The Most Disgusting School Lunches
Think your school lunches growing up were pretty bad? Check out these questionably edible school lunches from Harrison City Public Schools in Virginia, then decide. Such nutritional delights as Italian Dunkers, Chicken Fryz, and Taco Patties will make your eyes and stomachs bleed. View more of the lunches if you think you can handle it. Some of my favorites are the Taco Tub and the Ham and Cheese Pita. What were your most disgusting school lunches growing up?
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52 Comments:
No wonder kids have fast-food issues. None of these meals vaguely resemble food in its natural state.
beth1 at 7:54PM on 08/21/08
Ugh, did anyone see the pile of vomit that was the "cheese stuffed shells?"
PumpkinBear at 8:07PM on 08/21/08
Anyone notice that the only veggie is corn? Not a touch of green anywhere--and--kids obesity issues are a mystery? Hardly.
tawni at 8:36PM on 08/21/08
Fun Fish Fridays. Catholic school vegetarian fridays. Fish sticks in the shape of actual goldfish, nuff said.
midgepingleton at 8:37PM on 08/21/08
Whenever I see pictures of American school lunches now, I think back to this article:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91687769
philn at 8:39PM on 08/21/08
That's actually Harrisonburg, VA. Their current lunch menus can be found here:
http://www.harrisonburg.k12.va.us/foodsvc/
philn: Check this out! http://www.edibleschoolyard.org/homepage.html
Josh Baugher at 8:49PM on 08/21/08
Josh, that's outstanding. Thank you! I would love to see this catch on around the nation.
philn at 8:55PM on 08/21/08
Wait, are those Italian dunkers white sandwich bread with marinara sauce? Hilarious.
Except that they feed it to children.
renzata at 9:06PM on 08/21/08
I can't get over the slimy green hot dogs they served at our school; in my memory they seem to have fine, peach fuzz-like hair growing from them as well.
Then again, I went to school in the same town mentioned in yesterday's post, "Man walks 12 miles for a cheeseburger." If you saw that video, and noted the quality of the burger he walked 12 miles for, it seems there is a serious food quality issue in my home town!
shalomblack at 9:30PM on 08/21/08
Oh, and as a follow-up, that school menu picture collection is from a few years back. Harrisonburg recently had a few local food menus!
http://www.dnronline.com/news_details.php?CHID=1&AID=17157
For those of you unfamiliar with Harrisonburg, it's in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, a major agricultural region of the state.
Josh Baugher at 9:32PM on 08/21/08
It actually doesn't look much worse than it was 25 years ago.
I actually miss the trapezoidal/rectangular pizzas. They a sharp cheese flavor to them that I can't believe I'm nostalgic for. I also can't believe I survived on such little food! Heh.
jayevee at 9:43PM on 08/21/08
This looks positively gourmet compared to what I had in my public school system. Ours came pre- (and sometimes still) frozen in tin boxes that were reheated. There was no "cook" and the "lunch ladies" just punched your meal ticket. It was so sad. I hope things have changed since then, but I think they've probably gotten worse. :(
ReneeRobinson at 10:11PM on 08/21/08
Is anybody besides me channeling Adam Sandler right now? "Sloppy Joe, slop-sloppy Joe...."
Makes me really glad I was home-schooled!
buffy at 10:22PM on 08/21/08
I remember a choice between hot and cold lunch (NY State). Cold was pretty much your choice of 3 kinds of sandwich, and hot was the usual salisbury steak with instant mashed potatoes and string beans and some sort of compote in a paper cup. Kind of like a Swanson TV Dinner from the 60s removed from it's foil container.
Tonecat at 10:27PM on 08/21/08
I recall a few bad items. The first was the "ham" salad sandwiches. I say "ham" because it was really bologna salad. The second was something called sno caps. These were plain hot dogs with a scoop of mashed potatoes and covered with shredded cheddar cheese. Some kids (not me) then covered them in ketchup.
notirish at 10:34PM on 08/21/08
Ugh - that "Burrito with Rice" would have half the kids in this border town running for Mexico (or their mom's kitchen in El Paso).
Nearly everything in my high school cafeteria on the Mainland was awful. I voluntarily took a lunch bag to school 3/4 of the time. But the tater tots, man they were goooood...
TikiPundit at 11:36PM on 08/21/08
Went to a public school in Hawaii and we had great 'home' cooked meals. There were 5-7 women in a huge kitchen with 4, maybe 6 restaurant ovens and stovetops that cooked for the 600-700 of us in high school. Each 4th period class rotated every day, freshmen through seniors, to serve the food.
If I had to pick the food that I thought was the grossest, it has to be the chef salad and the chili made with soy (instead of real meat). Following close behind may have been those grilled riblets (the ones I thought were meat shaped like bears) with barbecue sauce.
Cassaendra at 11:47PM on 08/21/08
I have to say, my school lunches were MUCH better than the above which totally disgusts me. My daughter will take her lunch when she's old enough. Hopefully that's not too uncool!
You know what I am ashamed to admit? I actually miss my school cafeteria's Mexican pizza. Anyone else have this lovely Octagon with orange cheese and taco-y meat/sauce pizza? I'd buy a box if I could! LOL!
saffron4859 at 11:54PM on 08/21/08
My memories of school lunches aren't so bad. I remember that hardly anyone ate the ubiquitous apple that came on the tray. They ended up either zooming through the air during lunch becoming a weapon of fruity destruction, or rolling around the lunch tables and floor wishing they never left the tree.
One food that I actually did like, and did look forward to, was their "chalupa." A blend of ground meat and cheese is melted into what can only be describes as a taco lifeboat, that is then topped with a smattering of diced tomatoes and lettuce.
Mike13241 at 12:33AM on 08/22/08
That's really depressing knowing that that's what is being served in our public schools.
Not that I appreciated it, but almost everything that we had in our school lunchroom was prepared on site. Even if they served hamburgers, they made the buns from scratch. My how things have changed in the past 20 years.
sscoffee at 12:36AM on 08/22/08
our chicken burger was literally a chicken burger: a slab of dry, overly peppery chicken breast between equally dry buns
woot.
tiffanybite at 12:39AM on 08/22/08
Oh, someone else had slimy green hotdogs as well! School lunches also made me hate lunch meat ham and cheese. I generally avoided school lunches except the square pizza and this one meat sauce entree.
Tater tots were are a weakness.
manda at 1:19AM on 08/22/08
I always brought my own lunch, but I remember that everyone thought the burgers were made of horse meat.
windattack at 1:21AM on 08/22/08
in my school they used the same bland, mealy meat sauce for everything-- tacos, spaghetti, chili, meat sauce for those crappy italian dunkers. it was disgusting.
fortunately when i was in high school we had the option of getting a salad every day, which i did since i was a vegetarian at the time. it wasn't anything resembling healthy though: iceberg lettuce, cheese, bac-os and sunflower seeds. but i sort of loved it.
redzerostar at 2:38AM on 08/22/08
Someone was telling me about growing up in Minnesota, where you had pizza one day, and the next day you got an interesting concoction called pizza soup.... I can only imagine what that tasted like..
lysine at 3:36AM on 08/22/08
When I was in high school in the mid-80s, I was lucky enough to go to a school with the city's best culinary program. The food available was well-prepared, healthy and tasty. You could get a full meal with drink and salad for something like three bucks.
The downside was that I grew up kinda po' and was only given money for lunch as a special thing the last Tuesday of the month. The rest of the time it was cheap lunch meat on white bread plus an apple and a juice box, all in a paper sack.
jimcowling at 5:03AM on 08/22/08
Ah yes, that "pizza". Rectangular, and covered with a finely-shredded and melted cheese that was not unlike the size, color and texture of maggots. Wonderful stuff, that.
LunaPierCook at 5:26AM on 08/22/08
The food was uniformly terrible. We'd have "spaghetti" one day and on the next would be pizza. I was ecstatic seeing the pizza as it seemed possibly tasty and thoroughly edible. To my horror I discovered that the crust was constituted entirely of the previous day's "spaghetti" dried out and baked hard. Horrendous. At least they spared us by not then making a soup of the "pizza".
ctillman at 5:48AM on 08/22/08
I remember enjoying the rectangular pizza my old elementary school served; that was one of the good meals. Less comforting were the Sloppy Joes, which I can't describe beyond the sheer terror of their existence, since neither I, nor any of my classmates, ate them.
Ah, memories...
orpheum at 7:55AM on 08/22/08
I never understood why people got the 'real' food, other than the breakfast sandwiches, cheese danish or chocolate chocolate muffins I got in the morning. I would usually get a bagel with lite cream cheese for lunch, or some lite version of Hostess cupcakes. Occasionally the mysterious square pizza that seems to have haunted all of our lives.
That was in high school--in grade school, there was no cafeterias, but we had hot dog day, McDonald's Day, pizza day, and sub days, brought in. Other than sub day, because I couldn't chew the roles, I participated eagerly, given that my mother's idea of a good school lunch was peanut butter on rye bread with grape jelly. And the ice cream sandwiches, all...
Given that the worst-tasting food is usually the chicken, fish, meatloaf, fungus-looking hamburgers, canned vegetables I always wondered why people eat the lunches at all.
HeartofGlass at 8:14AM on 08/22/08
In my elementary school (Hopewell Elementary, West Chester, Ohio), the worst in my memory is something called "Romany Steak". It was frequently nicknamed Romany Snake due to its mystery meat appearance. I probably remember it even worse than it was but my recollection was that it appeared to be catfood that was broken up in water to make a sort of sauce that was served over noodles or mashed potatoes (I forget which). What any of this had to do with Romany or Steak, I cannot imagine.
jfultz at 9:38AM on 08/22/08
Just to add on to Tawni's message, there is something green next to the ham pita - I only hope it is supposed to be that color!
jfultz at 9:39AM on 08/22/08
Sorry to harp on it but the flashback to Romany Steak made we wonder if I only imagined it. I searched "romany steak" with the quotes on Google and it came up with only two hits. The second was a 1959 newspaper clipping (obituaries and school menu on the same page - hmmm!?) that listed Romany Steak and Mashed Potatoes.
What I cannot decide is whether it makes me feel better or worse to know I didn't imagine it.
jfultz at 9:48AM on 08/22/08
Overcooked broccoli was the worst...errr....overcooked vegetables in general. I guess that's what happens when you take cooked vegetables out of a can, then cook them for another 2 hours. Delicious.
Smoosh at 9:57AM on 08/22/08
That doesn't look that bad. I've seen much worse. In fact, the cafeteria in my office sells grey meatloaf. How one makes meat grey I'll never know.
Erin at 10:20AM on 08/22/08
i guess i was really lucky. my school had pizza hut, taco bell, papa johns, and chic-fil-a. i never understood why we had both pizza hut and papa johns. taco bell days came with those cinnamon twirls or whatever they were called. pure heaven. oh, they always threw in a side salad or a fruit cup and a pint of milk to make it more nutritional. in retrospect, that was probably not the ideal menu for children.
mikeismora at 10:25AM on 08/22/08
I remember being all excited when I'd get a dollar to buy my lunch instead of having to bring a packed lunch. Then, I could enjoy such culinary delights as braised beef (braised GROUND beef with some strange, thick, clear but speckled "gravy" poured over an ice cream scoop of mashed potatoes), hamburgers (always well done, but never well done, even with my less picky palate), fish sticks (whose gravel-like breading would scrape the roof of my mouth raw--hooray for lemony tartar sauce), and rubber-cheesed lasagna that I once almost choked to death on (no joke--the cheese was that stringy and impervious to chewing). I'm glad I brought lunch most of the time. I feel bad for the number of kids around here who have to eat one or sometimes two of their meals at school for financial reasons--hopefully, it's not all as bad as what this website shows.
OneWallKitchen at 11:04AM on 08/22/08
How about Chili Cheese Fries?? I remember that horrid concoction - soggy fries, neon yellow "cheese" out of a can, and all meat chili (canned no doubt).
What's even more frightening is I used to sprinkle salt on before I ate it. No wonder I lost 15 lbs as soon as I exited high school!
AliNC at 11:15AM on 08/22/08
My most disgusting portion of lunch was always the three bean salad! It always made me hurl and one particular lunchroom monitor/teacher forced us to "eat 3 bites" of everything on our trays........Seems like she was always the monitor when we'd have that junk and I always ended up puking later in the day. The teacher and the lunch were disgusting! To this day, I still leave the table if someone serves it! Even the slightest smell of vinegar nauseates me!
divajinx at 11:46AM on 08/22/08
This topic brought to mind a story I heard years ago about a school that implemented a seriously healthful lunch program and turned around the lives of their students. Amazingly, it was at a school for juvenile delinquents. I'm not sure if the link I found is the same as the one I read about, however it's a powerful article in and of itself:
http://www.lauralee.com/news/healthylunch.htm
Removal of vending machines should be mandatory in schools, methinks.
Oh, and by far the greasy 'mexican pizza' we were forced to eat was the worst. Luckily, I had a Mom who made me a brown bag everyday with a quarter taped inside for milk.
gastronomeg at 11:58AM on 08/22/08
Wow is all I can say. I liked my school lunch and most people said it was better than other high schools in the city (I went to Stuy) - which seems a bit weird since don't we all get the same crap? *shrug* we had French bread pizza, chicken patty sandwiches, fries, the normal stuff, and a sandwich bar (where we could direct a guy to make our sandwich the way we wanted, like at Subway), hmm, tater tots sometimes, I think we had other hot food, I forget now. And an ice cream bar area... but that was separate. Otherwise lunch was $1 and included chocolate milk or milk... mm... those were the days.
(I tended to get the chicken patty sandwich and slathered it in tartar sauce to counter the dryness. It was reconstituted chicken meat, of course.) Oh! and chicken nuggets which were just smaller versions of the patty lol
feistyfoodie at 12:03PM on 08/22/08
Gramma was a real, live lunch lady who retired at the end of my sophomore year in HS. What I recall is that the school only served pizza once a month - MAYBE. We had meals. They used the government commodities to their fullest potential. We had beef stew with Gramma's biscuits! Yes, there were the spaghetti days, meat loaf days...and everyone's favorite - Texas Straw Hat. While all the veggies were usually overcooked, the most disgusting thing was always the spinach. Nasty, vile looking stuff!
Then, all the lunch ladies retired and the school started serving pizza every week...by the time my kids were in high school, it was twice a week. At that time, there were ala carte options, but sadly, salad wasn't an option. I always wrote notes at the beginning of the year so that my kids could run home for lunch - we lived a block away.
Even now, I receive the school newsletter and shake my head at the continuous offering of pizza twice a week and sandwiches.
thewrighttaste at 1:09PM on 08/22/08
My High School has pretty good food, surprisingly. We have burgers, sandwiches, and quesadillas cooked on the spot along with the normal hot lunches and even Sushi! The sushi was terrible though... Also we're allowed to order food to be delivered to the school during lunch, or go off campus and eat wherever. Thank you rich Long Island school!
Although now that I htink about it, I do remember finding a butter wrapper in my soup back in Middle school. That and chicken nuggets that bounced pretty well
forsheezy at 1:14PM on 08/22/08
@ Mike13241:
The chalupa! It was awesome! (I'm not even sure I am being sarcastic about that). I would douse the cheese carpet layer with a couple of packets of that mysterious spicy taco sauce. That infamous school lunch "orange grease" would trail down the inside of our forearms as we ate them. Ugh.
JustNancy at 2:39PM on 08/22/08
The Taco Boat.
a "crispy" aka wet and chewy, boat shaped shell, filled with playdough consistency melted cheese, spotted with things supposed to be ground meat but looking like those mini chocolate chips. disgusting. tho they did bounce well....
listener at 2:20PM on 08/23/08
I mostly 'brought' my lunch but got to pick a few days a month from a calendar they sent out. I always got chili for unknown reasons. I hate it to this day - the only thing I can think of as a reason was that it came with cinnamon bread.
They also had this 'pizza bread' which was tomato sauce and that industrial shredded cheese on a baguette which I loved but am not so sure I would love today!
katarina_santiago at 9:19PM on 08/23/08
If schools are feeding this to their bodies, imagine what they're feeding to their minds. shameful.
jymbrittain at 11:19PM on 08/23/08
The worst had to be the turkey and gravy at my primary & elementary schools (they had the same kitchen.) The gravy was good, the mashed potatoes were passable, and half the 1/2 inch cubes of turkey were good. The other half were pure fat; I've never seen anywhere you could slice fat like that off a turkey, so I always wondered where it came from!
The french bread pizzas were really good, though!
cowprintrabbit at 3:15AM on 08/24/08
Ahh mystery meat. It's rainbow hued sheen of rancid oil and stringy gray appearance haunts me still. Only a good game of jello cube stacking could take our minds off the horror.
Edwins at 6:26PM on 08/24/08
let's see if i can remember elementary school lunches in new jersey... there were the pork roll sandwiches,2 pieces of pork roll on a bun... that was it. friday was pizza hoagies..cheese, sauce and a somewhat toasted roll. and i think we had something that resembled a fish sandwich every so often. and veggies.... tator tots and not much else. of course if you didn't like the main lunch you could always get PBJ... not too much of the jelly to call it that though.
dozertx at 11:01AM on 08/26/08
i don't know about these days but when i was in high school in the early eighties we had lunch ladies that made the best rolls and you could smell them baking all over the school...i liked chili with rice day because it came with cinnamon rolls and was pretty tasty. my friends mother was the head lunch lady.
eli225 at 12:33PM on 08/26/08
Our school had dominoes pizza every month. Kids were ecstatic for that and that day saw the most fights occur out of every month. True Story.
bagel at 1:44PM on 05/28/09