Instead of focusing on the anecdotal “my kid eats it/my kid doesn’t”, I would be very interested to learn about how free/universal school lunches are produced in different districts (ie large cities vs small suburbs; wealthy districts vs poorer ones etc). How much money is spent per student on public school lunch in NYC vs Westchester, for example? Who has the contract to provide the food? How does that differ district to district, state to state? School lunches aren’t a national monolith, and dialoguing about one’s personal experience with school lunch doesn’t feel helpful. Let me know if I missed the mark here.
Oh there's SO MUCH to report out there, that's a great feature idea. Here's a piece I did on how school lunch programs were working around the country in 2020. It has changed a lot, so I'd love to do an update. I also recommend Jennifer Gaddis' current research on this issue, and for more historical context, Janet Poppendieck's excellent book FREE FOR ALL. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/parenting/free-summer-meal-programs-snap-wic-children.html?searchResultPosition=3
Thanks for the link -- I’ll take time to read it later today! I look forward to peeking at Jennifer Gaddis’ writing, too. And I 100% support the idea of making a feature story on the topic... any editors out there listening??
Oh I meant maybe I'd run it here. (I'm increasingly territorial about which stories I'll give to other outlets -- I want Burnt Toast to have the scoop!)
I haven’t listened yet but last night I (childfree) was debating purchasing a fancy bento box for myself and am realizing that I still romanticize school lunch...
My kids' schools have started a "only take what you want" program to reduce waste, so the days of getting a tray with everything on it are gone, and I think that's fantastic.
My kids don't eat school lunch for mostly logistical reasons. My 7th grader is a pretty anxious kid, and both of them get overwhelmed by the noise in the cafeteria, so adding that to not knowing how the line works (we move frequently due to my husband's career, so they're in a different school every 1-2 years) and they just prefer to pack their own lunches. There's a bit of anxiety over "what if I don't like it and then I'm hungry?" and frankly, I'd rather not push them to get a school lunch since I make them pack their own anyway. I do suggest it, and we look at the menu every month, but I feel like forcing this issue in our family would be the same as forcing any other sort of food situation. They have done breakfast sometimes, and lunch on a rare occasion (at one of their previous schools).
For reference, they've packed their own lunches since kindergarten -- I used to make a dozen PBJs on Sunday night and flash-freeze them on a baking sheet, but like, buy Uncrustables too! I just have grape/strawberry jam-averse weirdos -- and they pack their lunches (they do their own sandwiches now, at 12 and 9) while I'm fixing dinner, and we're all in the kitchen together.
Kids packing for themselves is SUCH A GAME CHANGER. I wish I'd realized that during the two years we had no school lunch program, I mean it's literal DAYS OF LIFE I could have gotten back?!
Massachusetts kept school lunch free state wide this year. My first grader was not interested in buying lunch last year (and we heard the food was pretty bad) but they switched vendors this year so we tried again. He's gotten school lunch about half the time (he picks the days he wants from the menu) and he's said the food is very good. It's so much more kid-friendly than before. A daily option is a bento box of grapes, goldfish, yogurt, and carrots. Another daily option is a go-gurt tube, string cheese, fruit cup, and muffin. I would eat those!
We came from a daycare where food was provided, so he ate school lunch his whole life before going to kindergarten. So giving him a year of packing lunches before really pushing him to have school lunch worked for us.
We're also in Massachusetts, but our district has at least some scratch cooking. Similar meal alternatives, though -- I think it's cheese sandwich, PB&J, or yogurt and crackers. I wish they had that go-gurt/string cheese/muffin one, though, since my kid is forever coming home intrigued by the processed cheese products other kids have and then after we buy them and he likes them and we buy a second round he stops eating them. I feel like having a regular source for those at school would benefit him.
We have a hot meal of the day too, which is what my son picks from on the calendar. I just thought those daily alternative options were especially kid-friendly and easy for the school to offer!
In our house, we LOVE school lunch! My daughter's school is fortunate (not really the right word but YKWIM) in that it's free for everyone, due to the high percentage of students overall who would already qualify for free or reduced price lunches. She's a first-grader now so all she's ever known is "free lunch at school."
It took her several months into her kindergarten year before she was willing to try it, mostly because she was intimidated by the logistics of how to actually obtain the food and then take it outside (often in the rain) for when they were all outdoor-lunch. But once she switched over, she never looked back. This year she goes back and forth; her closest friend in school has dietary restrictions so always has a home lunch, and a lot of days my daughter would rather bring a home lunch too so they can maximize every second together.
She is a pretty picky eater and that's been a source of challenge in our house for literal years and years now. And while I really really try to remove the power struggle, it's not uncommon for her to take a home lunch and literally not eat one single bite of food that I pack unless it has chocolate. She participates in choosing everything, but it doesn't matter: if it's not a chocolatey snack, she will not eat it in the long run. Because of that, I actually prefer that she does school lunch: it takes all of that struggle out of my morning. If she wants to eat Uncrustables daily, great!
I am in some circles where moms are usually progressive and (typically) aware of being fatphobic, but you're right that school lunch seems to be the thing they'll criticize (and there's always That Person or three who chimes in about that's why they can't send their kid to public school, ugh). There was a thread of folks posting their school's typical lunch menu and making fun of it, and it made me so mad I couldn't even respond.
And the thing about private school is, one of the camps my kid goes to is at a private school and feeds them lunch (love that about it; unfortunately there's no pool there...) and the lunches are ASTONISHING. So many choices and they can take them all! He comes home like "I had chicken fingers and pasta and chocolate milk and..." Actually takes me back to when I started at private school in high school and the lunches being edible and having tons of choices were one of the main things I told my public school friends about. "Guys, they have real french fries! And like three different dessert choices every day!"
My granddaughter eats school lunch every day (it’s still free here in CA). It seems like a non-issue, meaning she never complains about the food and she never seems hungry when I pick her up. I think that’s so great and I feel fortunate that she has the option. It should absolutely be available in all schools and definitely before 2032. What the actual fuck?
It's so frustrating how much this varies. (And a reminder of why state govt matters so much!!) CA is a great model and I hope does lead the way for more states to follow.
I similarly had my kids attend a small private school during Covid, and have kept them there since they love it and I found a way to make it happen - and the lack of school lunch is the only thing I can imagine complaining about! But at the same time, I know that offering a school lunch for this student body (in addition to the myriad logistical issues of being a small school without a commercial kitchen, etc) would probably open up a pandora's box of exactly the kind of issues you're talking about here. They do pizza lunch once per week and I hit the sign-up button SO FAST for that, let me tell you.
My sisters and I were all fairly picky and we had WAY less drama about eating when we just did the school lunch, versus packed lunches. It removed so much of the emotional baggage/power-struggle part, somehow. My kids get literally no variety without a communal school lunch program, because I just stick with what works (a criteria that includes what I can handle dealing with each morning) and I do wish there were a lunch program I could just sign them up for and be done with it, but in the absence of one, this is what it is. I'm not packing lunch for optimal health, though. I'm packing lunch for survival, haha.
I have this vivid memory of going to a practice day for kindergarten at my little public school a little bit before school started, and we did a lunch time practice in the school cafeteria. They served chicken nuggets and we all got to practice getting trays, waiting on line, paying, etc, and then sitting at our table and eating. It was SO EXCITING. I still remember the thrill of getting each month's lunch menu over those elementary-school years, and poring over it.
Lunchtime practice!! What a great idea! The logistics are 1000% what stops my kids from getting school lunch -- both the uncertainty and the time it takes vs time they have available to eat.
YES! Our school has the kindergarteners ride the bus to practice the day before the first day of school -- cafeteria practice would be such a great addition to those orientations.
I was thinking about this a lot lately because my kids went to a camp for a short time this summer that had a lunch truck. I packed them a lunch every day in case the line was crazy (which it often was), but also sent money because I really wanted them to have some positive experience practicing this kind of thing, since they were newly 8 and newly 5 and I was not really sure how they'd handle it. The 5-year old learned on the first day whether he could afford both fries AND gatorade (he could), and ate that every single day and was soooooo happy. He got a ring pop on Fridays as well, hahahaha. The 8-year old preferred having the money and so he ate the boring packed lunch and put the cash in his bank every day, which was like....REALLY not my intention, but also a valuable life lesson, so, fine.
I was so psyched for them to have a chance to practice the whole deal of standing in a line, deciding what they were getting, taking part in a transaction, carrying their stuff someplace to sit down, etc.
We still have universal free school lunch this year here *if* the kid takes what's considered to be a full healthy meal (basically they have to take the vegetable), and I wondered how that would go because my kid only likes crunchy vegetables and the school ones are often mushy, so he doesn't like them. But it seems like they're just giving him the vegetable -- one day he arrived home with a baggy of baby carrots in his backpack -- so we haven't been charged. The baby carrots were of course crunchy, but he only likes those dipped in salad dressing so he hadn't eaten most of them.
The big change is that last year they ate in the classroom and lunch was brought to them and this year they eat in the cafeteria. So far I haven't heard that there are problems with the lines or anything, and it seems like an improvement overall in two ways. One is that last year there was one day a week when salad was the main meal and he didn't want it, and now instead salad is one option one day a week when there's an alternative, so he hasn't been asking for home lunch once a week, which is fantastic. The other is that last year the paraprofessional in his class oversaw lunch and was pretty strict that they had to eat their vegetables, with the result that on days he didn't like the vegetable he would get the cheese sandwich option even if he particularly liked the rest of the hot meal. And I don't get the sense they're as strictly overseen in the cafeteria, so I think he's eating a lot less cheese sandwiches, although with him being out for nearly a week with covid and me having had covid since I haven't had as many conversations about lunch.
Sep 30, 2022·edited Sep 30, 2022Liked by Virginia Sole-Smith
This piece is the one that made me subscribe, so I love that you're revisiting it along with reactions.
I'm not familiar enough with how food options work from place to place. As a kid, I remember the elementary lunch menu having one meal choice each day. You bought it or you didn't. The district we are in now has 3-4 lunch options each day. Do you know if this is more common practice now, perhaps related to some legislation, or is this more privilege from our particular (large, relatively wealthy) district? I tend to assume it's the district, but I wonder if featuring choice in this way would make parents more or less likely to support a program. (Just as an example, every Tuesday in August might feature 3 Bean Chili, fish sticks, a cheese pizza lunchable, and a chef salad as options - always something vegetarian and halal available, but she couldn't get the same sandwich each day because it's not available). I'd also be interested in whether there are efforts to push back against the shrinking lunch times for our kids, which I see as a problem for a whole host of reasons.
As anecdote, we live in California, which passed a universal meals program for the state. We're loving it. We pack lunch about once a week now (remarkably, even with 3 options a day, there are days she looks at the menu and asks us to pack her a sandwich). I'm constantly amazed by the things she tells me she ate; standouts include a fruit/yogurt parfait and a chopped salad. I can only imagine the horror on her face if I tried one of those for dinner!
As always too the parents' convenience factor rarely gets taken into consideration either on the lunch topic. I frankly don't care about what my kids eat at school lunch as long as I don't have to make it and they're not bringing home some squished up sweaty uneaten sandwich and goldfish crumbs for me to deal with yet another day. I just need them to eat enough so they are not monsters for me/their teachers later and whatever it is is NOMB (my privilege of course is that I don't have terribly picky eaters/kids with food allergies.)
Loved the first article, love the revisit! As a (pile of privilege) mom, registered dietitian/ED clinician and overall human being, I am so sick of discussing what my kids eat. I'm sick of defending or explaining the food options and choices that are available in our house and subsequently, in their lunches (expensive private school lunch option for one, no lunch option for the younger ones). While we do let the older one choose a few 'hot lunch' days they are almost always pizza and you know what, that's sure as heck what I'm picking too on a 'hot lunch' day! I'm grateful to read this again and again and to have the reminder that everyone's food situation is different, not superior, just different.
In Australia school lunch isn't very common. I think it sounds like a great program and when my child starts school I would love it if there was an option that meant I wasn't packing lunch boxes. I made sure to choose a daycare that provided meals because it reduces my burden, plus it exposes my kid to foods I just don't serve at home (tuna!). And I'm pretty sure the peer pressure of them all sitting down together means she tries things she might not normally.
Instead of focusing on the anecdotal “my kid eats it/my kid doesn’t”, I would be very interested to learn about how free/universal school lunches are produced in different districts (ie large cities vs small suburbs; wealthy districts vs poorer ones etc). How much money is spent per student on public school lunch in NYC vs Westchester, for example? Who has the contract to provide the food? How does that differ district to district, state to state? School lunches aren’t a national monolith, and dialoguing about one’s personal experience with school lunch doesn’t feel helpful. Let me know if I missed the mark here.
Oh there's SO MUCH to report out there, that's a great feature idea. Here's a piece I did on how school lunch programs were working around the country in 2020. It has changed a lot, so I'd love to do an update. I also recommend Jennifer Gaddis' current research on this issue, and for more historical context, Janet Poppendieck's excellent book FREE FOR ALL. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/parenting/free-summer-meal-programs-snap-wic-children.html?searchResultPosition=3
Thanks for the link -- I’ll take time to read it later today! I look forward to peeking at Jennifer Gaddis’ writing, too. And I 100% support the idea of making a feature story on the topic... any editors out there listening??
Oh I meant maybe I'd run it here. (I'm increasingly territorial about which stories I'll give to other outlets -- I want Burnt Toast to have the scoop!)
I haven’t listened yet but last night I (childfree) was debating purchasing a fancy bento box for myself and am realizing that I still romanticize school lunch...
Ha! I get that.
My kids' schools have started a "only take what you want" program to reduce waste, so the days of getting a tray with everything on it are gone, and I think that's fantastic.
My kids don't eat school lunch for mostly logistical reasons. My 7th grader is a pretty anxious kid, and both of them get overwhelmed by the noise in the cafeteria, so adding that to not knowing how the line works (we move frequently due to my husband's career, so they're in a different school every 1-2 years) and they just prefer to pack their own lunches. There's a bit of anxiety over "what if I don't like it and then I'm hungry?" and frankly, I'd rather not push them to get a school lunch since I make them pack their own anyway. I do suggest it, and we look at the menu every month, but I feel like forcing this issue in our family would be the same as forcing any other sort of food situation. They have done breakfast sometimes, and lunch on a rare occasion (at one of their previous schools).
For reference, they've packed their own lunches since kindergarten -- I used to make a dozen PBJs on Sunday night and flash-freeze them on a baking sheet, but like, buy Uncrustables too! I just have grape/strawberry jam-averse weirdos -- and they pack their lunches (they do their own sandwiches now, at 12 and 9) while I'm fixing dinner, and we're all in the kitchen together.
Kids packing for themselves is SUCH A GAME CHANGER. I wish I'd realized that during the two years we had no school lunch program, I mean it's literal DAYS OF LIFE I could have gotten back?!
Massachusetts kept school lunch free state wide this year. My first grader was not interested in buying lunch last year (and we heard the food was pretty bad) but they switched vendors this year so we tried again. He's gotten school lunch about half the time (he picks the days he wants from the menu) and he's said the food is very good. It's so much more kid-friendly than before. A daily option is a bento box of grapes, goldfish, yogurt, and carrots. Another daily option is a go-gurt tube, string cheese, fruit cup, and muffin. I would eat those!
We came from a daycare where food was provided, so he ate school lunch his whole life before going to kindergarten. So giving him a year of packing lunches before really pushing him to have school lunch worked for us.
Those grab-and-go options sound great and so replicable in districts of all different sizes/budgets.
We're also in Massachusetts, but our district has at least some scratch cooking. Similar meal alternatives, though -- I think it's cheese sandwich, PB&J, or yogurt and crackers. I wish they had that go-gurt/string cheese/muffin one, though, since my kid is forever coming home intrigued by the processed cheese products other kids have and then after we buy them and he likes them and we buy a second round he stops eating them. I feel like having a regular source for those at school would benefit him.
We have a hot meal of the day too, which is what my son picks from on the calendar. I just thought those daily alternative options were especially kid-friendly and easy for the school to offer!
In our house, we LOVE school lunch! My daughter's school is fortunate (not really the right word but YKWIM) in that it's free for everyone, due to the high percentage of students overall who would already qualify for free or reduced price lunches. She's a first-grader now so all she's ever known is "free lunch at school."
It took her several months into her kindergarten year before she was willing to try it, mostly because she was intimidated by the logistics of how to actually obtain the food and then take it outside (often in the rain) for when they were all outdoor-lunch. But once she switched over, she never looked back. This year she goes back and forth; her closest friend in school has dietary restrictions so always has a home lunch, and a lot of days my daughter would rather bring a home lunch too so they can maximize every second together.
She is a pretty picky eater and that's been a source of challenge in our house for literal years and years now. And while I really really try to remove the power struggle, it's not uncommon for her to take a home lunch and literally not eat one single bite of food that I pack unless it has chocolate. She participates in choosing everything, but it doesn't matter: if it's not a chocolatey snack, she will not eat it in the long run. Because of that, I actually prefer that she does school lunch: it takes all of that struggle out of my morning. If she wants to eat Uncrustables daily, great!
I am in some circles where moms are usually progressive and (typically) aware of being fatphobic, but you're right that school lunch seems to be the thing they'll criticize (and there's always That Person or three who chimes in about that's why they can't send their kid to public school, ugh). There was a thread of folks posting their school's typical lunch menu and making fun of it, and it made me so mad I couldn't even respond.
Ugh yes, the menu mocking is mind-blowing to me and yet so common.
And the thing about private school is, one of the camps my kid goes to is at a private school and feeds them lunch (love that about it; unfortunately there's no pool there...) and the lunches are ASTONISHING. So many choices and they can take them all! He comes home like "I had chicken fingers and pasta and chocolate milk and..." Actually takes me back to when I started at private school in high school and the lunches being edible and having tons of choices were one of the main things I told my public school friends about. "Guys, they have real french fries! And like three different dessert choices every day!"
God the inequities of that are just so staggering. Sigh!
My granddaughter eats school lunch every day (it’s still free here in CA). It seems like a non-issue, meaning she never complains about the food and she never seems hungry when I pick her up. I think that’s so great and I feel fortunate that she has the option. It should absolutely be available in all schools and definitely before 2032. What the actual fuck?
It's so frustrating how much this varies. (And a reminder of why state govt matters so much!!) CA is a great model and I hope does lead the way for more states to follow.
I similarly had my kids attend a small private school during Covid, and have kept them there since they love it and I found a way to make it happen - and the lack of school lunch is the only thing I can imagine complaining about! But at the same time, I know that offering a school lunch for this student body (in addition to the myriad logistical issues of being a small school without a commercial kitchen, etc) would probably open up a pandora's box of exactly the kind of issues you're talking about here. They do pizza lunch once per week and I hit the sign-up button SO FAST for that, let me tell you.
My sisters and I were all fairly picky and we had WAY less drama about eating when we just did the school lunch, versus packed lunches. It removed so much of the emotional baggage/power-struggle part, somehow. My kids get literally no variety without a communal school lunch program, because I just stick with what works (a criteria that includes what I can handle dealing with each morning) and I do wish there were a lunch program I could just sign them up for and be done with it, but in the absence of one, this is what it is. I'm not packing lunch for optimal health, though. I'm packing lunch for survival, haha.
I have this vivid memory of going to a practice day for kindergarten at my little public school a little bit before school started, and we did a lunch time practice in the school cafeteria. They served chicken nuggets and we all got to practice getting trays, waiting on line, paying, etc, and then sitting at our table and eating. It was SO EXCITING. I still remember the thrill of getting each month's lunch menu over those elementary-school years, and poring over it.
Lunchtime practice!! What a great idea! The logistics are 1000% what stops my kids from getting school lunch -- both the uncertainty and the time it takes vs time they have available to eat.
YES! Our school has the kindergarteners ride the bus to practice the day before the first day of school -- cafeteria practice would be such a great addition to those orientations.
I was thinking about this a lot lately because my kids went to a camp for a short time this summer that had a lunch truck. I packed them a lunch every day in case the line was crazy (which it often was), but also sent money because I really wanted them to have some positive experience practicing this kind of thing, since they were newly 8 and newly 5 and I was not really sure how they'd handle it. The 5-year old learned on the first day whether he could afford both fries AND gatorade (he could), and ate that every single day and was soooooo happy. He got a ring pop on Fridays as well, hahahaha. The 8-year old preferred having the money and so he ate the boring packed lunch and put the cash in his bank every day, which was like....REALLY not my intention, but also a valuable life lesson, so, fine.
I was so psyched for them to have a chance to practice the whole deal of standing in a line, deciding what they were getting, taking part in a transaction, carrying their stuff someplace to sit down, etc.
We still have universal free school lunch this year here *if* the kid takes what's considered to be a full healthy meal (basically they have to take the vegetable), and I wondered how that would go because my kid only likes crunchy vegetables and the school ones are often mushy, so he doesn't like them. But it seems like they're just giving him the vegetable -- one day he arrived home with a baggy of baby carrots in his backpack -- so we haven't been charged. The baby carrots were of course crunchy, but he only likes those dipped in salad dressing so he hadn't eaten most of them.
The big change is that last year they ate in the classroom and lunch was brought to them and this year they eat in the cafeteria. So far I haven't heard that there are problems with the lines or anything, and it seems like an improvement overall in two ways. One is that last year there was one day a week when salad was the main meal and he didn't want it, and now instead salad is one option one day a week when there's an alternative, so he hasn't been asking for home lunch once a week, which is fantastic. The other is that last year the paraprofessional in his class oversaw lunch and was pretty strict that they had to eat their vegetables, with the result that on days he didn't like the vegetable he would get the cheese sandwich option even if he particularly liked the rest of the hot meal. And I don't get the sense they're as strictly overseen in the cafeteria, so I think he's eating a lot less cheese sandwiches, although with him being out for nearly a week with covid and me having had covid since I haven't had as many conversations about lunch.
That kind of vegetable policing is so well-intentioned but backfires so much. Such a bummer.
This piece is the one that made me subscribe, so I love that you're revisiting it along with reactions.
I'm not familiar enough with how food options work from place to place. As a kid, I remember the elementary lunch menu having one meal choice each day. You bought it or you didn't. The district we are in now has 3-4 lunch options each day. Do you know if this is more common practice now, perhaps related to some legislation, or is this more privilege from our particular (large, relatively wealthy) district? I tend to assume it's the district, but I wonder if featuring choice in this way would make parents more or less likely to support a program. (Just as an example, every Tuesday in August might feature 3 Bean Chili, fish sticks, a cheese pizza lunchable, and a chef salad as options - always something vegetarian and halal available, but she couldn't get the same sandwich each day because it's not available). I'd also be interested in whether there are efforts to push back against the shrinking lunch times for our kids, which I see as a problem for a whole host of reasons.
As anecdote, we live in California, which passed a universal meals program for the state. We're loving it. We pack lunch about once a week now (remarkably, even with 3 options a day, there are days she looks at the menu and asks us to pack her a sandwich). I'm constantly amazed by the things she tells me she ate; standouts include a fruit/yogurt parfait and a chopped salad. I can only imagine the horror on her face if I tried one of those for dinner!
Those options sound amazing and I am SURE are tied to district funding. Alas!
As always too the parents' convenience factor rarely gets taken into consideration either on the lunch topic. I frankly don't care about what my kids eat at school lunch as long as I don't have to make it and they're not bringing home some squished up sweaty uneaten sandwich and goldfish crumbs for me to deal with yet another day. I just need them to eat enough so they are not monsters for me/their teachers later and whatever it is is NOMB (my privilege of course is that I don't have terribly picky eaters/kids with food allergies.)
Loved the first article, love the revisit! As a (pile of privilege) mom, registered dietitian/ED clinician and overall human being, I am so sick of discussing what my kids eat. I'm sick of defending or explaining the food options and choices that are available in our house and subsequently, in their lunches (expensive private school lunch option for one, no lunch option for the younger ones). While we do let the older one choose a few 'hot lunch' days they are almost always pizza and you know what, that's sure as heck what I'm picking too on a 'hot lunch' day! I'm grateful to read this again and again and to have the reminder that everyone's food situation is different, not superior, just different.
In Australia school lunch isn't very common. I think it sounds like a great program and when my child starts school I would love it if there was an option that meant I wasn't packing lunch boxes. I made sure to choose a daycare that provided meals because it reduces my burden, plus it exposes my kid to foods I just don't serve at home (tuna!). And I'm pretty sure the peer pressure of them all sitting down together means she tries things she might not normally.