This is the school lunch they served us when I was in middle school. I took these photos in 7th grade.
The only thing that changed when I went into high school is that now we're not allowed to use our phones at lunch.
To most American public school kids, this doesn't seem so bad. But the fact that this would be considered a decent lunch in most schools is disgusting. I once found a piece of tape in the "Dominoes" pizza they give us. A nail clipping in mashed potatoes, a hair in the corn. For some kids, school lunch is the only reliable meal of the day, and they're being fed cardboard pizza and soggy mystery slop mixed with a side of trash.
Most people started bringing their own lunches from home freshman year. The kids who couldn't didn't eat anything at all.
Oftentimes, some of my friends beg me to share my lunch with them. It seems light hearted and silly, but I know they're actually hungry. I remember convincing my friend to let me pack her extra food because she was skipping lunch and breakfast, since she had no time to pack anything for lunch or eat breakfast in the mornings, and the school lunch was too gross. She thinks it's normal to constantly be hungry, and her family is pretty well off, so she at least gets a good dinner when she gets home. Some kids don't even have that.
I skipped breakfast one time and I was so hungry I couldn't get anything done at all in my first 3 classes. Then I got to eat lunch. My friend didn't. People go in the lunch line just to have something to do. So much food gets wasted each day. Most of it gets thrown out. Kids play with their food, because the "food potions" we made when we were 5 are just as appetizing as the food we're served now. Some people eat the plastic tasting chicken nuggets, drink the expired milk, because we need food to get us through the day. So we can learn as well as possible. So we can keep up our grades. So we don't get yelled at for falling asleep in class from our 5 hours of sleep and empty stomachs.
It doesn't ever seem like that big of a deal. It's normal now, almost comedic, to have such horrible food. Everyone brushes it off. "Oh yeah public school lunches suck, haha."
But guys. People need food, especially children, to function properly. Eating shouldn't be a privilege.
And my school district spent all their money on fancy metal detectors so no one tries to bring a gun into the schools, and now we're too broke to provide adequate meals for the students.
