
The Real Problem with Lunch - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/16/opinion/the-real-problem-with-lunch.html
======
astrocat
This entire debate over the quality of school lunch is myopic. School lunch
food isn't the problem, American food culture is the Problem. I'd bet, (I have
no data for this - I'm just a windbag of opinions) that in most communities
(countries --> neighborhoods, whatever scope you want), school lunches will
generally reflect the status quo of food quality in the community. Because if
they didn't, parents would flip out.

Status quo meals in Norway and France are pretty decent, I suspect. I've spent
some time living in France and that certainly seemed to be the case. Status
quo meals in the US? Terrible. The average American eats poorly - incredibly
poorly - and it shows; in our health, waistlines, and, of course, in our
school lunches.

So the real challenge is to move the needle on American food culture. School
lunches can and should be one vector for effecting that change, but we need to
recognize and tackle the bigger picture. As others have mentioned, proper
regulations on marketing to children is a must.

~~~
keithpeter
UK, Further Education College, 16, 17, 18 year olds...

Salad bar is getting popular at lunchtime although the potato salad and
coleslaw get heavily used, low dressing alternatives less so.

I'm trying to get the students interested in porridge when they come in the
morning instead of bacon and sausage sandwiches. We shall see!

Beans and chips is cheap so popular early evening (some students might get a 9
or 10 hour day depending on timetable and extra lessons they decide to take).

~~~
stegosaurus
My sixth form had beans and chips. Also, beans and sausage roll.

For me at the time it was the only viable lunch option due to cost.

There are probably various factors making this impossible, but I would expect
that spending £5 per head on a decent lunch would return more than spending £5
on tuition. I could make up for large class sizes by sitting in the library or
using the internet to study - a better lunch would have meant taking a weekend
job (which I had anyway, but the proceeds went to savings...)

~~~
keithpeter
I agree with your basic point that beans and chips cost £1.50 and a warm meal
with (say) chicken/starch/vegetables costs around £2.50. Some rebalancing of
the subsidy would be a good idea.

'Tuition' costs (i.e. everything except the canteen subsidy) are a tad hard to
fine tune in Colleges. And remember someone has to put the stuff on the
Internet - in the UK its quite often teachers in there spare time or as part
of a project.

~~~
stegosaurus
Ours was more like 70p vs. £3, but the general point stands I agree.

WRT 'stuff on the internet' \- I wasn't thinking necessarily exam revision
material; more Wikipedia, the C++ reference, etcetera. Project Gutenberg for
an English student, etc.

I've always considered the examinations as a starting point - probably an
artifact of living in a near winner-takes-all society.

------
adekok
I spent years living in France, and my daughter went to kindergarten and grade
one there.

The lunches were _insane_. A 3 year-old can expect a five course meal every
day. Prepared fresh on-site. Different every day of the month.

The school district would mail a calendar of lunches to the parents every
month. I still have some.

The parents _care_ about the food their children eat. They're willing to pay a
little more for good food at school. As a computer programmer, I earned an
above average salary, and paid small amounts every semester for better food.
IIRC, it was about $200. And definitely way below $1K.

My daughter loved her lunches, and I was happy to not have to make something
with the French parents would then laugh at. ;)

The French attitude is "we live to eat". They say every other country "eats to
live". That definitely shows in the different attitude towards the school
lunches.

~~~
gkanai
> The French attitude is "we live to eat". They say every other country "eats
> to live".

Japan also lives to eat and their public school lunches are very healthy and
nutritious. The children often also partake in the preparation of the meals in
part, so they get that learning as well.

~~~
hanniabu
That actually seems like a great idea. Not enough kids know how to cook and I
feel this is a reason a lot of the younger generation eats out rather than at
home. Having a class rotation where every day of the month (or week, depending
how big the school is) a different before-lunch class will instead go to the
cafeteria and prep meals would be awesome. Students would get to learn and the
school may be able to cut costs by hiring less lunch attendants. Of course
kids would have to wash their hands and be trusted not to taint the food, but
that goes for current lunch attendants as well.

~~~
mikekchar
I have literally seen elementary school children in Japan slicing vegetables
with a normal kitchen knife. All the kids learn knife skills. It's amazing,
but I suspect not something that would be easy to export, culturally.

When I taught English to high school students in Japan, I had a couple of
courses where we took over the kitchens and the students had to figure out how
to cook meals with English recipes. I was very impressed with most of them.
Certainly every student had basic cooking skills and could be trusted with
every aspect of kitchen safety (and I was in a low level school).

One of the downsides to the Japanese school lunch approach is that it puts a
burden on teachers. They are "on duty" during lunch time on a rotating basis.
Japanese teachers get very little down time and extras like this are just
expected of them.

Lunch is taken very seriously at the schools. In high school, lunch is not
provided. A local bakery comes by to offer a variety of baked goods at a
reasonable price, but you can't really trust that there will be decent food
left by the time you get there (it is always a mad rush to be first in line at
lunch time). Parents are expected to make a packed lunch. The teachers will
often look at the students' lunches and if they are not good enough, the
parents will be called in. In extreme cases I have seen teachers teaching
parents how to cook nutritious packed lunches.

Again, it's a good policy which I think would be impossible to export. Imagine
being called up by your kid's teacher and having to go in and be lectured
because you failed to make a good enough lunch. I've actually seen parents in
tears during their reprimand. Also imagine teachers staying late (unpaid) so
that they can teach parents how to make lunch... In many ways, Japan is an
amazing place...

~~~
douche
U.S. school teachers are routinely on duty during lunch periods, as crowd
control, so I'm not sure that's really a difference.

U.S. school lunches are absolutely woeful. Just check out the
#thanksmichelleobama pictures on twitter for a general overview[1]. I think
there's got to be some big kick-backs given by the packaged food distributors,
because there is no way that frozen pizza and McRib sandwiches are cheaper
than cooking actual food.

[1]
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama](https://twitter.com/hashtag/thanksmichelleobama)

~~~
knughit
Bread is the cheapest food. Dairy is heavily subsidized in USA. Pizza is
famous because it is the cheapest cooked meal known to cow-owning humanity.
McRib literally exists only during times of pork market collapse. This stuff
is absolutely cheaper than cooking with vegetables.

~~~
douche
True, but how is it cheaper to purchase packaged pizza versus a bag of flour,
a can of sauce, a block of government surplus cheese, and the minimum-wage
cafeteria workers that you've already got hired? Making pizza is not exactly a
high-skill task.

------
sundvor
As a Norwegian, my first (and so far only) trip to the US was in the (northern
hemisphere) autumn of '99, for an Allaire developers conference in Boston.

My first impressions when landing at New Ark airport was one of being
flabbergasted by how utterly fat so many people were. In 20 minutes I very
likely saw more grossly fat people than I had seen in the previous year in
Norway. For me it really was the most bizarre thing.

Now in my early 40s, my memories are vague on this matter, but I'm pretty sure
Coca Cola and the likes were completely banned from my school canteens. There
just wasn't that much junk food to be had either. I mean in general ... as for
the schools, forget about it. Pizza would be a very special occasion.

Whatever the US were doing, it was doing it completely wrong.

~~~
learc83
The rest of the world is catching up.

[http://www.thelocal.no/20150506/norways-men-soon-to-be-
among...](http://www.thelocal.no/20150506/norways-men-soon-to-be-among-
europes-fattest-who)

Most developed countries are about 20-40 years behind the US in obesity rates
--if you look at overweight and obesity rates (and rate of change) in the US
from the 60s, 70s, and 80s, they match pretty well with the same data from
many other developed countries from the 2000s.

US obesity and overweight rates have mostly stabilized and will hopefully
decline, so maybe the same will happen elsewhere (maybe sooner?).

~~~
digbyloftus
Other countries are catching up in overweight and obesity but there's rarely
data on BMI levels above that. Anecdotally it does seem like the US has much
higher rates of super obese people at 50+ BMI. The mobility scooter using, as
wide as 2.5 normal people kind. There's a stark difference visiting from here
in Australia despite our similar overweight rates.

I don't know if it's because your food is so much cheaper that people who have
eating problems/don't care about their health and appearance can afford to
crazy, or if it's cultural, but there's a class of super fats waddling around
in the US that you really don't see in other countries.

~~~
cableshaft
At least in part it's cultural. We work much longer hours with much less
vacation days than pretty much the rest of the first world
([http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364](http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=93364)),
often sitting in front of a computer all day, then go home too mentally
exhausted to make good decisions about eating or exercise, driving in cars to
go everywhere because everything is more spread out and very few cities are
set up to make walking or biking feasible, so some people get very little
exercise at all during the day, all while being served (and thus eating)
larger portions of food at restaurants than most other countries.

I'm not saying we shouldn't exhibit greater willpower, but we're animals, and
animals tend to be lazy when given the opportunity. If US cities (especially
small cities and suburbs) were designed more to facilitate walking I think
we'd be healthier overall.

I know in college I was in much better shape and I had to walk at least two
miles a day to get to and from all of my classes (we had a large campus and a
giant quad separating the buildings), and I often worked out at the gym since
it was literally a two minute walk from my dorm.

------
jay_kyburz
We don't do school lunches here in Australia. My parents packed me lunch every
day for 10 years, and I'll do the same for my kids.

It's really no big deal.

~~~
iambateman
Probably not for you, but if you were a single parent with two jobs trying to
get two kids to the bus each morning, packing a lunch would be a lot more
difficult.* Especially to make a lunch healthy.

* to be clear, I am not that person. Just saying.

~~~
grecy
Why would anyone need two jobs? shouldn't one pay a living wage?

Maybe the problems run deeper

~~~
cmurf
Definitely deeper. The U.S. worker has seen 35 years of wage stagnation.
Economic growth is fairly restricted to those with college degrees. And those
aren't free.

------
gommm
As a slight counterpoint to this, I was born and raised in small villages in
Normandy. I had good food in elementary school and high school. A bit on the
oily side but still freshly prepared, relatively healthy and actually better
and less oily than food I later had as an exchange student in the US.

In middle school though, I had truly awful food. More than once the yogurts we
were served were past the expiry date and we had a few cases of food
poisoning. As a kid, I disliked the food so much that I usually just skipped
lunch (I would go to the cafeteria because I had to and would just eat the
bread and maybe the yogurts if they weren't expired), not good for growth...

The problem of preparing fresh food for students is that it relies on having a
Chef who is good at his job and organized enough to manage the food stocks and
expiry dates.

Also as an additional nitpicking, according to the article:

> Contrast all this with France, where vending machines are banned on campus

This is recent (2005 apparently) and that certainly was not the case when I
was a kid, we had vending machines both in middle school and high school.
Additionally to this, in high school, we had a bakery selling fresh warm pain
au chocolat at 10am (not healthy but certainly delicious)

------
eliben
This sounds misleading. They mention the French version is a high-end school
for high-income parents. But this isn't how the public school system works in
the US, right? Wouldn't it be more fair to compare to a high-end _private_
school in the US, where I'm sure the lunch budget ends up at more than "a
dollar + change for student"?

~~~
adekok
All French public schools have an in-school cafeteria where food is prepared
fresh every day.

High income parents get billed for this, or they can supply lunch themselves.
Low income parents didn't pay.

~~~
walterstucco
that's common in many European countries, especially southern countries. What
they call lunch in France, in Italy we call it "a snack" ;)

------
FussyZeus
I think this is a huge marketing problem, stemming from the ability for large
companies to market directly to children, and I don't think it's a coincidence
that the U.S. is one of the few industrialized nations (if not the only, I
couldn't find another in a quick search) that has ZERO regulation in terms of
what and how companies can advertise to children (outside of bans on
cigarettes and alcohol of course.) Kids are extremely easy to manipulate with
ads because they don't have the experience and the awareness to understand the
differences between the shows they're watching and the ads they're consuming.

~~~
roymurdock
I remember watching a ton of sugary cereal commercials as a kid. I'm pretty
sure Kellogs was banned from advertising cereals that did not meet some
minimum health requirement in 2007. [1]

With that said, it's ultimately the parent's responsibility to make sure the
kid is eating healthy foods. I was recently at an amusement park cafeteria and
I saw lines out the door of parents and their children holding huge green
refillable cups, waiting for their turn at the Coke fountain drink machines.
Many of the kids were clearly overweight. It struck me as terribly sad and
unfair that the kids did not know any better than to enjoy sugary drinks, but
that the parents knew exactly what they were feeding their children and just
didn't care.

[1] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kellogg-wont-market-sugary-
cerea...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/kellogg-wont-market-sugary-cereal-to-
kids/)

~~~
Renaud
The issue is that kids that grew up without a healthy approach to food become
the very parents that perpetuate the behaviour; they just don't know any
better because they haven't been exposed to good eating habits, either at
home, on the tv or at school.

It's a social thing. The parents are clearly responsible for educating their
kids, but as a society we shouldn't think it's OK to advertise and serve
dangerous crap to kids and just assume that this doesn't affect behaviour (the
very purpose of advertisement is that it affect people's behaviour, I always
found it strange that we then blame them for being influenced). You have to
start very early to educate kids senses to appreciate flavours more subtle
than fat, salt and sugar.

When Jamie Oliver attempted to change the horrendous 'meals' served to kids in
the UK, he hit this very issue: lots of kids preferred to eat their crisps and
junk food rather than the balanced, healthy and tasty meals prepared for them
by a top chef (meals that didn't cost more than the crap they were usually
served).

Contrast that to the meals served in schools in France: they are balanced,
varied, there is always some choice. You will always find a choice of starter,
main course, cheese/yoghurt and dessert. These kids find it normal to eat
their vegetables. Parents wouldn't have it otherwise.

In France at home, most people actually cook. Everyone orders pizza once in a
while, but the vast majority of meals are actually cooked from fresh. It's not
a money thing: you can get cheap produces. It's a cultural thing: cooking is
fun, it's a skill people pass down the generations, it's time well spent, it's
something to be proud of, it's a part of normal life.

~~~
knughit
In the USA we believe that once you turn 18 you are an adult and responsible
for yourself, and have no right to blame your upbringing (parents, and
schools, and doctors) for any of your mental, health, and economic
deficiencies.

And that's the problem with USA.

------
vacri
It's a bit of an odd article, that assumes the blame is on the food prep
departments. "The US has food far below France's quality, but the departments
only get $3/head instead of $7/head". All this means is the problem isn't in
the departments, but in the willingness to fund appropriately.

It's probably also not fair to compare pretty much anywhere to France, given
France's extreme cultural connection to fine food (and hence pool of suitable
school-level cooks).

~~~
smileysteve
I actually don't understand the $3/head part without any examples for the
smaller state portion. If a state matches $2-3 then the difference with $7 is
negligible.

Beyond this, I want to add that, if we're complaining about the overhead and
staff, Chipotle (ignoring recent ecoli outbreaks) and similar have very fresh
options ->$6.

~~~
knughit
What do you do with the "negligible" 15-30% of your money?

~~~
smileysteve
Save it, reinvest it?

From a more corporate standpoint, at $7 a meal, schools are entering
competition with "gourmet" fast food options, of which 15-30% is going towards
profit margins.

If mall food courts at all compete nutritionally with school lunches, then, at
$6-$7 a meal, schools should charge (at market, not cost) for the space and
restaurants should have profit margins.

------
guyzero
US government policy in a nutshell: increase standards, don't increase
funding.

~~~
repsilat
US schools have among the highest per-student funding in the world. Funding
has been steadily increasing for decades, though test scores haven't budged:
[http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-
books/t...](http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/cracking-books/trends-
american-public-schooling-since-1970.png)

Perhaps that money _should_ be going into school lunches instead of wherever
it is going at the moment...

~~~
Spooky23
A lot of that is different accounting.

In most US states, schools are nominally independent bodies of government,
they carry all of the costs of facilities, pensions, etc. They also need to
comply with all sorts of cost enhancing building and labor standards.

So in my city, the school collects $28k/pupil. That includes something like
$150M in debt for buildings, salaries, 20% of salaries for pension
obligations, 15-20% for employee healthcare, key expenses for the various
charter schools, etc.

They also need to deal with compliance issues. Because some redneck place in
Mississippi would give poor kids a slice of Bologna and stale bread, there are
prescribed calorie and nutrition standards that get audited. So you can't
prepare fresh foods.

~~~
knughit
The bans on fresh foods are due to lobbying by national good companies to
regulate against local competitors. It isn't because of citizen complaints.

~~~
thomaskcr
Students also probably don't want it. Fresh foods don't keep as well. I always
felt more comfortable eating "crappy" food at school because it's hard to mess
up. A couple wilted leaves in a salad doesn't really actually affect the
quality, but it does turn you off from eating it. There's no where for me to
wash the apple they gave me that was handled who knows how and possibly not
washed before I'd be eating it.

The Chipotle debacle provides a bit of evidence that fresh and local isn't
necessarily the easiest to quality control.

------
danielovich
Americans don't have a food-culture. Simple as that. That's the problem.

~~~
herbst
I stumpled on a conversation about foreign food once and still laugh when i
think about it. None of the listed _foreign foods_ from countries i know well
enough even existed there. It was all just typical american food.

------
zappo2938
A few years ago, disillusioned with the fine dinning industry, I walked away
from being a chef. Not working in Miami with summer coming, I wrote emails to
summer camps with sailing programs trying to get a job as a sailing
instructor. Kingly Pines Camp in Maine responded to my email saying, "I won't
lie to you. We still do need a sailing instructor, but if you are working here
you will be cooking." So I went to Maine for the summer.

All the other camps in the lakes region started to outsource their dining to
the Aramark corporation. Kingly Pines didn't want to go that route. How does
an institution like a summer camp provide three meals plus an afternoon snack
a day for $5 per person? The camp has average 200 campers under the age of 15
and 100 staff. Also, everybody is very, very physically active so people are
hungry. That's a food budget of $1500 a day. The decision was to make
everything from scratch. There were only three of us in the kitchen

The food director who was in charge of the pizza station at U of Maine during
the winter was awesome. I appreciate that he listened to me because I was
coming from the best restaurants in Northern California. We created a salad
bar with 5 different types of homemade salad dressing. We baked our own meats
for cold cuts. It's not difficult to make home made roast beef and turkey
breasts before using a slicer to cut them. The tiramisu caused a riot. Instead
of Dinty Moore beef stew, we purchased two top rounds. It's one thing to make
beef stew with carrots and potatoes but my recipe uses parsnips, celeriac,
turnips, and potatoes. Why only make one type of lasagna if you can make three
different types? I bet I could get your kids to eat roasted portobello
mushroom goat cheese lasagna. Once a week we would make several different
facaccia pizzas.

The camp's philosophy is to challenge children to do things they haven't done
before whether to get up on water skis for the first time or get to the top of
a rock climbing wall, to explore their world, and to learn to be independent.
That philosophy was extended to eating too. By the end of every session many
the kids even the most reluctant faced with peer pressure to try new things --
it works two ways -- had become gourmands. Turns out that we spent $4.25 a day
per person well under budget. The last day of each session when the parents
picked up their children we had a big lunch for everybody as the camp did
activities that included all the campers and parents for the day. I would say
things to the dinning director like buy me four sides of salmon, a couple bags
of spinach, and a box of puff pastry. So we were making prime rib and salmon
in croute. One of the parents was just amazed and asked if the campers eat
like this and his daughter said yes, every day.

Children are curious and if they trust the cook to serve them something that
isn't dull and bland,they are open to the experience of good and interesting
food. If someone is serving me canned vegetables and overcooked broccoli that
was engineered to have an extended shelf life not for flavor, I'm not going to
want to eat veggies either!

If you have kids, have a look at Kingsly Pines camp. [1]

[http://www.kingsleypines.com/](http://www.kingsleypines.com/)

~~~
muddyrivers
This is amazing!

I am not a chef. I cook at home, and my cooking skills might be above average.
I believe that the cheapest way to run a school cafeteria is to make food from
scratch. It is also a much healthier approach.

For example, instead of serving pre-made and super-unhealthy chicken nuggets,
buy those cuts of meat and fish that are deemed "undesirable" in grocery
stores, but perfectly fine in term of health and nutrition. They can be used
to make stews, or they can be made into ground meat by the kitchens themselves
and in turn made into meatballs, bolognese, lasagna fillings, burgers, fish
cakes, etc. The same idea can be applied to vegetables and fruits, too. A
large amount of perfectly fine vegetables and fruits are thrown away every day
just because they don't look nice. They aren't rotten. People won't get food
poisoning after eating them. They just don't look good. They are either in odd
shapes, too big too small, or have some light bruises, etc. School kitchens
can buy them and make perfectly healthy and delicious meals from them.

I do see the issue of this approach. It needs cooks who know how to cook from
scratch, especially how to cook those cuts of meats they are not familiar
with, or cooks who are willing to learn these techniques. I suppose it is much
easier to find these cooks in the countries who have a long and rich cuisine
history, like France, Italy, China, Mexico, etc. It could be a challenging
task here.

~~~
zappo2938
The camp bought food wholesale in bulk at a discount over small restaurants in
the next town over. Figure the camp spends 1/3 or 1/4 the amount you do at the
supermarket for the same if not higher quality product. We would make a turkey
dinner once for every session. Who doesn't love turkey dinner with all the
fixings, even in July? Take the every day snack, for example, there doesn't
need much choice. I'd make homemade chocolate chip cookies and zucchini bread.
But, we would also buy a box of Italian ices or a box of peanut butter in
single serve cups and serve them with celery sticks.

Children don't have immune systems that are as developed as adults so bacteria
contamination is much more serious. It is important that children are served
the most 'desirable' food. I don't understand why it is ok to even think about
serving the crap food to children? You are suggesting we give the old food
that has lost its flavor and more likely has developed undesirable flavor to
children. It's like you have this idea that we can just serve kids whatever.

I'm just saying that I had an experience where an institution served really
good simple healthy balanced food to children within a constrained budget.
It's doable. I know how to do it.

~~~
muddyrivers
Food safety is definitely the most important thing for a kitchen. It doesn't
matter it serves food to children or adults.

Pardon my English if I didn't make myself clear. When I say "undesirable"
cuts, it doesn't mean they are bad. For example, in local fresh fish markets,
there are expensive fish fillets. There are also many big chunks of fish meats
that were cut from from filleting. They are as fresh as the fish fillets.
Instead of being priced for like $15 per pound for fish fillets, they cost
like $3 per pounds. To make fish cakes, they are as good as the fish fillets.

The same goes for beef, port, lamb, etc. Also, the tougher the meat, the
cheaper they are, like pork shoulders, beef chucks, etc. It requires more
time, more patience, and different skills to cook them than steaks. Actually,
I feel children like richly flavored meat stews, no matter it is
Italian/French/Mexican/Chinese etc. much more than grilled steaks/chops.

I would go further to say buying from locally grown meat/fish/veg/fruits.
Establish good relationship with local farmers/butchers. Mention the food are
for children who are growing. One may most probably get healthier foods than
from wholesalers.

------
ryan-allen
When I went to school in the 80s and 90s (I live in Australia), our parents
had to send us to school with our own lunch.

We had cafeterias but they were by and large for treats not for day to day
lunch.

I don't understand why taking their own lunch is not an option if the food
served is so abysmal?

~~~
Renaud
The issue with kids having lunch boxes prepared by their parents is that the
kids are completely dependent on their parent's abilities to serve them a
balance diet. They don't get a chance to try and discover anything else.

~~~
reddytowns
A bigger issue with trying to force meal choices is that you are then
attempting to raise the kid instead of allowing the parents to do so.

Just because you don't agree with how a parent decides to feed their child,
doesn't give you the right to arbitrarily take away their choice.

~~~
Renaud
You always have the option of preparing food to your kids. If you feel what
you give them is better than what they get at school then of course, it's a no
brainer.

On the other hand, if it's chore to take the time to prepare and cook their
meals, and if school was presenting an affordable alternative, why wouldn't
use it?

No-one is forcing the kids to eat at school, no-one is taking away the
parent's choice.

------
dweekly
Somewhat surprisingly "95 percent of school districts in California...are
successfully serving healthy meals that meet strong nutrition standards."

Source: Pew Charitable Trusts, 2014 (cited by the NYT article)
[http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/phg/co...](http://www.pewtrusts.org/~/media/legacy/uploadedfiles/phg/content_level_pages/other_resource/kshfkitscaliforniapdf.pdf)

~~~
nitrogen
Maybe the easiest way to meet exact numerical requirements is to serve
chemical slop.

------
jld89
The university meals in France where I studied where quite balanced. Maybe
twice or thrice a month the food wasn't very good, like leftovers. But overall
it was very good food and cheap at that.

Of course a 5 course balanced meal.

------
aianus
You can eat an 800 calorie Soylent 1.5 meal for $3.08 all-in which is probably
going to be healthier and less of a time-waste than either American or French
school lunches.

~~~
tmnvix
> a time-waste

If this is how you view eating then Soylent is probably the best thing since
sliced bread in your mind. For the rest of us... not so much.

~~~
gruez
If the school's budget was constrained, wouldn't it be better to serve
nutritious (but tasteless) soylent than to serve whatever "regular" food that
could be obtained at the same budget?

~~~
adrianN
I don't think that would be popular, neither with the parents nor with the
kids.

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timwaagh
the 'muricans can be counted lucky they even have (free) school lunch. where i
live you don't and you bring your own bread or buy stuff. i think Michael
Moore is pretty much cherry picking. france has huge problems in other areas
(political islam & terrorism, unemployment, economy). norway is a petrostate.

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bbarn
The other thing to remember, in the U.S., is that parents are constantly in a
one-up war with each other. The two sides of that spectrum are "my kid's got
the best lunch for him ever" and "my kid's got the most awesome lunch the
other kids will be jealous of". This is why packed lunches should be flat out
banned, in my opinion, but I concede that it's a parent's ultimate choice in
how they raise their child. On the flip side of that, it's also their
responsibility to do more than write articles about the poor state of food and
actually try to do something about it.

I'm far too lazy to find the reference, but I recall that empowering the
children to do it themselves has worked more than once.

~~~
67726e
You want to ban lunches because someone might feel bad about it? I went to the
wealthiest (public) schools in the wealthiest town in the wealthiest county in
my state. A place where kids got on that MTV Sweet 16 show, and not once was
this ever a thing. This is the same argument they used for uniforms, that
people would get made fun of. Never once saw that either. It's a joke. Sorry
not everyone is wealthy, but that is a solution looking for a problem.

