I have never experienced a UK or US school cafeteria - are healthy alternatives available for students who wish them? Because if not, Checkmite's concern over the kids eating good stuff because they are forced instead of because they want it rings rather hollow. Surely a call for freedom of choice, if necessary, should go both ways?
In Sweden there are no packed lunches, everyone ate in the cafeteria in my day(often the teachers as well). Through infant and middle school, lunch was just as obligatory as any subject and whether you ate or not you sat at the table for at least 20 minutes before you were allowed to go to recess. There was only one option available - vegetarians and non pork eaters also had one option each. There were no sweets or puddings available - although for special situations the entire meal was swapped for a pudding, i.e lunch was nothing but rice pudding in a fruit sauce or rosehip soup with ice cream - the school had no tuck shop and we were banned from leaving school premises during recess, so nearby shopkeepers only got the skivers' and the obstinates' business.
Somehow, I survived this - despite being a childhood picky eater, often held against my will over a plate of something that made me dry heave. In infant school, there was no slop bucket. We were expected to eat up, and we also did not get to size our portions ourselves. I often spent the entire lunch hour in a war of wills with exasperated dinner ladies who had better things to do.
There was nothing wrong with the choice of dishes but the quality was not brilliant, and for me and my finicky ways it was sometimes a night mare. But I did have school mates who loved it, because their parents' cooking was even worse.
The food would be prepared in a central kitchen in town and delivered warm to nearby schools, chilled and heated in other schools and frozen, thawed and re-heated in the outliers. The outliers seemed to have little to do with geography and more to do with demographics - I for one went to four different schools for infant, middle, high and upper secondary and managed to be in the frozen group for three of them.
Personally, I loathed most of the stuff we got in the cafeteria, and famously threw up on my plate at one point trying to force down some lappskojs. This dish is related to lobscouse, but the Swedish version consists of mashed potato and reindeer leftovers. I couldn't abide the school mash, which was made from mainly potato stach and old gym mats, at the best of times (coincidentally, the pancakes were also made from potato starch and old gym mats, so they were never the kind of treat they were meant to be. Served with fruit sauce or lingonberry jam, which everyone knows is a savoury condiment, and not a sweet topping)
Despite this, I would never, ever, bloody anything ever, with grown up hindsight, have swapped my school dinners with the ones I saw Jamie Oliver fight in Jamie's School Dinners, I might have found them easier to force down, but it would have made me fat, poorly and stupid. I didn't die from skipping lunch two days out of three, but Turkey Twizzlers would likely have killed my by now if I had grown up on them. On the other hand, if you had given picky, finicky me a choice, as a kid, to swap my school dinners with what Jamie cooked for those kids, the dinner ladies needn't have worked overtime ever again.
Sometimes we need to be bloody grown ups and make unpopular decisions. "I know that you think that you think **** McNuggets taste better than a fresh lasagna, but I'm telling you, you haven't got that choice."
That is being a grown up. If kids were capable of making good long term decisions for themselves we would let them drive and vote.
When I returned to school, as a teacher, I was lucky enough to wind up in a place that had a cook who oversaw the entire process. From purchasing and cooking to serving. The food was excellent both in taste and nutritional value and the kids loved it too, even the picky and finicky ones chose to eat more often than they refused. Still no puddings though. In fact, sweets were banned on the premises and the teachers lounge did not have a cookie jar or biscuit kitty, because we were expected to set an example. Birthday girls and boys were allowed to bring in a small treat for their class, though.
There is such a thing as something in between tofu and hair shirt casserole, and warmed up Cheetos.
It's called "food".
