Lunch Time

Since I have been working at a middle school this year, it's bringing me back to my childhood. Particularly the lunches will be of topic today.

Before I start, I wanted to mention the 9 year old girl, Martha Payne, that is getting a lot of hype from her blog about her school's lunches. Here's an article here, and her blog here. Upon my initial visit to her blog, I assumed she was located in America, but in fact it's Scotland. So that makes a wee difference in my assumptions.

First, let me tell you my own experience with school foods in my own life.

I went to a school that held grades kindergarten to 8th grade. Thus I spent a great majority of my life there, not only that, my mother eventually worked there. I still live within walking distance to the school, making it located in Phoenix. This is an important little detail, you'll see. The school lunches were always free for us, we never needed to bring lunch money or hold school I.D.s to store money on [because most of us were poor]. To get it out there, I absolutely loved the food at my school. Whenever I think back, I have mostly good thoughts. We would have a large variety each day of the week. Let it be Mexican food one day, Chinese another, burgers, chicken, etc. What stands out the most was the meals that consisted of mashed potatoes in gravy with chicken bits and a nice warm bun. This was my first positive experience with potatoes [other than French fries]. This combination made me open up to mashed potatoes and made me love it ever since. I crave it every now and then. I should probably mention that I was quite a picky eater when I was young. Thus, me actually loving the cafeteria food was a big deal. Now days, I'm quite the opposite in terms of pickiness. I will also mention an 'odd' example of my pickiness with the cafeteria food that stands out in my mind. When we had hamburgers, I often took out the meat and added mayonnaise, mustard, and ketchup on the buns and ate it that way. No meat? Yes! I cannot remember exactly why, perhaps I wasn't fond of the burger meat or I was just sick of hamburgers [too much McDonald's I guess]. But I did love the way the condiments and buns tasted alone.

When I went onto high school, food became less varied, with cost, and less healthy. I felt that I was spoiled at my previous school and got sick of high school food quite often. I missed the old food so much. There's only so much of pizzas and pretzels with nacho cheese that you can handle. Eventually I just ate salads all the time. Plus, this also costed me money, which was difficult at the time. Sometimes I had to borrow money, and sometimes I had to lend money.

Now, the middle school that I work at is very similar to my high school in terms of food. Both the school I'm employed at and my high school are within the Scottsdale school district. The school I work at is in North Scottsdale, for you non-locals to understand what that implies, it's that it's a little bit richer than Phoenix schools, or at least the school I grew up at. Thus I would not expect what is going on at this middle school as I'm about to show you. This school charges for their foods, whether it's cash [even for the employees], or a school I.D. with funds loaded onto it. Even my special needs students have to pay for their lunches. Granted, I will say that most of these parents can afford it, but I still find it a bit odd in comparison to my childhood experience. Next, there aren't many healthy options for these young kids. Luckily I do see a lot of kids with packed lunches that they bring from home. Although I have not personally tasted any of the food at this school, my coworkers have. And I definitely have not heard anything good about the food, exactly why I won't risk trying it. Most things are stale tasting, under or over cooked, etc. Options include salads, which look pleasing, but contain chicken that tastes like rubber. Hamburgers are the same. Pizza doesn't taste fresh. Cheese sticks with marinara look tasty and I my special needs students seem to like it, although I assume they're a bit dry. Fries, chicken nuggets, celery and carrots. I think this is a horrible diet for kids of a continuing developmental age, especially with the obese issue that America has. The portions aren't excessive, so that's one good point. So my biggest surprise and disappointments lie in the cost and the unvaried options. They are simply missing out on what I had. It's too bad.

To conclude, as I said I initially thought the blog author Martha Payne was in America, I was happy to see some healthy and diverse options provided. But now that changes since I found out she's located in Scotland. Makes me wonder what is going on elsewhere...


Also, here's an interesting article, School Cafeterias Even Worse than You Thought.