What was your school lunch like?

I forget, because I rarely ate lunch. I packed a lunch when I was in elementary school (actually, my mother packed it.)
We did have an amazing salad bar twice a week, though, and I ate lunch on those days.

All of the school lunches I can remember were good. We always had a salad bar, so I could get that if I didn’t like what the regular meals were. Every Friday was pizza day (which was awesome because I loved pizza). We also always had the option of getting a sandwich if we didn’t like the main selection and didn’t want salad. Our meals were prepared at the school.

My son’s school lunches seem to be pretty good from what I’ve seen and what he’s said. I’ve went to school to eat with him a few times. He’s been at several different schools already. In some of the schools, the meals were prepared there, but in others it was prepared at another school and brought to his (these schools were very close together though). Right now he can choose between the main selection and a sandwich.

Back a long couple weeks ago when I ate school lunch it was crap but fun to make fun of and dare people to eat. I’ll list some of the crap.
sour milk.
raw chicken.
some sort of mysterious blue berry crap.
apple not so crisp.
rotten all the way threw the middle banana.
uncooked pizza.
soggy turkey and cheese sand which.
completely gray bologna.
Just to name a few. The raw chicken was my lunch, I ate it!

The lunches provided by my school district were vile, inedible, odd-smelling, and probably tasted worse than the Styrofoam trays they were served on. As a result, I brought lunch to school every day. In elementary school, my lunch was usually: a peanut butter sandwich (spread on both sides, and no jelly – ever), fruit (usually an apple, but occasionally I would bring a banana or grapes), a snack (chips, cookies, or cheese), and a juice box (sometimes it was apple, but it was usually this delicious pineapple drink.) It wasn’t the healthiest, balanced meal by any means… but it was edible, comprised of foods I knew I would be willing to eat, and filling.

Let’s see, this was 1976 to 1982 typical hot lunch.

White or Chocolate Milk
Cheese or Sausage Pizza
Meatloaf with Tomato Paste
Salsbury Steak
Green Beans or Corn
Jello or Pudding

It was served cafeteria-style (grab a tray and a spork and move down the metal rail past the blue-smocked, hair-netted lunch ladies and on to the grumpy cashier).

None of it was very good.

The schools I went to were not big on providing food. In elementary school, it wasn’t an option. All my lunches came from home. In middle school, there were options of prepaid catered food on certain days of the week. This food came from local businesses and was always good. In high school, pizza and other fattening items were sold during lunch, but I never got any of that. Always brought a lunch from home. In general, it was the lower-income students who bought food at school regularly, from what I noticed. But there was a law that was passed in California during my time at high school that changed what could and couldn’t be sold. Candy was no longer available and the food options suddenly became less greasy…I never paid much attention to it the last two years of high school, so I’m not exactly sure what was available.

@cprevite steak! That would be the best possible school lunch ever. If I could have that for a school lunch I would feel like I was in heaven.

My parents were very frugal and did not believe in paying for something we could make ourselves. The three of us kids always took our own lunch, and most of the other kids thought we were the luckiest kids in the cafeteria.

@daytonamisticrip Salisbury steak and real steak are two very different things, and I for one am very glad I was never subjected to the school lunch version of Salisbury steak :P

Well, America, thank you for providing me with a free midday meal from 1975 to 1982. Thanks. I mean that honestly. Some days that was all the food I had.

Anyway, the lunches at my schools? Waaaaay too much white carbs. Probably because they were cheap. The pizzas were pretty much just bread. I don’t remember that we ever had soup. We did have a lot of egg noodle-based dishes, I recall. Vegetables were boiled to death, and thus were grey. At least the burgers/Salisbury steak were pretty much soy.

Also, some of this was during the Reagan “Ketchup is a vegetable!” era, so we were lucky to even get the formerly green, but boiled to death stuff. Once I hit high school, I just brought a sack lunch from home.

Overcooked, undercooked, dry, or soggy. Take your pick.
Only fruits and P&J sandwiches where ever ok.

Yeah, salsbury steak is to steak what corn chips are to corn on the cob.

The lunches I remember served at school were first and foremost choice of milk or chocolate milk (I don’t like milk, but I could handle the chocolate milk). Tacos, hamburger, hot dog, pizza, and grilled cheese. Sides were tator tots, french fries, corn, green beans. I don’t remember any sandwiches, except for the grilled cheese. Maybe there was that choice, and my memory is failing, because I don’t eat sandwiches much, especially not when I was young, and definitely not PB&J.

In elementary when I lived in NY we all brought our own lunch, the first time I ever bought lunch at school was when I moved to MD in 5th grade. In high school we had an open campus and could leave for lunch. So, it was either cafeteria, or out to McD’s, or a hot dog, pizza, something like that.

We were all thin by the way, except for a couple of kids.

In elementary school we all went home for lunch and came back in the afternoon. School was within walking distance, and everybody had a mother or other caregiver at home.

This was in junior high:

26 cents for a hot main dish: meat, vegetable, potato or rice
4 cents for a half pint of whole milk
6 cents for an ice cream cup, which I couldn’t afford every day

No junk food, ever—it was before the first Burger King came to town, and none of us had ever heard of pizza or tacos. I was in high school before I saw my first pizza.

In high school I usually took a sandwich because it took too long to stand in the cafeteria line. I wanted to get out of the lunch room just as fast as possible.

My Mom used to pack a “bento box” style lunch for me, complete with rice balls, pickled plums, fish, seaweed, braised teriyaki chicken, and tofu for me. I got tired of it once in awhile, and opted for the occasional hamburger and fries at school, but I think that’s the reason why I was able to stay in shape in my teen years leading up to adulthood. I have my Mom to thank for that! Lol.

I grew up in Hawaii so it always consist of rice and crap. Raw chicken sometimes like @daytonamisticrip said. I never ever ate lunch only if there was rice or a roll to eat. Blah, I can’t believe that some of that shit they serve to children is legal.
@MRSHINYSHOES Lucky! I want to eat a bento right now.

My clearest memory was in elementary school. It was in NJ and they have wonderful Italian food.
We would get in a line and there was this HUGE ss vat filled with spaghetti. A big lady had a pair of tongs and would streeetch the pasta up in the air and slap it onto the plate . It was so wonderful that I’d gulp it down just so I could go back and get seconds.
They also served stewed tomatoes I forced myself to like because I was so hungry by lunch. Then there was the sadistic incident with sweet potatoes. I’ve never touched one since.

I have positive memories of school dinners!