This great blog, Fed Up With Lunch, is apparently old news, but it’s new to me, so: an elementary school teacher is eating student lunches for the 2010 school year. It looks really gross, and although I remember not liking the lunch options too much at my elementary and junior high schools, I don’t remember it being like this:

Maybe I blocked it out, but I don’t remember anything quite like “Day 49: Cheese sandwich.” Also, at my school, plastic plates and metal silverware were the norm–there definitely wasn’t this much throwaway packaging:

The meals [are] brought in frozen and heated up in large ovens. The containers are paper with plastic over the top. Microwaving is not allowed for school lunch (from what I understand). There are no real dishes or cutlery¹. Ninety-five percent of food delivered to schools is frozen.

To be fair to schools, cafeterias are working with about 90 cents per student meal (There seems to be some discrepancy here. The NYT calls it $2.36 per meal, still a piss-poor amount.), but that means we should be funneling more money into the program, not cutting back or ending free lunch programs for poor students.

The blogger also notes that her school doesn’t recycle, which is a whole separate (and huge) problem.

More potentially-related posts:

1. Lost in the supermarket.
2. AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH.
3. Family ties.