Why does America tolerate feeding school children such gross processed crap?

[Mitters]

Your schools had lunch? We had to bring our own or buy it

[Bryntrollian]

MMOers from other nations can't you believe how gross and greasy American school lunches are?

How do we get better food to American schools?

Would you feed your children this?

All of those lunches are bullshit, but most especially the " American " one, we didn't even get lunches that good.

[the game]

I love how veiled nation bashing is ok when it's about the US.

[tumppu]

I love how veiled nation bashing is ok when it's about the US.

Criticizing school food is hardly "nation bashing". Especially considering that the pics in the OP have obviously been cherry picked and do not portray the actual meals except in some very limited regions in the countries mentioned, if they are actual school meals in the first place. For the finnish one I can say that it would only fit the meals we had when I attended a vocational course in the late 1990s, so not exactly a "school".

Nowadays there are apparently options in the school lunches and in general they are pretty well liked. In the 80s, we had exactly one option and hardtack to go with it. Some days the option was porridge. If the pic in the OP is a more recent school meal picture, then we´ve obviously improved a lot.

[Adam Jensen]

Because spending money on kids, making sure they get proper nutrition, is "SOSHULISM!!!!"

Remember the outrage when Michelle Obama campaigned on healthier lunches in school? Sarah Palin bragged about taking brownies to a school event, Republicans sent in pictures of shitty lunch meals pretending it was somehow Michelle's fault.

Americans (and I say this as one) seem to have this instinctive aversion to spending money to help their own countrymen (in this case, their countrymen's children) out, even when it would hardly make an impact on their paycheck or when it'd actually help the economy out.

Having kids well fed with healthy food would help them have more energy and wellbeing to pay attention in class, succeed and become productive adults.

But "muh soshulism" or something.

Fucking Joe McCarthy.

- - - Updated - - -

Because (sigh, yes I know this is a CmdrShep2154 bait thread) entire countries serving meals across an entire school year make it easy to cherry pick pictures to fit an agenda. American school lunches are bad is a theme on the Internet, but google a bit and you'll find there are good ones too and they aren't all in private schools.

Looking at the cherry picked comparison:

Finland -- forgot meat?
Spain -- F.U. if you are allergic to shrimp?
France -- what the hell did they do to those apples, because if that isn't a staged picture they'd be going brown in a lunch line.
Italy -- looks pretty, just like the French lunch. I wonder if the real lunch line can afford to have someone plate things like that.

Here is an example of problems that American schools face with lunches:

Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...hool/15950629/

JFC school administrators are a special type of stupid.

EDIT: And let me be perfectly clear, I think the pictures in the OP's post are complete and utter bullshit. Point still stands though, the US serves shit lunches to students and then mistreats kids who can't pay.

[lockedout]

I can't even afford to eat that healthy for lunch ever!

Of course you can.

[Zelk]

This is my overwhelming memory of school dinners

[Rennadrel]

Because your country is run by McDonalds, that's why.

TBF, it isn't just America. We have an obesity problem in Canada too. I'm overweight myself, but I've been trying to change my eating habits and exercise more. I was out at a mall today and there were two kids with their dad, they looked like they were about aged 7-10 and both of them had double chins and moobs. I said to my friend, "there's no way a kid that young should have double chins and man boobs". But it's becoming more and more common. When I was a kid nearly 30 years ago, fat kids were rare, now there's almost as many obese children as there are skinny kids. I think it's a combination of processed foods as well as parents not caring to cook healthy or proper meals for their kids and the healthier foods being more expensive.

[shadowmouse]

JFC school administrators are a special type of stupid.

Yep, the detention pretty well proves that point. Nevertheless, what did they fall back on? Why, of course: "but because of safety and liability we cannot allow students to actually exchange meals." Liability is the magic catch all for all manner of stupidity and it is probably more of a problem in the US than in many countries.

I won't entirely disagree with your edit, but I'd say it paints too broadly. The differences from school district to school district, let alone from state to state, are just too great.

[Adam Jensen]

Yep, the detention pretty well proves that point. Nevertheless, what did they fall back on? Why, of course: "but because of safety and liability we cannot allow students to actually exchange meals." Liability is the magic catch all for all manner of stupidity and it is probably more of a problem in the US than in many countries.

I mean, I get that administrators have to worry about liabilities and lawsuits from idiots who goldmine the legal process (and the occasional guy with a legit complaint) but if I were that kid's father, I'd be infuriated that the values of kindness and compassion I brought my kid up with, were being punished. The school could have handled it a better way. Punishing him for doing a good deed is not the proper response.

[shadowmouse]

The school could have handled it a better way. Punishing him for doing a good deed is not the proper response.

No argument from me. My point is that this kind of thinking further fuels the costs of American school lunch programs.