School Cafeteria Food

[A-Stump]

What were your experiences with school lunches growing up?

Our school district had excellent food. I was always confused as to the disgusting cafeteria food trope because I genuinely liked most of the stuff on offer elementary through to high school. The one exception being Johnny Marzetti which tastes like dogshit and baked fish because they'd always undercook it.

 

[Battlecruiser3000ad]

Mostly very horrible. Something was very bland, something oversalted, something just .. wrong. Don't even remember what the thing we called "dead snails in slime" was supposed to be. There were big tanks with lemon tea tho with unlimited refills so I'd drink ton of that while we were waiting for a chance to evade the teacher-guards who wouldn't let us leave without finishing the food, and get the hell out of dodge. Then highschool didn't even have a cafeteria and we'd either bring something from home or use the 30 min noon recess to go get something from a supermarket.

 

[CuzinEd]

I never ate lunch prepared at school. When I was a kid in the 90's I lived in Baltimore and the school was only a few blocks away from my house so I went home for lunch. My mom would pick me up and take me back. Of course, this was back before Baltimore was really bad. I didn't eat lunch at school till I got to middle school. I just ate a sandwich and had a can of soda. In high school I did the same thing. Sometimes I didn't eat lunch and would just read a book. I would eat the sandwich when I got home. I never ate the shitty school lunches.

The school lunch was always shit when I was in elementary and middle. I never ate it, but I saw it and I heard the stories. It didn't look very appetizing. Nothing really changed when I was in high school It was basically the same shitty looking food. A taco with a weird flat shell made into a tray. Square pizza that looked like something you would see in the supermarket frozen food aisle mashed potatoes that looked like they were scooped out with an icecream scoop. When I got to middle school most of the kids didn't eat lunch at all and most of them would bring their own snacks or buy some at a store on the way to school. A lot of chips and candy for lunch. The same thing happened in high school but there wasn't a store around to get anything to eat from. By the time I had to go high school my parents had moved out to a county in my state and if you lived too far from the school you had to ride a bus and even if you were within walking distance like I was there was still no store around. So, people either ate the shit that was served in the school cafeteria brought something from home to eat which is what I did, or they didn't eat. usually the lunch break was only 20-25 minutes and you could be down there eating lunch at 10:00 in the morning during one of the lunch breaks.

The school lunch didn't look good no matter what school it was or where it was. I'm glad I never ate it.

 

[Jason Wynn]

Never got school lunch in elementary or middle school. It was always those square “pizzas” that looked like someone spread marinara sauce and string cheese on a oversized Ritz cracker, or those questionable-looking pieces of mystery meat over rice, or these burgers where I swear the patty was grey colored. Just brown-bagged it.

High school had a slightly better choice in that I’d either grab one of the little mini-subs they had wrapped, or my friends and I would just go to Taco Bell or Carls’ Jr on lunch. Most of the time though I wouldn’t eat lunch at school and I’d just fix something when I got home.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

hit-or-miss
I mostly brought my lunch, would occasionally buy it or trade
elementary selections were mostly shit, but I recall the "mexican pizza" was way better
any school food that was just taco bell was lame
high school had fries that were usually ass but if you got them fresh out of the fryer they were fucking amazing
high school also had really tasty meatloaf, I assume it was some mix of pig snouts and cow dicks and gym mats or whatever but shit was really good

 

[Grub]

I don't think I ever ate the cafeteria food at my school. I either brought lunch or did what a lot of the other kids did and walk over to the Little Caesar's 5 minutes away and get those hot and ready $5 pizzas they have. It was brand new at the time. I remember this kid I knew got the job as the town's first hot and ready signboard guy. I'm pretty sure it was his first job too. He got ripped on hard for it. He became known as hot and ready boy for like the rest of highschool.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

For the latter half of my time in school I would usually actually pocket all the money that was supposed to go to lunch and just eat the shit other kids wouldn't out of their pre-selected meals.

The thing is, because kids are retarded like half their trays would always go to waste basically every day, and it would always be stuff like vegetables, fruit salad, bits of the main meal, etc., perfectly good food that would otherwise go into the trash and I hated seeing get thrown away anyways.

I'd then take that saved money and use it to do more important stuff, like pay $5 a month Runescape Premium fees.

 

[Marcus Tullius Cicero]

I don't recall eating school lunches very often. I rather liked the pizza they would cook, but that was about it. I often brought lunches my mother prepared for me. In fact, seeing as she was a cafeteria worker, she would prepare my lunches right there, so that they were quite fresh. This changed in high school, but it didn't bother me much.

 

[Agamemnon Busmalis]

Those spicy chicken patties and tater tots were a favorite of mine but I generally ate a packed lunch in the HS library while reading from the stacks.

It wasn't allowed but I had connections. Getting on the good side of the head librarian and her disciples pays dividends.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

I have never eaten a Salisbury steak because of how foul the ones at my school looked and smelled.

 

[OvercookedBacon]

The lunches at my high school were alright enough, the pizzas were the best.
Pretty sure that chicken sandwich patties aren't supposed to be purple in the middle, though.

 

[Kiwi Lime Pie]

In grades 1-8, I largely brought lunch and only paid for my milk every day with the exceptions being pizza day for special occasions. I think a couple of times in junior high we may have had submarine sandwiches. Otherwise, the regular cafeteria pizza was similar to what @Dwight Frye described and the food as a whole was palatable yet average to bland at best.

In high school, there was more variety and the menus were printed in advance which made it easier to plan ahead when I wanted to buy a full lunch or when I just wanted bring my own and get milk and a snack. The pizza and chicken nuggets were good (the former being better than the elementary school pizza) and both were popular items when they appeared on the menu. The only thing I remember hating was the corn. One day when I forgot my lunch and had to pick something from the cafeteria menu, I made the mistake of taking corn with my entree. It turned out to be disgustingly-flavored cream corn. The experience was so bad I never forgot my lunch for the rest of my high school days.

Although my college didn't have a cafeteria per se, they had an on-campus pizza place and a deli. Both were overpriced for what they offered, and the pizza was excessively greasy, so I largely brought lunch from home and bought a beverage and snack except for special occasions.

I'd like to believe cafeteria food has improved since I was a student, but I think it's hit and miss and it depends on the schools and whether they prefer quality or cheapness - especially for those schools with outsourced food service.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

My highschool didn't have a lunch program. Grades 1-8 were okay, nothing special, but mostly edible.

The worst was Fridays. They alternated. One Friday would be fish - either fish sticks or fish sandwiches - and the next would be grilled cheese and tomato soup. I guess for the Catholics, or something. The fish wasn't bad, but the grilled cheese and tomato soup... gah. I've never liked tomato soup to begin with, and the grilled cheese sandwiches were awful - two slices of wonder bread, a slice of the absolute most plasticy processed cheese imaginable, and burned to a charcoal-like color and texture. Every time.

Alternate fridays were the only days I carried a lunch.

 

[XYZpdq Jr.]

My highschool didn't have a lunch program. Grades 1-8 were okay, nothing special, but mostly edible.

The worst was Fridays. They alternated. One Friday would be fish - either fish sticks or fish sandwiches - and the next would be grilled cheese and tomato soup. I guess for the Catholics, or something. The fish wasn't bad, but the grilled cheese and tomato soup... gah. I've never liked tomato soup to begin with, and the grilled cheese sandwiches were awful - two slices of wonder bread, a slice of the absolute most plasticy processed cheese imaginable, and burned to a charcoal-like color and texture. Every time.

Alternate fridays were the only days I carried a lunch.

I can't image a way grilled cheese could work well in a school cafeteria. Fry it and serve it and chug it down before it congeals is the name of the game

 

[Neo-Nazi Rich Evans]

i brought lunch until i was in HS. the pizza was okay, low quality frozen pizza is how i would describe it. the chicken tenders were good, but it is difficult to mess those up. the rest of it was okay-ish. nothing terrible, but just more like average frozen dinner type of food. most meals included french fries, they werent bad, but i really question the nutrition value of eating french fries every day.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

I can't image a way grilled cheese could work well in a school cafeteria. Fry it and serve it and chug it down before it congeals is the name of the game

I dunno. I went looking for "school lunch grilled cheese" on google, and most of the results looked waaay better than what we had.

This is just a stock photo, but, seriously, this is exactly what we were served every other week, along with a styrofoam bowl full of watery tomato juice they were calling tomato soup.

 

[ZsaZsaBinks]

It was good, but certainly a downgrade from its equivalents at restaurants.

 

[Lone Wandering Courier]

Our school's lunches weren't great, but not always the worst either. The most fancy lunch they would serve would be slices of dominos pizza. The worst part about school lunches were occasionally had to have the cheese sandwitch they give out if you have no cold lunch and nor money in the school lunch account. It wasn't the most disgusting thing nor worst tasting thing but was still the worst thing to happen just because it exposed you as the poor kid.

 

[MembersSchoolPizza]

i brought lunch until i was in HS. the pizza was okay, low quality frozen pizza is how i would describe it. the chicken tenders were good, but it is difficult to mess those up. the rest of it was okay-ish. nothing terrible, but just more like average frozen dinner type of food. most meals included french fries, they werent bad, but i really question the nutrition value of eating french fries every day.

French fries were almost never a part of the meal... exactly.

In 1-5, once and a blue moon you would get fries - always frozen crinkle fries. You would get like 6 or 8 fries. But this was really, stupidly rare - maybe once a month, tops.

In middle school, 6-8, you could get fries any day - but you had to pay extra for them. In middle school there was a "premium" portion of the lunch line that wasn't covered with your normal lunch payment. I don't even remember what things cost there, it wasn't a lot... I think I remember it was 50 cents for anything off the premium cart, this was very early 90s. Usually it was fries or tater tots, once and a while it would be chicken nuggets. But sometimes you could also get seconds on the premium cart... like on pizza days or chicken sandwich days, you could buy an extra slice of pizza or an extra chicken sandwich. The kids who didn't have money for the premium cart could only get seconds after the last kid went through the line, but if you had money, you got to be an "elite".

... My parents weren't rich, by any stretch... kinda upper-lower class or lower-middle class, somewhere in there. But most of my friends were very much The Poor. I always had money for the premium cart, and often whole dollar, so I'd get two cartons of fries and share them with my little group of nerd-friends as we talked about that weeks episode of Star Trek or video games or something.

There was also a freezer you could get ice cream bars out of, again, for 50 cents, but that stuff was all just normal stuff - fudgesicles, nestle crunch ice cream bars, those meh orange creamsicles, etc. The same stuff you would find in a gas station ice cream cooler. Same basic cooler, too.

 

[Tetragrammaton]

in elementary school the food was fine i remember being especially fond of these things they called italian dunkers. which were just a nice italian sub roll like you would use for a sausage sandwich toasted with mozzerella cheese and a little cup of pasta sauce for dipping. those were really good though i did not have high standards so thats not saying too much.

in middle school things were ok but you could see the quality start to go down nothing too major however i would say it was like eating food from a really really bad fast food place at night. its not the best but if you are hungry its whatever.

now all this changed in high school because for some reason around the time i was in high school i dont know if there were budget cuts or what but freshman year was fine but after that the food went to absolute shit and i dont mean it was just bad quality. kids would constantly get sick from it and i am convinced they were trying to poison us because the pizza started smelling and tasting like bleach.

one of the things i will never forget about lunch back in high school was the nachos and the macaroni and cheese. two foods that are pretty cheap and easy to make you would think right? well the nachos went from being actual nachos with shredded cheese and meat and veggies to some tortilla chips with a single slice of white american cheese melted over the top of them.

and the macaroni and cheese went from being what i can only assume was homemade or maybe some really good frozen stuff to some spiral noodles with again a single slice of white american cheese on top.

to this day i have no idea what happened to the food my only theory is that all the old lunch ladies who knew how to actually make trash food good all died or retired and the new ones gave zero fucks because my first year in high school the food was great they even had these huge cakes that you could get slices of if you managed to get in line early enough.

it was just insane how much the food quality just died in a single year. but on the bright side it was also kinda funny because kids started sneaking out during lunch and going to mcdonalds and pizza hut and bringing back a bunch of stuff for their friend groups.

eventually i just stopped getting lunch and if i wanted something i would make sure to pack up left overs from dinner or just eat whatever my friends had since they usually brought stuff for our lunch table to share.