It varies by location and affluence. When I was going to a public elementary school in the midwest, in the very early 1990s, we had "pizza days" that happened once or twice a month but generally the food was fairly healthy.
I think they maybe had deserts like pudding sometimes. There were no sodas or junk food available at all. The drink choices were 2% milk, chocolate milk, or water.
What I do remember is the food seemed fairly low quality. Canned and frozen packaged stuff, never anything resembling fresh. Every kid got the exact same meal unless you had some medical exemption.
In high school there were some bad choices available in the menu. There were soda and junk food vending machines, but they weren't part of the normal cafeteria and I never had money for them. While there were unhealthy options, there were also many healthy options and you simply bought what you wanted. The freshness was maybe a step up from elementary school.
I think there may have been efforts to remove the vending machines since my time there.
> In high school there were all sorts of bad choices. There were soda and junk food vending machines.
I read a bunch of years ago in Branded by Alissa Quart of American schools where soda giants would fund equipment for the sports teams and provide free soda for the cafeteria. So the school would both have to pay for their own drinks in the cafeteria and refuse sponsorship of the sports team to avoid being involved with soda the companies. It just makes economic sense in that case to let the soda company rope the kids in.
It's been a while since I read it, and I can't verify the truth. For me, it sounds like schools should have no part in getting kids addicted to soda.
That is just sad. I think it is for good reason here in Norway that companies can not contribute to school funding. They try to keep private money out of schools, so that you don't end up with A and B schools because some parents are richer than others.
I think the corporate sponsorship you talk about here also means that the pressure to fund schools properly through taxes are taken away. It gets too easy to avoid taxes by getting others to pay.
> That is just sad. I think it is for good reason here in Norway that companies can not contribute to school funding.
I had a great High School class in genetics that would not have been possible without large donations of money and equipment from a local biotech company.
I have fewer problems with companies donating science equipment, computers, and the like. There have been occasional issues with corporate donated history books though...
I can see that happening. Hopefully it's less of a possibility now than it would have been when I was attending in the late 1990s.
I think at my school it was because staff wanted them, so why not have them available for the kids too? I don't think much thought was given to it, and even if there were it would have been framed as a matter of personal responsibility. Adults there would have not thought of their responsibility to teach children good eating habits -- that was for the parents.
Back when I was in middle school (mid-90's), I was on the student council, which was responsible for maintaining relationships with the junk food vendors (we used it to raise money for other projects). We switched from Coke to Pepsi during that time, and I remember them coming to us with a deal that involved them providing the vending machines, running some contests, and some other goodies for the school. All we had to do was give them exclusive access.
What a terrible menu. It has 'cultural poverty' written all over it. Food is a major manifestation of culture--food speaks volumes about the people who prepare and eat it.
What ends up happening is that the Feds fund school lunch at a level where you cannot say no as a district, but the hooks that come with the money make it difficult to do a better job.
I think they maybe had deserts like pudding sometimes. There were no sodas or junk food available at all. The drink choices were 2% milk, chocolate milk, or water.
What I do remember is the food seemed fairly low quality. Canned and frozen packaged stuff, never anything resembling fresh. Every kid got the exact same meal unless you had some medical exemption.
In high school there were some bad choices available in the menu. There were soda and junk food vending machines, but they weren't part of the normal cafeteria and I never had money for them. While there were unhealthy options, there were also many healthy options and you simply bought what you wanted. The freshness was maybe a step up from elementary school.
I think there may have been efforts to remove the vending machines since my time there.