High School Lunch Menu: Fill & Download for Free

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.

I don’t know if it is doable in the USA, but it certainly is in other countries.The answer to your question therefore has more to do with politics, your electorate and your electoral system, than with whether the proposal is realistic in itself.Here in Finland, school meals that are free at the point of delivery have been part of our school system since 1948. That was only 4 years after the two disastrous wars against the Soviet Union and one against the Nazi Germany, and Finland was still a poor agricultural country facing huge challenges.We had huge war reparations to be delivered to the Soviet Union as a part of the peace treaty. The reparations constituted as much as 15–16 % of our budget in 1945–1949. In addition, there were other challenges. We had to resettle 450,000 people who had lost their homes in the region of Karelia, which the Soviet Union annexed as a result of the wars. 90,000 people had died in the war, and 202,000 more had been injured.[1]Children were everywhere. The general atmosphere was that we had to look towards future and raise a new generation whose life would be easier than that of their parents who had had to pay such a high price for our independence. Children were pretty much seen as our future, and it was important to ensure that they learn.Free school lunch was an important tool to achieve that goal.What is the cost of school lunch offered to all children in Finnish schools?It varies across the country, but the amount of money invested in the lunch of one child per day is $3.06 (€2.76) on the average.[2]In the city of Vantaa in the suburbs of Helsinki, where the price is the lowest, the cost is $1.85 (€1.67) per child daily.Some municipalities have preferred to invest more to school lunch, and that’s why the cost is much higher in some small municipalities with a low birth rate. In Puumala, eastern Finland, the cost is the highest, $9.17 (€8.28) per child daily. That also includes a snack in the afternoon, and the price of the lunch only is about five euros. There are years when not a single baby is born in Puumala, so that saving in the expenses of the school lunch is not that substantial.The contents of school lunch are planned by nutritionists. The menu is varied and includes all kinds of different dishes, and children have the possibility to e.g. vote between different alternatives when the menu is planned. The lunch covers 1/3 of the nutritional needs of the day.What do Finnish children eat at school?The school lunch includes a main dish, which can typically be a soup or a sauce with rice, potatoes, or pasta, bread, and salad. Milk/juice or water is included, too.All dietary restrictions are carefully taken into account. My children have had very allergic schoolmates, and they have been able to eat with the rest of the class, despite being served another dish if necessary.Vegetarians have their own menu, and so do children who cannot e.g. eat pork for religious reasons.The food is not what you would get in a fancy restaurant, of course, but I think that for that price it is healthy, nutritious, and mostly also good enough.Take a look yourself:School lunch is a way to ensure that all children eat well at school — and, subsequently, learn better. Since the school lunch is healthy, obesity and dental problems are less frequent than they would perhaps otherwise be.In Finnish schools it has been noticed that every Monday the amount of food needed is bigger than any other day, irrespective of the menu. It has been estimated that although our welfare state is quite generous, not all families still have enough resources to feed their children well during the weekend.So tax-financed school lunch has many advantages, and I’m sure it is one of the factors behind Finland’s success in the PISA tests.But not all countries deem it necessary to offer a free lunch at school. In Norway, which is in many ways a similar country to Finland, parents still make a packed lunch for their children.To answer your question: yes, it is doable, if you want to do it.Photo credis:Kouluruoka on saatava suositummaksiYle: Kouluruoka maistuu pienissä kunnissa, kaupungeissa moni jättää syömättäKouluruoka on hyvää – ei kannata sanoa heti, että en syö, vain koska siinä on kasviksiaKouluruoka valmistetaan Jämsässä lautasille alle 1,40 euron annosbudjetillaKouluruoka maistuu, kun lapset saavat vaikuttaa listaanFootnotes[1] Katja Kaila's answer to How did the situation use to look like in Finland in the first years after WW2?[2] Katso, mitä kouluruoka kunnassasi maksaa – Isot erot: halvin 1,67 ja kallein 8,28 euroa

Original Question: Why was Michelle Obama's lunch program a dismal failure?…………Preface explaining how this pretty much all happened:Way back when, there was no fully organized, or subsidized, School Lunch Program. Schools that provided lunches, did so for a captive, but paying, audience. Many had their own nutritionist (mine did) and purchased, cooked, and prepared the lunches on-site. Students paid for the lunches out of their own pockets. So, they had three choices: Buy the lunch; Brown bag it; or Skip lunch & go hungry.Adding to this was, of all things, the problem of enforced busing to racially balance many schools that began after Brown v Board of Education. Neighborhood schools were, for the most part, withing walking, or bicycling, distance in cities & suburbs. Kids were sent home for lunch. A lucky few were allowed to Brown Bag it in inclement weather. Although, this was discouraged in many cases because a teacher would have to be detailed to supervise them and sacrifice her (it was almost always a her in grade schools way back when)lunch time. Busing eliminated this option for most children. School kids *had* to eat lunch on-site.Then the Federal Government stepped in with the National School Lunch Act. While the origins of school provided lunches are long in history, the programs really took off in the ’80s when the Government started mass subsidizing of lunches for school kids who lived below a defined “poverty” line.With that “free” money came strings. And, it was those strings that the Obama Administration used to push it’s nutrition program. Effectively, School Districts had to “Conform to these rules, or lose funding.”It should also be noted that this program has morphed (even before the Obama Administration) into, in some cases, School Breakfasts, Lunches, Dinners, and a feeding program for the summer months when school is not even in session. Each time, it was a classic, “Think of the Children!” issue.Schools then were caught on the horns of a dilemma! And, the toughest part was the fact that no one in the system considered the “Paying” Customers. Those who could afford to not bother buying the lunches & Brown bag it. Enough of those & the School District was caught in a downward spiral of financial losses. And, even the “Free” lunch kids wouldn’t eat what was unappetizing. Disposal costs for all of the tossed out food also became an unexpected expense. This is described below.NOTE: Feel free to comment on any part of this answer. I’ll attempt to respond, as appropriate.…………..//Original Answer: Hmmm… Well… It’s like this - Basic economics tells us that:It only works if the paying customers decide to purchase it.It also only works if the “free” lunch customers actually eat the stuff.OK, with that, let’s check out what happened when the program went into full swing:From 1M kids stop school lunch due to Michelle Obama’s standards:The National School Lunch Program saw a sharp decline in participation once the healthy standards went into effect during the 2012-2013 school year. A total of 1,086,000 students stopped buying school lunch, after participation had increased steadily for nearly a decade.The report found that 321 districts left the National School Lunch Program altogether, many of which cited the new standards as a factor.The decline was “influenced by changes made to comply with the new lunch content and nutrition standards,” state and local officials said.Some points here:That’s over 1 million customers not purchasing school lunches. Excess prepared food that is not sold is thrown out due to food safety rules. That is a significant loss.What is not stated is, lower sales also means layoffs as fewer cafeteria staff are needed to serve the declining customer volume.There’s more, again from the article:The new standards led to kids throwing out their fruits and vegetables, student boycotts, higher lunch costs, and odd food pairings such as “cheese stick with shrimp” in order for schools to comply with the complicated rules.More points:Food waste. Nutrition numbers don’t work for food in the waste bin.Higher lunch costs cause a death spiral. Raise the price & see more brown baggers who don’t buy the lunches.And, the title of this article tells enough just in its headline: Kentucky kids to first lady Michelle Obama: Your food ‘tastes like vomit’Would you eat this?(From: These Are Some Of The Grossest School Lunches In The U.S.) Click on the link to be well & truly grossed out!Nay more! This from Why Some Schools Are Saying ‘No Thanks’ to the School-Lunch Program:Take the Voorheesville Central School District near Albany, N.Y., which the Associated Press featured in its story about schools struggling with the new lunch-program requirements. Superintendent Teresa Snyder says the district lost $30,000 in revenue during the first quarter of the year because of the program, since students either brought lunch from home or went without, instead of purchasing the healthier options offered in the cafeteria.But that district is very small, and less than 6% of its students qualify for reduced or free lunch.Yup, the paying customers packed their own lunches & the school district took it in the shorts. (Since grade, middle, and high schools work on a 9 month schedule, that extrapolates to an approximate $90,000 loss/school year.) Conservatively, that would mean that to balance the budget at current usage, two cafeteria employees would be furloughed and lose their jobs.And, even a favorite gets banished: Removing chocolate milk from schools caused plain milk to be wasted.The researchers looked at what happened in 11 Oregon elementary schools when flavored milk was removed. What they found was that total milk sales fell by nearly 10%. Kids bought more white milk — 161 cartons a day more — but they tossed almost 30% of it in the trash.And 6.8% fewer students ate school lunches; other factors were also involved in that change, but the researchers called it consistent with "psychological reactance."It should be noted that when I was in Jr.HS & HS, white milk was included in the lunch, but you could upgrade to chocolate for a few pennies more. From the survey above, flavored milk was removed from the menu, kids got the white milk by default (thus purchasing more) and as the survey states then tossed a goodly percentage in the trash!So, dear OP & readers, the customers voted with their hands (toss into the trash) & feet (serve a crummy lunch & they’ll either brown bag it (paying customers), or toss much of it (free lunch customers) into the trash).And, thus a little common sense finally intervened & the Trump Administration Rolled Back Michelle Obama's Healthy School Lunch Push. (Extra Note: Sanity Restored to School Lunches?)That’s why!(Bold & Italics, mine)Cheers//ADDED: So, there’s a crowd of comments on this answer. They break down into about four categories:It’s bad preparation and bad food choice by the School District …It’s Spoiled kids who don’t realize that good as opposed to junk food is necessary & reject the good food…It’s bad/ignorant parents who spoil the kids & don’t provide good/tasty food at home…(Special Attraction) Chocolate Milk is bad & never should be served…I’d like to address these sub-topics:The School Districts are under some severe constraints:Funds: The Feds supply a limited amount of subsidies for the “Free” Lunch programs. The Districts have to work under those financial constraints.Also, the Districts can’t really create a two class system: Paying & Free. All have to be treated equally.When a District has a very small (percentage-wise) number of “Free” Lunchers, it pulls down everyone to that level. This means that a very large percentage has the option to not participate & Brown Bag it. (Every Brown Bagger who used to be a paying customer places extra strain in the budget. Enough of them & staff get furloughed & the money to buy food itself declines leaving an ever worsening system.)Kids (spoiled, or not) will eat what they like & toss the rest.Even if they are a captive audience (no off-campus allowed, or no sac lunch from home, allowed), they will not eat what they don’t like.Kids, if given “Free” lunches that they don’t like won’t eat everything on the plate. Trash bins fill up with rejected food.A Question not answered is, “Do the District Staff members & food planners ever check the waste bins to see what got tossed?” (Tossed food, no matter how nutritious is a wasted expense.)Totally restrict outside access to food other than what’s in the School Lunch Program & if it’s not eaten, then expect to see serious food smuggling. Candy Bars by the case in a student locker, anyone?Parents are caught on the horns of a dilemma.Feed what they’ll eat at home, or face the quickie-shop selection of chipsPack a healthy Bag Lunch for your kids & get a call from the school that they are trying to trade healthy stuff (carrot spears & stuff) for chips from other kid’s bag lunches.Government guidelines have changed dramatically over the past 50 years. Anyone out there old enough to remember the Food Wheel? It was taught in HomeEc (a required course in my HS in ‘68). We have since had several iterations of the Food Pyramid. (All of which, Wheel & Pyramids, have been influenced by politics. The original Food Wheel had seven co-equal groups. “Eat some of each one every day!” Original copyright, US Government):Chocolate Milk is a hot point!Fifty years ago, my HS lunch program supplied one container of milk (Plain, or Chocolate) with every meal.You could buy one extra “Milk” with your lunchToday, Flavored Milk is a “No No!” So, what happens? The trash bins fill up with unopened plain Milk containers.The Kids here are making a choice. You can’t force them to drink the stuff. It doesn’t work.And, so, what has really changed? My old HS tells the story. (The Field Museum & Museum of Science & Industry in Chicago, also tell the same story.)Actual cafeterias where food was created from ingredients and cooked on-site are gone (due to economics).Today? Prepared “heat & eat” food selections save money, labor, & space.The Museums have gone one step further with …wait for it…Vending Machines with Sodas, Chips, & etc.Fast Food franchises on-site.Those old fashioned cafeterias? Gone forever.……………..//DISCLAIMER: I have made some assumptions here:Some are extrapolated from personal experience as a Grade→HS student in a suburb of a big city:Grade-Walk Walk home for lunchJr.HS-Bus Closed CampusHS-Walk Closed CampusOthers are from TV News and Print News (magazine & newspaper articles)School busing did not work in some areas due to either natural barriers (rivers), or political boundaries (city, or county, borders), so it was a factor, but had different effects, depending on the location: Urban; Suburban; and Rural.The actual evolution of the School “Lunch” System is much more complex than I have mentioned here as it has evolved over nearly 3/4 of a century.I am only pointing out what happened to the system when the Obama Administration began adjusting the rules on food nutrition and it’s general responses as reported in the press.//EVEN MORE ADDED:There’s another point that I totally missed in the answer, Single Parents & Both parents who are working full time. What happens there? Well, Latch-Key Kids. And, Kids left to themselves to eat healthy as they are, in many cases living with distracted parents probably won’t. And, when they come home from school, before the parent(s) return from work, eat what they want, if available.Now, this is a problem because even though the parents may be doing their best things just plain don’t work out perfectly. From personal experience, it’s extremely tough to:Get the kids up & ready for schoolMake a (quick, but) healthy BreakfastPack a (quick, but) healthy Brown bag LunchHave a healthy snack ready for when they get home from schoolProvide a healthy Dinner.I went through this routine for 16 some years. Easy, it wasn’t. I succeeded most of the time, but no one is perfect. In that win/lose war with hungry kids I believe that I won most of the time. But, remember, sometimes an overwhelmed parent’s option? The local Fast Food Joint. I’ve done it myself, on occasion, if only for a special treat, if not for a respite from attempting to gin up a dinner from kitchen scraps (not having had the time to get to the grocery store).So, don’t condemn the parents out of hand for failing to do their “perfect” best. The rise of divorce & the two parent working family over the past 50 some years, itself, is a large part of the problem.//Something worth trying:Wild & Basmati rice pilaf with baked veggies & olive oil:InstantPot: 5 cups of water; 1/2 cup of wild rice. Run on “Rice” setting twice, waiting 10 minutes after each run. Add 2 cups of Basmati rice & run on “Rice” setting & wait 10 minutes. Dish out into storage buckets to cool.Ninja Pot: Add fresh & frozen veggies to taste & fill the pot. Sprinkle EV Olive Oil over the veggies & run the Ninja on “Slow Cook - High” for four hours.Place the rice into plastic storage buckets first (see above). Top with the veggies. Serve for dinner & store the rest in the refrigerator. Makes about 14 side dish servings.PS. Every batch is different as the goal is to wipe out the “crisper” bin in the Fridge before any fresh veggies go bad. Tomorrow’s ingredients? Cauliflower, Broccoli, Asparagus, Okra, Sweet Peppers, Chopped Red Onion, Celery, & Jalapeno Peppers to give it a bit of a bite.Frozen vegetables also work well & can be purchased when they go on sale at your local grocery store. I recommend against canned vegetables as the salt content is much higher.The above can also be done with ordinary kitchen cook pots & baking dishes, albeit, it’s a bit more work.And, those servings? Can be put into a microwavable travel dish & warmed up in a microwave oven at school (if available). That’s a nice side dish. Add a good sandwich & either juice, or milk, to the lunch bag & you have a nice, healthy, & inexpensive alternative to the school lunch.PS. I did this on a regular basis when I worked at several businesses over the years (no InstantPot, or Ninja Pot, back then, just an oven, stove, and good old kitchen pots & pans).//Some References and Updates:Ag Secretary Perdue Moves to Make School Meals Great AgainStates sue Trump admin over changes to school lunch standardsU.S. to states: School lunch changes none of your businessNo Matter Who Wins the Fight Over Trump's School Lunch Reforms, Kids Lose.USDA's Rollback of School Lunch Reforms Won't Accomplish Anything