Yes, this fosters some competition among parents (like with everything else these days)...but at least the end result is better nutrition. School hot lunches are improving in part fueled by social media/parent expectations & we should keep up the good fight for high quality standards. It has never been the cultural norm in America for schoolchildren to all eat the same school provided hot lunch (as it has been in other countries). I think one other factor not mentioned here is that it is not unusual for a schoolchild to begin his/her school day at 7:00 am and not arrive home until after 6 pm. Parents feel the need to pack a school lunch that is individualized to their child's taste and appetite (aftercare may not provide a substantial snack).....and like many have mentioned, a packed lunch does represent an act of parental sacrifice (making, packing, purchasing) and love which does not go unnoticed in the life of a child.
8
This is bananas! We used to pack a lunch for our kids and got tired of it. School lunch in my district is $1.75. Elementary school. All three of my kids eat it now and never complain. We taught them how to pack their lunches and they all didn’t want to so we said “school lunch for you!” It’s balanced with healthy options but a few things I related to with other commenters: massive plastic waste, massive food waste, what happened to using plates and silverware like when I was in high school? I don’t even want to pack a lunch for field trips now!
3
I was a tutor for two years at an elementary school in Manhattan. Clearly, you haven't seen the slop offered to these students, my heart broke every time I walked in the cafeteria and saw what was considered healthy.
That is, if you could stomach the smell of the food. For all the knowledge we have about eating healthfully, and the importance of young children learning about it, it is remarkable that the author can make these claims about the current situation.
18
My son's school district has free lunch for all. I pack his lunch. He is a vegetarian and lactose intolerant. They do not get a range of fresh fruits and veggies; virtually everything they get is packaged and shelf-stable. I would love it if they had actually school cooks like they did when I was a kid, but they definitely don't at his school. They aren't serving a salad with pita and apples as in the picture to the left (all of which he'd happily eat). Heating up prepackaged pizza is not cooking. So I'll keep packing fruit and nuts and hummus and the like.
12
One year in high school, one of my classmates brought a bean sandwich every day during Lent. Would they be expelled for that in the current thinking?
2
Why is food for the people of the US, especially children, not subsidized?
3
Reason to pack your child's lunch? How about the school not having a cafeteria so it was pack or not eat
2
Not my kids school they haven’t.
1
Cow's milk--dumped from agriculture welfare programs--does not belong in healthy children's lunches. Big Dairy and its inside advocate, the US Dept of Agriculture, are long overdue for a makeover.
10
Crummy commodity-based USDA garbage, propped up by FedGov policy.
No thanks, I'll have my own healthy lunch.
15
I feel so ashamed. Twenty-five years ago, I dropped my 1-year old off at daycare near my office. I only had time to dump some refried beans or a hot-dog into a tupperware and the staff nuked it for him.
Why are we judging anyone's parenting? Why do I feel like this is written for people whose kids go to a well-funded school? Why is this article on the front page?
17
one of the dumbest articles I've read all day. Thinking from a purely cost-benefit perspective, why would anyone buy school lunch when the home made option can be more affordable? Is there really a need to regulate what the children eat nowadays?
13
My daughter is vegan (as am I). Once, she wanted to buy the school lunch, so I asked her what on the menu for the next day was vegan. She said, "An apple".
I've been packing her lunch for 11.5 years. Most college campuses have excellent vegan options in their meal plans, so my time as a school lunch packer is about to end, hallelujah.
8
I can’t get over all the disposables - what happened to trays you could sled on if they happen to make their way to the top of a hill with snow?
Also, my daughter has no interest in vegetarian option available four days a week. Which might meet some guideline but doesn’t look all that healthy to me. So she packs pbj.
6
In my school district the lunches seem decent, but the problem is that the kids don’t have enough time to stand in line to buy, and then eat. They have to be in and out in half an hour, which is really not enough time if there’s any line. The curriculum is so packed that the administration tries to maximize every minute.
8
My jogging route takes me by an elementary school. One day I somehow managed to pass close to the dumpsters. I was appalled to see the amount of single use food containers thrown out with uneaten food. It was a sea of styrofoam and plastic mixed with gobs of unconsumed food. Knowing this occurs on a daily basis across the country is unnerving.
I would be interested in paying for school lunch if they were served in reusable containers.
A couple of decades ago when I was at school we were served on reusable trays with real silverware. The only single use containers were the milk cartons and napkins. In high school we were given certain days to help in the kitchen with clean-up.
10
My children's school does not serve lunches like that, nor do they have enough time to eat properly. This leads to enormous food waste--not to mention the waste generated by disposable everything serveware. And with the latest news that our president plans to roll back nutrition guidelines for school lunches, no thanks. They'll keep carrying those lunch boxes until they graduate.
8
Our daughter benefited from the Healthy Foods Act from kindergarten to her current 9th grade, accommodation was made for her nut allergies by professional staff and she never had a problem. Breakfast, lunch & after school snack was healthy, wholesome and free for all. We are eternally grateful for the privilege afforded by the taxpayers in support of our youth!
2
I don't know what schools the author has visited but the food served up at our grandchildren's school is marginally better nutritionally than what our children were served but looking at their weekly menu is far from encouraging. To wit: Monday: Cheese or Pepperoni Pizza, Iceberg Wedges, Apple Sauce. Tuesday: Chicken Nuggets, Corn Niblets, Mandarin Orange Sections. Wednesday: Picnic Day: Hot Dogs or Hamburgers, Fries, Watermelon Slices. Thursday: Macaroni and Cheese, Broccoli Cuts, Choice of Stir from Bottom Strawberry or Blueberry Yogurt. Friday: Breaded Fish Sticks or Cheese Pizza, Cut Green Beans, Apple Sauce. A steady diet of that fare is a recipe for early onset of type 2 diabetes. That's why their parents pack their lunches.
22
I work in an elementary school. Part of my job is to accompany a Kindergarten class in the cafeteria for their lunch. I will say that school lunches have improved in the past decade BUT the bar was pretty low to begin with. While we now have a fresh salad bar with our own school garden-grown greens and tomatoes that many kids do choose to sample, most of the lunches are the same foods from our own school days with a slight upgrade- The pizza crust is whole wheat, and there are more fresh fruits offered. The cooked veggies are often soggy and many days canned fruit is served. Nachos and breaded chicken nuggets, hamburgers and french toast sticks still dominate the menu. The PB&J offered are the very sugary Uncrustables by Smuckers. Chocolate and Pink milk are offered alongside 2% and 1%white milk. Which do you think the children choose? Quite a few kids who buy lunch often say they don't like it and throw at least some of it away. I do urge them to take uneaten bananas and apples home. My own teenager bought lunch once in 1st grade and then said never again. She has eaten a home packed lunch every day and she is a junior. Even the high school lunches are unappealing. I will say that most parents ARE packing healthier home-made lunches these days, but there are still so many lunchboxes packed with nothing but Doritos, cookies, donuts, fruits gummies, sugary granola bars and crackers. That's a whole other topic!
5
Actually the price French families pay varies by income level with 7.50 being what the most affluent pay. The average price paid is between 3-3.50. lowest price is about 13 cents. No one is denied due to lack of ability to pay.
They also ban vending machines and junk food is not on the menu.
4
When I was a kid I was desperate to eat school lunch. Unfortunately, I had a milk allergy and the monthly menu couldn't be trusted to tell me what they were actually serving. I had enough lunches consisting of 4 trays of corn when the substantial food was all covered in cheese that I eventually had to give up.
I have a slightly different take on the article (and not sure if this has already been mentioned by other reader(s)). Honestly, if I go by the pictures in this article, I would be appalled to think of all the waste that is being created due to the use of plastic containers, foam plates and plastic spoon/forks. Nutrition aside, when kids bring food from home, they do so in reusable containers. On the other hand, since the schools do not care about sustainability, they end up created some much more garbage which is either NOT recyclable, or NOT recycled due to the prohibitive costs involved. What are we teaching our kids?
9
Not sure if it ever occurred to the author: some parents like me enjoy making our kids lunches. And my kids, both adopted from China, love Chinese food. Sorry, but I don't think there's an elementary school around that can match my mapo tofu.
15
The district I work in serves all food on disposable trays with disposable cutlery. That alone is enough reason to pack a lunch, but the food isn't too great, either. Nachos for lunch? Cinnamon roll for breakfast? We do offer plenty of (individually wrapoed in plastic) fruits and vegetables, but those are generally dumped.
13
This is not what school lunches look like in Baltimore City! The city children get free breakfast and lunch at school and these consist of predominantly processed/packaged food. I'll continue to pack my kids lunch from home, thanks!
10
@Elizabeth Colantuoni
Those pictures are from Austin, which is basically the Berkeley CA of the Southwest.
1
I don't have kids yet.
None of that food looks especially nutritious. I see
1) white/refined flour (buns, pita bread, cornbread, croutons)
2) no leafy greens (kale, collards). Lettuce doesn't count as a vegetable.
3) hidden sugar (ketchup, chocolate milk, jelly in the pb&j snadwich)
4) some fried food (lower right corner)
Cucumbers, tomatoes,, and lettuce are useless veggies. Good veggies are kale, collards, squash, beets, beet greens, arugula, peas.
Apples and lowfat milk are good.
Overall, not quite enough protein. The chili and chicken cutlet might have enough.
It's better than most school fare, but it's not super healthy food or anything.
4
@Anti-Marx
My main dietary prejudice is against white/refined flour. I almost never put it in my body. I tend to believe that deep fried food (fries, fried chicken, potato chips) is less bad than white flour (pizza, buns, goldfish crackers, crackers). That said, I was a thin kid, and I poured goldfish crackers down my throat all the time. I lived on refined flour.
My daughter has packed her own lunches since she started middle school, as did I when I was a kid. Before middle school, we both ate the school lunch. No, it didn't kill us or give us Type-2 diabetes. I have already done my fair share, which is pay for the food and the roof over her head. Kids are so spoiled nowadays LOL
2
If Ms Gaddis is an expert on school lunches, no wonder so many programs are in trouble. She reads like a lobbyist, not a parent. Her sampling is meager: in some cases, some school lunches are better some of the time. No kidding. But to consign your children to mediocrity so things may get better is utter foolishness. Lobbyist natter. Growing up as a kid in a small town, I went home for lunch. From high school forward, I made my own. Even in college at 'elitist' UVA, the meal plan was a horror. Interestingly, Ms Gaddis reaches the right conclusion, and then races right past it. The answer on school food is the same as every answer to every school problem. Community involvement. But then we would need fewer experts telling us what to do and promising their new approach is the new right answer.
11
As a teacher in a good district no the food has not. It’s unbalanced processed and unhealthy. The lunch choices are a horror show of processed meat, salt, fat, fries and “low sugar” junk food masquerading as a healthier option. No one cooks it. It is unfrozen and heated, not fresh in any way and not healthy. Chicken finger pizza fries burgers and nonsense. It’s gross
13
My lunch in school was always a swiss cheese, butter and bread sammich. Maybe a slice of cold cuts. Yummers. But kids needs to be fed and fed well.
Have to believe the author of this article doesn't have kids if she has to wonder why many of us like to pack our kids' lunches.
9
Because son only has 20 minutes for lunch and doesn't want to spend 15 of it standing in line.
13
For crying out loud, are we really going to criticize parents and students who bring their own lunch? Political correctness gone amuck.
21
I'm a school leader at a public high school in the Bronx. Please come join us for lunch one day. Then let's talk about your article.
17
This must from an alternate universe. I have yet to meet anyone impressed by school cafeteria food - that's from K - undergraduate.
7
The unity of school lunches has improved significantly. They are still really disgusting and foul the air in school buildings
3
@aiyagari Our current government wants to do away with the higher food standards (whole grains, not so much fatty and sugary junk) promoted by Michelle Obama because they were promoted by Michelle Obama. Good thing you can afford to donate to school lunches, but I guess you can't stand your tax dollars helping other people.
4
When did Ms. Gaddis really write this? Trump has done away with the school lunch improvements Michele Obama and others worked so hard to put it place.
8
It is exactly because of articles like this one that parents feel pressure... any kind of pressure. It lists so many ways you should feel bad about yourself. Normal people don’t create Instagram lunches. #stupidarticlewithfalsepremises
7
Too bad the Trump administration just struck down the healthy food initiative in favor of junk food. I hope someone is keeping track of all the good things they destroy.
Write an article in a couple of years. The headline will have the opposite message but there will be another Billionaire GOP company profiting from the malnutrition/obesity epidemic.
2
Ms. Gaddis is an expert on school lunch policy. This article seems to indicate that Ms. Gaddis is a busybody. If parents wish to pack a lunch for their kids—and many do—that is their business. Further, the guessing at motives and images offends me.
11
Um, a lot of us Dads make the lunches too.
15
The bigger question is why anyone is still having kids.
4
Not for the progressive Santa Monica public schools (SMMUSD).
1
did you ever think that packing a lunch is cheaper?
how elitist can you be?
11
it's cheaper
5
"Women ... preparing school lunches cuts into their already limited leisure time and adds to the mental load they disproportionately shoulder."
Well BOO HOO for them! Perhaps they should have considered this before they started a family? My goodness that's the most ridiculous thing I've read in 2020 ...
8
The fact that milk is in all four photos reflects that we still have a long way to go. There is irrefutable evidence that dairy is carcinogenic. Apparently, despite this, the dairy industry's continues to dominate the menu of school districts in America.
Dr. Neal Barnard Slams Dairy Industry-Funded Guidelines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QQlQ3vz5TY
Evidence links dairy products to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and some cancers. So why are certain health organizations pushing milk on children? Dr. Neal Barnard talks about the dairy industry's ties to a dangerous new report. Learn more at PCRM.org.
Let's not forget the good work of Michelle Obama toward improving school lunch nutrition has been rolled back by the current administration. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/01/17/usda-proposes-changing-school-menus-allow-more-fries-pizza-fewer-vegetables-fruits-reversing-michelle-obama-effort/
4
The bigger question is: Why Are You Writing An Article About This?
4
Better headline: "Don't Pack Lunch - Make School Lunch Better for Those Who Can't Pack"?
3
"Mothers, in particular, are pressured to be the perfect parent"
so tooo are fathers, your view is myopic ms Gaddis
2
Another clueless and tone deaf article from the NY Times who don't seem to get that not everyone in America can afford to buy lunch for their children every day.
I guess this is another piece written for the people who click on the housing stories 'What you can buy for $1 million in...'
Sounds like you really have your thumb on the economic pulse of the nation! Keep it up!
4
Why Are You Still Packing Lunch for Your Kids?
Because it's cheaper.
4
As long as the" Lunch Lady" is named Betsy, we'll keep on baggin'.
4
Sloppy Joe! Green Jello! Bring em back.
3
Thanks Michelle Obama -
Public school is designed to give your kids mushy brains. Mushy brains through a dumb downed curriculum. Mushy brains via government food at lunch with slop made of soy and chemicals. Mushy brains via the flouride in the drinking water. Mushy mushy mushy squish squish squish squish squish.
Educate your kids yourself.
4
To answer your silly article in a single word: Celiac.
3
I grew up in Oklahoma.
The nasty garbage they fed us they wouldn't feed to a death row inmate. The ACLU was at least fighting for those on death row, but not for the kids.
2
Donald Trump would be happy if all American children grew up to be obese like he is.
6
Why have I been packing lunch for my children every day for 14/15 years now? No matter how you try to pretty it up with beautiful photography in your article of those sad school lunches, school lunches in the USA are still unbalanced, often unhealthy, and very poor tasting. Your photos are higher quality school lunches that are not available in all school districts. Fried and processed food is still very much the norm in most schools. Even your "best class" school lunch options that you photographed look unappetizing. If you want to see truly healthy school lunches, look at photos of what the French feed their children in school. It's night and day. I pack my children's lunches because I value my children's health.
16
@Paula : OK but cut out the "French meme". Those French kids were eating fancy sauces and poached fish -- stinky cheeses! -- things American kids won't touch with a 10 ft pole. They have a different culture -- those are the foods they EAT AT HOME! -- and they are expected to sit down and eat with family like polite little adults, not gobble pizza in front of the TV. Many American children today are growing up with literally no concept of a meal eaten at a table, on plates, with conversation! Their own FAMILIES serve them chicken nuggets and pizza every day!
If that were not enough...those French school lunches cost $7.50 (US) per day! that's 3 times what most US school can spend. Oh and the French families pay for this out of pocket -- they don't have a "free lunch" program.
3
I grew up on school lunches. In NM it was a sandwich, a fruit and a treat, usually a cookie. In IL it was awful. In UT it was great. When my children went to school they got the NM menu from me. I knew better than packing vegetables into a school lunch, unless they were requested.
1
Please at least Google Jennifer Gaddis. I am sorry to say I have not read her book; just a review. She is the one who is trying to discourage big business prepackaged school lunches and make changes by purchasing locally to be prepared on site. It will take a while to catch on. As I recall lunch workers did not know how to do anything but serve, not actually chop or cook. It would employ higher skilled workers. And the aim could be lunch as good as what is a mid day meal in France.
1
Interesting article, and timely. I am a food safety director for a non-profit working on getting farms to implement food safety practices and eventually become USDA GAP certified, in a state where there is a huge farm to school movement. I am also a mom who packs a lunch for my son to take to daycare. I just read Tightrope by Nicholas Kristoff and Sheryl WuDunn. Much of what I've taken from the book is that we need to recognize that investment in the policies and programs we want to have access to is where America has failed in recent decades. School lunch is exactly this. Most everyone sees the need to provide a more wholesome lunch for students. For some kids, there is not a parent at home who can make them lunch, nor can all families exclusively afford one OR the other. The point of this article is to support this effort, whether you allow your kids to buy lunch once or twice a week or you come up with some other way to make a positive impact. All kids should have access to food at school, and it should be healthy. They shouldn't be shamed for not bringing lunch from home, or getting reduced lunch, or whatever. Do what you can to support more equitable options for kids--buying a better school lunch seems like a relatively small step that will make a big impact.
1
I've been working in a public elementary school for the last 30 years. For at least the last 10, I've brought my own lunch to school because the lunch options at are school are like bad airline food-everything comes pre-packaged, nothing is prepared on site. In fact, our cafeteria doesn't even have a first aid kit for it's workers because they don't do any food preparation. So the lunches might be getting better somewhere, but it's not in my school.
7
Counter-productive to look at one meal (school lunch) in isolation. While making public school lunches better for everyone, let us also improve everyone's ability to afford healthy food, period.
For starters, how about $15 minimum wage, family leave and universal health care so that people can live on one job. Then if they prefer to cook at home, they have time to do so.
4
Thank you for bringing this (social justice) issue to attention, no more home lunch from this mom!
We are pretty solidly middle class but our kids' school lunch costs $3 each assuming they don't buy any extras. For 3 kids, we're at $60/week or $240-$300/month just for weekday lunches! Plus, they are often still hungry with what they are served. This is not affordable.
8
My child goes to a small public school in New York City. One with an affluent PTA budget which supports our "alternative" lunch menu. I find it surprising that "mozzarella sticks" are an entree, and that my child is able to opt for a side of onion rings. The fact that there is a salad bar is comforting, but if the meal is not inherently balanced when served those options are meaningless. So that's why I pack lunch three days per week. I also think it's very valuable for her to eat with her peers as part of the community. On those days I ask questions about the options and encourage healthy choices as gently as I can. It's a good exercise in independence, and making healthy decisions.
2
Perhaps it depends on where you are located. I had lunch with my granddaughters on two different days. The food was awful! The bologna sandwich I used to put together for my children was 10 x better!
4
Guilt is an ineffective motivator. If the food was as good, kids would want it and parents would pay for it.
6
School lunches of yesteryear weren't *all* bad.
In my elementary school in the 60's, (Houston, Tex) everything was prepared onsite and was pretty good. Meat, veggies, a yeast roll, milk (white or chocolate) and choice of dessert -- kid-sized serving of ice cream, jello, pie or cake. I usually had the ice-cream or cake.
The rolls alone were a bona fide smash hit. Every day, a second line formed just to buy another delicious roll. They cost 5 cents. An entire lunch was 35 cents, if I recall correctly.
After lunch, we placed our trays, dishes, and flatware on a conveyor belt that carried it all out of sight to the dish room. The only trash we had to dispose of separately was our paper napkin and the small cardboard box that our milk came in. Most kids ate every bite so it was uncommon to see left-over food on the plates.
Alas... Those really were the days.
7
All research indicates that industrialized food increases the risk of cancer. All research indicates that climate change is linked to excessive waste from single use plastic. But thanks for patronizing me for putting pictures fresh veggies on Instagram. It takes time and effort to create my “Instagram worthy” lunches, but imagine how terrible it would be if more parents did that.
7
My older son attended a special-needs elementary/middle school, as he had ASD and learning delays. He was a picky eater, and there was a point when i’d it wasn’t PB&J, he would not touch it.
His school made lunch a part of the curriculum. Teachers sat at each table, and the cafeteria came with interesting meal choices from different cultures each week, which students were instructed to try as a part of the lunch “class.” My son learned to love all kinds of food this way — he may have a better range of tastes than I do at his point.
9
I pack my kids' lunches because they get about 15 minutes to eat, and if they buy school lunch, that means waiting in line and getting 5 minutes to eat. They want to sit down and eat with their friends in a reasonable time frame.
12
I am happy to hear there are schools that have healthy options for lunch.
I am not sure if the private school my children attend have the same requirements. They only 3 options at the school cafeteria: chicken nuggets, Mac and Cheese and pizza. Another thing they also provide is chocolate milk, which I am sure everyone knows, has a significant sugar content ... more than soda.
I would love to rely on my children’s school to provide a balanced meal, but with these options, I feel I have no choice but to make it myself.
6
I ain’t buying it. Not to be dismissive of cafeteria food but no, there’s no way an involved parent on a halfway decent income can’t provide better than that. And why should the state be the chef of choice? As a vegetarian who doesn’t want to support the crop sprayer industry and the damage it does to the immigrants who pick crops, I hope to do better. Sure it’s a pain. Lots of things are a pain. Step up.
8
Maybe "stepping up" would be advocating for better sourcing of the vegetables in your school cafeterias. If you're that passionate about it, tackle the problem. Opting out of the system does nothing for anyone.
3
@Jmart Why must we have a system for something as basic as lunch? Let parents feed their kids. If a family needs food assistance, SNAP should be meeting the difference. We don't need redundant systems.
2
I walked home for lunch every school day from first through twelfth grade, as did most of the kids in my school district. The very few kids that were too far from home to walk, either packed a lunch, or ate at a classmate's house. There were no school lunches provided in those days, and all the mothers were at home anyway. That was long ago and far away in a place called post-war America.
4
Or maybe just do what parents have done forever and let the kid decide what they want to eat. School lunches are good in some places, not as good in others. One size does not, despite the prevailing belief, fit all. Crazy concept in an Era of Overthinking, I know.
8
I was so excited when I saw the title of this article - and so disappointed when I read the subtitle. The question is, why aren't your children - and mine - packing their own lunch?
12
I was so excited when I saw the title of this article - and so disappointed when I read the subtitle. The question is, why aren't your children - and mine - packing their own lunch?
3
We packed lunch for our kids so that:
1.Kids taste home cooked ethnic dishes with lots of variety.
2.Kids have a healthy vegan organic meal with lots of greens.
3.Kids avoid junk food.
8
I like the idea behind this article. But, the author misses major points about the current state of food in public schools around the US. I recommend visiting France or another Western European country to see what a "good" school lunch looks like.
And to echo the parents points below, if your kid will eat your homemade lunch because they like it -- then whats the issue?
Anyone remember the M.Obama push -- a bunch of tasteless uber processed food -- basically the opposite of healthy.
3
The best way to get kids to eat veggies is to involve them in growing veggies. This school used an unheated hoop house to align the school year with the growing year and their harvests went to the school lunch program. The gardening classes included nibble time when kids were allowed to pick lettuce, kale, tomatoes, carrots and eat them immediately. Thus was a great way to create enthusiasm for fresh veggies. https://childrengrowing.com/2015/05/11/share-if-you-think-every-school-should-have-a-year-round-gardening-program/
1
Ugh. The affluent don't want to invest in the public school system and its lunch... Well, we don't. I have an active boy, and I don't want him in a NYC public school at 4 where he will have a worksheet and a behavior chart thrown at him, with 30 mins for lunch and recess. And no, I don't want him eating a hamburger, 1% milk and a side of cucumber. None of that is healthy. Sorry.
4
Milk and a cucumber aren't healthy? Strange times...
2
@Maria before spouting snobbish nonsense go check out what public schools in NYC actually serve. The information is up on the DOE website . The menu is varied and quite good. Yes they do get a hamburger once in a while - but it’s protein.
2
My daughter's elementary school requires a snack be packed in addition to lunch every day. It's hard to just pack a single item as a snack, and I like to provide a sampling of items, so consequently I basically end up packing a second lunch on top of the lunch she buys every day at the cafeteria.
I hate this so-called snack time. I wonder if my kid eats any of the cafeteria food and how much being full from snack has to do with that. Based on the fact that she is starving at 3pm when she gets home, that hypothesis actually makes sense.
Schools should do away with some of the data they provide about academic achievement and provide more data on what my kid actually eats during the day.
2
Starting in middle school, I gave my kids $10.00 per week, which was enough to pay for cafeteria lunch for the week. Then I gave them the choice to either keep the money for themselves and pack their own lunch, or to spend it on the cafeteria. Guess what? All three decided to pack on almost all days. Why? Because they had better ideas of how to spend their money, and most importantly the cafeteria food was gross. Even with Healthy Options push from Michelle Obama, all our school district did was add apples and bananas, which were usually rotten. Even if they were buying they'd still tuck a decent apple from our fridge into their backpacks so they had something healthy to eat.
4
This headline made me laugh, out loud! Clearly Ms. Gaddis has never eaten one of the NYC public school lunches served at all but the most hyper-involved PTA school. "Gross" is the best way to describe it. Really . So much so that this Ms. Gaddis' article reads like a piece from The Onion.
Laughing LOUD at my open work space work station - with a few other NYC public school parents.
5
There's another excellent reason to refuse school lunches - they (at least in my state) are typically served on a styrofoam tray which, after a few minutes of use, goes into a trash can. Think about the amount of styrofoam going into landfills from just one school per week. Now multiply that by millions of schools across the country. It's criminal and negligent from an environmental perspective. We can't seem to do anything right in the United States.
9
Why not petition for sustainable trays and a recycling program?
Talk about being "out to lunch." This writer seems unaware of the cost of buying school lunch every day. Yes, there's a "hot lunch" option that is a deal, but nearly no one gets it. They all order a la carte, and a school lunch can easily cost between $7-10 a day. And while the options have gotten somewhat more healthy, you can still do a much better job at home, at a far less cost. That fact that she identifies herself as a "school lunch policy expert" is hilarious. She is clueless.
11
Because properly done a packed lunch is healthier & lower cost.
10
Stop giving parents advice! We know that home cooked meals are better all around (economically, nutritionally, emotionally, etc.), and this author wrote this?
8
Where are the Trump Steaks?
I do wonder how many kids won't be getting meals like these because so many school lunch programs for poor children have been canceled by Republican controlled legislatures.
"Sure kids will go hungry. But every C17A Globemaster III costs $328 million. And that money has to come from somewhere, right?!"
Particularly when most billionaires and billion dollar corporations like FedEx not only pay nothing in taxes, but have tax positions which are actually revenue streams.
Jared Kusher is a multi-millionaire, but for his last known tax returns, he got a check from the IRS for $4000. You can't do that, and prevent kids from going hungry at the same time.
When I look at these lunches, you know what I think about? The approximately 2,000,000 homeless children living on the streets in this country right now. The kids who, unfortunately, aren't quite as "precious" as the unborn fetuses the GOP is forever wringing it's collective hands over. What a bunch of self-serving, pontificating hypocrites.
5
This is hysterical and maddening. Maybe lunch looks like that in your district but not in NYC, where it should be mentioned, everyone gets free meals.
My older child is in pre-k, she went to 3-k last year at our local public school. I’m the target demographic for the Instagram moms. I’m early 30s, white and yes, I buy organic berries at Whole Foods.
I’m appalled by what they serve kids as young as 3 and 4 for lunch and breakfast. Juice, maple syrup with corn syrup in it. Pizza. Every. Friday.
This woman is either well intentioned and severely out of touch or trying to spin what she knows full well to be a sham.
7
@Julia get a grip. Pizza once a week isn’t bad especially when it comes with a chickpea salad or garden salad. Go check out the menu online it’s not bad - there’s variety. Feb 19 - sweet n sour chicken bowl, veg rice, garlicky green beans, salad and carrot smackers.
2
The school lunch program in France is interesting. I was amazed years ago when I first saw the posted menus on the front of what we call elementary schools in Paris, and even more amazed when I saw the way the lunches were served. I checked in some country schools, and it was the same. Multiple course menus, usually four courses: a vegetable appetizer, a hot main dish, a cheese course, and dessert. The children are served at tables and taught table manners. There is no nonsense tolerated; no food fights, and the children sit still for the most part. A wide range of foods are introduced, and children are encouraged to try everything. Families pay what they can afford. If you want more details, go to:
https://cromwell-intl.com/travel/france/school-lunch-menus/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ovO18E-hgew
8
I think the author should be more concerned about the parents who send their kids to school without breakfast than parents who pack their kids lunch everyday.
11
The parents who send their kids to school without breakfast probably need help, not judgment.
7
Oy, vey. What nonsense is this? My kids pack their own lunches. I have no idea if their lunches are "Instagram-friendly," nor do I care.
5
i get the impression the republican will put an end to those regulations .
1
At least get rid of flavored and low-fat milks in favor of plain, whole milk. If kids won't drink milk, let them drink water. We must remove drinks loaded with sugar; whole milk has been proven to be superior for kids.
2
How times change. When I was in high school (early 00’s) it was frowned upon to pack your own lunch. No one said it out loud but “only poor kids bring their own lunch” was the implication. I don’t miss the school lunchroom.
1
Poor kids or kids with helicopter moms. I know what you mean. I think we felt like adults being able to pick out what we want, I guess.
I'm so sick of reading things like "Instagram friendly school lunches" in article one every topic.
I don't know anyone who put their food or that of their kids on social media. Just stop.
3
Jennifer, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN? The current occupant of the White House has just cut the standards of the federal school lunch programs. And to add insult to injury for the millions of children whom eat hot lunch at school: the agriculture bail-out paid JBS US, $100 million for commodities for said lunch program.. I told my children not to let their children eat hot lunch, as the quality is going, going gone.
3
If the author wants to discuss school lunch policy (which clearly needs tweaking) maybe try not to condescend to and alienate parents who actually care about what their children eat.
7
Just to avoid the use-once utensils, tray, straw, carton and napkins is justification enough to pack your kid's lunch.
9
The food in the photos looks like garbage. No thanks on the food. I'll thank my parents for my sack lunches throughout my grade school days.
3
This article is slightly infuriating. Most parents have no time to post their lunches on instagram. Families choose what they choose for many reasons, a lot I suspect has nothing to do with one's feelings towards the lunch lady or to sell an image on instagram. In general, unless one is so lucky as to live in a school district like the one in Encinitas (http://www.eusd.net/child-nutrition-services/), a home packed lunch is healthier. Recently, my childen started to make their own lunches and I want to encourage that. Abilty to cook/prepare one's own meal is an important life skill.
7
Well after agonizing about all these things and packing lunches, then having my kid pack his own lunches, he's off to college where he stuffs himself with unlimited supplies of campus produced pizza like every other American.
5
What a terrible ecological waste. Single use, non-biodegradable plastic for everything but the milk carton. The kids will drinking the microplastic from the water for years to come -- if the macroplastic doesn't doom the wildlife and us first.
Lunch from home using reusable or paper containers is far better than anything here.
5
Not one mention of ORGANIC or did I miss it ??
I have never voted against any initiative our schools have had via lunches. However, I LOVED making lunches. I left notes, gave an extra snack for a friend, snuck in a new food choice. I knew what juice box was “cool” and could provide at the next play date. Food is such a warming, loving, inclusive thing. I had so many conversations because “Jimmy or Janey” mom bought this kind of snack, etc. My kids made friends vi bartering. One wanted Oreos and the other wanted the school bread (my kid).
I get the article’s point but the headline was “why are you still making your kid lunch” and it’s because I wanted to.
6
The cafeteria food in my local school is disgusting. Everything is pre-frozen and in plastic bags. Kids eat frozen french fries, chicken nuggets, burgers, dollar burritos, cold hard pizza, bags and bags and bags of cheetos and wash it all down with gatorade, which qualifies as a non-soft drink.
1
Oh come on Ms. Gaddis. The cost for providing a sandwich, with a handful of carrots, a piece of fruit and maybe a cookie is more economical than buying a school lunch. And there's very little time involved in putting that together.
Please stop trying to guilt people into supporting school provided lunches.
8
@MTM it’s free in NYC and pretty good.
Because not every kid goes to school.
Well now that the NYT has drawn attention to an effective program that actually HELPS working Americans and their kids become healthier, I'm certain that Republicans in congress will move to destroy it, in favor of the candy and fast food lobby.
4
Dear editors: As a NYC parent, I wish you had addressed the dismal state of food services in NYC schools, the slow pace of and resistence to change, and lack of innovation in quality and delivery. Maybe New York newspaper will give it attention rather than another national perspective that is out of touch with the NYC experience.
3
French fries cooked in oil. Pita bread? Fat free milk is like water. How is that an improvement?
3
Look to France for a vibrant school lunch program.
4
Institutional food is as trustworthy as the President.
3
This idea that kids need fat free or low fat milk is completely wrong. Look at that picture of a salad, apple slices and a couple of little pieces of pita bread. That's not enough calories for a growing kid. At least give the kid some full fat milk.
5
Would it kill you to learn the difference between healthy and healthful?
2
Why Are We Still Scolding Parents? I almost missed this thoughtful piece due to the suspect headline and snarky subtitle. If we would stop blaming parents for everything then maybe we could have a real conversation about why parents and their children are so stressed out.
5
As an observer who has absolutely no skin in this game, I can only say those four photographs of the school lunches reveal a perspective on "healthy," not to mention "appetizing," that is pathetic and discouraging. The Times has run several pieces over the past years on school lunches in other countries (France, for example) that highlight how some countries support and encourage healthy eating among their children. A lot of European children wouldn't touch some of this garbage. No wonder all the moms writing in are packing lunches for their kids!
2
Well, at least until Trump follows through with his rollback of Ms. Obama's school lunch program, that is.
1
Because it's for "those people." Just like the city bus.
I blame Instagram and Pinterest.
1
I pack lunch for myself! BP&J still tastes good!
1
my kid gets diarrhea whenever she eats school cafeteria food. when she eats food from home she doesn't get diarrhea. not sure there's much else to say.
2
We pack a lunch bag, for one because we know what food we use and second I don't believe in school lunch programs funded by the government. That money should be spent on music, art and PE education.
2
Kudos to Michelle Obama.
Gee whiz those portions for elementary kids, know wonder we have obesity in the US
I have only one thought for this author: ketchup is not a vegetable as the school would have you believe.
I read the NYT each day. I'm not sure I've ever felt so encouraged to comment. I hated everything about this article, including the sexism, as a dad who packs my kid's (and my wife's) lunch almost every night. Silliness.
7
People are really proving the author’s point in these comments. The reason American school lunch is bad because there aren’t enough people with resources invested in it and fighting for it. Too many of you are opting out. If we all went in on school lunch and committed to making it better — prepared by professional cooks, and with plenty of time for kids to eat, like in France or Finland — then lunch would be good! The hyper-individualism is the problem. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Are the trays reusable? Cutlery recyclable? Great to have good food at school but does it create other issues over a home packed lunch?
2
My kids attend middle school, where lunch is free to all students. I'd love for them to eat school lunch as it would save time and money. But what should I do if my kids would much rather starve than eat school lunch? They're not even picky eaters. I find that they have no confidence in the quality, taste, preparation and health of school lunch. Perhaps if all school lunches resembled that in the images, it would be appealing to them.
2
I remember as a kindergartner walking by the cafeteria, I was in the afternoon class, and thinking what a treat it would be to get my tray and go pick out my own lunch.
Sadly, my parents moved us to Tripoli, Libya the week I was supposed to start first grade.
Nevertheless, over the years, I was able to eat at school cafeterias when we lived in the US. Some were really good and some were just so so.
I have to say the photos of the meals in this article did not bring out the nostalgia for some of the really good school food I experienced.
Cinnamon rolls, collard greens, corn bread, chicken pot pie, fish sticks, pinto beans, peach cobbler, macaroni and cheese, meat loaf, chocolate cake, and Eskimo pies. Almost forgot the little carton of milk.
In those days, I had this panoply of delights for the low, low price of 25 cents.
Parents must make the decisions that they deem best, but good school cafeteria food was fun, not so good school cafeteria food...and my Mom packed me a peanut butter sandwich with Fritos. Yum, Yum.
Not the done thing today, but I am reasonably healthy in spite of the food.
Buon appetito, first graders!
4
The photos accompanying the article are why I prefer my kids to pack their own lunches: an enormous amount of plastic waste in every school lunch. My kids’ school does not cook a lot of the food on premises and much of what they are served is wrapped in single-serving plastic wrap. More waste that the photos aren’t showing.
151
@Rayna Mitchell thank you. I am surprised this has not been more commented upon.
11
@Rayna Mitchell
Dear Rayna,
I'm an old guy and actually experienced some great school cafeteria food, but the photos of the food that accompany this article look, sterile.
Where is the meatloaf, ham and beans and of course chocolate cake?
I also experienced some bad school cafeteria school, and then my Mom made me peanut butter sandwiches with an accompaniment of a sack of Fritos. Yum, Yum.
5
All of the items on this tray are actually compostable! The tray, utensils, and bowls! Every school in Austin composts - we are working towards 0 waste. Our newer schools even have kid helpers and 100% reusable plates, utensils and cups.
17
The article considered the nutritional value and taste of meals. It did not consider the economics - the limited budget within which school menus planners must work - nor the fact that this is as much a marketing plan for America's food producers as anything else.
In places which put the cost on a sliding scale, there's a shame factor. In places which have parents recharge a card, the logistics of the card are an issue, so is "shaming" if a parent is delinquent. If the cost is made common for all, that eliminates the shame issue, and is a better solution for poor communities where the poverty rate exceeds 70%.
But, the meals are still not that great, nor are they necessarily prepared that well. That varies from school to school. And yes, the tastes kids want in order to eat the meals, rather than dump them in the trash, tend toward lots off salt, fat and sugar. And those kids who dump the meals may go hungry and/or or spend on other equally unnutritious and expensive snacks.
I suggest that people watch Michael Moore's film, "Where to Invade Next", and watch the section where he goes to a public French school, nothing exceptional and has lunch with the kids. If they can serve food that good there, why can't we? I suggest that we certainly can, we just don't want to.
3
This is a unicorn argument. If we spent many more resources and got better paid staff and better kitchens and ingredients, and convinced folks that it was worth it, and made it affordable by subsidizing the cost, then yay we'd all be better off.
Except we wouldn't because in reality, the School Lunch programs are run by politicians, running in electoral systems with voters and interest groups, and these constraints and incentives lead to a very costly system trying to satisfy multiple goals, only one of which is providing nutrition for our kids.
I would rather scrap the program entirely, and institute a system where schools can allow a market for lunches where families can request or sell lunches, and the price can emerge to make it profitable for some families to send an extra lunch or two with their kids to make a little extra money, and other families can buy this lunch and save time if they rather do that. And if folks aren't able to afford this, then the school chips in so some families can buy but pay only some of the cost. This eliminates the need for costly school cafeterias and ensures parents can choose what type of lunch their kid receives.
1
Whether it was grade school, middle school or high school, my kids said that going through the lunch line took too long for their very brief lunch periods. It took away from their social time, so they wanted a packed lunch. And yeah, far less expensive.
7
My kids have multiple severe food allergies. School food service is not able to properly insure safe meals. My oldest is about to go to college and there, too, she will prepare her own meals.
1
My kids told me they loved my turkey and lettuce sandwiches and they were cheaper than school lunch ( we were not eligible for subsidized lunch). They are grown up now and take their own lunch to work instead of buying. I am happy to have my taxes pay for school lunch but we should encourage kids to budget by preparing lunch at home.
4
I vividly recall the taste and smell of cafeteria food in the Chicago Public Schools as a downward trend in quality and variety.
Particularly galling and separating was socioeconomic status that marginalized some and magnified others.
My mother preferred to make a lunch for me. Partially out ot pride. But also based in poverty
By end of my era we called cafeteria food 'chokes' as the sensation evoked if you tried to eat it.
1
If most of the commenting parents pack healthy lunches, I'm wondering whether their children are leaner looking than the typical percentage of overweight kids in the country.
As a sub, I saw many of them pitch their food and buy snacks, mozzarella sticks, and fries...
5
If parents eat healthy, e.g. real food, then school lunches cannot improve on that. But packing that lunch for an instagram moment is all about a parent’s ego and vanity. I had no idea this had become a competition. Absurd beyond belief.
2
Why?
1. The curated photo shown here is misleading. Most schools have very poor choices for vegetarians. (Many days, the vegetarian burger is a burger with patty removed).
2. Costs. School lunch without subsidy is about $4 per kid per meal here. That's about $175 just for kids meals. Our entire grocery bill is $300 per month (breakfast, lunch, snack and dinner).
3. We Americans, in general, need to cook more and eat out less. That practice needs to start with home cooked meals for schools. Involve your kids in the cooking process. They'll like it and turn out to be more responsible adults.
In general, this article is the exact opposite of what we need to recommend our families do. Don't "outsource" the most important life skill and necessity. Cooking and eating healthy food.
12
Having been a school teacher for ten years -- the way to solve the budget problem would be to get in touch with the local pig farmers and have them come, daily, to pick up all of the milk and food the children waste.
In my Denver elementary school, fresh fruit, take a bite and toss it, milk, open it up, maybe take a swig and throw it out, (we so hope it lands in the bin) cooked veggies no thank you, whole grain pizza, no thank you, every day mounds of wasted food and rivers of wasted milk, in urban schools where there was free lunch and reduced lunch offered.
I have no solutions but I can tell you that the regular white bread pizza did get scarfed down, and the whole grain pizza, which by the way is dreadful, was tossed.
Is it better to have unhealthful food eaten or healthful food tossed?
The waste was, and is, utterly shocking.
4
On top of school lunch quality, can we talk about quantity? I have zero faith that I would be full on a school lunch (at my not-rich high school). It usually looks like about half of what I would want to eat, maybe less. I tend to eat a lot in general, so I don't know if most kids who eat school lunch find it to be enough or not. Doubt it though - 1 slice of pizza??
2
If I'm being honest, my school's hot lunches are made of mystery meat and three-month-old too yellow cheese. I pack my own lunch, and while it may be a little extra stress, it's worth not having to buy lunch on nacho day...
7
I enthusiastically support healthy school lunches for children. Shaming parents for packing healthy lunches for their kids is wrong-headed, though.
Doesn't packing healthy lunches help teach children the economic and nutritional benefits of "brown-bagging" a healthy lunch? I'm middle-aged and when I go in for my regular physical exam, one of the questions my doctor still asks me (along with whether I drink or smoke) is how often I eat out. He reminds me that it's healthier to pack a healthy lunch for myself. So why get kids in the habit of "eating out" if a healthy bagged lunch is an option?
I realize that not all families have the time, resources, or inclination to pack a healthy lunch for their children. Others might not want or to be able to do it regularly. So a nutritious school lunch should be available to every student in every school.
This article posits the issue as a bizarre trade-off: either you pack your kids a nutritious lunch or you're sabotaging healthy school-provided lunch plans. As a society, we need to find a better way to promote both healthy school lunches and the habit of packing and eating healthy home-packed lunches.
9
The main reason I’ve been packing my kids’ lunches for years is that I believe in cooking, rather than having food prepared for us. Its a life skill I value and want my kids to have.
I hope my kids have learned not to be afraid of raw ingredients, a knife, a pan and a gas flame.
14
They will thank you. My sons are in their 40’s now and the cook — I fact one is a chef. My grandchildren now are fascinated by cooking and foods of all kinds.
5
I have been teaching for 17 years at 4 schools and have always been impressed with the lunches available in our cafeterias. Is every meal option the healthiest? No, but there are always healthy options and appealing fruits and vegetables.
I also notice what kids regularly bring in packed lunch—cookies, yogurt full of sugar, empty simple carbs like crackers, fruit snacks, pretzels, and chips—loads of highly processed foods. Maybe these packed lunches are organic, but they sure aren’t all healthy! I think some parents might be in denial.
My own child goes to school in a district that serves free lunch to everyone. Sometimes she has pizza, but sometimes we have pizza at home too. I think school lunch is great. For many of my students, it’s the best meal they eat all day.
5
When I read this title I thought the article was going to recommend that our kids pack their own lunches and thus gain life skills, responsibility, etc. Even though your article is not about this I think I am nevertheless going to transition this responsibility over to her sooner rather than later. It will still be home-made of course - cooking from scratch is not something I will give up.
I packed my own lunch at least from the time I was in middle school. Maybe even elementary. It was either leftovers from dinner or a peanut butter sandwich plus two fruits. One was a banana and the other was a juicy fruit like an apple, pear, orange, peach or plum.
I support efforts that fund universal free school lunch and I support leisure time for mothers and reducing their (our) mental load but mandating that children eat school lunch would not help me at all. It would only stress me out.
wrt grass-fed, let us end the government subsidies to the meat industry. This and many other measures would make high quality food affordable. Let the government use some of that money to improve the school lunches. Provide vegetarian options. If possible lengthen the lunch break so that kids can actually eat and digest (after standing in line to get the school lunch).
And let those of us who pack our lunch eat in peace.
7
“In fact, if we could muster the political will, increasing the financial and public support for subsidized lunches would secure a future for healthy school food that would improve public health....”
Shaming parents to buy school lunches is not the answer. We can support good or better school lunches for those who want or need them—without raising taxes to support what many parents prefer to do themselves, without the added waste, and without further contributions to the factory food industry.
8
First, it is condescending (and let's be honest about the subtext: also sexist) to say that parents have been busy packing Instagram-friendly lunches, as if we are all auditioning to be influencers instead of concerned with our children's health.
Second, I can say with certainty, since I have volunteered at my children's school during lunch, that their school lunches looks nothing like the food in the accompanying pictures, which appears to be normal, fresh food I would be willing to eat myself.
That said, I let them eat the school lunch because they request it and they get lots of fresh fruit and vegetables at home. Except on Fridays, because my native New Yorker sons refuse to recognize whatever is served in the cafeteria as pizza. :)
9
Additionally, it is relatively easy to pack lunches in re-usable containers, assuming families are willing to do without plastic baggies, thereby avoiding disposable school lunch containers.
8
This was the problem with school lunches in my kids'sschool that is not address edhere. The school offered a main "healthy" choice like what is described in the article, and then some other choices like a salad, or a short line item, or pizza. So instead of having the "healthy" meal every day and pizza once or twice a month as a treat, the kids get the pizza every...single...day.
8
Then why has trump reduced nutritional standards for the nation’s school systems, and encouraged serving pizza and chicken nuggets, while rolling back guidance for vegetable servings? Why do schools still lunch shame with a cheese sandwich when a kid’s account is in arrears? Perhaps parents can ensure their children’s nutritional and dietary needs best by preparing lunches at home.
4
As a middle/upper income parent, I would have welcomed the chance to purchase a nutritious and tasty meal for my children, but alas, this movement for higher quality lunches hasn't made it to much of silicon valley. I used to allow my kids 1 school lunch/week which they initially viewed as a treat, but they even gave up on it despite the chocolate milk and I was also appalled that the district considered "orange-flavored, sugared raisins" as a suitable fruit (why artificially flavor raisins in any case, I thought they had a flavor already?!). Some school districts in our area have opted to outsource lunch delivery to 3rd party vendors who provide healthy, fresh meals, but sadly that hasn't made it into my local school.
4
Im a teacher. We pay $4.55 for lunch (high school portion). The food is delicious and makes economic sense for me when you account for spoilage. Good selection, healthy salad bar, and no waiting for the microwave. Can't wait for my lunch hour tomorrow.
2
@Patrick
Our high school makes the best tomato soup I have had, and it's a lot cheaper than the Whole Foods across the street.
"While parents have been focusing on creating Instagram-friendly school lunches"
No they haven't.
35
Thank you Jennifer! I'm an elementary school teacher in a public school and frequently go through the lunch line and eat with my students. School lunches have improved dramatically (I'm a baby boomer) since my student days in a public school. No fried foods, whole wheat grains, daily fresh fruit, served by hard working, underpaid "lunch ladies" who care about our students. An urban myth is that most of the food gets thrown away. Just the opposite, many kids would go back for seconds if they could.
3
We are forced to pack lunches as the lunch served in our new school really smells so horrendous of chicken wings ans other fried products , I guess the school admin is making some money giving cheaper options to kids who cannot afford home lunches. This is not true broad based as my gifted kid managed to improve her scores in gifted programs admission tests and manages to move to 3 schools now. Hands down our local school had the best lunch thanks to special care by the principal and staff.
But the current one which is incidentally in a posh neighborhood unfortunately serve the worst fried foods specially those kids that are in the gifted program from poorer neighborhoods suffer the most.
2
I’m a father who prepares lunch for his three kids every school morning. Trust me, I would buy them lunches at school in an eye-blink if that made them happy. So, after reading this article, I asked each of them if they were willing to try lunches provided by their cafeteria. Three resounding No’s!
7
When my two oldest kids were in elementary school in WI, I allowed them to purchase school lunches once a week as a treat. Each lunch was $3.25, which quickly adds up to a big expense if they were to have it five days a week. We are middle class but we didn't have the resources to pay that much for their school lunches. I could buy groceries and pack lunches for them far more inexpensively and, on the whole, they preferred the food from home. This article ridicules selfish families of means for not supporting the lunch program but even middle class families often can't afford paying that amount every school day for each child. The only kids we knew that ate lunch at school every day were the kids that got free or reduced lunch, which was a good portion of the school. We might have chosen that route as well if the lunches were less expensive.
5
Not gonna lie, when I read the headline I thought it was going to be an article about parents needing to let kids do more for themselves. As a parent of three, I have a hard time understanding why any parent is packing their kid's lunch by the time they are in 5th grade. This assumes of course that their children are neurotypical with no special needs.
5
I pack my kids' lunches because it is EASIER for me than allowing my four kids to pack their own lunches. I am stressed thinking about the amount of mental energy that it would take on my part to keep the kitchen stocked so that each kid could take what they want for lunch. How do you keep one kid from taking all the apples/peppers/cucumbers intended for that week and leaving none for their siblings? How do you prevent waste? Who is responsible for letting the person who goes to the grocery store that you are low on popcorn or crackers? And how do you deal with four kids in the kitchen at the same time trying to pack their lunches?
2
Because the food is bad.
I believe the school lunch program started because during WWII the government saw for the first time how many volunteers and draftees were under nourished. So badly nourished they could not be drafted for a war! That will get the government moving... I still remember my father telling me how some of the soldiers in boot camp were amazed to be getting 3 full meals a day - they never had that in their entire lives...
6
My kids have a paltry 25min lunch. That includes travel time to and from the cafeteria. And since they only have one short recess a day (assuming weather is perfect), the rowdy kids have to wait until the line is quiet and straight before they can get lunch. All this means some days they have less than 20 min to eat. If you have to stand in line to buy food, sometimes you have closer to ten min to eat. That’s ridiculous. My kids prefer to bring packed lunches so they actually have time to eat food at lunch. I’ve gone in for lunch duty. The menu hasn’t changed that much from my youth. Leaves a lot to be desired, full of plastic packaging and takes too long for a too short lunch period. And the nutritious lunches I pack are not from Whole Foods and still are a lot cheaper than what the cafeteria charges. Families sending in lunch is hardly something to criticize.
14
Through the years there has been so much pressure to increase academic time that lunch and recess were shortened to accomplish this. Thus, students now barely have time to get through the lines and to finish eating their full lunch. Lunch and recess combined have been shortened from an hour thirty years ago to 30-40 minutes in schools today. And, based on current results, students are none the smarter than they were back in the day. Think too, about why many kids love fast food, this is what they have learned in school as far as fast eating goes.
2
If there's one thing that never changes about our schools, it's the poor quality of the lunches that are served. So when it comes to the advice to buy them, I just say "no." :)
6
Contrary to the majority of the other posts, my kids purchase their lunch from their public school cafeterias EVERY DAY. It's super convenient, they like the food and it's pretty healthy. They eat things like salads and carrots. Why the majority of those commenting want to waste their time packing lunches is beyond me and I applaud this article!
8
My kids always complained about long wait times in line when buying school lunches. If you bring your own, you have more time to actually eat.
14
Our school lunch period is 15 minutes long. There is barely enough time for the kids to eat lunch, let alone go through the lunch line. One skill my children have gotten from school is eating fast. The kids that really need to buy lunch at school often don't have enough time to eat it. As it stands, about half the week her lunch goes uneaten and the reason is almost always because she was talking to her friends. As a society we have de-prioritized food and the healthy social rituals that come from sharing a meal together.
What makes me more upset is that our school has an onsite kitchen, but nothing is actually prepared in it. The nutrition services have consolidated the services off-site and serve pre-prepared meals to the kids that include a good share of hamburger, pizza, hot dogs, and other bland kid-foods.
8
Are you aware of the concentrations of neurotoxic and cancer-causing pesticides and herbicides in non-organic food?
Glyphosate is sprayed intensely on wheat right before the harvest, so every slice of non-organic "healthy" whole wheat bread is packed with this likely carcinogen. Chlorpyrifos and neonicotinoids are still not banned.
Until school lunches are organic, there is every reason to pack a child's lunch.
6
As a non-parent I am curious as to how true this statement is?
"Middle- and upper-middle-class women especially are encouraged to pack lunches made from pricey local organic and fair-trade ingredients"
As in, is this pressure truly the norm for "Middle" and "upper-middle" class women?
Or is this only true for self described "middle" class and above families living in a select urban areas? At least six figure and above in other words.
If it is true I'm surprised that the organic section of supermarkets outside of whole foods isn't larger in my local grocery store (and I live in a fairly affluent area...). If not true, the article is fun, but I think "picky kids" might be a more accurate cause of the lack of participation across the nation. Even if that isn't as much a "close to home" reason for select NY times readers.
4
Despite all the tweaks in the menus based on federal guidelines, the problem remains that most of the choices are "kid food" like chicken nuggets/finger, burgers, and pizza. The fact that there is milk and an orange along with it means nothing. When my teens were in elementary school, I didn't want them forming preferences for those things and becoming like every other kid (and sometimes adults!) who won't eat anything else. Not when I could easily make them a sandwich or salad with some fruit, etc. And thanks for the concern about my mom time, but I got this.
7
It may be that the school lunches are getting better than they used to be but that's a very low bar. I think the quality really depends on where you live, maybe this may be the case in areas of coastal CA and the east coast. In central Illinois, which is probably the more toward the average in the US, the school lunches are slightly better than 20 years ago however still rife with too much sugar and complex carbs. Most of the food served in schools around us are contracted out to horrible catering companies that only care about serving the cheapest, easiest food they can. All that to say, this article is seriously misguided.
8
I live in coastal CA and it's true here as well. We are vegetarians and the only option is a cheese pizza once a week. And the worst quality. I think packing lunch is still the way to go if you want to watch what goes into your kids body.
6
At some of the poorer schools where I substitute teach, the food is awful. Lunches consist of fried chicken tenders, waffles and chips. Sometimes there’s an apple but the kids usually don’t take them. It’s all carbs.
13
I think the author undercuts her good points by suggesting that parents pack lunches so they can Instagram them (i.e., for social clout or bragging rights or something). Most of us are not able to waste time with a social media show of making lunches. I know that for my family, my husband makes lunches b/c it is more affordable (even using some organics), and profoundly less processed. My children do get school lunches when we are busier, and they are being served sugar sweetened milk or fruit juices. It's not the end of the world, but having a sugary drink daily in childhood can contribute to health problems. We don't pack lunches for some vague bragging rights--not sure who the audience is for this piece. Certainly no one in my set.
I'm willing to do a lot to help even out access to good lunches for kids of all income levels, but not at the expense of acclimating my kids (and many other kids who have less access to healthy eating at home) to sugary drinks. Those palates are forming now, and habits are hard to break. Just today the NYT is running an article by Jan Brody pointing to sugary beverages as a problem for a nation facing an obesity epidemic. Why not give the kids the option of whole milk or water?
I still have my kids buying lunch about once a week--I'm not terrified of chocolate milk, but creating a habit of it could have quantifiable negative effects.
5
You have clearly not seen my son’s cafeteria lunch options here in Brooklyn. Maybe it’s an
improvement, but it is still awful and I am very thankful he doesn’t want to eat it.
15
I don't know where they got the pictures for this article, but as a newly retired teacher, I can tell you that this looks nothing like the food that was being served in our cafeteria. As a mother, I would not want my children eating that food. Even I did not eat that food. First of all, it was not what I would consider healthy. I worked in a school where for many of our students, this was the only food for them for the day. It just is wrong to see what they are given to eat. I would love for students to have the types of lunches talked about in the article, but overall I don't think this is happening.
11
It's great that school lunches are getting better! But there are times when a home-prepared lunch is much more than a good meal. It can be a connection to a culture; a little bit of "quality time" when parents are working late and too busy to have dinner together; an expression of love.
4
Studies show that lunches produced my schools have 40-52% of the food given to kids is tossed in the trash whereas a homemade lunch gets eaten.
And lets not forget that big ag, big business has a big say in what food is made for kids. Google school lunches around the world to see that America falls short on delicious school lunches!
And the idea that a homemade lunch is some high income fare makes me laugh since the best homemade school lunch tend to be awesome leftovers from dinner. That does NOT get tossed.
Not to mention depending on who is president the school lunch program may or may not have funding decreased or offerings allowed in public school lunches cut.
12
The problem is that like most socialist programs, this is not sustainable unless we are all compelled to buy in. The State decides and we all have to follow. Not the American way. Not then, not now and not ever!
8
@BC Inequality is the American way. Thousands of children are going hungry.
Now school lunch is socialist? Calm down. It’s very helpful to those families who can’t afford or don’t have time to pack a child’s lunch. Children should have that option.
School lunch should also be healthy and tasty. It was going in that direction until this administration decided to roll back new school lunch regulations because of intense lobbying by the tater tot companies.
As a parent, I've eaten at my children's cafeteria and the food was of low quality. As such, I pack their lunches. It would be nice to live in a where the food was good. I live in a middle class Miami suburb.
5
When I was a kid in school I loved the cafeteria paper sack lunches...hamburger bun with some kind of hamburger meat goulash , fruit, milk and the best chocolate cupcake that ever graced the earth. All of it absolutely delicious...yeah, 65 years ago.
3
I just showed the header photo with the four hot lunches and asked if this looked like the hot lunch in her school and she said not at all. When I asked if hers were good or bad compared to them and she said bad. We live in an affluent community in Rhode Island with a school district that consistently ranks 1 or 2 in the state, so that's pretty disheartening :/
9
My 8 year old complained that on hamburger day at school they don't have lettuce or tomatoes for the burgers. Doesn't sound like there were any fresh fruit or veggie options. she mostly brings lunch from home. She LOVES breakfast at school because they have sugar cereal choices which I refuse to buy.
6
It is not only about the quality (or often lack thereof) of what's in our kids' plates at school (or at home, for that matter), it is also about the "experience". When I hear my kids' school principal stating that lunch break will now be reduced to 30 minutes, "because you know, Dr Rousseau, kids don't stay at the table, they eat in 5 minutes", then I think we have a real problem. We should set an example ourselves, and help our kids to sit down and enjoy their food. And the company of their peers. Volunteers could help keep them focus on eating well, slowly and enjoy what they eat. Eating well is not only about the content. Context matters too. Starting at an early age.
7
When I was in elementary school, back in the Stone Age, I told my mother to go to my school cafeteria and get their recipes. She never let me forget that.
8
This article assumes that yummy, diverse options are present in all school districts. I assure you that this is not the case. We live in a large district near Chicago, and my daughter's lunch menu is on a pretty routine rotation. This rotation includes: Pizza, pizza dippers, stuffed bread sticks with marinara, hot dog, cheese burger, mini corn dogs, pancakes, French toast sticks, ham sandwich. That's about it. No matter which way we slice it, pizza-ish foods are the option 3 of 10 days, and it's not tasty. This is why we pack lunches nearly every day. It's a gigantic PITA, but we feel the best choice for our kiddo.
11
Thank you for saying this! Same here in the upper-middle class suburbs, where you might think cafeteria fare would be better. I’m glad the school in Austin, TX has better options, but this isn’t the norm.
1
“while some parents have been focusing on creating Instagram-friendly packed lunches, the quality of school-cafeteria food has improved significantly.”
This writer couldn’t come across as more privileged and clueless if she tried. No. This is just...no. Out here in working parents reality land we’re doing it like it has always been done. Sandwich, chips, a banana or apple, and whatever else we have to throw in the bag. The idea of posting it, or anything for that matter, on instagram is not even under remote consideration. And the cafeteria food is still bad.
18
@W.H.
Ms. Gaddis is an assistant professor at U. of Wisconsin. I don't think she has a clue about the reality of what is served in our school cafeterias.
Her byline states that she is an expert on school lunch POLICY, not what is actually being served in the lunchrooms of our schools.
School lunchrooms are like any other restaurant. The quality of what they serve depends, mostly, on the cooks.
Do they cook from scratch, or just open up a package of frozen something or other and throw it in the oven?
8
@W.H. : Exactly. Working parent here with a kid with sensory issues and serious food allergies. Lunch lately? A lara bar (bought for $1 each on sale), some gluten-free crackers (Simple Mills, bought in bulk at Costco, a couple of handfuls tossed into a tuperware container) and some fruit (some frozen mango, also in bulk from Costco and tossed into a container, or an apple or a couple of mandarin oranges). It does the trick and he eats lots of veggies and whole grains and protein for breakfast and dinner.
The idea that any of us have the time, money and energy to prepare an instragram-worthy lunch is just laughable and smacks of some serious privilege.
4
Right?! Who has time to post lunches on Instagram?
No. Just no. I dont care how “great” school lunches get, they will still be cheap junk. My kid is fed snacks at her upscale pre-k and it is still junk. Waffles and defrosted fruit, sausage, rice cakes with sun butter. On the surface its far better than what I got at school, but its still mostly heavy on the carbs, fat and sodium. They aren’t exactly dishing out steamed broccoli and corn (which incidentally she loves).
2
Because it's still way cheaper and way healthier to make your own. I can make a lunch for way below 2 dollars 50 that is better than anything from a cafeteria/
15
None of the kids deserve to eat the kind of trash served at our public school at LAUSD. I certainly advocate for needy children to be served wholesome food but I won’t sacrifice my children’s health for policy.
Our charter school had a cooked on-site wonderful program that we purchased, even though it cost $5.10 a meal. (With vegan, vegetarian, and gluten free options every day; milk waiver so that children could choose what to drink, organic when at all possible). That is food for children and until the diary/corn agribusiness and low federal repayments stop controlling what is served, we will not have healthy children.
15
Amen to this. Dairy milk being pushed on kids as a health food is a joke, at best.
1
Mine is past school age, so packing him a lunch means avoiding fast food at work, but when he was younger, paying for school lunch was the problem. There was no way to limit what, or how much, the funds in the account, or up to a $5 overdraft, could go for, so he would buy as much as the account allowed immediately. Whatever extras were for sale, he'd buy--extra milk, juice, ice cream... to be fair, he is on the spectrum and additionally suffers from mental illness, and another child who is more able to respect boundaries and follow rules with the school lunch account may be just as well off with school lunch.
I'd rather pack my kid a PBJ—whole wheat bread, no-sugar peanut butter, and whole-fruit jam—than have him eat the crustless white bread, oily, sugary Skippy, and sugar jelly that they serve.
There is no comparison: Home-cooked food is healthier.
19
I’d like to instagram what my kids school lunches look like so we can have a more factual basis for discussion about parent choices. And I live in a district that has no fast food company handling the meals and tries to do healthier options including a salad bar. My kids go to a title one school and many of the kids who qualify for free and reduced lunch don’t eat school lunch because the options are not culturally relevant. The district is working on that but your presentation of school lunch is not based in reality.
4
@La Annabanana : I love this. I feel like I need to open an Instagram account so I -- and all the other indigent parents commenting on this article -- can share photos of what our kids' lunches *really* look like.
Then there needs to be another part with photos of what gets thrown away with lunches from home versus what gets thrown away when the kids get a school lunch.
When mine gets home from school, I tell him he's got to eat what's left of his lunch before I'll give him more food. Or at least eat the perishable parts of his lunch. The tupperware of crackers can get replenished and sent again the next day.
2
At my school, when we had spinach, they always gave us pizza too, like they were consoling us over the spinach. But my veteran father was still locked into his military canteen diet of SOS etc, so the only veggies I got were at school.
And spinach tastes okay when you eat it on top of the pizza.
I would ask my school to provide sources for all of the food they serve children.
My local grocery store is unable to tell me where their poultry and seafood is from.
1
The NSLP is no longer a sink for excess agricultural commodity production -- it needs to go. Rather than this national program, doesn't it make sense to roll the lunch subsidy into SNAP and just let schools serve whatever lunches their communities prefer, and let parents decide whether to prepare lunches or have their kids buy? Helping feed the children of people who are struggling financially is a good societal investment. But the school lunch program in general and this author's suggestions in particular are misguided.
Truthfully, no matter how "good" school lunches may be in America today, I doubt the public school system will ever come close to the quality of food that may be prepared at home. There is a reason that adolescent obesity and Type II diabetes are skyrocketing. It is the food.
10
I pack my kid's lunch because after going to her locker and then navigating to the cafeteria, she gets only 20 minutes to eat. There's simply no time to stand in the cafeteria line. If you want the kids to eat more of their school lunches, give them more time! A 45-minute break at least, like other countries do.
11
I was very happy to support school lunches. They boasted about the healthy options and high quality. And we paid for that good quality. My son had a kidney issue and every 6 months they would test his urine and blood for a variety of levels. In the 6 months he ate school lunches his sodium level increased 10 times the level it was pre school lunches. That says it all!
9
Wow, where do I start? My middle-schoolers looked over my shoulder as I read the article, and exclaimed, "that definitely isn't what our lunchroom serves!" I have been packing my children's lunches in reusable containers every day for 10 years, because it is healthy, eaten, and environmentally responsible-absolutely nothing gets thrown in the trash unless it landed on the floor. Until the schools return to using washable trays and silverware, as well as having a kitchen staff that actually prepares the food rather than reheat it, as was the case when I attended public school, my children will not be purchasing lunches at school. The short lunch break is not long enough to wait in line, to echo the comments of another reader. If we are serious about improving school lunches for American students, we should look to countries such as France, where the lunch break is taken seriously, from what is served to the length of the break- at least one hour. My kids barely get 30 minutes. Now about hand washing...ha! See my last sentence for the answer to that one...
14
I certainly agree we need to assure that children with less means have healthy food options - including breakfast. However, I would argue that the current "factory" process of creating these meals and the waste that is inherent in it is worth consideration. For instance, in addition to food waste, there is no discussion here on the enormous amount of plastic that is generated and discarded in programs like this one. Also, most parents of means I know are not the snobby food elitists characterized in this article. They are happy to support healthy, well-orchestrated school food programs for their communities.
6
My kids eat the school lunch, but I'm curious if the writer asked if there were "alternatives" offered by those cafeterias. I was excited to see all the healthy options at my kids' new school when we moved to a better school district last year. But after a couple of weeks I asked my son if he liked the chicken dish and peach sorbet they had at school that day. He said he just at the cheeseburger. When I asked "what cheeseburger" he said that they have cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and pbjs every single day in addition to what is shown in the menus that are sent home to parents. I then asked if he had EVER tried the items shown on the menu and he said no: the cheeseburgers, hot dogs, and pbjs were what he ate.
Healthy options are really just options at the end of the day--kids can and do opt out. If I had time to pack a lunch, it would be nice to be able do so to take away the temptation of junk food. As it is, I now have had to resort to basing my kids' allowance on them eating the healthy meal, and hoping that they are telling the truth when they say they did.
5
My kids all chose to pack a lunch rather than eat hot lunch. They were responsible for making it every morning. I do know that packed a way healthier lunch than anything served at school and in the end it was much cheaper than school lunch. Also my oldest daughter's, (who just graduated from college), love of cooking began with making her lunch from grade school though high school.
4
We have the means to buy lunch for our kid, but we send them to the lunch line. We're lucky to be in a public school district that provides free breakfast and lunch to all kids. It's a wonderful gift.
Having our child eat the school lunch is not only convenient for us, it's an expression of our belief that resources should be shared and schools should be important spaces of community life. If the menu is good enough for any kid in our town (and it is a fine menu), it's good enough for us. And if it's not good enough, then we should work to change it for everyone, not opt out for the benefit our kid alone.
1
A couple points occurred to me:
a. The pics are from Austin, Texas which is a relatively progressive area of the US so the lunches might be healthier due to societal, parental, etc. pressure whereas lunches in a less progressive or poorer area are likely still not that healthy. Especially in light of further cuts via Trump.
b. Are parents packing lunches mostly in wealthier areas? Because even if it saves money, poorer families may not have time to shop/ pack for lunch daily.So it might be a moot point depending on the area.
c. I wondered if a parallel could be drawn to healthcare. When everyone participates in a national healthcare system, there are efficiencies and purchasing powers that occur which don't work as well when some opt in and others opt out. I do like the idea of parents having a choice of what to send their kids to school with but on the other hand, maybe national school lunch programs across the world are as strong as they are because practically all students participate (albeit they're usually healthier/ better tasting/ cheaper).
d. It's sad we can't get out act together in the US. Recently, I learned India feeds ALL its children a free lunch everyday. The US is wealthier than India yet we can't achieve this goal.
3
I come from a hispanic culture and always found it a little sad that parents here don't like to prepare meals for their kids. My husband who is gringo prepared his own breakfast and lunch when he was a kid. I loved the cafe con leche my mom prepared every morning before school. When I'm back home I don't cook much. My parents do it. They love it. Is preparing your own food the only way to learn independence?
I love preparing lunch for my kids-- mind you, it's a sandwich, yogurt and fruit, nothing extravagant, time consuming, or instagram worthy. I remember as a kid opening a lunch that came from home and feeling that connection to home and parents. Feeding is connection, love, caring. My kids are at school for like 9 hours a day. I like that they have that small connection to home during the day. They eat school pizza on Fridays!
6
@cb77 I agree on the "connection" issue. I am not Hispanic, but I share the idea that preparing food is an expression of love.
I work full time and always have. But the 15 minutes it takes to pack a lunch is well worth the time.
We lived in Italy for a short period, and schools there usually share a family style meal (for lower grades). The food is fresh, prepared by people who know how to cook, and children have about an hour to eat. I am fine with that style, since it offers a different kind of social experience and community. But that is simply not present in the US. I am happy that my daughter gets to eat something from home every day while we are apart.
1
There is a larger issue looming in this conversation, one that circles around what is a healthy meal coupled with how much children should be eating. Additionally, physicians are woefully inconsistent and misinformed as to where a child should be on "the growth curve" as it represents good health and what exactly the curve represents. This society is intent on dieting itself to death while we're sending messages to all of our children, educators and physicians that it's better to be on the lower end of the curve (thinner) than on the higher end, which will inevitably lead to problems.
1
Because there was only the two of us, my son started making his own sandwich when he entered kindergarten. During the time it took him to make a sandwich, I gathered everything else that went in his packed lunch. We kept up this routine until he entered middle school, when he told me he hated making his sandwich and wanted to switch it out for another chore. His choice? Vacuuming. I never vacuumed my house again until he went away to college.
7
The logic of this escapes me. This sounds like the most indirect, overcomplicated and risky way of going about giving kids the nutrition they need.
The situation is this: We lack the political will to fully fund school lunches for kids who need them. We lack the political will to ensure school lunches are healthy. We lack the political will correct the underlying inequality that makes any of the above necessary.
But somehow the political will exists to convince millions of parents who don't have to buy school lunches to buy them? If op-eds like this one had so much influence that they could change the behavior of so many millions of families, and sustain that behavior change for long enough to make a difference, then why no use all that influence to directly change the policy itself?
It's a complicated, confusing tactic, and it requires parents to second-guess themselves when their instinct is to do what they think is best for their own kids. I submit that asking parents to support social programs and support economic equality is easier than asking them to put school lunches first and their own kids second.
12
My kid is vegetarian; school lunches are not.
12
School lunch had gotten better. But the lunches I pack has more variety (I make a variety of dishes from different countries), less sodium, and cheaper. They also like the packed lunch better (which are leftovers from the previous night's dinner). Moreover, I want the kids to see packing lunch is the norm for them instead of buying lunch so that when they enter the work force, packing lunch would not seem so much of an effort and they won't need to eat out every day
6
The problem is, many school districts operate their own lunch program. For smaller school districts, this often translates to higher cost and less choice.
At my kid's school, I have to pay whopping $7.25 per lunch and $0.60 per milk.
And before anyone thinks my kid goes to some snobby district, no, the price is for sad looking peanut butter and jelly or grill cheese sandwich with fruit cup.
So no, I won't be subsidizing to the school lunch program until I see more meaningful progress by the school districts and government to improve efficiency (and therefore cost) and quality further.
4
"While parents have been focusing on creating Instagram-friendly school lunches, the quality of cafeteria food has improved significantly."
That's definitely NOT the case in my neck of the woods. School lunch menus still run heavy on the chicken nugget, bean burrito, pizza and hot dog rotation. The cheese zombie is still on the H.S. menu, just like 40-odd years ago. And how about "breakfast pizza" ( pepperoni & sausage) or the school district version of an egg muffin Fresh cafeteria food...more like delivered frozen out of the vendor truck the day before it's served.and thawed/heated before going on the line. Ain't no chefs in the school kitchens around here.
And that's why we still pack school lunches. We haven't needed to get into a whole bunch of complicated or "creative" lunch meals. And that's '05, including a picky eater.
8
Here’s my answer to the question in the headline: because when my children brought their own lunch to school, we could use reusable food storage containers that they brought back home each day. Although I agree with the article that the quality of school lunch food has greatly increased, the amount of paper and plastic waste generated by disposable serving utensils and plates is horrifying.
12
I'm sure many have already commented on special dietary needs, which you devoted one sentence to. I have a child with Celiac who simply can't safely eat the food in the school cafeteria.
5
I wish my children's school lunches looked like that. White bread with maybe a hint of whole wheat is the norm. Plus snack chips, cookies and ice cream available to buy every day as they check out. We know that junk food should not be in their faces every day. And yet?
7
It's good we know a lot more about nutrition than we did in the 1950/60s, when I went to school. Yet, we all seemed to do fine.
I still remember the cafeteria lunch, from elementary school. Monday was spaghetti, canned green beans, and chocolate pudding. Tuesday was hot dogs and fruit cocktail (canned).
BUT we had adequate recess, and homework wasn't all-consuming so we had lots of physical playtime after school. No obesity.
6
Many of my mom friends have their kids pack their own lunches, starting at around 8 years old. They do it to teach them two things - responsibility and how to make good food choices. They also do it to better control their food choices. As many parents have mentioned, their school lunch options don’t look like the ones pictured with this article. If their kids don’t pack a lunch, they don’t eat at school the next day. Mom doesn’t bail them out with lunch money at the last minute and their kids learn a valuable lesson. I think the so called expert who wrote this article has an agenda to promote with regards to school lunches. Shaming parents isn’t the way to go about that.
5
This one is simple. Back when we had children, we packed lunches because there was no school lunch program until junior high. Elementary schools did not serve lunches. Second, we knew what the kids were getting.
4
Don't forget food waste costs at home. Leftovers are made for school lunches. If leftovers would otherwise get thrown away, you are essentially getting a meal for free if you feed your kid from scraps of other meals.
3
Let's be honest: $2.50 is not buying a decent lunch for anyone.
This program is basically charity. Low income families will obviously take a free lunch over no lunch. But why would middle/upper income families try and cut costs on their own children?
5
@John: You are mistaken; have you seen a modern school lunch? They are much healthier than when I went to school, and tastier, with more choices. Parents who can afford it can give their child the funds to buy an extra item or two of their choice. I am appalled by the poor civic kindness of many of these comments.
1
When I was a kid in Dallas, school lunch was something that most kids liked. We had a protein source, rotating among roast beef, baked chicken, roast pork, a dish called "tamale pie," and baked fish (Friday). There were always two servings of vegetables. Salads and soups were available, along with delicious deserts (pies, cakes, puddings). Hot dinner rolls made in the cafeteria kitchen came with the meal. Ice cream, in small rectangular bars was also available. In fact, for 7 cents (2 for the hot roll, 5 for the ice cream), the best ice cream sandwich on earth was often fashioned by the kids.
The above lunch cost was 40 cents, plus 5 cents each for soup or salad if chosen. This was in the late fifties, early sixties. I think elementary schools had smaller portions and a lower price.
Some kids did take lunches from home. But the school food was excellent, and one could smell it all over the school as it cooked.
Even so, my senior year the kids revolted, and refused to buy lunches. The main complaint was that soft drinks were not offered, but people complained about the quality of the food in general. Mainly, they just wanted to complain. For three days, only a handful of lunches were sold. Then one day, our principal, who was well respected, went to a table of senior boys at lunch, and spoke to them frankly about student leadership. They bought lunches, and the "boycott" was over. Soft drinks were not added to the menu. Overweight kids were rare.
6
1) Glad this writer lives in a world with lovely school lunches. Not so in my child’s school!
2) Dad packs.
11
@Ellen: Have you actually seen a school lunch, or just listened to kids complain? And kids will complain; it’s part of the child/parent power dynamic. If the lunches in your schools really are substandard, perhaps the community could get involved, and also provide more funding for the schools, if needed.
I agree with the author that the school lunches in Austin public schools are pretty good. One of our family’s favorite dinners is based on a lunch so popular that I asked the food service workers for the recipe.
Nevertheless, I pack my kid’s lunch because there isn’t space in the school cafeteria for all the students to be served in a timely manner.
3
School lunches are full of single-use plastics and non-recyclable materials, reheated at schools in most cases, and heavily subsidized by the dairy industry (in order to ensure dairy-addicted and morbidly obese children stay drinking it for the rest of their lives), hence the milk in every photo. Let's stop shaming parents for making the choice to send their children to school with well-rounded and healthier meals that feed better eating habits and grow great minds. Yes, school lunches have improved, but we still have a VERY long way to go. Let's not sing their praises quite yet just because a few schools have offered "healthier" options, which are only "healthier" compared to the absolute junk they were serving before.
11
I don't see any choice of non-diary drink option (like soy or oat milk) in these photos. Isn't it true that the meals/drinks offered to our kids is what federal subsidies are offered to food and farm industries (which is why there is a lot of dairy and animal products in these photos)?
I would like to see more non-dairy and non-animal proteins offered to kids in the school cafeterias across the country.
6
@Mike At my grandkids schools in Spokane, Washington, there is a vegetarian option every day. My 7 yo granddaughter prefers the school lunch to a lunch from home, and has it. My 11 yo grandson prefers a homemade lunch, and has it. He packs his own, with ingredients approved by parents.
Uh huh speaking from a very nice location in the Bay Area, have you ever seen the disgusting lunches served? In fact it is a sad testament to an impatient age that parents don’t care about their child’s nutrition. The schools sure don’t care. The trays of food mostly have sugars and fats loaded. Pesticide covered and much handled fruits,vegetables, milk and meats. We are not living in Europe where fruits and vegetables are of higher quality, taste better and are handled better than here. Why on earth should folks not pack lunch for their kids if they can? If people can think of it as a successful long term investment, it might help. Given the present governments roll back of all safe environmental measures, especially with pesticides and safe water, why should any parent believe in an education system out to safely feed and protect our youngest citizens?
6
I packed my son's lunch for the entirety of his school life K-12 (I know, I know). I frequently asked him if he'd prefer to buy lunch occasionally, especially when there was an especially appealing item on the menu. He usually said "no." The reason? If the lunch period was, say, 30 minutes, he could spend 10-15 minutes in line, eat, and go back to class; or he could sit down and eat and have the free time left over.
12
Our school lunches are free but we still pack lunches (happily made by my husband every day) for our kids in 5th and 8th grade. The main reason is time, the kids get 20 min. for lunch and if they were to get school lunch they would spend at least half of that waiting in line with no time left to eat. This is also one of the only social times besides a 20 min recess that they get at school so they want to maximize their time to eat and be with friends.
3
Because my kid won't eat the school lunch? The other kid loves the school lunch just fine, but if I want her sister to eat something, I pack it.
1
Why not pack a lunch? For some, it is somewhat of a family ritual that reinforces family bonds: in other words, it's a daily event that - in a small way - says "I love you." What's so wrong about that?
10
I'll tell you why. The offerings at my son's school are heavy on starch and light on everything else. And standing in line to buy lunch eats up a good bit of the allotted time.
9
If the main point of the article was to advocate for greater funding to expand school lunches and better food then that should have been purely point. The article read like a commercial: Buy my car and we will plant 10 trees; pay for school lunch and help fund one low-income lunch. As a parent who packs my kids' lunches as well as my own I found it demeaning and self-righteous that the author believes that the prime reason parents give their kids their own lunch is so that they can post on social media.
8
While school lunches look to have improved, I seriously doubt that they are using locally sourced, organic food. I'd stick with making lunches for them.
3
I hate the assumption here that if a child wants to bring lunch from home that it must be packed by a parent. My kids have been packing their own healthy lunches since 3rd grade.
I find school lunches in our area to be highly processed and expensive. My kids think they are gross. How about we invest in high quality foods for school lunch first? You won’t get the upper income buy-in without it AND you will likely find that there will be better academic and health outcomes for the kids who rely on free or reduced lunch.
9
There is another consideration: time. School lunch periods are 20 - 30 minutes long. That timeframe includes going to their locker, maybe the restroom, walking to the cafeteria and getting to their next class on time. My kids preferred home packed lunches for the quality of the lunch and because they got to sit and eat without rushing as much.
3
Schools need to get over their urge to provide some kind existentially correct school lunch and focus on a lunch that kids will actually eat, even if its not objectively that healthy.
My son is a 9th grader in high school, and we pay for school lunches. On average, he actually takes a lunch about 3 days a week, sometimes less, and seldom eats much of it and throws a lot of it away because it's unpalatable. So what does he actually do? He winds up swinging by the convenience store on his way home and eats junk food that's more appealing.
I firmly believe kids would have a healthier relationship with food and eat less junk if school lunch was appealing. Most of his descriptions of the lunches he's served sound like Frankenstein nightmare of public school budgeting mixed with the most oppressive nutritional guidance -- bland white meat chicken chunks with brown rice, mystery meat stews with limp vegetables. Marginal amounts of protein and fats and a heavy dose of gross vegetables and starches.
It's hard as an adult with basically no budget limit or ingredient restrictions to make "healthy" food appealing. When you try to enforce "healthy" on a tight budget you wind up with an unpalatable mess kids will replace with junk food.
1
@Mobocracy
Interesting: "On average, he actually takes a lunch about 3 days a week, sometimes less, and seldom eats much of it and throws a lot of it away because it's unpalatable."
Why would you send an unpalatable lunch for your son to throw away?
@Mobocracy
Kids in other countries simply eat what they are served, and many of them are fed on budgets so tight we can't imagine it here int he US.
1
Why am I still packing? Because I can’t afford to let my kid buy lunch everyday regardless of the quality. It would cost over $50/month. Even if I packed her “instagram worthy” organic food (I don’t) I could do it cheaper than $50/month.
4
Here are the lunches at my child's school for this week: Mon-Chicken Poppers; Tue-Pepperoni Pizza; Wed-Cheeseburger; Thurs-Beef Soft Taco; Fri-Catfish Strips (likely fried). When one of the largest school districts in the country considers this menu a "healthy" one--it's no wonder parents are packing lunches. School lunch is free for my child but I won't subject them to it.
9
@Chris
Great to see a parent opting out of an unhealthy, government subsidy to the Big Ag. Good for you. There really is no such thing as a free lunch....
2
Because cafeteria food is cheap, mass-produced and tasteless. Much better is to make an inexpensive lunch, with ingredients sourced from a local market and prepared at home. The kids should help pack their lunch.
It takes only a few minutes to put together a lunch box. I take my lunch to work each day - takes 10 minutes to assemble, I save a ton of money and, as in school cafeterias, the foods in the "healthy" salad places near my Manhattan office are far inferior to what I buy locally and prepare in my kitchen.
Also, per hot foods, etc., I do what my mother did (and what I did when our son was in school; she worked 5 days a week, commuting an hour each way). I make twice as much as I need, then freeze or refrigerate. My husband and I cook for the week on weekends, even though our son is now grown.
7
My kid is still in preschool so we haven't crossed this bridge yet, but...the lunches I currently pack him generally cost less than $2.50/meal, the average cost of a school lunch cited in this piece.
His preschool currently serves two snacks a day and the adhere to the federal CACFP guidelines. We were really unimpressed with what these guidelines permit. Most of the snacks served were very high in simple carbohydrates and sugar. After being in the classroom at snack time a few times, I was also really bothered that the calorie counts of snacks seemed to be all over the place. One day they were served 4 Nilla wafers and 4 cucumber pieces for snack, this is about 30 calories--what active 3 year old can actually make it from lunch at noon to dinner at 6pm with only this snack? Other days they serve more substantial food, but the variability plus generally so-so nutritional content was troubling. We decided to opt out of all school snacks except fresh fruit/veggies and send in our own. This way I know he's consistently getting a reasonable amount of food every day, and he has the option of eating some more satiating protein and healthy fats at each snack.
4
In our suburban world where food shopping happens on Sundays and assorted practices and extracurriculars fill your weeknights, "buy vs bring" simply comes down to the day or the week.
Monday/Tuesday-definitely bring (fresh fruit and cold cuts, etc..)
Thursday/Friday-definitely buy (unless the school menu is depressing enough to take a chance on cobbling together a lunch.
Wednesday? Could go either way
2
One reason I'm still packing lunches for my kids: reduce waste from disposable containers and utensils. The pictures in the article shows good food but plastic forks and disposable trays/dishes. Multiply the number of students by the number of school days, that is a huge amount of plastic trash heading towards the landfill. A few schools I know have taken the initiative to switch to reusable. But most schools still use disposables as it appears to be "more convenient." Reusables actually cost less than disposables if you do the math.
6
@Lee They would have to hire more people to clean all those dishes.
This article's images are from (based on cursory research anyone can do) a moderately-affluent school in what seems to be a decently well-off suburban neighborhood. Pictures taken from a school less well-funded would not paint nearly as optimistic a picture.
5
In France, children are provided a meal from scratch that is extremely cost effective. The difference there is that they use lunch time to *educate* children about the food they eat and also teach them about how it is sourced and made. Unfortunately here tastes are molded by corporate influence as evidenced by the numerous ads by fast food companies and junk food manufacturers everywhere we look. These companies try to mold taste before we can even educate. Junk ads must be regulated like big tobacco if we are ever to make headway against obesity.
9
My children's school only offered packaged meals shipped from a central kitchen. Lots of trash, not fresh or healthy nor did it meet their standards for taste. I made a deal with them - they packed their own lunch - a protein, a fruit or vegetable and then they could supplement with a "snack" food. They were more likely to eat it because they had chosen it themselves. When possible, we would heat up leftover turkey and veggie chili and other hot items in a thermos. Ditto on the reader who mentioned the time constraints - their lunch time was too short and they barely even had time to sit and eat the meal they had brought. American society had changed children's taste buds away from enjoying vegetables and other wholesome foods, and it isn't easy to change back. Looks like any progress will be wiped out. Michelle Obama fought for improvements in school lunches, but no doubt the Trump administration is going to bring back sugar filled "ketchup" as a vegetable.
3
What I do for my child is our business, and not for the “greater good”- if my kid wants to buy or pack, I will make that choice giving no weight to how it affects other people’s children. It’s school lunch, not vaccination. We are really talking about who pays for feeding low income children, not whether as a society we think those children should eat. If as a society that’s our (valid) decision, make it clear how much that costs. This doesn’t mean that I don’t support free/low cost lunches for kids who can’t afford it, it means I think the costs of the program should be transparent and funded by tax money. In fact, I’m happy to pay MORE in taxes rather than be expected to have my personal choices influenced by manipulative guilt like this opinion piece. Don't get in the weeds about whether the food sold is worth it/too expensive/packed in non-reusable containers, etc. Those are all valid reasons parents can make their own choice. And if as a society its important to feed the future, we should all pay for it.
7
Liberals tend to have many advantages in politics, but still lose a lot of elections. Too often ignoring or downplaying the concept of intrinsic power is a big reason why.
Once everyone becomes dependent on the local convenience something like Facebook, the transit system or school lunches, those institutions are extremely likely to eventually leverage their monopoly. Stores keep prices low because people can move around and shop somewhere else. The cafeteria will only stay good as long as it competes with students bringing their own food (or sneaking out to go to Subway every day and getting suspended for it, but I digress). If everyone hangs a sign on their door that says, "please exploit me", odds are someone will take them up on it.
This does not mean we can never rely on the bus or the cafeteria, but if almost everyone became dependent on them, their quality and/or cost will at some point be nearly certain to deteriorate. One can gamble that today's quality will last or improve until the kids graduate, or one can exercise agency over something as fundamental as food and spend the effort on it.
What else is more worthy of someone's time than having a certainty that children are eating quality food?
3
Wow - I would eat those lunches that are pictured. Unfortunately my kids' school lunch offerings have never looked like that. I would be thrilled to give up packing lunches each day - it is something I dread, in the midst of getting everyone (including myself) off to school and work. But until our school menu ditches entree items like "french toast sticks" and "fried mozzarella sticks" (these are the main events on the plate, not the side dishes!) it would just be supporting them to eat more junk food. For awhile they said they were committing to healthier options because the maple syrup that came with the french toast sticks was sugar -free. Which we know is just a different kind of unhealthy. I think all the time about the privilege I have to make this choice. Because this is just another way that inequality surfaces in schools - when kids can have a free meal, but that meal is unhealthy, is it really equal?
4
One word: styrofoam. I worked in a school for seven years and each school day several hundred students would get their meals (the school I worked in was majority poverty level there was also a free breakfast program) served on a styrofoam tray with plastic utensils, and if there was chili, a styrofoam cup. And then it would all go into the trash. This would repeat several hundred times every day all school year long. And that was just one school in one town in one state. I would sometimes think about the amount of styrofoam (and other plastic waste) that school lunches were adding to landfills every day and I think it might be a rather staggering amount. I won’t even touch on the food waste.
I am all for school lunches but would love to see schools with kitchens that are able to employ reusable trays and utensils. Alas, that would require funding and I’m sure that this is an issue that will never be a priority in the grand scheme of education.
4
In NYC school lunch is now free for everyone regardless of income. And while some schools have really made amazing strides in putting out healthful options, supported by special non-profit programs, the majority of them do not, and rely greatly on the usual standbys of pizza, burgers, and chicken fingers, with some woeful boiled vegetables to make it seem healthful. And for vegetarians, the options are even less appealing. Free breakfasts are no better--white-bread bagels, sugary cereals, sugar-filed muffins.... So we end up packing lunch all days for one kid, and many days for the others. The Dept of Education needs to get much more serious about making school meals actually healthful. We may not be paying a la carte for school meals, but we are certainly paying through our taxes, even if the food ends up in the garbage.
4
The author vilifies parents who make their kids lunch. Making lunch, she argues, is a mentally taxing, upper-class luxury that cuts into the preparer's leisure time. All kids would be better off if no kids brought food to school. Indeed! We can leverage our collective parentage. Let's have institutional learning and dining centers also provide a nutritious breakfast and dinner. If we plan right, we can retrieve our well-fed organisms with just enough time to tuck themselves into bed. Oh love! Dost thou hide in antiquated sacrifice and under rusted lunch box lid? What a mess hall. --A father who has mostly enjoyed making his two kids lunch every school morning for the last 10 years.
11
The title of the article should have been, "School Lunches are Getting Better", which is true. The author made the mistake of assuming the question "Why Are You Still Packing Lunch for Your Kids?" was going to be accepted as rhetorical by many parents whom (perhaps mistakenly) think they are packing a better lunch for their kids or, for others with large families, who simply can't afford school lunches. In any event it was a good article and I miss Mrs. Obama.
1
@Charles
The author doesn’t pick the headline. Blame the NYT editorial staff for the inflammatory title.
1
What if parents packed lunch for their kids and the money spent on free school lunches went to teacher salaries?
5
What if all parents could run a household on a single 40-hour-a-week job? What if the rent really is too damn high?
I literally never once ate a school cafeteria meal. I saw it and smelled it and that was enough for me to know it was garbage. I could go home for lunch all through grade school and part of junior high. When it stopped being permitted in h.s., I just stopped eating lunch until 3:30. They only give you 15-20 minutes to eat lunch, which is terrible for digestion and of course, one would spend 10 minutes in line. Secondly, schools start lunch "hours" at 10:30! My nephew has lunch at 10:45. This is absurd and encourages terrible eating habits. Third, buying one's lunch costs money and there is no control over the ingredients. This country does not understand good food or good nutrition. Take a look at Michael Moore's movie, "Where to Invade Next" and see the amount of time and types of school lunches served in France and Italy, to even poor children and then tell me the U.S. is improving.
4
These cafeteria lunches look healthy, but are those styrofoam plates in the photos? If so, parents are happy their children are being fed well, while destroying the environment. Selfish.
1
@Gale Based off the edges I'd say it's recycled cardboard/some paper sort of tray
The time it takes for the kids to get the lunch here leaves them with little time to actually eat their lunch - leaving 1/2 of it to go to waste.
This is why I continue and will continue to send my kids to school with a lunch from home.
2
I dare the author to last a week on NYC public school lunches.
When you write things like “(mostly) mothers” make lunches, you expose your own bias and perpetuate the myth that men are too clueless or lazy to put a sandwich, fruit, snack and juice box in a bag. It may be the author’s unfortunate experience, but it’s not true universally, and perpetuates the myth that fathers are have less value domestically— the same complaint women have made for decades about their treatment in the workforce. It’s not ok. Fathers, perhaps especially single fathers, are capable parents.
To be fair, my (3) kids are in middle school and high school now and often make their own lunches, but that’s more about individualism and their hatred of the dreaded school lunch.
6
Mom packed lunch for my sister and me because our public school system did not offer a Kosher alternative .....
4
This is got to be one of the dumbest pieces in a long time. When I pack my kids' lunch, there are set expectations and transparency -- what is put in the lunch box is what must be eaten. That cannot be replicated in a school cafeteria, especially in more modern buffet style school settings. I would not be able to control if my child fills up their plate with bread and french fries.
5
I don’t get it. What is the problem with packing lunch for your kids?. Why don’t all parents do it ?
5
Why don't all parents have the time to do it? Ask and answer that first, and get back to me. Glad I could help!
1
You must be kidding me! The author advocates paying for a school lunch (free or reduced, somebody still pays) instead of preparing one at home. Done correclty, a home prepared lunch is less expensive than cafeteria lunches.
When my son was in high school, I would make his lunch, then put riddles or jokes on the bag. It was a big hit with his friends.
Arguing to buy school lunches to provide work for lunch ladies is socialism at its worst.
8
@Ted Odell High school kids should make their own lunches.
1
I guess we have progressed. When I started junior high in Central Queens (middle school to the rest of the country) having 50 cents in your pocket for school was a near surefire way to mugged and (beaten up if you refused) by a gang of older kids, so I prefered a brown bag sandwich. Occasionally, you could be assaulted for just not bringing money, but it was less likely.
4
I would love for them to buy lunch but it is just too expensive.
2
And the plastic and waste....no mention of that?? My kid gets reusable containers that we use over and over.
4
If parents want to send their kids to school with a home-made lunch, why should anyone care? Whose business is it if a parent wants to spend the (allegedly) "already limited leisure time" making lunch for lunch for their children. Perhaps the parent wants to instill in their children's minds that, yes, you can eat food that doesn't come from a factory kitchen. Or, maybe, they just know what their kids like and will eat.
This article seems to be focusing on "keeping lunch ladies employed" and "free, free, free, why not grab it!!!"
Well, keeping lunch ladies employed is not very high on most parents' priorities and some find "free, free, free, why not grab it!!!" not to be something they believe in or want to model for their children.
In other words, MYOB Ms Gaddis.
6
Once upon a time the LA Unified School District provided this, for our 'nutrition break'.
CITY SCHOOL SWEET ROLLS
FILLING
1 cup plain cake crumbs
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon cinnamon
GLAZE
2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup hot water
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
ROLLS
2 (1/4-ounce) envelopes yeast
2 cups lukewarm milk
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons salt
1/2 cup shortening
1 egg
1 cup cake flour
5 cups bread flour
3/4 to 1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg
1/4 cup melted butter
FILLING
Combine cake crumbs, brown sugar and cinnamon. Set aside.
GLAZE
Mix powdered sugar and hot water until smooth. Stir in vanilla. Set aside.
ROLLS
Dissolve yeast in lukewarm milk.
Mix sugar, salt, shortening and egg on low speed of electric mixer 1 minute. Add milk mixture and mix 1 minute. Add cake flour, bread flour and nutmeg and mix until flour is well incorporated, not more than 5 minutes.
Roll out dough to rectangle shape. Brush with butter. Sprinkle with Filling. Roll up jellyroll fashion. Cut into 1 1/2-inch-thick slices.
Place on greased baking sheet, cut-side down, and pat out fairly flat. Let rise until doubled. Bake at 400 degrees until lightly browned, about 15 minutes. Cool slightly, then brush with Glaze.
18 rolls. Each roll:
347 calories; 313 mg sodium; 21 mg cholesterol; 10 grams fat; 58 grams carbohydrates; 7 grams protein; 0.13 gram fiber.
We were only allowed to buy these once a week. We saved up for the purchase.
2
@GWPDA - Thank you NYT for letting this go thru. It really is a wonderful receipt. And it really was a wonderful world where children had the possibility of treats, at school.
1
I send my daughter to public school because I believe in public education.
I draw the line at serving her school lunch. While I wish that schools served decent lunches (we lived in Italy for two months, and they have it figured out), we've lived in 4 states and the lunches are universally disgusting.
Additionally:
1. We are vegan. This is the most important personal action we can take for not contributing to climate change.
2. Most school lunches look nothing like those pictures.
3. Even those pictures look pretty unappetizing and use disposable plates and utensils, the epitome of waste.
4. I love my child. Making a lunch of healthy, tasty food is an expression of that love.
5. The nutritional guidelines for school lunches are wack. All that dairy is bad for the environment, totally unnecessary for nutrition and causes a fair amount of kids to ride the fart bus home every day.
Medicare for all, free public college, all sorts of government business regulation - I can get behind it - but school lunches are so incredibly far from acceptable no amount of civic duty can get me to feed my kid that stuff.
11
Parents who don't pack lunch don't love their children?
OK, treehugger.
Keep in mind that these good things are in danger from trump administration, just like many other programs and regulations which are a matter of health. He wants to dumb down good food, make it easier to pollute our air and water, and provide less funds to the unfortunate among us.
3
Where I live, its disgusting to look at the school menu. They are teaching the kids to eat fried food and meat and sugar at every meal. Funnel cake for breakfast, chicken nuggets for lunch...
6
The kids have to sacrifice so the farmers can get their welfare checks.
That's why school lunch is run out of the Department of Agriculture: to draft schoolchildren for the War on Farm Surpluses.
1
First of all there is no "free" lunch. Although I send lunch in for my kids, my taxes pay for that free lunch for all those kids. I am in effect paying twice and that is MY CHOICE. This article is typical liberal nonsense. The government knows best and you need to bring yourself down to the lowest common denominator. Why stop there, families should not eat breakfast together, that's an unfair advantage that folks that cant afford breakfast don't enjoy!!
5
Looking at the obviously staged photos of cafeteria food, I thought I was reading an infomercial. Comparing those photos to actual cafeteria food reminded me of the scene in the Michael Douglas movie Falling Down where he is in a fast food joint and makes a point of comparing the photo of the great looking burger on the wall with the actual pathetic looking burger on the counter.
2
This is a no-win situation.
First, conservatives don't support it. Only satanic, muslim socialists (aka liberals in general and the Obamas, specifically) would suggest that kids eat a healthy meal once a day. How dare they! Also, if low-income kids are hungry, they'll get no sympathy. That's what they get for being born without a trust fund. Losers! (smh)
Second, IMO, one reason kids eat better in other countries is not only because lunches are better but because they're exposed to good food at home. Ever glance in a shopping cart at the supermarket? If little Suzy and Billy survive on chicken nuggets and the occasional leaf of iceberg lettuce drowning in ranch dressing at home, of course they won't eat vegetables at school.
Lastly, to be fair to the kids that are exposed to healthy eating at home, mass producing tasty nutritious foods is hard and under the best of circumstances; I doubt that most schools can do it well, particularly on the budgets they have to work with. Yes, these lunches may look better, but the bar was so ridiculously low before that this isn't difficult. I'm a pretty healthy eater and I can spot a number of things that turn me off in these pictures. Of course a picky 10-year-old is going to dump a lot of it in the trash.
I don't know the answer, but lunches weren't that great when I was a kid; now they're even worse. Somebody needs to burn the school lunch program to the ground and start over with some truly fresh ideas.
1
Ummm . . . because they love their kids? And they'd like to save this thing called "money."
9
Why did I have kids at all?
4
@Chris Rasmussen This made me laugh.
While I feel the time constraints of a full time job and parenting duties, at some point, we need to ask ourselves what we think we should actually do ourselves if we can't even take 10 minutes to warm up some soup or slap a sandwich together.
2
Wow, the billion dollar dairy industry has really sucker punched the NYT and these schools that you’ve photographed who serve milk (in all four pictures!) I think by now most people know that milk is horribly bad for our health, bad for the environment, bad for the climate, and bad for the female cows whose babies are stolen from them. Only baby calves should be drinking cow’s milk. No humans. Did anyone hear Joaquin’s speech last night? Or watched The Game Changers on Netflix? Or Forks Over Knives? Dairy is bad for everyone!
2
@Laurie Gough I noticed the same thing. Thank you for your comment.
1
@Laurie Gough Not to mention the digestive nightmare dairy is for most humans over the age of about 3. The number of kids in my daughter's class who regularly take Muselax is ridiculous.
1
Why not just call trump Mr. Evil? I mean, seriously, why are they trying to lower the standards for school lunches? One report recently said half of all Americans will be obese by 2050. Half! Of course that probably pleases our grossly overweight president - "they'll look like me." That's even more distressing than the idea of him shredding the Constitution to get re-elected!
1
Let the schools feed them. We've got quite a few 4 foot nothing, 250 lb kids around here. Just watching how they struggle to walk, they'll never be able to hold a job
1
When your children have food allergies that's what you do.
2
Trump and cronies are busily trying to lower school lunch nutritional standards which this article somewhat side-stepped. It should have been the lead, but the author basically doesn't even really mention it. This is a shill article if they don't bring up this very important point.
2
Maybe to save the planet for their kids? Look at all that plasticware!
3
Why should the school be feeding your kids in the first place. You had the kid, that's on you.
My 17 year old tells me the school provided lunch is not very good.
Another huge issue is public schools only providing 20 minutes for lunch. They barely have time to heat up their food with only that amount of time.
4
I let my son eat a school lunch once a week. The rest of the days, I pack a school lunch. Why? It costs less. Paying for school lunches daily gets costly and I like to budget our groceries and food expenses.
5
...because my last school district considered nacho chips with a ladle of neon cheese "lunch" and my new one sells ice cream that many kids buy as their "lunch" (my kid included - until I made her start taking lunch).
4
Some parents need to pack lunch for their kids because their kids are given 30 minutes to eat lunch and the line is 40 minutes long. Schools are obligated to provide food, but there are no regulations to ensure that children have time to procure or eat food.
4
We have 2 school age kids - one elementary and one middle school. Our kids - who are great eaters everywhere else - want a packed lunch because they don't like the taste of the school-provided lunch. And, frankly, I don't believe a single word of the so-called "experts" about school lunch, like this author. These experts told us, less than a decade ago, that whole milk was bad for kids. And that is now the law. But we have since found out that whole milk is in fact better for kids. Heck, I read about that in the New York Times. But yet, whole milk is still banned in school, even though it's been shown to be better. As far as I'm concerned, the "experts" don't know what they're talking about.
237
@Vanessa
It's true that school lunch policy is in some ways still wedded to outdated views that demonize fat. Low-fat food is less satisfying and tasty, leading food manufacturers to replace the natural fat with various sugar and refined carb substitutes. Still, Gaddis's point stands: if you want to continue to push the system to improve, you need to opt in and lobby for change. Maybe you can supplement your kids' cafeteria lunch with some triple-creme brie. That was frequently part of the "cheese course" in the Parisian public school our daughter attended for a semester.
16
@Vanessa nutrition science is notoriously complex and has been unreliable and in the past, information was based on grants by industry. However, that doesn’t negate anything experts in school lunch say about eating school lunch. Countries with governments and families willing to fund better lunches have kids who eat better lunches. As the economy changes and fewer students have a parent who either stays at home or has the time in the day to prepare balanced food for their school lunch, it would be prudent to eat it at school.
7
@LRD The middle schooler is old enough to pack his/her own lunch.
9
Why do I pack lunches? Because the local school district uses a centralized kitchen and disperses food via truck to the schools in the district. Just like large airlines prepare food.
So, if you enjoy airline quality food for your child day in and day out, have at it.
If you like your child to have hot food for lunch, buy some Thermos branded containers and pack soup and/or sandwiches.
If your child likes food with actual flavor, pack a lunch.
If you like your child to not spend half of their lunch/recess time waiting for food to be served by the cafeteria workers with only 7-10 minutes to actually eat. Pack a lunch.
This is why my wife and I still pack our kids' lunches.
6
I would love to participate in school lunch. However, the two reasons I don't is the poor quality of the food and the packaging waste. My two kids have tried the school lunch option several times and don't like it.
The school district's provider uses "recyclable" plastic trays and non-recyclable plastic film. We pack our homemade lunches in reusable containers.
1
The kids have 22 minutes for lunch. Because of overcrowding, they first go sit in the auditorium. As the line clears, they are allowed into the cafeteria. It takes 15 minutes to buy lunch and find a seat, which leaves seven minutes for eating.
My kid packs a lunch because the pace of the American schoolday is obscene.
9
@A Little Grumpy Sounds like prison.
1
Funny, I always packed my daughter’s lunch and now she packs a lunch for her two children ( one is a vegetarian ).
All my working life I’ve packed a lunch, it’s vegetarian and real whole food, (apple, walnuts, Greek yogurt).
2
I packed my kids' lunches until they were able to pack their own. I stocked the things they preferred to pack and eat that were reasonably healthy and I provided supplies that used as little single-use plastic as possible. They had a small lunch allowance that they could spend how and when they wished to. The amount was based on about 3 school lunches a month.
I look at the pretty pictures of those lunches and think about all that single-use plastic going into landfills from just that one school. Every. Single. Day. It makes me want to scream.. and weep.
3
The cost of a $5 lunch for say, 120 days is $600. I have no idea how many days are in the school year. Say you have 2 kids, $1,200 a year for school lunches? Of course the majority will always bring lunch.
My brother and I were allowed to buy 1 School lunch per month. Families have tight budgets.
5
Because student lunches in my wealthy suburban district come prepackaged in styrofoam. 10,000 kids. Every day. Destroying the environment one child at a time.
6
My kids have a very short time to eat lunch and the lines are long. Also, lunches at our schools run about $6. So I pack lunches.
3
Surely I'm not the only one who made his own lunch as a child, starting roughly in 2nd grade.
This is a very basic skill for children, and one that will pay off later in life.
4
Our lunches cost about $6.00 per day. With 2 kids, that's $12.00 total per day. If I buy the ingredients at the supermarket, pack and prepare, it works out to about $2.50 per child, or $5.00 total per day, which equals a savings of $7.00 per day. 200 days of school = $1,400 per year. 14 years of school (preK3 thru 12) is $19,600.
8
Because we can feed our kids healthier food and for less cost. And without a fraction of the disposable packaging.
12
@Gone Coastal you mean "at a fraction."
The simple answer to the headline question is: Because we love our children and this is one way to demonstrate it. There seems to be some perverted idea we should somehow surrender our children to the tender mercies of the government because it knows best. I don’t have time or space to list the numerous failures of our government to illustrate the fallacy of that viewpoint.
11
Why are parents packing their chiller's lunch at all? Growing up, and raising our own children, the rule was the kids pack their OWN lunch. This not only ensured there could be no complaints about the contents, it taught responsibility, planning, and time management. It was relatively easy to purchase the pantry and refrigerator items needed to do this.
4
The lunch options at my daughter's school are awful. I'll continue to pack her lunch, and save a bit of money in the process.
5
I cannot relate to this article at all. Just because upper-middle class parents pack their kids' lunch, it doesn't mean they are packing "instagram worthy" lunches or all-organic blah blah. Our household is upper-middle. My kids bring lunch from home. I make their sandwiches or "main dish" and they are responsible for packing the remainder. I do it that way because if they make their own sandwiches I've got 3 people in my way in the kitchen fighting over the supplies for the sandwiches. Why don't they buy lunch? Because it's $3.50 a day here per kid, which is around $170 a month for 3 kids and they WON'T EAT half the stuff offered. It has nothing to do with quality. They are picky. They can bring their lunch for a fraction of the school cost and I know they will eat it all.
13
If we don’t train the kids on institutional food early they won’t be ready for food deliveries when they get older. Then where will the fast food industry be.
2
My daughter has three children, and packs lunch - at their request - daily. Usually it's leftovers (cauliflower fried rice with chicken and fresh veggies from dinner) or homemade "lunchables" with whole grain crackers, preservative free meats and cheeses, and fresh fruit). Her husband is in the Army, and they live on a military post with the kiddos attending on post school. His salary is their only source of income, so they are "poverty level" and the kiddos could eat free, but they prefer to bring the better quality lunch from home. With the exception of special holiday meals, lunches are hardly Instagramable. My granddaughter plays travel basketball and is in a rigorous training program, so she gets extra protein. One child has ADHD, and is sensitive to preservatives and sugars, so his lunch is probably better controlled from home anyway. Everything is packed in reusable containers, so there's little waste.
5
I am sure that one of my kids would have starved to death if I hadn't made 2 peanut butter-and-bacon sandwiches on bagels every single school-day that the kid (now 42, with 3 teens of her own to worry about) attended. Lunches have come a long way since the slop that was provided when she was little, but they are still very bland, with ridiculous sodium and fat restrictions for youngsters. I am a nurse in a high school, and I say that with confidence. Childhood obesity is not the product of delicious meals - it is the result of unhealthy snacking, among other factors.
3
The school lunch at my daughter's school was sub-standard. The "meat" was bits of chicken glued together with three stripes painted on the top to look like grill marks. The school was not allowed to opt out of sweetened chocolate milk even at the classroom level when teachers specifically requested. We suspect the milk was old and chocolate syrup and sugar were used to cover the taste. This is a common practice. The fruit was often served still frozen and promptly dumped in the garbage. More of the lunch was dumped than eaten - except for the sweetened milk and dessert. No thanks. No matter how many parents sponsor the school lunch program by not packing their children's lunch the quality will remain poor because the vendors are operating to maximize profits and will serve whatever is legal. It doesn't matter to the vendor if the majority of the food is dumped as long as it is paid for. This is because contracts are made at the school district level far from the consumer's mouth.
5
It is true that school lunches have improved a great deal in the last couple of decades. However, it's likely that government-funded school lunch programs will suffer the same fate under the current Republican regime that many others have; funding will be cut, schools will not be able to afford to sustain current levels of food quality, low-income students will go hungry as they once did, and we will be back to soggy fries, mystery meat and cardboard grilled cheese for kids whose families can afford to pay. So keep those sandwich-making skills sharp, parents.
2
The food is only part of the reason parents and kids pack lunch. Once they hit middle and high school, kids don't have time to wait in line to buy lunch and still make it to the club meetings and labs that are all scheduled during lunch time! In fact, my daughter's high school doesn't even have a working cafeteria -- it is given over to club meetings and the lunches are served from a kiosk with a long line outside. Even the packed lunches often come home uneaten due to these activities, and the real "lunch" is eaten at home later.
1
When I decided to have children, I took on the responsibility to feed them the best food I could. I always packed their lunches, as well as mine and my husband’s, and cooked dinners from scratch. That was my job as a wife and mother! Besides, we could not afford for them to buy lunch. If this country really wanted to make life easier for mothers, we would provide a family allowance high enough so that mothers would not have to work outside the home.
6
@Regina in Civitatem except many want to work outside the home. I'm a terrible cook. My husband makes most of our meals. We want to have kids, but becoming a mother doesn't mean I want to stop being a lawyer for 18-24 years while they grow up.
7
@ladyfootballfan There's really no excuse to be a "terrible cook." It's literally just following basic directions properly, the exact thing young children learn to do in school.
Many of us even grew up making our own lunches, which is perhaps something your child could do while you're out lawyering.
2
The quality of the school lunches in our district is pretty amazing. (This is public school in the US).
Our schools have cooks. I've eaten school lunch when volunteering at school (full price to me was $2.85 - if one qualifies for reduced lunch, it's 100% free in our district). Lunch was good. Not just edible or OK, but good.
This month's menu includes:
- Burrito Bowl Bar (chicken or bean) with Red pepper corn, cowboy black beans
- Cacciatore (chicken or chickpea) with steamed broccoli & carrots
- Roasted Chicken with maple roasted squash & green beans
- Coconut crusted red fish with rice, steamed peas and mango slaw (and the fish is local)
There is pizza every Friday, but it is far less grease bomb than I see elsewhere. There are alternatives (simple sandwiches) if kids don't like the hot meal.
Our district is considering making the day a bit longer, and putting that extra time into more time to eat and play during lunch and recess.
Your school district CAN provide healthy, tasty meals. Make them do it.
9
Where in NE do you live?
@XxXx - Greater Boston Area. Not one of the fancy W towns.
I just checked, and about 45% of kids in our district qualify for reduced/free lunch (and reduced is free in our district - but the statewide data separates those categories).
2
Is it the sack lunch that's the problem, or is it the a la carte items that aren't covered by the Program? Parents give their kids money to "buy lunch" and they buy Hostess pies and chips. Seems like the problem could be solved by not offering the other items.
Of course, the profit on snack items is probably better, so the school cafeteria may cover more of their costs that way, while the national program suffers.
3
My kids are long past elementary age but I packed lunches every day even when we qualified for free lunch because they did not want to eat the food in the cafeteria. It was reasonably healthy in our district, and when my older child started school he liked the food. But then the district switched to a central kitchen model. Everything arrived soggy and gross in throwaway plastic trays. Nothing tasted good anymore and the waste was insane. If I had not been able to send a lunch, I do think the meals were nutritious enough -- but they were yucky. Before the central kitchen the meal contents were the same, but the food was heated onsite and was appealing.
4
I have an issue with creeping institutionalization of peoples' lives. With the exception of the small population of home schoolers, children are already mandated to go to school, a good thing for most children. Now you're saying that they must eat the school food because otherwise its unfair to those whose parents don't send them to school with lunch (for whatever reason). So, I assume that next we'll have mandatory school uniforms, as the parochial and some private schools do, because, you know, wouldn't want to shame anyone who doesn't have the latest clothes. And on and on.
This shouldn't be an either/or choice. We should be able to have decent lunches available from the school while not running some ridiculous guilt trip on people who make lunch for their children (or kids who do it themselves).
11
I was lucky that I grew up in a small town where if you wanted you could buy a lunch that was made at the school cafeteria. We had what I guess would not be considered heath food, goulash, hot dogs Mac and cheese pasta and meat ball etc. but very few kids were over weight and nobody died from the food. Plus we had an hour for lunch and you could go home to eat. The kids that stayed got a half hour of recess. It was a working class town but people could afford the lunches.
My daughter works at a school, again in a working class area but two parents work and about 75% of the kids get free breakfast and lunch.
I see Trump wants to increase defense spending and cut safety net programs, nice priorities. SAD.
3
We live in a district where school lunches are excellent. We stopped buying them for our kids because they were given 20 minutes for lunch in elementary school, at least 10 of which were spent waiting in line. By the time they got lunch and found a place to sit, they had perhaps five or six minutes to eat. Additionally, if the kids were not able to eat every bit of their food in this tiny amount of time, they got in trouble with the lunchroom staff and were made to skip after-lunch recess and moved to a table where they would be watched and criticized until they finished. Despite discussions with the head of food services, the principal, and the district we made no progress in this ridiculous situation. Our kids are healthy eaters, not picky, and eat an appropriate amount of food for their level of hunger. The fact that the lunchroom staff would insist on each child taking a certain amount of food despite their appetite, and insist on them eating it all very quickly, was an extremely unhealthy thing to teach kids. Opting out of this negative situation by bringing lunch was a much better situation. We have never gone back to school lunch.
8
Very simple reason. FOOD ALLERGIES and anaphylaxis.
2
Once upon a time school lunches were actually prepared on site by school cooks. Obviously there are challenges to feeding large groups of kids, but I've spent many years in schools all over the US and most of the meals are pre-prepared, industrial style, by providers like Chartwells, (which is the service my own children's school had all the way through high school) and trucked into the district. As many have commented, not all schools are equally serviced and the health-factor of many is suspect.
While the services make it easy for staff to serve large groups of kids at the same time as they offer vast choices, they are often processed, and are especially high in sodium. Our family has a genetic issue that makes these levels of sodium detrimental, so I packed every day for my kids until the very end of twelfth grade.
What if instead of schools having every choice under the sun, they actually prepared healthy, home cooked meals, on site, and gave only two choices?
2
@Dar James : talk to some folks over 55 or so.
That's what they did for generations -- simple homecooked food -- nothing exotic! -- no soda, chips or candy -- just whole milk and usually 1-2 choices of entree -- plus maybe a sandwich.
The only constant I see - negative! -- is that it is deemed OK to give kids 8-12 minutes to eat! that's awful.
2
As a parent, I recently spent months working with an elementary school committee to improve the cafeteria food. We suggested a campaign to get more parents to buy school lunch and advocated for more local and state funding to support more scratch cooking. In the end, the corporate stranglehold on the budgets and menu items, coupled with extreme fear of food staff to not rock the boat, meant that our efforts were not successful. Cheap food equals processed food, the system delivers that and only much better funding can make a change.
7
While NYC lunch (and breakfast) is thankfully free for children whose parents don't have the resources, my son prefers to bring lunch from home for a few reasons: he gets more fresh fruits, veggies, and bread, and it's package free and less wasteful!
Not all schools have adopted scratch cooking, and honestly it makes my stomach turn to enter the school cafeteria where the amount of plastic and food waste could feed and house the homeless in this city! Some children grab their lunch trays only to slide the contents off and into the garbage, while others are lucky if they don't slip on a puddle of milk.
I do see some attempts at progress, but like everything in education, it's a process that would involve full participation by the school admin/teachers, parents (volunteers), and city.
2
My children’s public elementary school provides amazing lunch options that I would be willing to eat!
However, I still pack my kids’ lunches due to time (not nutrition) concerns. Their school only only gives 15-20 minutes for lunch, and my kids barely have enough time to eat as it is. I don’t want them to lose any actual eating time if they don’t have to.
6
Well, if the school lunches here in Utah looked like the school lunches from Austin (my childhood home) that you pictured, I probably wouldn't pack a home lunch. As it is, the school lunch my daughter is offered is regularly comprised of soggy vegetables, Dominos pizza, sloppy joe, fried-I'm-not-sure-what, and corndogs. When a state doesn't properly fund education (Utah = perennially at the bottom) lunches also suffer. I'll keep packing lunches.
6
We pack lunches for our kids the majority of the time for much the same reasons we pack lunches for ourselves. It is healthier, we get to decide what we want to eat without having to settle for what is available, and it is often less expensive. But the latter is closer to a wash with the kids since theirs cost $2.50. That all being said the kids get to pick 3 days out of the month after looking at the menu where they eat school lunch. Because also just like their parents, sometime is nice to "eat out" too.
1
Produce a superior product at a great value and people might buy it. Otherwise, let's get the government out of our kids lunch boxes.
3
@BC That doesn't explain why McDonald's, which is arguably not a superior product at a great value, is so popular.
1
@BC : what the author and most lefty lib want is a socialist nanny state that DECIDES FOR YOU -- because "they know better than YOU what is (or is not) in your child's best interests".
They want to control even the food you are allowed to eat!!!!
5
@Anna Kavan Actually, there is a fairly large market that says McDonald's is superior.
A big problem is that kids do not have enough time to eat lunch. Our elementary school provide 25 minutes to eat lunch. The line can often take 10 minutes. There is simply not enough time left a for a 6 year old to finish eating.
9
Nope. If I had school age children I would make a generous donation to the school's lunch program, but I would provide my own lunches. The kids would help develop the menus and they would help assemble the lunches the night before. Done.
4
Our school does not have a proper cafeteria, so lunches have to be pre-ordered and are brought in by a vendor in the morning and sit waiting to be distributed until lunchtime. We prefer to prepare our children's lunches and make sure they have something we know they will actually eat. They are allowed to select one item to include, invariably a piece of chocolate, but otherwise the lunches are healthy.
3
Sorry, I don’t see packing lunches for children after the first few grades. They ought to eat at school or make their own lunches. It’s obvious that I’m nearly eighty now, but I still think that keeping groceries in the house is the job of the homemaker, and kids should be able to figure it out from there. If the school lunches really are bad, the grownups should be doing something about it at the school level.
Also I’d supply school lunch money but I don’t want the youngsters to be foraging through community shops for food so they would need to do that on their own dime.
2
Pitting made-for-instagram packed lunches against gourmet cafeteria lunches completely ignores all the kids who go to schools without any sort of kitchen at all. My kids have attended multiple public and charter schools in different states over the years without kitchens. For some, bag lunches are a necessity.
2
School lunches have improved over recent years. Good. They couldn't have been much worse. The meals in the photos look OK: not great, just OK. What is the protein in the meal in the top left? Milk? also, Pita bread AND croutons? Those are pretty empty calories and a lot of kids are allergic to dairy and/or gluten. None of the meals pictured would be suitable for them, and even if they did provide a gluten free option, cross contamination is rampant in prepared foods. The article makes no mention of the sources and qualities of the proteins in the new and improved school lunches either. I love to cook. I DO have a food allergy, and I cook EVERYTHING from scratch. Everything. I would prefer a home cooked, home made lunch, any day.
2
@Michelle : the top meal is a lettuce salad with NO PROTEIN (or dressing). That's hardly a filling meal for an active teenager! most late teens boys would be starving! and yes, croutons AND pita bread! two starchy carbs! three of the meals have the same cut-up plums -- which can be hard and TART. And why lowfat milk????
2
I pack my kids' lunch because the lunchroom is so crowded that by the time they get through the line and find a place to sit, there's less than 10 minutes left to eat. They much prefer taking the lunch into the cafeteria, finding their buddies, and sitting down for 20-25 minutes.
4
The mere act of teaching your child to be self-sufficient and brown bag it as a lifestyle choice sets them up for better health later on. (Poignant given today’s article on expected obesity to reach 1 in 2 Americans by 2030. ) There is more to packing lunch than nutrition; we should strive for our children to learn to pack a healthy, tasty lunch while young and continue the habit well into adulthood. Forsaking this opportunity because others cannot or will not pack lunch serves no one.
4
School lunch costs $65/month at our school, is significantly less nutritious than what we pack, and our kindergartner prefers the more nutritious lunch.
We make donations to the school in various ways and would certainly contribute to subsidized lunches, but until they stop serving pizza, crackers and fruit juice, I can’t justify paying $585/year for my kids to eat it.
5
I partner through work with a HS in the South Bronx which is 100% free or reduced lunch. The students make fun of those who eat the school lunch - they call them "schoolies." It is unfortunate because these kids could all benefit from the free meal. Most of them are not bringing packed lunches from home, instead they grab a granola bar or worse, or just go without lunch. My own kid in a suburban middle school doesn't eat the school lunch because the lunch period is so short she doesn't have time to cross campus, stand in line, eat, and get to her class on time.
3
I pack my daughter’s lunch everyday because I don’t find the school lunches to be very healthy. Some choices from this month include nacho chips with cheese sauce, French bread pizza and Belgian waffle. Vegetable and fruit sides are available but I don’t find these meals to be very nutritious. I appreciate the idea that buying the lunches supports the quality but the quality isn’t there. My daughter also says getting in line takes too long and cuts into her eating time. I would gladly support school lunches in other ways like a donation, but I will not make her eat this just to get money into the system.
7
I take your point, but people with choices will always opt out of systems that don’t work for them. My kids will continue to take healthy lunches packed (pretty efficiently) at home. If ever the American lunchroom looks more like it’s French counter-parts, I’ll reassess.
7
Maybe the question we should be asking is why parents don’t see that their kids can actually pack their own lunches?
I supervised when my kids were in kindergarten and until they learned they needed a protein, a fruit, a veggie, and a snack (to cover snack and lunch).
Our kids are capable of making good choices for themselves if we teach them how.
Then, it doesn’t matter if it’s a school lunch or a packed lunch.
3
I live in NYC. I am so proud and happy to say our school lunches are free. The downside - they are pretty terrible. Really. They try to make them healthy, but the food just looks really unappealing and not very fresh. By combining cooked veggies with everything, many kids are picky (including mine) and won’t touch the lunch. Most kids would eat more from a buffet-style salad bar with everything pretty raw and separate, and some simple protein and choices of bread for carbs. Maybe that is cost prohibitive.
4
School lunches have improved - good. But it's still mostly processed food, and not all the choices are available in all school districts.
5
All good points and I get it but my kids has 15 minutes for lunch. This includes leaving the classroom, heading to the cafeteria to get in line, wait in line, getting lunch, get recorded to deduct from lunch account, leave cafeteria to find friends (weather friendly outside eating city), follow trash rules for getting rid of food items (lets not even get started on styrofoam platters and plastic cutlery) before heading out to play for the 20-minute recess. I pack my kids lunch, so I can use reusable items and reduce trash, and he can eat and get on the playground as quickly as he can. He says he sees kids coming out with their school lunch tray as he's putting his lunch box away. When given appropriate time allowances for eating and social play become an important part of the school curriculum, I'll look into buying and helping increase funding for school lunch.
6
I must now be officially an old fogey.
I never ate one cafeteria meal in K-12. I made my own sandwich and took an apple. I did occasionally buy a cookie.
We were lower middle class and buying lunch was out of the question due to cost.
9
@Phil Carson : well, it was not free in those days (60s). It was subsidized but not free. I remember it very well. Milk was heavily subsidized -- PLAIN whole milk, in tiny 1/2 pint cartons. It was always somehow lukewarm. Everyone drank it, because there was NO other beverage, period. If you hated milk (or were allergic to it)....there was cold water at the drinking fountain.
The lunches ran 30 cents to 40 cents, with a few specials hitting 45 cents. This was the daily special, which was a hot meal on a real china plate -- say, hot roast beef sandwich with gravy over bread and mashed potatoes. Fridays was always fish sticks or patties, with macaroni and cheese (we had a lot of Catholics!). That was about 30 cents.
Now, that sounds dirt cheap in 2020, but in 1967....it was a lot of money for some kids! I knew kids from big Italian families with 10 brothers & sisters! Most kids had at least 3-4 siblings. So they'd have had to pay X times 30 cents, every day. And minimum wage was about $1.25 an hour.
Most of us brought a packed lunch at least 2-3 times a week, even kids from relatively comfortable families. Nobody I knew expected to eat lunch at the cafeteria EVERY DAY! and there was no breakfast, period. Your mom was expected to make you breakfast.
1
Are there vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher, and allergen-free options? No? do these people not exist in Ms. Gaddis's world? Do these institutions serve meals reflecting the ethnic and cultural makeup of their schools?
This article is frankly culturally insensitive. Many families in the US have religious or cultural dietary restrictions, and school lunches simply don't reflect that. Many folks prefer traditional foods from their cultures, which are NEVER reflected in school meals. I don't see sushi or kimchi featured, ever. And many cultures consider it the responsibility of the family, not the government, to feed a child.
Would the author kindly address these concerns?
7
@jz -- You've given the perfect reason for packing your own lunch; and many schools do have vegan burgers. BTW, Japanese kids don't eat sushi for lunch.
1
Would you ever eat sushi from a school lunch? Really? Why not just get some from the gas station? I’m sure the drug store has you covered for your sashimi gohan craving. Never know when you’ll need some uni from the Exxon quick mart, ya know?
@Jorge
True. Lots of Korean kids eat kimbap for lunch, which is essentially sushi.
1
Any kid older than 7 can make their own lunch (and older than 10 can do their own laundry). My kids used to make avocado and cheese or peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or whatever else they wanted, and they could KEEP their lunch money. It takes 5 minutes, and it's cheap. So enough about the poor beleaguered parent slaving away to make expensive lunches.
And the example pictures. Milk? Looks like the dairy industry still rules. Milk is only good for some kids, the rest either hate it or can't handle it. It is so 40 yrs ago.
8
@Jorge : there is nothing wrong with milk, unless you have an allergy to lactose.
It is an extremely nutritious food, which is why it is included. Even if a kid mostly skips the veggies and fruit and only eats the middle of a PB&J....the milk will supply the nutrients he/she needs.
It's also a good lifetime habit to get into. I am very sure as a child -- and I was not crazy about milk, unless I got to dunk Oreo cookies in it! -- that I would have happily drunk gallons of fruit juice, soda pop, Hawaiian Punch, KoolAid and other crap! because kids love sweet junk.
But there was NOTHING ELSE TO DRINK at school but milk -- WHOLE (plain) milk! -- or water from the drinking fountain! -- so I learned to drink milk and tolerate it.
Today as an adult, I love milk and drink it daily. It's a good habit that I LEARNED IN SCHOOL.
1
@Jorge I think seven-year-olds can do laundry--I did, in the 1960s, and with coin-operated machines!
Not in New York City! I’m a teacher and my students refuse to eat the school lunch. Horrifying smells come from the cafeteria.
13
Why are parents still packing their kids' lunch? Because school lunch has become expensive and packing lunch is still cheaper. I'm an adult with no children and I pack my lunch when I go to work. I work in the Times Square area and I can't afford to pay $12+ a day for lunch at the area eateries.
9
@RBC : my husband is about to retire later this year. He has worked since he was 15 years old. He's been married to me for 26 of those years. Every single workday, with very few exceptions...I have made him a packed lunch.
He has a good job and he could afford to eat out, if it were a question of "just money". But I know then he would mostly eat burgers and fries, because that's all that is around the area of his company -- fast food. Or maybe pizza. The company is not huge, and there is no cafeteria. Or he'd skip lunch on busy days, and end up hungry and headache-y.
Years ago, he worked for a big corporation and there WAS a cafeteria, but it was pricey -- almost as much as a regular restaurant -- entrees were $6-$7 (in the 90s). Occasionally, he would buy something like a bowl of soup or chili in addition to his packed lunch. But he always had a packed lunch.
I never found this to be an onerous task. It was mostly leftovers, or a sandwich and some fruit/veggies. I am quite sure I never spent more than 5 minutes packing his lunch -- I could do it in my sleep (and sometimes did!) as I had packed school lunches for many years!
Homepacked lunches are vastly cheaper, fresher, more nutritious and if that were not enough -- they are a sign of love and caring, that can't be beat.
1
I was in the public school system throughout this whole decade and let me say, I went to school in a wealthy district. Lunches cost closer to $4-5 when I was in high school and they were all gross frozen and reheated inedible meals. I honestly feel as if the food got worse between my time in elementary school (2007-2012) and my time in high school (2015-2019). No thank you.
10
I’m a dad, and I make 90 percent of my kids’ sandwiches. I ate in my high school cafeteria. I’ve never understood why our kids can’t do the same. My wife, who will probably say, “But their friends don’t eat in the cafeteria!” is going to see this article.
1
Why are fat-free and skim milk promoted as "healthy"? Fats help make you feel full and therefore less likely to want to snack sooner. Has the author looked at the ingredients in chocolate milk? In particular, various forms of sugar?
Is school hamburger meat still made with pink slime? If I'm interpreting the Current Use section of the Wikipedia correctly, the answer is, "yes." (This stuff is banned in Canada and the EU.)
The responsibility to improve the quality of school lunches lies with the government and our schools, not with parents.
9
@Valerie : no, it absolutely belongs to parents. Parents are responsible for their own kids -- or should be! and parents are a driving force in what is or is not acceptable in their districts!
I agree on flavored milks. Now, I get that kids love sweet stuff. I loved chocolate milk as a kid, but it was a rare, rare, RARE treat. It was fattening and it was expensive!
Today, stupid parents and schools apparently think they must offer sweetened milk to trick kids into drinking ANY milk. As a result, many children now won't touch plain milk -- it tastes strange to them, because they expect "a flavor".
My own grandkids refuse plain milk and are angry and upset when it is served. They would cry (and I do mean CRY, tears running down their cheeks!) after one sip, and demand "Grandma, why don't you buy vanilla milk? or chocolate or strawberry? We HATE plain milk!"
They are teens now, and won't touch plain milk with a 10 ft pole, They act like it is poison.
In comparison, "pink slime" is nothing. It's a nasty name given to some "scrapings" of meat that are perfectly clean, fresh and healthy and would otherwise go to waste. It's a classic example of lefty liberal hysteria and exaggeration. (However, I am pretty certain it is not served in schools, thanks to the lefty histrionics.)
1
Bringing lunch from home often means using up leftovers that would otherwise be thrown out. And if a parent cannot feed a child effectively breakfast and lunch on $2 a day, something is wrong and they need some home economics classes. Oatmeal is a cheap, filling and nutritious breakfast, to start. A whole baked chicken can feed 5.
7
@Snowball : an average breakfast for an elementary school age kid would be something like plain cold cereal with milk or oatmeal. A serving of Cheerios or oatmeal costs maybe 20-25 cents. If you buy "generic" products and not brand names...LESS! The milk -- maybe another 20 cents. A piece of whole wheat toast, maybe 20 cents. This is simple stuff, even a 9 year old could make most of this on their own.
A peanut butter and jelly sandwich isn't much more -- 20 cents or 30 cents each? some baby carrots or celery sticks? 20 cents? the paper lunch sacks are literally 1-2 cents a piece. Plastic bag or waxed paper, another 3 cents.
We are talking DIMES here. If you pack up leftovers...the cost is nearly zero as it is otherwise wasted food.
1
Parents would do their kids a great service to teach them how to pack their own lunches with food that parents select. On the front end there's a lot of conversation and monitoring to have about what choices are the best choices and portions, in the end, kids end up self-sufficient and parents have more time on their hands.
The challenge in my town is not that families opt out of the school lunch program, but the school district itself has chosen not to participate. Affluence breeds non-participation
3
@TBB I often snuck home from school at lunch in high school to see my dog and cook myself food I wanted to eat. There's nothing appetizing in school cafeterias.
Why don't we buy school lunches:
A. Cost; school lunches are much more expensive than home made, and groceries are already a huge portion of our budget
B. Dairy and gluten allergies (which show up in every picture for this article), two increasingly common allergens
Still, glad that improvements are being made.
5
I'm a teacher at a small fairly rural school. I have cafeteria duty every other day so I have a good idea what the kids eat and don't eat. A much higher percent of the kids buy the school lunches than bring a lunch from home. Maybe that's a reflection of quality of the lunches at our school. Maybe a reflection of the economic status of the community. I will say that the quality of the lunches and the choices the kids have is much better than the recent past. I am absolutely amazed at the number of kids who take advantage of the salad bar stocked with romaine, spinach, field greens, peppers, tomatoes, chick peas, califlower, onions, shredded cheese, yogurt and fruit. I each a lunch from the cafeteria every day. Yes, there is waste and lots of plastic is thrown away. But the prepackaged sliced apples and baby cut carrots are eaten. The cost of the lunch is $3.70. It's a healthy, inexpensive meal that lots of kids in the district take advantage of.
9
@Michael Schaertl : this is obviously an affluent suburb.
$3.70 a meal is much higher than the average of about $2.50 (gov. figures).
It is also $35 a week. I am an adult and I wouldn't spent $35 a week on LUNCHES! that's $140 a month!!!
Imagine you have two kids -- $280 a month! vs. maybe $30 to feed both kids 5 days a week with simple packed lunches!
1
I understand the setup and understand that school lunches have improved.
Our kids make their own lunches from things we have at home. We have healthy, unprocessed food at home. They have made their own lunches since they were in 4th grade. Nobody has ever taken a picture of their lunch, nor would there ever be a reason to. The contest aspect of motherhood does not exist in our house - it's not a competition to see who can waste the most time on useless endeavours. Creating lunches worthy of a picture is one of those things.
3
Depending on how and what is being packed (versus how the school cafeteria does it) a packed lunch could also be a more ecologically sound if the plastic or metal container, along with utensils, is being washed for reuse instead of ending up in the trash in the cafeteria.
In countries like India and Japan, lots of lunches were ‘packed’ for adults in reusable metal containers, reducing waste.
In this country many professional adults pack their lunch to save money.
3
I had never considered the impact of full-price payers opting out. Unfortunately we are one of the families not contributing. But my children (11 & 13) actually have to pack their own lunch.
If the lunches at our schools looked like those in the photos, my kids may be more interested in eating them. They ate often ate school lunches in elementary school, which was a high-poverty school that gave everyone free lunch. In middle school and high school, the kids have 30 minutes or less to eat, and standing in line for lunch takes 20. This is a major reason why many in our district bring their lunch.
2
None of the four meals pictured look anything like the lunches at any of the local public schools I've worked at. They don't even bother to cut up the apples, resulting in most of them being thrown out.
A typical lunch at school: breaded chicken meat patty, canned vegetables, and a whole apple or orange (neither of which are accessible to students with any type of motor difficulty--and this is a school FOR students who aren't succeeding in their home schools), and milk (students usually choose chocolate).
Breakfast is even worse. Fried "french toast sticks" with corn syrup, juice (sugar), sugary cereals, and chocolate milk. A couple years ago I added up the grams of sugar in a preschooler's breakfast and came up with 74.
11
Waste – food waste, plastic waste, time waste, monetary waste are all reasons I and my kids take packed lunches. Expand lunchtime, institute a policy of reusable place settings, in addition to on-site cooking in schools, and I may consider spending a portion of my food budget on school lunches. Until that happens, my kids will continue taking homemade lunches.
8
@Paula Stanley Yes, and teach table manners!!! So many adults I know don't know how to properly hold a knife and fork.
1
The sentiments in this article may be well-intentioned but the truth is that the quality of lunches in most public schools is poor and is heavy on carbs and unhealthy food. It would be nice if a country that purports to care about children so much could actually provide them with a healthy lunch and a quality education.
8
Schools would do better by the students, the schools, and the planet by offering exclusively vegan lunches. What unimpeachable reason is there for anyone to eat dead animals at all, let alone more than once a week?
5
I have four kids. My kids actually prefer when I pack their lunches. Personally, it's a huge time suck to pack five lunches in the morning (mine plus theirs) before heading off to work; however, what I pack for them tends to be healthier than the school lunches. I would say the school lunches aren't horrible -- our school offers fruit and veggies that my kids like and eat (e.g., steamed broccoli and fresh carrots). I don't like that the milk options are 1% or sugar-loaded flavored milk. I'd rather my kids drink whole, unflavored milk (which is what they get and prefer get at home and with packed lunches). I don't like the sugar and sodium content of most of the lunches, but for a once or twice a week purchase (or all week when I'm slammed), it's OK. If the lunches were better (less sodium/less sugar/more vegetarian options (e.g, less reliance on chicken and burgers), I would be thrilled to have them buy every day. But we aren't there yet.
171
@Michigan Girl I do as much of a "prep" that I can for lunch preparation the night before. I find I am not so frazzled in the morning (i.e., toasting bread, washing and slicing veggies, putting snacks on the counter so I don't forget).
6
@Jane Doe Exactly: NIGHT BEFORE. In fact, do all of it the night before.
And put the packed bags in the refrigerator.
I did this for years, packing night before for my son, my husband and myself.
We did not ever forget them. Can't think of one time.
Do have to ask about "toasted bread"?
Seriously? Uh, plain bread is fine. I'd "save" the toasted bread for the weekends. Your kids are getting Star Treatment with bag lunches to begin with.
I'd bet they're fine with regular, softer bread.
Now, homemade cookies on the other hand ...
(Those can be frozen and pulled out for lunch. They're great!)
11
@Michigan Girl And we are never going to get there. As this author stated at the beginning and end of this article, until more parents opt for kids to eat school lunches, doubtful that school lunches and pay scale for the cafeteria staff will improve.
7
I was sent to school every day with a pb&j or sometimes a tuna fish sandwich. Hardly Instagram fare.
We've always packed lunches for our kids.
Yeah, we're kosher--my kids couldn't eat the meat that gets served in the school cafeteria--but mainly we pack lunch because it's saves money.
I pack lunch every day for work because, yikes, it would cost around $10/day, $50/week, $200/month to buy lunch. If my kids get into the habit of buying lunch, it might be hard for them to get into the habit of packing lunch when they grow up. That would be a shame.
I know that not everyone can afford a lunch to pack.
School lunch -- and school breakfast -- should be free to any kid who asks for it.
I don't think paperwork should be a requirement to be fed.
If a kid is hungry, give the kid food. You can't learn when you're hungry.
And, sure, it would be nice if there were more nutritious, and vegetarian, options at the school cafeteria.
But please don't try to make me feel guilty for trying to teach frugality to my kids.
7
Maybe, as a starting point, we should get rid of the laws that make it illegal to sell whole milk to school children.
13
My kid goes to a school in pretty wealthy school district, yet their lunch is pretty bad to my standard. The school claims that they provide healthy lunch, but the choices are very limited, and they are cooked in advance somewhere else, and delivered. Often the lunch line has extremely long line, as well - so long that by the time kids get lunch they only have 5 minutes of lunch time left. This also seems a common problem. The author needs to sample many more school lunch all over the country. When we lived in Europe, we learned that the lunch at UK and Germany were indeed much better. They require lunch to be cooked at school kitchen and they have chefs on site even for all public schools. In US public schools, I don't think that's the case. We both work, yet we get up early to prepare our kid's lunch, because we find that that's the only way to provide reasonable and healthy and tasty enough lunch.
3
Depends on your school/district.
Im tempted to cry fake news. I live in a wealthy community with organic farmers markets, vegan restaurants etc. The public School lunch vendor is some giant corporation and the lunches they provide are as disgusting and unhealthy as they were 20 years ago. Bad burgers, inedible pizza, etc.
8
So here's the thing -- not every parent who packs lunch is doing so because they are bougie upper class mamas who can't bear to see their little darlings eating non-organic chicken wings. My son packs his own lunch because he has autism and one of the many challenges he deals with is sensory food aversion, which means that the range of things he will eat is very small. (I think he may be the only child in North America who does not like and will not eat either pizza or chocolate.) My choices as a parent are to make sure he packs a lunch that he will eat, or pray that the school has SOMETHING that he will eat. Not only that, packing his own lunch every day gives him practice in the daily tasks of being organized and caring for his own needs, which if he is to ultimately live independently with his disability, are valuable lessons. Please let's not presume that every kid carrying a lunchbox is the product of affluent helicopter parents who overprotect their kids from real life. Some of us do have carefully thought out reasons for why our kids are bringing their lunch.
13
Weird how this article tries to guilt you into not doing one of the best things you can do for your child
22
I invite Jennifer Gaddis to Memphis. She can evaluate whether her putative “improved” lunches are a feature throughout the country or just limited to a few privileged oases. Then she’ll know why we undertake the “useless” task of packing lunches for our children. Is this really an editorial that needed publication?
10
While the lunches in better-resourced districts are looking good these days, the lunches in the many low-income schools I've worked in are downright depressing and disgusting. It's really, really sad. This seems like another example of the widening class divide in our country- in some places, they are figuring out how to do school lunch well, but for the less fortunate, lunch looks even worse than it did 20 years ago.
5
Because lunch costs $5.50 a day.
8
Food quality depends, greatly, on the school.
There is, also, a lot of food wasted in school cafeterias. Home lunches — no so much, I’d venture.
But an interesting issue to raise.
Why do I pack my kids lunch? Because I love them...
Honestly, my wife and I pack our own lunch to work : chicken, grilled vegetables, half cup of wild Rice, Greek salad. A Banana and an orange. All organic. Why would I not give my kid the same quality meal that I am eating?
It costs a fraction of what a restaurant will charge, and there is no way a school cafeteria will provide the same quality. Also, I find the meals always contain too much carbs and starch, and too little protein and raw vegetables (except for cheap beans and lentils)
It also aligns my kid's tastes to our ethnic background - one meal for the entire family, and remember your heritage.
It is important to show your child that cooking and preparing meals (by mom and dad) is part of the responsibility of being a family.
302
@Tom I don't disagree with the gist of your comment, but I take issue with a couple of comments.
You make food for your kids because you love them. That is true. The implication is that those who don't, don't love their kids. Feeding your kids exactly what you want them to eat is a privilege not everyone has. We should all strive to make sure every child has a nutritious meal. It is a public health issue.
Lentils and beans are cheap. However, they are excellent sources of protein and much much less taxing on the environment. Brown rice and beans make a great, balanced dish with lots of fiber, which animal protein does not provide. Legumes should be embraced.
62
@Tom Agreed. It's nice to know other parents feel the same as my family does. Yes, I support high quality school lunches but the schools are far from there yet. My children should not suffer by eating unhealthy school lunches in the meantime.
15
@EML I don't think saying that I make food for my kids because I love them implies that other people don't love their kids. It's one way of showing love.
In our family cooking and food is a way of showing love, but I see other families where the mom makes the nursery beautiful as an act of love.
We moved five months ago and our daughter's bedroom still is being used for storage and we haven't hung her nursery art yet. If a mom says I decorate my child's bedroom because I love her, I don't feel like she is implying that I don't.
So my kid gets gourmet lunches and a bedroom that's a disaster. It all evens out in the end.
29
You pack kids lunches so you can:
-make sure their choices are healthy -they develop good eating habits
-teach them about the economics and cost savings of bringing food from home
- show them you care enough to take the time out of your crazy lives to shop and make the food they like that is also good for them
- ask them when they come home from school if they liked their lunch and they found the little surprise that you put in ( could be an “I love you” note; “good luck in the geometry test”; “you look fabulous today”, etc)
- teach them about small acts of love that family members need to learn and remember
....duh....
10
I choose to pack lunches for my children almost solely due to the amount of single use wasteful packaging in school lunches. My children bring their lunch in reusable containers and have water bottles with bamboo cutlery which creates no waste. It is horrifying to think of the plastic forks, styrofoam trays, straws, and other packaging products that millions of kids throw away daily.
I am a teacher in public school but had taught in the UK for years where lunch is provided for all students and sometimes staff with proper dishes, trays, and flatware. I can't imagine how we could implement that change here but it's the only way to make school lunches doable.
5
The Heatlhy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010?
Thanks Michelle Obama!
4
Why in your photo are they all drinking chocolate milk for lunch?????????
4
The quality of lunches in our district has trended steadily downward. We are a fairly wealthy district in our state, but the school board has contracted with multiple vendors over the years and the food is higher in fat and salt than it was 10 years ago. I pack my kids lunches or they pack them, now that they are older because the food from home is way better.
5
Maybe some folks like having that extra connection with their children. I used to put notes in my kids' lunches, draw pictures on the lunch sacks, and give them unexpected treats.
4
I went to junior high and high school in Katy, Texas. Schools served food every Thursday from either Chick FilA, Dominos, etc. The rest of the other days, the food was basically burgers and pizza. I don't remember ever eating healthy food there and nothing has changed as far as I know. Have you seen the food served at HISD? It's awful. Working-class parents trying to juggle work and life balance. The government has failed us all.
4
The problem though is not so much the quality of the lunch but that my elementary school kids have 20 minutes to eat lunch before they go out to recess. It would take them almost that entire time to go and buy the lunch; I don't think they'd end up eating much of anything. With a packed lunch you just open it, eat it, and run off to the monkeybars.
OTOH, the ban on peanut butter is a significant obstacle in making a packed lunch today versus in the 80s when I was their age.
8
Yes, it's wonderful that school lunches have improved. What has declined, however, is the amount of time students have to eat their lunch. The need to cram more academics into already crowded schedules leaves student's at my sons' high school with 20 minutes or less for lunch. So, I pack my kids' lunches so they won't have to wait on line for food, and instead will have time to eat.
4
Less plastic used in a home packed lunch.
9
I couldn’t help feeling sick when looking at all that single use plastic.
2
I am a middle-class, white mother. I choose sack lunch because it's more cost-effective. Period.
9
In our district, the lunches continue to be disgusting. I would never allow my kids to eat anything but lunches from home.
3
I thought that trump just gutted the policy/law about school lunches using better ingredients...
5
My kids pack left overs from dinner most of the time, we cook at home all the time and prepare extra food, Using stainless steel lunch boxes, we minimize plastic, we reduce waste, they eat well,
Besides their school a "progressive private school that charges an arm and leg for tuition, fails miserably in the cafeteria..its pathetic."
3
Every one of those lunches on a throwaway tray, some with plastic, others not. The amount of garbage alone is reason enough to pack your kids lunch at home.
8
The food at my school is simply disgusting. I understand the author’s point, but I’m not asking my kid to eat something I won’t just for the social justice of it.
8
My kids are in grades 2 and 4 and we pack. 1) They are kind of picky. 2) They only get about 20-30 minutes for lunch. Packing lets them have more time to actually eat. We encourage them to eat protein first because otherwise they are hungry an hour later. So having enough time is important or they won't get to fruits and veggies. 3) we can pack the veggies they like best, so they get more veggies.
5
RoundUp Ready food is what our government calls "healthy". > Celiac disease is what's for lunch.
4
I pack lunch -- cheaper, better nutrition and no plastic waste.
11
Lunch cost money at my high school and the food made me want to kill myself. That's why I packed my lunch. Why pay for poison?
8
@Christopher
“Why pay for poison?”
Precisely. Thank you, Christopher
Michelle Obama advocated for healthier eating and more fruits and vegetables in school lunches. Trump’s undoing of everything Obama has put more unhealthy food on your child’s lunch tray. Still want to have school lunch?
5
I don’t know what planet this writer is living on, but the school lunches in DC are pure sugar and junk food. Which is why we always pack lunch for our kid.
7
I’m a dad. I make all the meals for a family of four, but I don’t make school lunches. My school-age daughter eats lunch at school. We live in Manhattan so lunch (and breakfast) is free. If she doesn’t like what they have on a particular day, there are always apples and cucumbers for the kids. Even if the food is not fantastic and not much is eaten, how much do otherwise well-fed kids need to eat at school? Also, this idea about more participation can be applied to public school a a whole. If more people put their kids into public schools, the schools would get better.
3
Food for thought. Thank you.
Pictures all have low fat or fat-free milk. AKA lactose that will lead to insulin spikes. People have fallen into the belief that eating animal-based fat makes you fat; when in reality it is insulin spikes that put your body into a calorie-conserving mode.
The chili in the bottom left likely has a good level of protein and fat; the rest will deliver a surge of blood insulin that will trigger the body to move sugar from the boodstream and into fat storage. The other three meals won't stop childhood obesity, but the grain farmers in Iowa will profit handsomely.
5
Jennifer, have you eaten Sodexo food? There is a reason the same companies serve food to students and inmates.
7
I don't know where the author lives, but those healthy lunches are not what is offered in our schools. Not by a long shot.
Oh, yes, our middle schools and high schools do offer healthier options - salad bar and healthier entrees - but it can cost upwards of $8 - $10 a day for a healthy lunch.
The regular fare? Sure $2.60 but that will get you microwaved chicken nuggets, warm milk, and a red apple that looks like it fell off the truck before it gets to you with a wax coating that really does not appeal.
5
"Mothers are encouraged..."
Please. I love making my child's lunch.
7
As an elementary school teacher, I can say that I continue to be appalled by the choices offered to young students. Vendors will not discontinue offering food that sells, and what second grader would pass up eating a giant chocolate muffin with a chocolate milk for breakfast? How many children look at the label on that muffin and that chocolate milk, see that they have a combined total of 56 grams of sugar, and balk at the choice? (BTW that is roughly 14 teaspoons of sugar). I teach lessons to help my students make healthy choices in the cafeteria line, but why are poor choices an option?
5
My kids have all told me that the lines at their high school cafeteria are so long, seating so limited, and time for lunch so short that - when they have bought school lunch - they aren't able to eat. So they bring their lunch or they go to the nearby shopping center & buy from the grocery store or a fastfood place. They had similar experiences at the 2 middle schools they attended in our county (without the option to leave campus). Maybe give them more than half an hour for lunch?
(yes, the high school's open campus policy is a whole other issue.)
4
@rax : Why do you object to an open campus policy? That is how my own parents grew up in the 50s and 60s. When high school is over, it's open LIFE time -- can't we let the kids experiment with a modicum of freedom in high school?
2
Well when you are vegan you are out of luck! SO I am packing breakfast and lunch for my kid every day since elementary school - 2 more month!
3
I'm a consultant for several middle schools and recently one school spent a couple months examining the pathways of their food. They read "Omnivore's Dilemma," visited a dozen local farms, and counted the types and amounts of food waste in their cafeteria.
Because the school is mandated to give all students vegetables--whether or not they want them--their is a tremendous amount of food waste. They compost but still.
I love the idea of better and healthier foods for our students; however, we do need to be careful how we implement such an important program.
Often programs fail because of poor funding. In Portland we have an incredibly diverse population of immigrants and refugees combined with a collection of foody-children. Many are vegetarian and some are vegan--their diets are not compatible with most of school lunch.
If--the few, obscenely wealthy people in--our country were not so greedy and shared its wealth, all schools could have cooks instead of workers who reheat prepared foods so the quality of school lunches would be appetizing and healthy.
241
@James Siegel
I agree that having better and healthier food for students is important, however it is not up to the top 1% in order to support this. The responsibility falls to all of us, not just the obscenely wealthy.
12
@Turner Exactly. So we should all strive to participate in public school meal programs and work hard, from a financial and active-engagement point of view, to improve them. Opting out weakens the movement.
7
@James Siegel I understand the need to adapt menus for medical and religious reasons but a diverse population should not be an excuse for restrictions around menu planning. I was a refugee kid who grew up on the school lunch program and was hungry enough to eat most of whatever I was served. School lunch was the first time I was introduced to tacos, pizza, hamburgers, etc. and I consider that an important introduction to the culture of America - a mix of different backgrounds. Kids will adapt and most do so quickly.
10
We are an upper middle class family; my children attend school in a relatively affluent suburb. I let my children "treat" themselves once or twice a week to a school lunch (mostly days when we are running late). They really like it (there are only so many peanut butter sandwiches a kid can take ... no Instagram-worthy lunches in my house!). But while I would be happy to support school lunches for some greater benefit, I cannot afford it . 2 teenagers x $5 per day x approximately 20 lunches per month = $200! That money is best spent elsewhere. We need to revamp spending for school lunches as a public investment, especially for lower income Americans. (By the way, I don't buy my own lunch at work; I pack it)
5
I haven't packed lunch for my kids since probably third grade — they pack their own lunch. (I realize this reply is a little off-point given the thrust of the article, but the helicopter-parenting assumption of the title got my attention.)
From the start, we permitted our children to buy lunch three times a week and take a lunch for the other two days. We thought this gave them an opportunity to plan (review the month's menu and pick the days the cafeteria had meals they wanted) and a chore they could be involved in (planning/making/taking their lunches.)
By high school, both kids were adamant lunch packers. I was curious about this because I always enjoyed cafeteria food as a child. They said they preferred to avoid the cafeteria because lines were long, slow, rowdy, and the food was so-so. By the time they got their food there was no time left to socialize.
Yet another orthogonal comment: given the picky childish eating preferences that I see so many adults exhibit, I would be very curious to survey the trash can input for days when the four sample food trays at the top of the article are served.
325
@Scott Butler
Yes, my young child also looks at the menu each week and decides which days she will buy lunch and which she will bring her lunch. Often when she brings, she will buy desert, which usually is not terrible as to nutrition.
14
@Scott Butler the time issue is huge, most kids in this country have only a 30 minute lunchtime.
22
@Scott Butler
Very smart. Love the idea of buy some days and take the lunch on others. Learn to plan
5
It's actually a lot cheaper to pack lunches for your kids. I'm not sure where the author gets the idea that parents that pack their kids' lunches are all going to Whole Foods for the ingredients.
565
@Yo : I think it's what *her* social circle is doing. And having no idea about the financial realities of the rest of us, she assumes that everyone does what her friends do.
I am baffled by the idea that parents are producing Instagram-worthy school lunches. But then again, that's not my social circle.
82
@Yo I do go to whole foods for my groceries, and I still manage $2-3 lunches.
14
@Yo My kids' school lunch in elementary school is over $5 per kid. I spend about that a day for all 3 lunches. Not going for instagram just trying to save for college.
26
20 minute lunch periods with hundreds of kids to serve - means it's better to bring lunch from home.
2
The thing that immediately jumped out at me from the pictures leading this article is the amount of trash produced by those lunches. My kids use the same lunch bag for years, along with the containers in it, water bottle, and metal utensils. There is zero waste. And the food is all things that they like so it is all eaten. At their school there was a study of what gets thrown away and, by weigh, most of it is uneaten cafeteria food.
9
My oldest started kindy this year, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that lunch has indeed come a long way since my childhood in the 80s. No more peanut butter-marshmallow on wonder bread, with a side of fries. They do make a much better effort to offer fruits and veggies and don't offer dessert.
That said, I still often pack lunch. While school lunches have improved, they still can't match the taste or health of what I can pack (and no, I don't aspire to Instragram-worthy lunches). A bonus: I know what my kid will actually eat, so I can include veggies that actually get eaten rather than some poorly-prepared veggie that will get tossed.
Now, school breakfasts are still dismal. They serve juice every day (despite pediatricians constantly telling us to not give juice!), and the main course is usually some processed muffin or cinnamon twist. Absolute garbage.
81
@Itsy Breakfast is dessert. Look at the sugar content in what a school breakfast is. Crumb cake=23 grams, Juice=11 grams, canned fruit=approx. 12 grams. That comes to about 10 teaspoons. Not the best way to start the day. Not to mention their poor teeth.
Water is never an option unless its purchased. Very odd.
Teach the kids to read the nutrition labels, they'll live longer.
6
@Itsy peanut-butter marshmallow is the best.
2
In Japan, school lunches are prepared by the cafeteria staff, but students do the rest, including distributing the food to their fellow students and some basic cleanup afterwards. Lunch therefore becomes another chance for teaching, and for community-building. Kids with actual special needs (not just "I don't like green stuff," actual food allergies or religious requirements) either bring their own food or have something special prepared for them, but otherwise, you eat what's given to you. Because students control the distribution, you can often ask not to get something you don't like, though usually you can't trade what you didn't want for something you want more of. FWIW, there is very little wood waste in the system - when kids are raised to see the process as normal, they actually tend to eat what's prepared for them without much resistance.
The comments to this piece show why that would never work in America, however: we simply aren't communally minded in this country any more. You'd have tons of outraged parents ranting about how their kids don't like X, Y, or Z, or ranting that their overweight children don't get big enough portions, and then you'd also have the problem of time: this process takes about an hour, time American schools don't seem willing to allocate to lunch.
In short, we get the country we deserve, because nobody cares enough to do any better.
8
@A The “In Japan” comment. If you’re willing to look at the larger picture, you’d consider the nuances and complicated issues and perhaps find some empathetic understanding rather than opting for the bitterness, nihilism and fat shaming—it's counterproductive to finding any solution. You’re on the right track; you have a good idea. Find a way to start locally and small and test it out in the USA.
My niece and nephew who live in CT say they don’t have enough time to go through the lunch line and eat. That’s why they pack their lunch.
3
As long as towns like ours hire contracted companies like Chartwells to provide school lunches, the result will always be garbage bed to our kids. I'm appalled at the menu choices, particularly at the elementary school level--carb and sugar heavy meals, pizza and french toast sticks--with little fresh fruit and vegetables if chemically infused apple slices and baby carrots count.
Packing your child's lunch is economical and healthier. If a parent chooses to create an Instagrammable meal for their child, who is this person to criticize?
Curious: Is Ms. Gaddis an "expert" or a lobbyist?
4
This is bringing back some vivid old memories, wow! Ugh, the school cafeteria, what a social Gordian knot. Balzac could have written about it. When I was in school, healthy school lunches didn't exist, and healthy food was frowned upon/not what the cool kids ate, so while I would rather have eaten the tuna sandwich on brown bread and cucumber slices my mom lovingly packed for me, I would stash it in my locker (and feel tremendous guilt about it)and spend my chore money on garbage food so as not to incur any more notice from the 7th grade bully girls just looking for a reason. I also remember the friends that I had who were on the free lunch program back then hanging their heads as they went through the line for this garbage food because they had to state their name and status to the cashier. Horrible. I'm glad at least that things seem to be moving, however glacially, in a healthier direction, ESPECIALLY when it comes to handling free and reduced lunches. A bad lunch can be corrected by a healthy dinner. Being shamed for it is not something so easily digested.
Nearly fifty years later, I still rhapsodize over cheeseburger turnovers and lime jello with shredded carrot pieces suspended inside, and a dollop of whipped cream on top. And milk was milk, not tasteless zero-fat white-colored water that is suitable only as radiator fluid. Will today's students get nearly as sentimental over cucumber slices and tofu souffle' and a slice of wheat bread?
But I digress; the point of the article is why would parents still be packing a lunch for their kids? Well, I don't know about you, but that Partridge Family lunch box makes an absolute fashion statement.
The slogan "Make School Lunches Great Again" is the best antidote for Trump that I can think of, since school lunches used to be notoriously horrible when I was growing up. While we are at it, let's make cancer treatment great again. Everyone would should have access to the treatment my grandmother had in 1943. And polyester. Let's definitely make polyester great again. Loved that double-knit.
Why styrofoam food trays and plastic bowls?
2
I can pack lunch for all three of my children for less than the price of one school lunch. My children also hate the school lunch offerings. They also hate fat free milk, which often has fillers added to give it the mouth feel of full fat milk.
2
In the pictures I see only low and fat free milk. Those are the wrong choices for children (and adults). Kids should all drink
full fat milk. Sending lunch could be a money issue.
4
You want to write about improved, healthier school lunches?
Write about Michelle Obama pressing for this, studying nutrition for kids with professionals, and going forward in the lunchrooms with healthy, nutritious lunches.
Write about how the now president of this United States has tried to negate this work, criticized Michelle Obama endlessly and her work - her work to make kids’ lives better, healthier. And not only for food, but for her programs to help kids learn that exercise is fun and worthy.
Wake up, people.
2
Maybe not so healthy options at all schools. Here's what for lunch at my local school district: WG Chicken Drumstick w/ mashed potatoes & WG Roll, Bacon Cheeseburger on WG Pretzel Roll with WG Onion Rings; Cheese and Pepperoni Stuffed Crust WG Pizza.... Glad I packed my kids lunches!
3
I come from a completely different perspective. As a post WW2 student in an austerity driven UK, our school lunches were miserable (think of the shortages in the terrible winter of 1947). However, everyone was expected to eat the school supplied food as this extended the rations provided to each family. At lunch time, we sat at long tables supervised by prefects (think Harry Potter) and learned basic manners. The food was horrible but the community spirit was wonderful and the older students were expected to look after the little ones.
I now substitute in my local affluent school district and have been impressed by the food supplied and the behavior. If the children don’t want something, they place it on a cart for other children to eat. By the end of lunch, everything has gone. Little to no food seems to be thrown away.
I agree that lunch breaks are too short. Easy solution: why not extend the school day by 30 minutes. My UK grandsons don’t finish school till at least 4 whereas I am home by 3.
2
If all school districts were like the one I attended--funded by substantial upper-middle class property tax rates--this article would ring true. I have a hard time believing that trusting the school lunch is universally a good idea, especially among those who need healthy lunches most.
2
If parents are really creating lunches to be worthy of Instagram, as the headline would lead us to believe, I think these poor kids are in for a very long, lonely, shallow life. Feels like they're quite missing the point.
2
Oh my. The democrats will lose 2020 with this type of thinking. For those who bring lunch to school, I would recommend the kids themselves make their own lunch starting in at least middle school. Moms don’t need to be doing this chore for their kids.
3
We live in a fairly wealthy district and the cafeteria food is premade and not particularly healthy or satisfying (pancakes, nachos, turkey corndogs). I wish Michelle Obama would pay them a visit as our school board definitely missed the memo.
6
is this a joke? there isnt a cafeteria or restaurant on earth that will be as healthy as a home made meal. the end.
12
@Nirmala Sandhu
Depends. A lot of kids bring snacks or packaged food like Lunchables instead of what you and I might consider "lunch."
@Nirmala Sandhu I agree, and would add, as fresh, delicious, and economical. Get a small thermos and your kids can have your leftover stew/ goulash/curry/soup! So easy, so healthful!
That said, we've lived in France for 4 years now, where kids either eat at home (1.5 hours allotted to make it possible) or in the cafeteria, no packed lunches allowed. Kids report overall quality is not exceptional, but the great upside is the amazing variety of foods they eat, all of which are "adult" meals. Pizza and fries have appeared on the menu maybe 3 times in 4 years! Meals are served communal style on real plates/serving ware; a ferociously kind attendant oversees portions and manners, and kids participate in clean up. The culinary exposure and social lessons alone are well worth the $4/meal we pay.
2
I volunteer in our local elementary school every week in a program where we read to the children while they eat lunch. Many eat the school-supplied lunch. And it smells awful! Doesn't much matter what it is, it is not appetizing. Most of the kids either pick at their food or eat only a small portion of what they are given (and portion sizes are very strict). The fruit is often packaged (fruit salad, presliced apples, etc.). The milk is all low fat or fat free (for 6 to 10 year olds -- not a good idea). And the entrees smell so bad!
8
Local, state and federal governments are responsible for the quality and cost of school lunches. Why does this article put the blame on parents, and particularly mothers, for poor quality and unaffordable school lunches?
8
The waste created by throw away trays and utensils in school cafeterias is reason enough to bring a lunch from home.
7
My daughter generally eats school lunch. Judging from the menu, it's as healthy as what I could pack from home (that she would actually eat). It has the added bonus of being "hot lunch" which is more appealing to her. I like that she eats what her friends eat, and she gets some experience in eating what's put in front of her, with some variety, and obviously it saves me a ton of time.
I wish the kids got more time for lunch (and recess!) When I do pack her lunch, it comes back mostly uneaten (even if it's exactly what she requested). She always says she didn't have time to eat it.
3
Fairly clear that Prof. Gaddis has an axe to grind here, and tgat she strikes several really sour notes with people who read her column. They're basically correct, too. The overwhelming choice locally by kids in the lunch line is hamburger, and not very good ones. Not to mention the mountains of one-use plastic containers and spoons/forks hauled off daily.
6
Once upon a time, half a century ago, when I was in school, lunches were served on trays that were washed daily, on plates that were washed, etc.
The pictures of lunch in the article show the terrible garbage factory that the school lunch room has become.
10
This article brought back memories...
My mother would pack lunch for my brother until he graduated from high school: three sandwiches that she would pull from the freezer on the morning of. (That sounds like a lot, but a tall high-school boy can eat a lot.) Only years later did he tell my mother that the middle one was usually still frozen and eaten later or not at all. (And there was no money for a purchased lunch at this private school. It was the frozen sandwiches or nothing.) It seems standards for both purchased or home-made meals have risen over the years.
There's a lot of unrecyclable plastic waste on those trays! Schools make lunch every week day, there's no reason to have so much disposable waste.
7
Why do I pack lunches? Because at least then when my kid brings them back home uneaten, I know about it. Otherwise I’d just watch the cafeteria account I pay for drain away every week and have no idea whether my son is actually eating or throwing it in the trash. It ain’t like he’ll tell me what’s really giving on.
8
I did not expect this article, to be honest, but I'll take it.
Our school food is better than what I got as a child but far from gourmet. The kids often select carrots, apples, and a bagel and cream cheese as the "vegetarian alternative" lunch but that's probably what they'd pack anyway.
However, as a parent who pays for the kids' meals and hopefully helps pay for others by doing so, I appreciate the pat on the back. You're welcome, everybody.
1
How many parents have seen all the prepared food thrown out, wasted, every day? Send the kid to school with a boxed lunch - it’s better for them.
3
I thought Trump was cutting the funding for these programs.
1
Yes; Everybody needs to surrender their self-determination to the state. We are all like peasants and serfs and need our elites to rule our lives for our own good. How can we re-create a neo-feudal paradise without embracing big government? Surrender! Surrender your free-will and accept domination by the new aristocracy!
4
Has any school district considered integrating preparing and eating lunch into the curriculum? You can teach everything from reading to math, chemistry, geography, ecology, and social sciences through food, not to mention table manners and courtesy, both of which are extremely useful life skills.
3
Serious food allergies. Hard pass.
1
You must be joking! How many school lunches have you sampled? Do you know how much time a NYC kid is allowed for lunch? Schools are so crowded that lunch shifts start at 10am. Giving kids less than 30 minutes to collect lunch, eat, and maybe play. Early lunches leave a 5-6 yo without any food till 3pm. We often encouraged our son to eat in the cafeteria, however he always said the food is gross, pasta uncooked, uncooked French fries, or pizza that he would not look at... he is in 6th grade now and we suggest he at least pick a banana or apple at school, but those are no good either. So not sure where you are getting your data from...
8
Trump just rolled back the Michelle Obama-driven nutrition guidelines for school lunches.
Let's see how long the good lunches endure.
7
Given the revision the current administration is making to almost all rules established the Obama administration, I wouldn't want to take the chance that lunches that meet revised standards have any nutritional value at all. Remember counting catsup as a vegetable, anyone?
4
School lunches are expensive! I have four kids and I'd spend hundreds of dollars a month buying lunches that can be made at home for a fraction of the price! What planet does this writer live on where money is free?
10
Didn’t Trump just roll back Obama’s effort for better, healthier school lunches? Yes he did. So start packing!
6
My wife is a teacher here in the Hudson Valley and the lunches they serve are disgusting. Processed foods like chicken nuggets are absolutely horrible. Last week I was in the cafeteria and saw them serving a fruit cocktail mix that was gross, I almost vomited. No fresh foods, no vegetables that actually look like vegetables and nothing has flavor. Mind you, this is coming from someone that was born and raised Italian eating a awesome Mediterranean diet. I also think airplane food is good. But the school lunches around here are just not good. I’ll continue to make lunch for my sons that include fresh food and even a Nutella sandwich. Anything is better than the processed food they serve.
9
It doesn't have to be either or.
My daughter buys lunch many days but I also send her with a packed snack. Between before-school clubs and after-school practice, she's gone 7am to 5pm most days. She enjoys hot lunch in the caf with salad bar as her side. And she also gets a little homemade goodness from dear old mom to tide her over before practice. Everyone wins.
1
Our 5th game daughter pointed out how much food gets wasted and thrown away in a world where many people don’t have enough to eat. The reason being the food presented to the kids is often tastes terrible or unappetizing.
It’s a challenging situation to balance freshness and nutrition and feed 500 kids all in two hours.
3
I packed my daughter's lunch because we couldn't afford hot lunch in the school. We weren't poor enough for reduced/free lunch, but I couldn't afford hot lunch. Why is this not a consideration of the author?
15
One factor not mentioned here is an important part of the decision about whether to pack a lunch at home: time. Our high school of 2400 students provides free lunch for all. The food is nutritious, often making use of local produce in season and preparing dishes students like.
The lunch periods are only 20 minutes each, however, and the state-mandated instructional time does not make it possible to lengthen them. A large school means long lines waiting to be served. For many students, that can mean 15 minutes in a queue and five minutes to eat. This rushes the meal, obviously, which has costs in terms of social time with friends, basic manners, and, of course, the opportunity to eat at a healthy, reasonable pace. A lunch prepared at home affords some time to enjoy one's food and relax, however briefly, in the middle of the school day.
So, like much else, it's complicated.
15
With the Republicans walking back all the regulations, this article could outdate pretty quickly, and we end up with Bush-era junk on cafeteria trays again.
5
I live in a large urban district with a high percentage of students who receive free or reduced price meals. I’ve served on committees about offerings in our cafeterias and the staff say kids won’t eat healthy food. The bulk of the food served at breakfast is pre-packaged and full of sugar, because it’s “grab & go.” Kids coming in on the bus don’t arrive in time to eat before classes start. Lunch is 20 minutes (25 at elementary level). Nothing is prepared on site, it’s all made in one kitchen & distributed to different buildings. There are more options at the high school but generally speaking, this is not wholesome, nutritious food. It’s the bare minimum that meets federal “standards.” And yet we wonder why our kids are obese and type 2 diabetes is not unusual.
6
I packed lunches for three reasons:
One, it was dramatically less expensive to pack healthy meals than to buy cafeteria meals each day.
Two, like many public schools today, my daughter’s school used modern rotating scheduling that sometimes had her lunch period begin as early as 9:45 AM or as late as 2 PM – – for this reason, she needed to carry her food with her during the day so she could eat when her body was actually telling her to eat.
Three, it gave me pleasure to provide her with good food she liked.
That said, I support the movement toward healthier school food, and I would willingly pay a reasonable subsidy within my school district to support it.
13
As a student myself I can very much deny the improvement of school lunches. Cafeteria food quality can vary from school to school. My old elementary school often had good quality food and the now nostalgic breakfast yogurts and cereal. In my high school the school food is a big step backwards. While it looks really good, the pizza is very very VERY greasy. I’m talking so greasy that the plastic bag it comes in is no where near able to contain the grease. It seeps from the bag. And the worst part, it doesn’t taste good. I think it would be a much better alternative to teach your child to pack their own lunch. It will benefit them in the future when packing lunches for jobs will be a breeze, thanks to their early practice.
16
This article is the perfect example of why the left loses it. Asking folks to change something as personal as food choices -feels like an attack on family bonds and the diversity of food traditions-both things "liberals" claim to care about deeply. So as practicing Hindus, we never eat Beef and eat mostly vegetarian food,-but now I "must" make my kids some terrible food, so we can all start eating "grass fed beef" or whatever? On a different note, has anyone factored in the enormous packaging waste generated in these food lunches vs the food one brings from home in a reusable container??
19
@aiyagari Thank you. This article came across as completely tone deaf to me. I grew up with dietary restrictions that required me to pack a lunch. But that is besides the point, because the school lunches were not affordable to my family, who made just a little too much to qualify to free or reduced school lunches. This article finds an odd solution without addressing the multitude of problems.
3
@aiyagari
I think you've missed her larger point, which is that if we care about the quality of school lunches we will help fund them. One could do that by buying the lunches, or making a donation. It actually takes funding lunches away from the hands of the government and into the hands of private individuals who care about the issue. Not a typical liberal viewpoint. Typically, liberals would be badgering the government of provide more funding.
46
@Syliva, funding schools and school lunches is the government's responsibility. The whole point of government is to act in the interests of the population.
Private individuals who care about the issue should indeed be "badgering the government to provide more funding." This statement translates to "telling the government to do its job."
5
Love this idea! My husband and I frequent local restaurants we love to keep them in business - why not do the same for school lunch? This would require the cafeteria already offer decent food, of course, or the will/finances to improve with increased use. Sounds like a fun PTA initiative to me!
1
In areas where ketchup is classified as a vegetable, you don't want to rely on stingy bureaucrats to feed your kids.
12
My kids pack their own lunch. The two biggest problems at the local (Atlanta) middle- and high-schools are:
(1) Lunch time is *way* too short - like 30 minutes.
(2) Food is made off-site and prepackaged, and doesn't taste good.
What makes me most sad is that I fondly remember my own 60-minutes lunch breaks in high-school in the well-staffed cafeteria that was cooking healthy and fresh $2 meals on-site - and they tasted good. That was my luck growing up in a country (Canada) that actually cares about feeding their kids well. Sadly, I feel the US public system is more about keeping everyone's tax bill low than about raising healthy, happy children.
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Its a simple answer. Personal preferences. Even if all public schools succeeded in developing healthier and, more importantly, tastier meals prepared with quality ingredients (and that’s a big “if” even if parents all opt in and funding is not an issue), kids, like adults, like to eat what they...like to eat. Unless public schools can offer the spread you find at the tonier private schools with tons of different options every day, of course kids and parents will pack lunch. Seems a more efficient solution all around. And the 15 minute lunch periods surely do not help! Spend 10 minutes on line and you have no time to actually eat, much less enjoy and socialize.
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Schools lunches are inconsistent. The food in the photos bears no resemblance to the meals served in our local schools. Obviously a school that’s using disposable plastic and foam to serve lunch must have plenty of cash to throw in the landfills.
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Our high school is serving Shepherd's Pie today, which my non-red meat-eating daughter wouldn't touch. We do have a salad bar, but the boat containers are tiny and more of a small side than something to carry a kid through the day (and don't forget about sports after school). Instead, I pack her a large salad with chicken and veggies, a whole grain roll, and fruit (usually an apple). Sometimes we have leftovers suitable for reheating, so she'll get that in a thermos. This way I know that she's eating a healthy lunch, and for her, she doesn't waste precious socializing minutes by standing in the lunch line.
She'll especially enjoy her big salad this Friday (the cafeteria is serving chili cheese fries).
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Every photo in this story shows single-use disposable plastic and cardboard. The sandwiches, snacks, and drinks I send with my kids are in entirely reusable containers. The only single-use item in their lunches is a napkin and most days that comes back unused.
School lunch at our elementary school is $8-$10. For 2 kids that's $400/month. The lunches we pack cost 10-20% of that.
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We switched to cloth napkins, doesn't affect how much laundry I wash, they are small anyway. Moving to reusable napkins and opting for reusable for cleaning helped cut on our paper towel waste tremendously.
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@Marie Given that the same paper towel has been in my son's lunchbox for over a month, we are probably using cloth too in the form of t shirts and shorts :-)
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I can afford with time and resources to pack my kids lunch. But I don’t. Our district lunches have improved over the years immensely, they get a meat dish and a salad bat, and beyond the “I want MY kid to have xyz type of organic, local food”, I firmly believe in the power of the masses and the best way to continue to support high quality school lunch for every kid comes down to participation in the program and demand for quality. The disparity in child home life is apparent in virtually every part of education, this is one more way that I can personally contribute to equality of education in my community.
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Maybe whomever packs the lunches likes doing it? They feel it connects them to their kid (my parents put a note in my lunch each day). The kid is picky and doesn't like what's being served at the cafeteria? There could be many reasons. Let's not overthink everything.
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Why do we pack our kids’ lunches? Lack of healthy, vegetarian options, GMO content, non-organic foods...the list goes on.
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school lunch should be at least 45 minutes
and 30 minutes to eat.
the food has to edible and taste good.
fresh or frozen it has to cooked correctly and
not over or undercooked.
As for kids with allergies they are
small percentage.
Organic,conventional or GMO food have the
same nutrition levels at same state
freshness.
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@wargarden Amen. Good points. Also, per recent research, move recess to BEFORE lunch. This move has been shown to work better for behavior and relative happiness for kids and teachers than having the kids eat first. The kids so often race through the meal to get outside. In recess first, they blow off energy and then come in and eat a bit more peacefully. Those are the findings. And also they do need more time to eat.
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1946: President Harry Truman (D) signs National School Lunch Act in response to concerns by the military after 40 percent of potential World War II recruits were rejected for reasons related to poor nutrition. 1966: President Lyndon B. Johnson (D) signs the Child Nutrition Act to establish the Breakfast Program Pilot.
Alas, the school lunch program was not born of altruism.
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@MED
The real reason for the federal school lunch program was to use surplus farm commodities.
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There are pictures of school lunches, and then there is what the kids actually eat. And what they order. Those things are quite different. How many kids are actually going to eat the cucumbers and tomatoes? How many are actually going to order dark bread over a burger bun or mini-corndogs? Honesty, I wouldn’t be thrilled to eat it, so why should they?
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One major influencer are the social pressures the kids put on each other around eating school lunch versus packed lunch versus out in the world at a restaurant lunch. many kids push back on school lunches because “it’s not cool“. It seems to me that a packed lunch falls somewhere in the middle and is often acceptable for many kids depending on the level of peer pressure in their community. You can lead a kid to hot lunch but you can’t make them eat.
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@Michael Cushing : You realize in many places, bagged lunch and school lunch are the only options, right? When I lived in Seattle, I was surprised to discover that at least some public schools did let high schoolers leave the premises for lunch. But everywhere else we've lived, that has been verboten.
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We’re lower working class. We don’t have a lot of money. But we do choose spend on healthy fresh food. I understand it’s not an option for everyone. I pack their lunch because my kids would come home famished since they didn’t have time to eat. They have 20 minutes to get into the cafeteria, wait in line, grab a seat and eat. There isn’t enough time! Now they walk in with their lunch from home and get to eat the entire meal. If they want cafeteria food on certain days that’s fine by me, but they come home hungrier than usual.
Certainly some schools are doing a great job with meals, other are not. Let’s not forget these meals may be the only food many, many kids get that day. I’ve been there. Feeding kids needs more funding. If only they could add more time and less beige food (alert: kids like to eat colors). Even the choosy eaters come around.
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@Phillyburg Then it sounds like your school could increase participation by adding cash registers or other logistics to reduce the lines. Tell that to the PTA.
As you note, these improvements are under fire by the Trump administration. Also at many schools, children who buy from the line have little time to actually eat their lunch given abbreviated lunch times. You assume that the responsibility for packing lunches falls upon mothers. However this does not need to be the case. Fathers and other caregivers can and should pitch in—or a more novel idea: kids could pack their own lunch which is exactly what my 7 year old does.
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Because my lunches are healthier and tastier than what's served in the school cafeteria. Also, I know exactly what they're putting in their bodies each day. Personally, I think if everyone did their best at home rather than relying on "national programs" to do their job, that would be the best way to improve the situation of current and future generations.
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