5 ms·

Indeed. Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing, made from scratch.

Indeed. Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing, made from scratch. These lunch ladies are the ones fighting to be allowed to do the same things for the children in their communities in the USA. But getting ham strung by the whims of federal politics and the crippling fear that someone somewhere might be given something for free they could have paid for themselves. More power to the Lunch Ladies.

Animats 1y ago
The view from the other side: NeverSeconds.[1] Each day in 2012-2014, a middle school girl in Scotland took a picture of her school lunch and wrote a review on her blog, including number of hairs and insects. The headmaster of the school told her to stop taking pictures of her lunches. So she published a note, "Goodbye". That got some small publicity. Then the local town council backed up the headmaster. More publicity. Politicians became involved. National press coverage. Coverage in Wired. "Time to fire the dinner ladies" article in a Scottish tabloid. Worldwide press coverage. BBC interviews. Girl wins "Public Campaigner of the Year award". Headmaster in trouble. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeverSeconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeverSeconds
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- jancsika 1y ago
  Wikipedia: "number of hairs" You: "number of hairs and insects" Citation, please?
  - theoreticalmal 1y ago
    Cmon dude
- dpark 1y ago
  So this is interesting but I would hardly call it “the other side”. This isn’t a battle between lunch ladies and students. Even here the girl was not asking for them to stop serving the food. Rather she said they should serve more and also improve it. > She added: “I'd like them to serve more, and maybe let some people have seconds if they want to ... and not serve stuff that's a wee bit disgusting.” https://web.archive.org/web/20240418175610/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9256454/Girls-school-dinner-blog-becomes-internet-hit.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240418175610/https://www.teleg...
  - gusgus01 1y ago
    I think this girl has a better understanding of lunch time dynamics than you. It's almost an objective, base point that any food is better than no food, which is why she would advocate for serving more and also improving it. A huge emphasis on improving it.
- lelandbatey 1y ago
  The blog in question, right when posting seemed to pick up: https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/ https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/
  - zdc1 1y ago
    The comparison school lunch from Finland looks lovely. It's a shame that many school lunches are meals that we wouldn't pick for ourselves. It's a simple test: would I want that for my lunch? For most of the photos, it's a no.
- Aeolun 1y ago
  Hah, this is great to read even now. It’s nice that these little bits of the internet are still up 11 years later for me to enjoy.
Coffeewine 1y ago
Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section: > In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so states to offer free school meals to all students, regardless of family income. Dillard supports free meals for all students with an emphatic, “Yes, yes, yes!” Food should not be based on income, she says: “It should be part of the school day. Your transportation is of no charge to students. School books are no charge to students. School lunch should be of no charge to students. … It’s just the right thing to do.” On one hand, that seems like an excellent argument to use for free school lunches. On the other hand, it feels like school busses are like libraries, accidents of history out of step with the modern world. If this became a rallying cry there'd probably be a strong pushback to start charging kids to be taken to school.
- tstrimple 1y ago
  Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries if they hadn’t grown up with them. The panic and hysteria they would generate over the idea that people could access books without paying for them! Communism! You’re making authors into slaves!
  - ryandrake 1y ago
    Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable?? Government should be run like a business!"
- michaelrpeskin 1y ago
  We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything else away. The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where you can put anything you don't want so that someone else could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch. My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing the rest away because they don't want that. Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year because the free lunches were more expensive than they had planned. Wonder why.
ryandrake 1y ago
"Someone somewhere might be given something they don't need." Sad and incredible how much of US politics is summed up with just that one statement.
- babyshake 1y ago
  The rhetoric you see in some places about how social assistance is used on hair weaves says something about the underlying reasons for much of this concern.
  - krapp 1y ago
    Remember the only reason we have school lunch programs in the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free breakfast program for black children in the 70s and the government wanted to undermine the political and propaganda power the Black Panthers had gained through that and other social programs. So the government created its own, then Reagan underfunded it.
    - opo 1y ago
      No, that is not true. The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946. That has since been updated several times: the Child Nutrition Act in 1966, the Child Care Food Program in 1975, etc.
      - komali2 1y ago
        What you're saying doesn't contradict the argument that the goal was do outdo the black panther lunch programs. Certainly I'd like to read more about the idea before I buy into it, but it does make a lot of sense - schools in black neighborhoods are chronically underfunded and the black panthers were first and foremost a direct action and mutual aid group, and furthermore the USA government viewed them as a huge threat to government authority and did many things to attempt to undermine the black panthers... Including outright assassination.
rkomorn 1y ago
> Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing, made from scratch. Man, comments like these compared to my 10+ school years in France really make me wonder wtf happened in my 3 different schools' cafeterias. My 3 and change years in 2 US schools definitely had tastier food. IDK if my expectations of food in France (my home country) were just higher and harder to meet. I don't think that was the case.
- dpark 1y ago
  The quality of food is probably extremely variable across schools even in the same general region. I’ve seen some pictures of really appealing lunches plucked from European schools. But how many different schools are there in Europe?
  - rkomorn 1y ago
    I'm guessing a bigger consideration is whether what appears online is subject to selection bias (especially when the context is "look how much better the food in European schools is"). Maybe it's also changed a lot. My anecdata is admittedly not recent since I am also "not recent."
  - bittercynic 1y ago
    Absolutely. I work at a school where the food is OK, but just, and the school across the street has very good food. One of our students used to sneak into the other school in the mornings for breakfast. He made the mistake of bringing the food back to our school where people asked questions, and pretty soon the other school knew he wasn't their student and banned him. Something seems really off to me about different kids within a couple hundred feet of each other getting drastically different quality of food.
- em500 1y ago
  In the Netherlands no elementary schools have any cafeteria, kitchen or lunch area at all. Kids bring their own lunchbox, with usually some sandwiches, fruit and water, and eat inside the classroom.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
no_wizard 1y ago
Truly American affliction, a crippling fear that the government does something for its citizens that doesn’t have any strings attached
thunky 1y ago
> These lunch ladies are the ones > getting ham strung Nice.

Animats 1y ago

The view from the other side: NeverSeconds.[1] Each day in 2012-2014, a middle school girl in Scotland took a picture of her school lunch and wrote a review on her blog, including number of hairs and insects. The headmaster of the school told her to stop taking pictures of her lunches. So she published a note, "Goodbye". That got some small publicity. Then the local town council backed up the headmaster. More publicity. Politicians became involved. National press coverage. Coverage in Wired. "Time to fire the dinner ladies" article in a Scottish tabloid. Worldwide press coverage. BBC interviews. Girl wins "Public Campaigner of the Year award". Headmaster in trouble. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeverSeconds https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeverSeconds

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jancsika 1y ago
Wikipedia: "number of hairs" You: "number of hairs and insects" Citation, please?
- theoreticalmal 1y ago
  Cmon dude
dpark 1y ago
So this is interesting but I would hardly call it “the other side”. This isn’t a battle between lunch ladies and students. Even here the girl was not asking for them to stop serving the food. Rather she said they should serve more and also improve it. > She added: “I'd like them to serve more, and maybe let some people have seconds if they want to ... and not serve stuff that's a wee bit disgusting.” https://web.archive.org/web/20240418175610/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/9256454/Girls-school-dinner-blog-becomes-internet-hit.html https://web.archive.org/web/20240418175610/https://www.teleg...
- gusgus01 1y ago
  I think this girl has a better understanding of lunch time dynamics than you. It's almost an objective, base point that any food is better than no food, which is why she would advocate for serving more and also improving it. A huge emphasis on improving it.
lelandbatey 1y ago
The blog in question, right when posting seemed to pick up: https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/ https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/
- zdc1 1y ago
  The comparison school lunch from Finland looks lovely. It's a shame that many school lunches are meals that we wouldn't pick for ourselves. It's a simple test: would I want that for my lunch? For most of the photos, it's a no.
Aeolun 1y ago
Hah, this is great to read even now. It’s nice that these little bits of the internet are still up 11 years later for me to enjoy.

Coffeewine 1y ago

Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section: > In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so states to offer free school meals to all students, regardless of family income. Dillard supports free meals for all students with an emphatic, “Yes, yes, yes!” Food should not be based on income, she says: “It should be part of the school day. Your transportation is of no charge to students. School books are no charge to students. School lunch should be of no charge to students. … It’s just the right thing to do.” On one hand, that seems like an excellent argument to use for free school lunches. On the other hand, it feels like school busses are like libraries, accidents of history out of step with the modern world. If this became a rallying cry there'd probably be a strong pushback to start charging kids to be taken to school.

tstrimple 1y ago
Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries if they hadn’t grown up with them. The panic and hysteria they would generate over the idea that people could access books without paying for them! Communism! You’re making authors into slaves!
- ryandrake 1y ago
  Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable?? Government should be run like a business!"
michaelrpeskin 1y ago
We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything else away. The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where you can put anything you don't want so that someone else could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch. My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing the rest away because they don't want that. Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year because the free lunches were more expensive than they had planned. Wonder why.

ryandrake 1y ago

"Someone somewhere might be given something they don't need." Sad and incredible how much of US politics is summed up with just that one statement.

babyshake 1y ago
The rhetoric you see in some places about how social assistance is used on hair weaves says something about the underlying reasons for much of this concern.
- krapp 1y ago
  Remember the only reason we have school lunch programs in the US at all is because the Black Panthers started a free breakfast program for black children in the 70s and the government wanted to undermine the political and propaganda power the Black Panthers had gained through that and other social programs. So the government created its own, then Reagan underfunded it.
  - opo 1y ago
    No, that is not true. The first school lunch programs started with private initiatives in the 1890s. The first major federal program for student lunches was the National School Lunch Program enacted in 1946. That has since been updated several times: the Child Nutrition Act in 1966, the Child Care Food Program in 1975, etc.
    - komali2 1y ago
      What you're saying doesn't contradict the argument that the goal was do outdo the black panther lunch programs. Certainly I'd like to read more about the idea before I buy into it, but it does make a lot of sense - schools in black neighborhoods are chronically underfunded and the black panthers were first and foremost a direct action and mutual aid group, and furthermore the USA government viewed them as a huge threat to government authority and did many things to attempt to undermine the black panthers... Including outright assassination.

rkomorn 1y ago

> Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing, made from scratch. Man, comments like these compared to my 10+ school years in France really make me wonder wtf happened in my 3 different schools' cafeterias. My 3 and change years in 2 US schools definitely had tastier food. IDK if my expectations of food in France (my home country) were just higher and harder to meet. I don't think that was the case.

dpark 1y ago
The quality of food is probably extremely variable across schools even in the same general region. I’ve seen some pictures of really appealing lunches plucked from European schools. But how many different schools are there in Europe?
- rkomorn 1y ago
  I'm guessing a bigger consideration is whether what appears online is subject to selection bias (especially when the context is "look how much better the food in European schools is"). Maybe it's also changed a lot. My anecdata is admittedly not recent since I am also "not recent."
- bittercynic 1y ago
  Absolutely. I work at a school where the food is OK, but just, and the school across the street has very good food. One of our students used to sneak into the other school in the mornings for breakfast. He made the mistake of bringing the food back to our school where people asked questions, and pretty soon the other school knew he wasn't their student and banned him. Something seems really off to me about different kids within a couple hundred feet of each other getting drastically different quality of food.
em500 1y ago
In the Netherlands no elementary schools have any cafeteria, kitchen or lunch area at all. Kids bring their own lunchbox, with usually some sandwiches, fruit and water, and eat inside the classroom.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

no_wizard 1y ago

Truly American affliction, a crippling fear that the government does something for its citizens that doesn’t have any strings attached

thunky 1y ago

> These lunch ladies are the ones > getting ham strung Nice.