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All praise to the lunch ladies

bittersoutherner.com

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Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#41

Post by HeyLaughingBoy »

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…

It seems odd to me that anyone would need an argument in favor of free school lunch. School is mandatory between certain ages and it's free. Let's just make meals free as well.

And I'm not sure how school buses are out of step with "the modern world." What are you proposing? Uber or something?

For the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing why we shouldn't spend money on social causes.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#42

Post by bittercynic »

dpark wrote: post #32
rkomorn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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) we…

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?

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.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#43

Post by lelandbatey »

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…

The blog in question, right when posting seemed to pick up: https://neverseconds.blogspot.com/2012/05/

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#44

Post by i80and »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #40
jimbokun wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform. In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA f…

> on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.

I think this says far more about your specific forum bubbles than anything else, to be honest.

At worst I see a perception that libraries are for children.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#45

Post by DrewADesign »

ilamont wrote: post #35

Growing up near Boston, my public elementary school built in the 1920s didn't have a proper kitchen or even a cafeteria because kids at one time always brought meals from home and ate at their desks. Indeed, we did too, bringing metal lunchboxes or brown bags, until the mid-1970s. At that point, something changed and we all ate together in a repurposed room in the basement, eating the same unhealthy and unappetizing…

The school I attended as a child not too far from Boston was rather unusual in that they chose to get the government-issue ingredients (government cheese, powdered eggs, etc) and pay cooks to cook scratch meals with it rather than using their funding to pay a food service company for heat-and-serve things like the hockey puck pizzas. Place was a redneck hellhole aside from that but the lunches were actually pretty nice. There were some garbage of course... like when the brownies went stale, they'd just douse them in cheap chocolate syrup. Fresh baked hot rolls every day, though. Glad I didn't go to high school there.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#46

Post by nathan_compton »

HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #40
jimbokun wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform. In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA f…

> on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.

Don't get where you are coming from. I'm american and everywhere I've ever gone into a library its been great. Everyone I know with kids (including myself) visits the library all the time, often daily, at least weekly.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#47

Post by HeinzStuckeIt »

i80and wrote: post #44
HeinzStuckeIt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform. In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA f…

> on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up. I think this says far more about your specific forum bubbles than anything else, to be honest. At worst I see a perception that libraries are for children.

If you do a DDG search site:news.ycombinator.com "libraries" "homeless", you find some such discussions from this very site. But as I said, you can also find this across the internet when forums are dominated by Americans and it’s certainly not limited to obscure and dodgy venues.

I suppose it is the big-city Americans who are complaining about the social problems. But it’s also common to see from small-town Americans that opening hours at their local library have been slashed, which also speaks to declining support for them.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#48

Post by mauvehaus »

Just want to note that The Bitter Southerner ran two seasons of an absolutely outstanding podcast that sadly went defunct in 2020. Truly it's one of the best podcasts I've listened to, and I'm bummed that they quit making it.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#49

Post by pxc »

Spivak wrote: post #24
michaelrpeskin wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 someo…

I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be minimizing the amount of waste—cook literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then try to nudge toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low. Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune dishes kids e…

Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in this case— a good nanny would likely take the same approach you describe here: meeting the kids where they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better along the way instead of making food just for it to be thrown away.

Re: All praise to the lunch ladies

#50

Post by watersb »

I didn't consciously notice the source URL, yet I thought "This would be a great article for The Bitter Southerner".

I strongly suspect I actually read the source location. Whatever.

The point is that "The Bitter Southerner" is a fantastic magazine. They sell subscriptions.

This is where I grew up but it's a different planet for my kids. "Let Everybody Sing" https://bittersoutherner.com/sacred-harp-let-everybody-sing

Just looking through past Hacker News submissions is worth your time.

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