http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/health/woul...er-did-1157394/

The above is an article I just read about school lunches, and some mom claims that she could save money by having her kid buy school lunches. I am confused by this. There is no denying that school lunches are not the healthiest things, and I wish they would provide healthier choices for kids, but that is not what struck me as odd in this article. It was the cost.

When I was a kid, not THAT long ago, my mother made me a lunch pretty much every day. The number one reason was, she couldn't afford for me to eat school lunches. In grade school in the early 80's it was a couple bucks and in High School a school lunch would easily exceed $5.00.

So my questions are:

A. Did school lunches because extremely cheaper?

or

B. Is this a cherry picked person who will spend $7 on a lunch for their kid to take to school?

I know I could make my son a lunch containing a PB&J (on the expensive wheat bread(that's for you brvheart)), an apple, some crackers and/or chips and maybe a stick of string cheese and be a lot cheaper than what I paid for lunch 20+ years ago.

All the schools up here are peanut free.

I think a couple bucks is still standard.

OK, a couple quick web searches showed some message boards where people were saying between 2-3 bucks + cost for milk or other drink at .50 to 1.00.


I know for a fact that what I posted above would cost less than that.

2 slices of bread .32
2 OZ Peanut Butter .18
1 OZ Jelly .12
Apple .50
2 OZ Crackers .45
1 String Cheese stick .39

1.96 cents

They can drink water.

I guess in retrospect if a mom is putting a lot of food in their kids lunches it would be over the cost of a meal, I can't believe that school lunch prices have not gone up in 20 years. I guess that's why the food has gotten so much worse..

EDIT: Yes I did figure out the above costs based on what I pay for my groceries.

You forgot to include the convenience fee. Using Ticketmaster as a guide, I think that's something like $172.

Why don't you cut out the string cheese and save .39? Or maybe give him real food instead of that shit, which shouldn't even be called cheese because it is really some kind of rubber or plastic from what I can tell.

I remember in elementary school a friend of mines mom packed him 2 chocolate bars a twinkee and chips and a coke everyday for lunch. In grade 6 I though he had the coolest parents now I think she was ****ing moron. No wonder he had bad acne from grade 5 on.

Have you ever had string cheese? It's just skim mozzarella. I also by it in Jack and Cheddar, which are really more just individually packed cheese sticks.

In my wife's school in the inner city, most kids get breakfast and lunch for free.

I know I'm not here anymore, but she says in the article 'her' lunches include soy butter and organic apple sauce. Which presumably brings the cost higher than $1.96, and probably more than the $2-3 that schools charge.

On the plus side, she probably knows a really good polar bear vet.

Edit - apparently this isn't the Sick Thread. So apparently I'm not not here.

Yeah, string cheese was invented when I was a kid so I ate it in school lunches for years. Then I got to the age where I realised that it has no nutritional goodness (don't buy that bullshit about calcium, there are way better sources). You can get a lot healthier snacks that cost less. Feeding kids big chunks of cheese for a snack doesn't make sense to me.

Well it was just an example, my son actually hates string cheese. And if you by the lowfat mozzarella ones, it's just individually packed mozzarella.

I'm pretty sure that in MN and WI, school lunches are cheaper than what you could bring from home for the same quantity and quality of food.

Fact: all kids should eat string cheese.

Live by the cheese. Die by the cheese.

Lunches here are $2.35

My school definitely had a thing where, if you were poor, you could apply for free lunch for your kid, and then your kid would get free lunch (or it might have cost 25c). Just throwing that out there. I think that was only in elementary and middle school.

Thats pretty standard in poorer neighborhoods.

My town wasn't particularly poor, was the point I left out. It was very middle-of-the-road, for a town within ten miles of a major city.

I think that's pretty standard everywhere except wealthy school districts where it wouldn't be utilized by anyone. You don't have to be that poor to qualify.

Maybe this is what my experience was because of, at least in the middle and high school years.

IIRC, lunch at the school where I work is $2.65 (for kids, more for adults). It includes an entree (there are 3 or more choices most days including a salad and fruit & yogurt), vegetables, a carb of some sort, milk and fruit. Usually at least one of the choices looks pretty good.

My sons (both the elementary schooler and the high schooler) buy lunch at school. We pay full price. My older son has a 4$/ day spending limit on his lunch account (set by me) and he's 14 so he eats more and hits that limit most days with an extra side or two, or an additional milk.


65% of the kids at my work receive free or reduced price lunch.

in 10th grade i once started chugging a half pint of whole milk...after 2 seconds i realized i was getting chunks....and i threw up infront of everyone over this insanely sour milk! since then i smell the milk before i pour..even in my own house even if i just poured some...i still smell it.


ruined my life

Add IA to that list. My kids lunches at school are $2.20. Milk is $0.45.

No comment on the string cheese, because I don't want to unnecessarily upset LG.

Oh, I doubt anything you say will upset her.

In California a couple years back they contracted with the fast food joints to supply the lunch food. I think Taco Bell and Carl's Jr.

I'm pretty sure that everything I say upsets her.

If Villanova loses this game I'll eat all your lunches.

My cousin lives up in the Bay area, and her kid's school uses a private contractor for school lunches, which sounded really awesome to me. They order their lunches over the internet each week, selecting from a menu of really great sounding stuff like "Deluxe Turkey Ciabatta Sandwich" and whatnot. I think it was around $4 per lunch.

In hawaii it was .45 cents for lunch and then you could get double lunches for .90 The good thing about double lunches was you actually got two milks.

Also, Lady Grey ... why the hate on cheese? Cheese is delicious. I mean at least he's providing cheese and not twinkies. This post is from a person that has no kids by the way.

She's not hating on cheese, she's hating on string cheese because she thinks it's overly processed crappy faux-cheese.

Ah, that makes more sense then. I agree that the overly processed cheese is horrible.

Finally someone who gets it.

My understanding is that string cheese is just standard mozzarella.

me gusta queso.

I do, but I'm not sure I agree. Like vb said, a lot of string cheese, even though it looks like it would be nasty faux-cheese, is actually the real thing. It's made into that form by the process, not by adding all kinds of unnatural crap to it.

The kind I buy is.

Everyone already got that... except maybe Pokerbum. We just enjoy real cheese in string form.

Makes sense. I think that free breakfast is only offered in poorer neighborhoods but maybe not.

My wife says that sometimes she thinks the free breakfast/lunch is the best thing they do for the kids.

What does she think is the best the other times?

Bolded part is what confused me ... issue is all cleared up now though.

LadyGrey is NOT a fan of processed cheese.

an education. The teachers at her school are pretty bad though.

For some kids, it is. Some kids don't get much in the way of food at home. Kids that are truly hungry have trouble concentrating and don't have energy. Our school offers breakfast.

There are a lot of things kids get at school that they may not get at home.

Food
Fresh Air (some kids live in areas where it's dangerous to play out at home)
Books
Games (not of the video persuasion)
Rules
Love
Friendship

It's federally mandated for all public schools. It goes back a long time, like more than half a century, methinks.

http://www.jamieoliver.com/tv

I assumed this thread was about this.