School Lunches Through the Decades

No day was better than chicken nugget day!

Nothing beat pizza day on Fridays

What type of pizza did you guys get, R2? Is it the same soggy crust variety? When I was little I thought soggy crust pizza was just another variety of pizza. It wasn't later that I realized that wasn't the case.

We were lucky to actually get pizza hut. It was back in high school in the late 90s.

In my high school there was graffiti in the bathrooms that said "Flush twice, it's a long way to Freds" Freds being the cafeteria service company.

I rarely bought my lunch - the lines were so long and slow that you only had 10 minutes to eat by the time you got to sit down. Our cafeteria lunch ladies were all Italian-American moms who tried to make the food palatable. My school didn't sell soda but had "juice" dispensers of purple grape drink or lemonade. I used to like the grape juice, it tasted like melted purple popsicles.

I grew up in the '50s and '60s. What I remember most is the horrible smell (and taste) of the canned vegetables -- like green beans and spinach -- they gave us. At home we always had fresh or frozen vegetables. I found canned ones to be disgusting, and still do to this day.

At least they served you vegetables, R7. My school lunch experience was pretty much like OP’s. By high school, I stopped eating lunch altogether. I was home by 2:30, so it wasn’t terrible to just eat when I got home.

I loved "chicken fried steak" day. Basically a hockey puck of breaded steak, with a splash of gravy and some mashed potatoes with parsley butter on top. Mmmm.

I teach at swanky private schools but I went to public schools. You bitches would not BELIEVE the gourmet food the kids get fed everyday. And they STILL complain.

I had such a taste for that rectangle pizza a few weeks ago, it was bizarre.

Did anyone else have make your own taco day, except there was NEVER EVER enough meat to fill the three shells they gave you. Even if you smeared an ant-line width of taco dribble down the shell.

I graduated from high school in Dallas 2 years ago. My senior year they opened up a Breakfast Station for lunch. They would serve fake scrambled eggs, chicken sausage links, hash browns, with French toast or pancakes. Other days there would be breakfast burritos with those sides.

A huge favorite most kids at my school loved was a thing called a Monster Bowl- chicken poppers, mashed potatoes, corn, and gravy in a little styrofoam bowl with a plastic lid.

I remember having pizza like that in the 90s. My child-palate absolutely loved that shit.

I went to nice schools, so the food was pretty good. Hamburgers and tacos were both tasty. At 16 when we got cars, off campus eating.

Rectangular pizza and chocolates milk was the perfect lunch...I was in heaven.

My elementary school served some kind of breaded mystery meat patties on a bun. I don’t know what was in them, nor do I want to, but I LOVED those. Occasionally I crave one to this day.

For those of you who had cars and went out for lunch, how long were your lunch periods? Mine was 22 minutes, which was barely enough time to get out to the car and drive off campus.

60s public elementary lunch in Texas: cornbread, pinto beans. the best. everthing homemade. still remember lunch lady's name. Mrs White. she ran the cash register while her minions dished it up.

LA City schools in the 70s did nice spaghetti and breakfast rolls that I still crave today.

The rest was okay -- sausage patties and rice for breakfast, or maybe pancakes that never lost their dryness no matter how much syrup the food ladies poured on them.

There was a "lunch shack" that served burgers and fries that were okay, and I liked the fresh fruit vending machines where one could buy refrigerated apples and oranges. A few years later, under Reagan, these were replaced by soda machines that were always vandalized.

Pizza burgers and salisbury steak.

We had a soda machine but it wasn't turned on until after school was dismissed. So if you were staying after school for sports or clubs you could get a soda.

Growing up in Louisiana we had red beans with cornbread and collard greens every Monday, jambalaya sometime during the week, and shrimp gumbo every Friday with a little packet of crackers.

The public schools in my town each have their own vegetable gardens. Gardening is part of the curriculum for the elementary school and club activity for middle and high schools. The cafeterias incorporate what they can during the season. I think this is a nice idea that all schools should employ. Even in urban schools they could do rooftop gardens.

OMG, I was in first grade the year ET was in theaters. So my elementary school thought of this fantastic idea: A hot lunch called ET's FINGERS, I shit you not. We were all super excited and everyone bought lunch that day. This is what ET's FINGERS were: sausage links swimming in cheese sauce. It was horrifying. What an idiotic idea.

R24 Sounds yummy....I'm going to make it for dinner tonight

45 minutes for lunch in high school, and it was very close to lots of fast food places and restaurants. A sit-down place was pushing it.

R25 but why on earth would any kid want to EAT ET's fingers?!?!???!

They should have done something with Reese's pieces, or something. Just gross.

R26 How old are the people who got to leave for lunch in high school? I was graduated in 2002, and we were never allowed to leave for lunch.

The whole concept of going off campus for lunch is so over my head- I graduated 2017 and you weren't even allowed to leave the cafeteria during lunch. The only reason my friends and I got away with it was because we were in the Student Council so we ate in our sponsor's classroom.

I graduated in the early 90s and we weren’t allowed to leave either.

At my high school, you could get whatever was on the regular menu, which was different from day to day or get pizza with whatever the side dishes were on the main menu. The two separate lines were usually about even. If I didn't like the main course on the regular menu, I'd get the pizza.

[quote]always served with side dish of tater tots.

This. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

To those asking about leaving, my school allowed only seniors to leave campus for lunch. I graduated in 1989.

Of the many delights trucked in by Sysco, I think "taco boats" were my favorite. It was like a giant nacho with meat that looked like rabbit droppings sprinkled on top.

Mid 90s - we weren't supposed to leave campus for lunch, but it wasn't enforced. It was too easy to walk off campus, and there was a hamburger stand a block away.

I don't know why I just typed mid 90s. I graduated from high school in 1978, before security was such a big deal

R33, that looks like good guilt food. You eat it and don’t give a fuck that it’s not good for you, nor tastes that great, but it makes you feel good.

I graduated in 85. Our lunch staples were steamed tasteless burgers, steamed hot dogs (with or without chili). The best thing was meatball sub Fridays.

In LA in the 70s, the schools that were mostly Anglo had open campuses, the schools with large minority student bodies kept the kids locked up.

@LosFelizDaycare

Incident report: Orwell’s dad’s sent a bulk sized tub of “cheese balls” for afternoon tapas. We sent a note home explaining that it was unhealthy unauthorized snack and they should also be referred to as “cheese ovaries.”

In Queens NY during the 80's we occasionally got Jamaican Beef Patties and Sloppy Joes. Also, crinkle cut fries.

I grew up in NYC, and I can remember going home for lunch until the fifth grade. I'm 56. Can anyone else remember doing that? In high school, seniors had the privilege of going out for lunch at least one day a week. I always brought my lunch from home. My Mom was a fantastic cook, so my lunch was always better than the cafeteria food. I'd often get a knish though

I’m 55 and also went to NYC Public Schools - we were allowed to go home for lunch - a remember doing it mostly in 3rd & 4th grade. Elementary schools are neighborhood based & we also walked to & from once we stopped taking the bus in 2nd grade. The bus was for “babies.” Intermediate school 6 - 8 was bigger & further away - I don’t think going home for lunch was allowed. You couldn’t leave the school in HS either.

I read the linked article & it made me remember my grandparents talking about 3 cent lunches at NYC Public Schools when they were kids in the 1910’s

Im 58,and our school lunches were always pretty tasty,but that was back when everything was cooked on site. My favorite was fried chicken,but pizza was a close second. Somewhere around here is my 5th grade picture with a big ole grease splotch on the front.That day was pizza day !

I am 24 and I left campus to eat lunch.

1960s -- Robert E Lee High School (we were the Rebels and had the world's 2nd largest Confederate flag) let all students leave campus for lunch. Mostly only the rich kids did or kids who knew how to salvage an old car, since they had their own cars. Dairy Queen would have our orders ready. Deal was, yes, they let us go, but if you weren't back on time, you got in BIG trouble. Good days. Freedom with consequences.

I went to Catholic school during my elementary years, late 90s/early 2000s. We had Mcdonalds catered Mon-Thu and Peter Pipper Pizza on Friday’s. Man, Wednesday’s were the best because we had McDonlads “original” Chicken Sandwhich. It was delicious. Parents needed to submit the orders by the previous Friday and they had a few extras for days parents didn’t send a child to school with a lunch. Terrible way to bring up children with no nutritional value, but that’s what you get in a red state opposed to government oversight.

By the time I went to a public HS, in a different state, I had that decent square pizza everyone’s talking about. Chicken nugget tuesdays were the best thing running. They got rid of our “junk food” section with ballpark pretzels, real pizza, and other concession type of food.

Last bit, no more credit lol. Student couldn’t run up $50 IOUs anymore. You didn’t have money, you either starved or had the saddest PB&J know to man, woman and child.

r45 were you a Raider???

R28, I graduated in 84. Lunch was the same length as a class. We got to leave campus for lunch. Blimpie subs was my go to spot, seconded by Roy Rogers.

r23 Well smell you, Michelle Obama!

I graduated in '70. San Francisco suburbs. 100% closed campus -- no one was allowed to leave for lunch.

I love the "regional lunch" stories: gumbo and jambalaya from Louisiana; tacos from the Southwest.

New England here from the 60s: we had fish sticks, plus "hamburg fricassee" (chopped hamburg over mashed potato).

R47 I think the school now calls the team the Raiders or the Generals or somesuch. We were the Rebels. Tyler TX.

R44 Really, where are you that a school in this century allowed you to leave campus for lunch? Was it a public school?

(Robert E.) Lee High School in Texas was renamed Legacy of Educational Excellence-LEE High School a couple of years ago.

Southern CA, my high school has allowed kids to leave for lunch since my mom went in the 70s and still does.

Those who got homemade cornbread & beans, or other ethnic dishes for lunch have always been the luckiest. Bring on the hot sauce.

I was among the group that brown bagged it. Once bought my own lunch in 6th grade with my babysitting money. Hamburger & macaroni with processed cheese on top. I would never eat the processed cheese part. It came with jello salad made with canned fruit and carrot and celery sticks. I didn't think it was worth the money, and forever after felt sorry for the kids who had to buy lunch.

Jr High and high school I occasionally bought school hamburgers (with my own money.) Seniors sneaked off campus to buy candy and snacks and it was always very controversial with school authorities. They wanted a per cent of the money so eventually got soda and candy machines on campus. Others complained so fresh fruit was added. It wasn't as popular as the junk food.

I miss French toast sticks day

R10 - I went to a fairly prestigious private elementary school back in the late 60s and early 70s, where we had to eat the lunch that was prepared for us. Far from gourmet, most of it was okay except for the one meal I absolutely detested: chicken chow mein!

High school was more of a cafeteria affair, although there was always peanut butter and jelly provided as an alternative. I don't recall most of the dishes that were served, but the food was okay, especially if you were a teenage boy.

I graduated in '00 and my high school was in the middle of farmland. Not only were we not allowed to leave the school for lunch, but there was nowhere to go in terms of nearby restaurants. The closest McDonalds was 20 minutes away.

Graduated '02 not only were we not allowed to leave for lunch, the school would send teachers who were free to the fast food restaurants to catch anyone who dared to go.

R52 - There were several R E Lee High Schools in Texas. One of them may have been renamed, but I think the one in Tyler is still R E Lee. I mean, new and old alumni still bemoan the loss of the gigantic Confederate flag under which the football team ran as they entered the field and our facsimile CSA cannon that fired when we made a touchdown.

I graduated high school in 1990 in small town Connecticut. We had some bland meals, but man do I remember the chicken and rice that occasionally popped up on the menu. So good. I do remember in senior year of high school my morning breakfast slipping into French V with a bagel with cream cheese and a Fresca.

R63= Andy Cohen

Comment saurais tu, R64?

R22 - I went to public elementary school in Louisiana in the 70's for a couple of years. The food was all hand-made, but undoubtedly Southern. Fried chicken, buttered rice, cornbread, greens, peach cobbler - that was a typical menu.

We did have fish filets, stew, and other items. Breakfast was buttered grits and fruit. I believe lunch was 15 cents and breakfast was 5 cents. And no, it wasn't a poor neighborhood and I wasn't on discounted lunch.

R66, Schoolkids for generations envy you. Bet you didn't have that many children ditching school either.

Elder gay here, from Westchester NY. IN the late 1960s no one was allowed to leave school for lunch, ever, nor were you allowed to bring your own lunch. It was always bland and boring -- everything over-boiled and over-sauced. Then there was Lucille's Surprise Dessert, which happened once a week, and was usually composed of whatever was left from other days' desserts.

I do remember that in senior year they let you buy individual cartons of yogurt, and it was like, yuck, who would eat spoiled milk or whatever it was. I remember wishing I liked it so that I could that instead of Lucille's specialties.

My elementary school cafeteria had the best, most buttery grilled cheeses I've ever had in my life. I never complained. The food was mostly pretty good, but I always remembered still being kinda hungry after I'd eaten. The portions were always sorta small and you'd have to sneak another cup of juice just to quench your thirst on most days. They had these tiny little juice cups with aluminum on top that you'd poke a straw through. They were always practically frozen, too, so it was more like drinking a slushie.

Looking back now, maybe I should go back to those portion sizes. I remember being super skinny then. Guess they were doing us a favor.

All this talk of PB&J sandwiches, which were in my day too, makes me wonder whether schools still do that. I mean, between the peanut scares of today and all that.

R48 Roy Rogers every day after school in the 80s, once I got my driver's license. Unbeatable bacon cheeseburgers.

We never had school lunches because everyone had parents who cared enough to make their kids a lunch.

R72 uh... kind of a weird brag? "My parents packed me, a high schooler, lunch every day." *flips hair*

R73 It's only weird if you had deadbeat parents.

R74 Yikes lmfao, imagine thinking a parent who doesn't pack their 18 year old kid their lunch is a deadbeat.

I don't understand why milk is served to kids for school lunch. Milk makes kids sleepy. People wonder why the kids are sluggish and falling asleep in afternoon classes. The dairy industry really has a strange hold over America. I'm guessing the need for calcium was the reasoning behind this. Drinking milk actually depletes calcium. We got the science all wrong

Who drinks milk after slugging down greasy pizza, chicken patties, or fish sticks?

R75 Why doesn't the 18 year old know how to pack their own lunch? Poor parenting.

R41 we trudged home everyday for lunch even thru Cleveland lake effect blizzards.

then we moved to KC and they had hot lunch in cafeterias and I LOVED it!

They published the menu in the newspaper

Yum Yum on Bun and Beanie Weanie were my favorites and of course beautiful sheet cakes !

I would giggle as one cafeteria lady (in hair net) would ask Pees or Solid(salad)?

Early 1970’s rural Wisconsin public high school. Closed campus. (But the only fast food place in town was A&W so there weren’t places to go anyway.) I think freshman and sophomores ate first, then juniors and seniors.

In late summer/early fall we had a fresh corn on the cob dripping in butter. Main course was homemade grilled cheese sandwiches, hamburger mac and cheese, meatloaf with a squirt of ketchup, beef stew, square pizza, corndogs, and fried fish on Fridays.

Fruit was canned peaches, canned fruit cocktail, or an apple. After the corn season, veggies were generally canned except for Friday’s cole slaw. Tater tots were frequent but sometimes there’d be delicious scalloped potatoes, mashed potatoes, German or regular potato salad. The only condiments were salt and pepper shakers on the tables. The only drink was milk in a little carton.

There were no options to choose from - it was a meat, a bread/potato/pasta, a vegetable, and a fruit. There were no burritos, tacos, beans, salads, or vegetarian options except for the occasional grilled cheese. You didn’t talk to the lunch women scooping stuff into the divided plates, as it was an assembly line where you picked up your plate and milk at the end. If you didn’t want the green beans, you still got them.

The hot lunch kids had to sit separate from the baggers, so no unauthorized kid could benefit from the government-subsidized meal.

I don’t remember any desserts except we did get an ice-cream bar/cup vending machine at the front of the cafeteria at some point.

A lot of kids took buses home to farms and had to hook up the milking machines after school, after doing the milking early in the morning, so they needed big lunches. Townie kids practiced sports/activities after school so they needed big lunches too. Even though the lunches sound fattening, I don’t remember many fat kids.

I went to school near Manchester in the UK, the campus was dual-site,very old (built about 1860) and pretty decrepit by the time I attended. Half of it is a care home now following a lot of renovation.

We had 2 canteens (cafeteria) which hardly anyone used as the lunch break was about an hour and a half. The food had always been boiled into submission and was pretty horrible.

I usually went home for lunch or to the local chip/sandwich shop.

They didn’t have hot lunches in Cleveland, r78?

[quote]The hot lunch kids had to sit separate from the baggers, so no unauthorized kid could benefit from the government-subsidized meal.

Damn. They took that shit seriously!

Our elementary school lunches in the 60s included things like fried Spam, yellow wax beans, and crinkle-cut beets, the thought of which makes me gag to this day. There was a sublime apple crisp, though, best I ever had. By high school in the 70s, we had pizza and burgers, along with some mysterious desserts - this pink foamy berry-flavored stuff I still can't identify, and some kind of oily dense yellow cake with chocolate frosting that we all loved, called "wheat bars." I remember somebody whose mom worked as a lunch lady said one time the cake they baked fell in the oven, so they just decided to cut it up and call it "golden bars." I thought that was pretty resourceful and creative.

I do think kids today have too many "choices." Probably better for the character to get what you get - slop some creamed corn and hash on your plate, move along, deal with it.

In high school in the 70s, I liked the crinkle fries under the heat lamp, sold in a brown cup that had fries pictured on it. But when we went off campus I'd have crêpes!

Rectangle pizza heated up in plastic wrap.

Burritos heated up in plastic wrap.

Manager's special -- yuck!

It was all pretty gross.

Graduated from public HS in NC in 2003. Juniors amd Seniors could leave for lunch. There were a ton of nearby food restaurants, too. Academically though, that school was awful (ignorant evangelical hillbillies, and that was in “cultured” Raleigh). So glad I got out of there.

In elementary school in the 70s I almost always brought my lunch except occasionally on pizza day. I would get a new lunch box at the start of every school year - actually, maybe only 1st, 2nd and 3rd grade because the only ones I remember are the Flintstones, Scooby Doo and Happy Days. My favorite was when I had a "thermos" surprise, either hot chocolate (which paired perfectly with PBJ or Fluffernutter sandwiches) or Campbell's soup, favorite was chicken & stars. With the exception of peanut butter, all of the other sandwiches I had -- ham, chicken roll (precursor to deli sliced chicken breast, it was compressed chicken scraps), bologna, cream cheese, tuna -- probably all needed to be refrigerated but I don't remember ever getting sick.

That's something I hadn't thought about in a while, I would pack tuna sandwiches for my boyfriend and me in HS (except on Friday- meatball sub day). Those bad boys would be unrefrigerated from about 7 am to 1 pm when we ate lunch. Scary, but we never got sick either.

R88 Your thermos comment got me to wondering what kind of soup Brian's mother packed him that day.

Kids at a high school in New Jersey didn't like their food. Parents began delivering lunch. The school will no longer allow it.

Well, r91, these days to even enter a school you have to present a photo ID and have very limited access inside the school, so I can imagine delivery services getting very frustrated.

When I was in 1st grade a classmate broke his leg and was in a wheelchair. His mom came to school every day at lunchtime to help him go to the bathroom. Every once in a while she would buy the whole table (each class sat at one long table in the cafeteria) ice cream and on the last day she had to come she brought McDonalds for everyone.

Seem to remember wanting to upchuck at the smell of scalloped potatoes.

My mother was a horrible cook so school lunches were welcomed by all the kids in our family.

I went to high school in the 80s and we had the stereotypical gross, unhealthy cafeteria food. The big special of the week was pizza with greasy fries on Fridays.

We let out at 2:15, and I always just waited to eat until I got home.

I realize now what a privilege that was--there were always kids at my school who ate every crumb and took anything other people didn't want to eat, which I could never figure out at the time (the food really was pretty awful). Now I see it was because that was the only meal they were getting that day.

I worked in Nice, France for years, so my kids were raised in the French public school system. Every Friday, the school sent home the lunch menus for the next week -- mussels in white wine & garlic sauce, poached sea bass with fresh asparagus, steak with Bearnaise sauce, zucchini au gratin...All healthy, fresh, adult food. Just a totally different attitude about food and educating the young on good eating habits.

R95 - you didn’t have only fish on Fridays? Blasphemous.

This thread is interesting as it does show local influences. Our little Wisconsin town was Catholic/Lutheran so it was fish Fridays.

I’ve always wondered how we Wisconsin kids got so much local, homemade food in the 70s. Did government programs subsidize schools to buy from local farmers? Did the farmers get a credit for giving corn/food/milk to the schools? Some kids called called lunch “dinner” and dinner was called “supper” so maybe that’s why, as the midday meal was important.

The fresh corn and fresh potato salad were great. I bet our milk was local too. I cannot imagine how the lunch-ladies husked all of that corn and boiled all of those potatoes for 700 kids. But it was delicious!

My mother would NEVER send me to school to eat hot lunch like some trailer trash hellion whose mother clearly doesn’t love them as much as she loved me. That all changed the day after she came home from the hospital when my brother was born, when she forgot to send me to school with my lunch. I sat down to eat only to notice my brown bag wasn’t in my Thundercats knapsack. I nearly had a panic attack. Where was my FUCKING LUNCH?! One of the lunch aides noticed me coming close to hyperventilating and directed me to the lunch line at the front of the cafeteria, a place I had never so much as ventured near in my three years of public schooling. The lunch lady gave me a Steak-Umm sandwich. I stared wide eyed as the gray, gristly meat in the wet bun. They expected me to eat this fucking dog food? Meanwhile at home, busy with a 3 day old crying newborn, my mother noticed my lunch still in the fridge. Dad had neglected to pack it in my bookbag. So while simultaneously screaming at my father and holding her C-section stitches, she jumped in the car and flew to the school 3 minutes away to bring me my lunch. She sat with me as I ate after the children had gone into the auditorium to watch Pinocchio, gently apologizing to me and assuring me that it would never happen again. That was 32 years ago and the PTSD is still there. Thank you for that triggering topic.

I think we occasionally had fishsticks, R97, but I don't remember it being tied to a particular day. My hometown is in an overwhelmingly Protestant area, though.

went to HS in the 60's on Long Island. we were allowed to go out for lunch. The pizza place, McDonald's and a hamburger place called Westons were all across the street. The street was an 8 lane highway and you ran like hell to get across. I think we had 25-30 minutes for lunch but can't remember. It was long enough to go the pizza place, order and eat a slice and dance to a few tunes on the jukebox. McDonald's hamburger, french fries and a coke cost the same as a school lunch. 35¢

Where was there ever an 8 lane highway on Long Island? Especially in the ‘60s before even the Expressway was built?

r101 Hempstead Tpke. maybe it was a few less lanes but seemed like at least 8. might have been 6.

It’s 4 lanes. Two in each direction, but that doesn’t make it any less dangerous. I don’t know if you still live on the Island, but it’s consistently the deadliest road.

And I hope I didn’t come off as snarky because I truly enjoyed your story, that just jumped out at me.

But the 35 cents really hit hard with today’s prices.

I went to school in the 80s in London. School dinners (as we called them) had a bad reputation but in hindsight they were actually very nutritious.

We'd also always have traditional desserts like Spotted Dick with custard which I've never actually found anywhere outside of a school dinner since.

r103 4 lanes???? lol things seemed larger as a kid I guess. I left over 40 years ago and moved to rural America. There were a lot less cars on the road then. I don't remember anyone ever getting hit crossing the road. I do remember we didn't have time to go to the corner and wait for the light so you just ran.

r103 Hempstead Tpke is 6 lanes wide on google. did they widen it since the 60's?

Yeah, what was with those giant cookies that all the schools had? I grew up in LA City School System, so that was pretty vast. In the late '50's when I was in early elementary school I begged my mom to buy me school lunch. That was just once, and the only thing I could eat was the delicious chocolate pudding with the skim on top and a whipped cream rosette. The glamour of the school lunch wore off right after I set my sturdy orange tray on the food line and actually saw what was in those yucky steam tables! Pork chops, watery instant mashed potatoes with gravy and canned peas, at which I, as a vegetarian, recoiled. I could not understand why the lunches were something that an old grandpa might have eaten, but not a kid.

At some point in California lunches became what OP described, but I was happy with bag lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich every day with a carton of milk purchased for a nickel.

Interesting, R98. You just triggered another memory for me. So even though we moved to Wisconsin from LA County in 1968, there was a time around 1963 when an elementary school classmate sat down, opened her brown bag, and it was filled with just chocolate chip cookies!

Her mom obviously stuck the bakery bag into her little lunch box. The girl was mortified. She nibbled on a cookie, hiding the bag. I said, “pass it around!” She didn’t as she was so embarrassed. I gave her half of my sandwich and she threw the whole bag of cookies away on the way out!

In LA in the 1960s we elementary kids would get sad when the dairy cows switched from winter hay to Spring grass grazing. The milk tasted sweet and we didn’t like it until we got used to it.

I wish someone would do a study about how the heck we got so many local foods in the 50/60/70s in public schools. Lunch ladies were the best!

R81 not at Fairfax Elementary in Cleve Heights in the 60's

I cannot imagine schools not allowing children to bring their own lunch from home. What about those with allergies, health or religious restrictions who can't eat many dishes?

The best lunch day at South River Elementary was sticker day.

We had the standard English muffin pizzas and fish sticks on Fridays.

On sticker day if there was a sticker on the bottom of your plate you got your dollar back.

I never got a sticker.

& p.s. my lunch box was Speed Racer. Racer X was my first crush.

I just KNEW there'd be a thread on this.

I graduated HS in ‘85, suburban Dallas (Plano). Typical processed public school lunch foods. By junior and senior years... at an entirely separate school... the menu became split into typical “real” food (a meal, almost like dinner), or junk food (pizza, hamburgers, fries, etc.) every day. But by junior and senior year we were also allowed to leave campus for lunch, 50 minutes (as long as a class). MOST people left, I remember the cafeteria being kind of barren. Some people used the hour to do other things. Maybe go home and eat.

Allthough through school I had mainly brought lunch from home which was far healthier than the cafeteria stuff (sandwiches on whole grain bread with turkey, ham or bologna and lettuce tomato and cheese, never Mayo because it might spoil, a piece of fruit, and a granola bar! Never any kind of junk. My parents weren’t health nuts but believed in good nutrition. I consider myself lucky). On the occasion I did buy lunch at school it seemed weird. Almost too heavy. Plus I was a terrible eater and skinny as a rail all through my adolescence.

The real revelation was college. An entire cafeteria with endless choices of what to eat, salad bars, desserts, endless full options like a food court you could just take anything you wanted. Open almost 24 hours fully stocked and with location all over campus at different dorms. I gained the legendary “freshman 10” indeed.

I went to school in the 60's in a suburban school with lots of kids, 3000 in my high school my junior year and that was only 3 trades. The hot lunches were actually quite good. They were all made on site and were tasty. We had a vegetable for every meal, though that was usually canned. there even is a cookbook out with recipes for many of the most popular items. If I were to be transported back in time and taste them again, would I think they were still good. Probably not. I saw a school menu about 5 years ago for the same district and no wonder kids complain today. It sounded terrible.

In the 70’s/80’s school cafeterias seemed to be able to make tater tots way better than my mom could ever make at home. So crispy outside and tender inside, perfect.

Their mac and cheese also had that cafeteria-y soupy consistency that was so different than the Kraft blue box.

There were certain simple things they did (usually unhealthy, oily, fattening) really well that couldn’t be replicated at home.

I was in a parochial elementary school in the 50s and always went home for lunch, most of the kids did too. I guess we all had someone at home to feed us.

There was a lunchroom for the kids who didn't go home, but the only things available for them to purchase were drinks( regular and chocolate milk, or OJ, and soft pretzels) They all brought stuff from home.

I remember one time my grandmother showed up( my mom worked outside of the home) as I was about to leave to go home for lunch, she had a bagged lunch for me, and explained she had to go somewhere. She couldn't have been more apologetic, I guess she felt she let me down.

In my Catholic high school there was a big cafeteria( student body was 3000+), but I don't remember ever purchasing food, just drinks. It was odd, you couldn't pay for anything with actual US coins or bills, you had to purchase what were called 'chips' from the 'chip ladies,' they had their own space, with a big, tiled counter, in one corner of the lunchroom. The chips were small, metallic, silvery coins, very lightweight, about the size of a dime. I guess this way when you paid for your food no change had to be made.

I brown bagged it every day, usually with great leftovers from the previous night's dinner.

All four years it was always the same guys at my assigned lunch table, we even had to sit in the same seat. Very regimented, and woe to he who was not where he should be for seat check. Going out for lunch? Not hardly.

The only soda brand available was called Gruber's, and they had maybe 5 or 6 flavors. The school must've gotten a sweet deal from the soda company. I never saw the brand for sale anywhere else.

Still have memories of the burrito at my junior high. The burrito filling was mostly ground beef, no beans or if it had beans it was small amount of refried beans lost in the grease. I say grease because when you bite into the burrito, orange drippings of greasy sludge would flow out onto the transparent (with grease) tortilla. The burrito would be at times so drenched with oil that I now think they were either fried or baked in that shit. I still ate it though, it was tasty in a junk food way.

I heard once that those "hamburgers" weren't made of meat at all, but soy.

All of these posts and no fellow '80s children have mentioned chili and cinnamon rolls? I always thought it was an odd combination.

During lunch in elementary school, I always made sure to sit as closely to the cafeteria door as possible because that's where the janitor stood by the trash can and I had a huge crush on him.

R118 chili and cinnamon rolls? Together? Never had that in our elementary school in the 80s. Now the janitor crush I could relate to in elementary school. I was a young gayling in the late 80s and had the maddest crush on our janitor, Kent. Kent was lean, blond surfer type with longish, surfer hair who looked like a hitter version of Matthew McConauhey. He was friendly with the cool, older 6th grade boys who looked up to him. Kent was definitely slumming it with his day job, I’d imagine he’d go back home with plenty of time to spare so that he could drive to Santa Cruz for a late afternoon of surfing.

England here.

You can imagine how disgusting ours were circa 1970.

Fish fingers, mashed potato and tinned spaghetti...is one combo I remember.

Does anyone remember the cheesecake with still-frozen strawberries on top?

R121 cheesecake and with strawberry on top? Our school lunch was not that fancy, I don’t remember any memorable desserts unless sometimes the occasional chocolate cake

Wayback I remember fish sticks on Fridays. Boston area, lot's of Catholics.

I remember the fish sticks at my school being terrible! All salty fried stick batter and just a little of the fish in the middle, like ground pollack or whatever. And a tiny thing of tartar sauce so you felt like Homer in that episode of The Simpsons.

I ate school lunch in two school districts in NW Ohio between the years of 1984 and 1996.

While there was a lot of frozen crap, there were definitely more homemade things than there are today. When I go into schools now, almost everything is pre-portioned in plastic.

In the district I attended during primary school, the only extras available to buy were tiny cartons of orange juice and fresh fruits. I later felt tricked when I learned that the little paper cups of “He-Man raisins” were actually prunes. We only had white milk at that school, and, for some inexplicable reason, we were made to pour any milk we didn’t drink into a huge plastic bucket. I almost never drank my milk, and I remember the janitor always shaking his head at me when I poured out a full carton. I’m amazed I wasn’t horribly dehydrated as a little kid, because no one brought water bottles or the like.

I packed a lot, but at my second district it was uncool to pack. I was stunned and delighted that they had chocolate milk there and also the extras to buy were chips and Little Debbies.

There was never any soda, or pop as we midwesterners call it, and the one time I packed a can of 7-Up, I was roundly scolded. Dessert was rare. Occasionally we would have a square of pumpkin cake in November.

Vegetables were almost always canned, and peas stunk up the whole schoolyard. I loathed the mixed vegetables of peas, carrots, corn, and some kinds of beans. Fruit was almost always canned too, and any fresh apples we had were cut up hideous Red Delicious. Bananas were always cut in half.

There was rectangular pizza or an odd stop-sign shaped “Mexican” pizza called a fiestada every Friday, except during Lent, when we’d have pizza on a Tuesday or something.

There was rarely any choice, and in the upper grades we got to have a salad bar instead of the hot lunch. In the high school, the kitchen staff portioned out the iceberg mix into large bowls so we could just put on the toppings. This was always extremely wet, and we learned to pour out the water prior to adding anything because otherwise you would have a disgusting watery bowl of ranch dressing and toppings. Once a week in high school we had a pasta option where you’d get a large plate of rotini pasta and could put a yellow cheese sauce or a red meat sauce on it.

Fried chicken was always red at the bone.

Things I liked were macaroni and cheese, grilled cheese and tomato soup, spaghetti or any type of pasta meal, chili, turkey Manhattan, shredded chicken sandwiches, sloppy joes, and what they called a grilled pizza sandwich. This was a very greasy grilled cheese sandwich with white cheese instead of yellow, pizza sauce, and pepperoni.

R125 what detailed description, thanks for that, funny how Mexican pizza seemed to be a constant in so many school districts. Ours had cheddar cheese in lieu of mozzarella and instead of pizza sauce it had some taco sauce or something similar.

I was lucky. Our 1970's cafeteria was run by a lady who was a real cook and for the most part everything was homemade. On fried chicken day, the rolls were homemade and as big as your head. There were no options. You got what was cooked. But it was good!

We had a cigarette machine in our cafeteria back in the 80's, not kidding. I went to a Catholic grade school, they would also use the cafeteria for bingo in the evenings. Friday's were the best though, because the church made and sold their own fresh pizza's. Otherwise I just packed my lunch.

I remember when I was in middle school, it was a big deal when the soda machines got RONDO soft drink. I don't remember what the big deal was about Rondo; I think it was sort of like Mountain Dew? It wasn't around for long I don't think.

My high school friends and I still laugh about when you would order a cheeseburger, the way the lunch ladies "melted" it was by swishing the slice of cheese around in a little hot pot of water before slapping it on the hamburger.

Catholic school for elementary / middle school. Now that people bring up fish sticks, I remember them on Fridays. Yes, they were good, IMO. Especially b/c fish sticks were not in my mom's repertoire. I don't remember getting French fries. I think we had Tater Tots.

I remember liking things with gravy (meat loaf).