Menu Lunch Elementary: Fill & Download for Free

Elementary School. I could not eat the school spaghetti. If I did eat it, I would be sent home an hour later for vomiting. When we figured it out, we started packing my lunch on spaghetti days.Sometimes the menu would change unexpectedly or weren't handed out yet for the month.One day, it was spaghetti day and we hadn't known. I ordered the secondary lunch like always when we were caught off guard. It was supposed to be leftover chicken nuggets. The other kids are the lunches while going through the line so when I grabbed one, it was just a slice of bread.I was told by the staff there was no secondary lunch and if I wanted to eat lunch, it had to be the spaghetti. I explained what would happen but no dice. An hour later, I was at the nurse, the classroom covered in vomit.To say that the school got into trouble was an understatement, and always made sure I had a secondary lunch available after that on spaghetti day. I think someone may have lost their job too but I'm not sure.Note: I didn't think this would get so much attention. Thank you for the views and upvotes.

It was pretty horrendous when I was in high school and below, but my school’s district as well as pretty much everyone else lately have been making efforts to incorporate more fresh, local, and quality ingredients within the past couple years.For a little background on myself, I was born and raised in Hawaii, and spent all of my education, save for sixth grade in public school. It was just as bad as it’s been stereotyped: lots of pre-heated, frozen, lukewarm slop at best. There were a couple times the baked chicken they’d occasionally made would still be a little pink on the inside.Although I can’t find any pictures of how Hawaii school lunches used to look like, the picture above is a good example of how it sort of did at one point. The absolute worst thing on the menu were the fish nuggets or patty; I would often opt to go hungry if I saw it on the list, and saw someone throw up after forcing himself to eat it back when we were in elementary school.But don’t let that depress you! Within the past couple years, there’s been a reform: a program known as `Aina Pono, a farm to table program aiming to serve healthier, better quality and tastier lunches to our public schools. My high school was among the first to join the program.Here is what a typical lunch might look like now, minus the whole pineapple and breadfruit. I was actually jealous seeing my youngest cousin’s school lunch menu the last time I visited.

My mom, dad, and aunts/uncles all remember going home to eat their home-cooked lunches. At that time? It was normal. The kids got 1 1/2 hours for lunch! Kids were actually forbidden to be IN school during lunch time.Even when I was in school (late 70’s to early 90’s), this was not allowed. Kids couldn’t leave the school grounds then…and still can’t now. Unfortunately, times have changed. They know if they allowed it, half the kids wouldn’t come back after lunch.I do remember when I was in school, we did at least have a 45 minute lunch period…but where my schools were located, even being in a semi-large city, there wouldn’t have been time to actually GET the food, let alone eat it, if we had been allowed to leave anyway. My elementary school, nothing was near it. My junior high, there was ONE restaurant anywhere relatively close. My high school - the only place close enough wasn’t a fast food place - it was a sit-down place, wait staff and all. To drive there, get seated, order, wait for the food to cook, eat, and get back to the school would have taken much longer than our 45 minute lunch break allowed. (Average time in the restaurant was about an hour and a half…longer if you ordered anything special, off-menu, had allergies, or had a restricted diet where substitutions were required for your meal.)Today, a typical lunch period is only 20 - 30 minutes. Definitely NO time to get somewhere, order, pay, eat, and get back. One local high school and elementary school do have about 12 restaurants within walking distance, but it still takes about 10 minutes just to get to the nearest one.Lunch breaks simply aren’t what they used to be.