Not American, but here in Australia there is a growing trend towards supplying some level of food at school, quite a few schools are introducing Breakfast Club to offer food before school, and a lot of schools find they can get better nutrition for students by supplying balanced options to students directly via a variety of programs.
Food and Kids can be quite complicated and my own son can be quite resistant to the idea of even having food in his school bag as his medication supresses appetite and he feels pressured if we make him something as opposed to providing shelf stable packaged foods that won’t spoil if he can’t bring himself to eat.
From what I understand of the situation in the US this is an intersectional issue where it has been identified that:
Preparing food in bulk is a lot cheaper
Food can be fresh and thus encourage kids to eat it more readily
Nutritional outcomes can be targeted
Which is intersecting with:
America is a capitalist hellscape where no opportunity to profit of anyone, no matter how vulnerable, can be overlooked
There are multiple levels in the school lunch program where private companies can invade to engage in some rent seeking
Social pressure can be exerted to make sure families feel obligated to participate no matter how expensive or predatory the program
Never ever should a poor person be allowed to feel a modicum of support or relief, if that can be achieved by leveraging their children so much the better.
The thing is that something like sandwiches aren’t cheaper to produce in bulk and a lot of the cafeteria’s will have either a fair amount of food left over or they barely make enough for everybody to combat that.
I don’t think the food in US school is really that fresh.
No person should go hungry period, but I rather fix the reason why most go hungry than fix the solution. And I have had mandatory lunches in school and generally there is just a choice between meat, fish or vegaterian and I often find myself picking the least bad option.
Having prepared sandwiches at industrial scales yo would be surprised how much you can scale down costs, bulk purchases can make a suprising difference.
I really envy the system that most Japanese schools have in place. They seem to be focussed on the outcomes, not the cost or social engineering.
I have talked with some Japanese friends about this and while a few are from wealthy families and attended schools without a formalised school lunch program the majority talk about how it opened their horizons as far as food options, gave them a sense of community, and was just a defining characteristic of their school life.
Not American, but here in Australia there is a growing trend towards supplying some level of food at school, quite a few schools are introducing Breakfast Club to offer food before school, and a lot of schools find they can get better nutrition for students by supplying balanced options to students directly via a variety of programs.
Food and Kids can be quite complicated and my own son can be quite resistant to the idea of even having food in his school bag as his medication supresses appetite and he feels pressured if we make him something as opposed to providing shelf stable packaged foods that won’t spoil if he can’t bring himself to eat.
From what I understand of the situation in the US this is an intersectional issue where it has been identified that:
Which is intersecting with:
The thing is that something like sandwiches aren’t cheaper to produce in bulk and a lot of the cafeteria’s will have either a fair amount of food left over or they barely make enough for everybody to combat that.
I don’t think the food in US school is really that fresh.
No person should go hungry period, but I rather fix the reason why most go hungry than fix the solution. And I have had mandatory lunches in school and generally there is just a choice between meat, fish or vegaterian and I often find myself picking the least bad option.
Having prepared sandwiches at industrial scales yo would be surprised how much you can scale down costs, bulk purchases can make a suprising difference. I really envy the system that most Japanese schools have in place. They seem to be focussed on the outcomes, not the cost or social engineering. I have talked with some Japanese friends about this and while a few are from wealthy families and attended schools without a formalised school lunch program the majority talk about how it opened their horizons as far as food options, gave them a sense of community, and was just a defining characteristic of their school life.