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All praise to the lunch ladies

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Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#11

Post by michaelrpeskin »

Coffeewine wrote: post #8
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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. Schoo…

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.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#12

Post by [deleted] »

Animats wrote: post #7
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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 publici…

[deleted]

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#13

Post by jancsika »

Animats wrote: post #7
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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 publici…

Wikipedia: "number of hairs"

You: "number of hairs and insects"

Citation, please?

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#14

Post by devonbleak »

Coffeewine wrote: post #8
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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. Schoo…

As someone who lives near a school I can say school buses are very much a necessity and they are getting modernized. I see an electric one consistently going through the neighborhood. And I much prefer them to hundreds more cars or pedestrians going through the neighborhood (people drive like maniacs through the residential streets here).

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#15

Post by cpursley »

mc32 wrote: post #3
lighttower wrote: post #2

This is a well written piece about how government regulations driven by budgets and less lobbies have enshitified school lunches.

A big sarcastic thank you to G Dubbya for taking us down that road to perdition..

American school lunches were big-ag industrial complex garbage well before Dubbya was in office.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#16

Post by cpursley »

Having a school lunch in a "poor" former eastern block country as a guest was really eye opening. It was actually good, fresh made borscht, veg dishes that tasted good (wasn't steamed)! Like, I would order and enjoy it at a restaurant level no-bad. Who knew that was even possible? From what I can tell, a non-crappy school lunch is the norm all over Europe. Why can't America have that?

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#17

Post by supportengineer »

Coffeewine wrote: post #8
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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. Schoo…

In California where I live there's no school buses. You're on your own to get to school, fortunately there are so many neighborhood schools that almost everyone can walk.

I love that my tax dollars are being used to feed kids at school.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#18

Post by dpark »

Animats wrote: post #7
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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 publici…

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.teleg...

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#19

Post by jimbokun »

Coffeewine wrote: post #8
jimbokun wrote: post #4

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…

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. Schoo…

Today, libraries are more amazing and more necessary than ever.

With online services constantly changing what is or isn't available, having a library with physical media, books, and even their own services for borrowing audio books and other online media, can be a real asset when trying to watch a specific movie or TV show or listen to a particular song the streamers decided to stop offering, or moved to a different service you're not subscribed to, etc.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#20

Post by Baeocystin »

I used to get the poor kid's meal when I was very young. They made us stand as a group aside in a line and let all the other kids get their full-sized meals first, then would give us our half-sized shitty sandwich after everyone else walked passed and stared at us.

Fuck every single adult involved in that kind of cruelty.

That being said- the bit of light in this story is the lunch ladies who went out of their ways to sneak us extra when it was available, even though I know they got in trouble for it. I managed to give one a hug once, and the strength she hugged me back, I knew she meant it. I have nothing but love and gratitude for those women.

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