Chicago school bans homemade lunches

[XCashier]

I was in K-8 from 1973-1982, high school from 1982-1986. K-8, the food had its ups and downs. Some days it was tolerable (they usually had at least one edible thing on the menu every day, even if it was just applesauce), other days, seriously gross (take their pizza, please! Cardboard topped with ketchup topped with rubber cement. Bleh!). HS was worse, rarely had anything decent, but they did have a snack bar and vending machines you could buy stuff from instead.

I saw these articles yesterday on a different browser, and one of the links took me to a page that showed what some schools serve now. I was repulsed. They offered microwaved food in individual serving plastic containers! Extremely wasteful, and it looked even nastier than the stuff we suffered through.

I know that cooking for hundreds of kids is tricky, but that doesn't mean you should serve slop. You can squawk about nutrition and the obesity epidemic all you want, but when you feed kids that crap, you come off sounding rather two-faced. Why is the only choice between junk food and stuff that looks, smells and tastes like regurgitated dog food?

[Lace Neil Singer]

Besides, microwave meals are chock full of salt. If they really wanted to serve up healthy meals, surely they could do better than that?

[XCashier]

Besides, microwave meals are chock full of salt. If they really wanted to serve up healthy meals, surely they could do better than that?

Salt, preservatives, fat, artifical additives, plus there's been studies about chemicals from the plastics possibly leeching into microwaved meals. It just seems like things have gone from bad to worse here.

Back in my day, they prepared the meals and cooked them with regular cooking pots and trays, on the stove and in the oven. It was still slop, but at least it was properly prepared slop!

All kidding aside, can't they offer kids fresh fruit and veggies, maybe sandwiches with lean meat on wholegrain bread? Cook up some mac & cheese with pureed veggies mixed in. I know schools are on a painfully tight budget, and kids can be fussy eaters (mine certainly is!) but they need nutrition, and they aren't getting it from common school lunches.