For those who are in high school (or have children), what do schools normally serve for lunch these days?

At my kid’s school it’s just as bad, but with smaller portions (and the option for salad… until they run out).

No, it’s not the same. My kids high school offers salads and fruit and yogurt and a heathy warm lunch. like teriyaki chicken bowls. And of course pizza is available everyday.

But when I was in high school , it was all casserole type dishes, with hamburgers and hot dogs available every day. We never had salad when I was in school.

The hard part is still getting kids to eat it.

It is worse at the school I work at than it was even 5 years ago. The cook retired then and she liked to cook and bake.

Now we get prepackaged meals from a school lunch catering service that are no where near as good, or fresh.

At my daughter’s high school the lunch service is amazing. (Closer to what @zenvelo mentions.) It’s way better than even my college’s dorm food service was back in the day.

They have a “quick” line where you can get pop, chips or snack foods, a regular hot food cafeteria line where kids/staff can select from multiple meal options (e.g. pizza, grilled cheese sandwiches, whatever the cooked entree of the day is..and a salad bar is always available, too) and then a separate area off to the side where you can always get a sub sandwich (like a mini-Subway sub shop set up to the side) made to order. They also have a multitude of drink and dessert options off to the side, too.

The only complaint our daughter has is that her lunch period is so short (I think it’s only 15 or 18 minutes?) she doesn’t like to go through the lunch line & prefers to pack a lunch from home so she can have more time to socialize with her friends.

The children have choices now and they are healthier. I didn’t have a choice until I was allowed to leave campus.

In Canada when I was in high school (recently) the food choices were pretty bad. Drinks were all filled with aspartame and the only alternative to Diet pop was water. Foods where cheap tasting, oily, and disgusting. I think it was an attempt to help reduce the amount of child obesity but when it comes at the cost of your health it’s not worth it.

Recently though during my last 2 years of highschool they tried to be healthier, adding “smart” foods that didn’t taste very good but not all were bad. Most drinks became less poisonous but 95% were still were filled with high fructose corn syrup (called glucose-fructose in canada) and other not so healthy ingredients. The choices where better but there is still much room for improvement today.

I wish there was a way that they could serve organic foods at high schools as a healthy alternative to the chemical slop served today. More and more people are starting to become aware of how food is made and whats in it, at least that’s what I noticed when I was in my last year. Maybe by starting out with a small selection of organic food and slowly grow we could see a dramatic increase in health in our schools.