Ask Lemmy

Unfortunately, not all kids that go to school can afford to pay for food. In some cases the meal they get at school is the only one they get.

Source: Worked with public schools

This has to be reiterated whenever anyone talks about 'American schools.'

US has a Federal system where each state runs its own schools, and each local community has its own school board. Two schools can be ten miles apart and have completely different standards and curriculums.

Also, each school has a different social milieu. In one place, the popular kids might bring in meals cooked by their maids, so eating cafeteria food is a sign of poverty. In another place bringing your own lunch might be a thing only the poor kids do.

A lot of kids eat school lunch because it's subsidized, and cheaper than food from home would be.

Or because both parents work and don't have time to pack lunches, and the kids won't do it themselves.

Or because no one in the household knows how to cook (no, really).

Or because it helps them "fit in".

I always packed my own lunch, from middle school onward. Now I send my kids with lunches I pack; if I don't they just won't eat.

Kids are weird.

Movies don't always do a great job of depicting things. I imagine they might skew towards depicting practices that are common in southern California, or where the creative team grew up. If the cafeteria set on the back lot is shaped a certain way, re-dressing it to change to another style might not make sense for your budget.

It's going to vary based on private/public, state, and then local school jurisdiction, wealth of the community, and wealth of the family.

My school experience had a mix of:

• Kids bringing their own lunch. This would often be a sandwich, and might include additional items like fruit (apple or banana) or single serving snack packets (chips, cookies). Sometimes there wouldn't be a sandwich. Leftovers were rare, partially due to no microwaves being available for student use. Sometimes these items would be packed by a parent, or the kid might pack their own.
• Kids buying lunch. A hot lunch had a fixed fee per day and there were usually several items of questionable culinary/nutritional value to choose from. There were also cookies, chips, or milk available for purchase. There may have been more options here, I didn't interact much with the paid lunches.
• Kids bringing money for lunch and choosing to pocket some or all of it, and just eating later.
• Kids not bringing money for lunch, and not bringing their own. This could be their choice, food insecurity, neglect, or any number of other reasons. Their friends may or may not feed them depending on the relationship.
• Trading items with friends. It doesn't even have to be food for food.
• Various mixing and matching of the above depending on external factors. A kid might bring lunch then buy milk or a snack on top of their other items. Or they might beg their parents to buy them lunch once a week so that they could have pizza when it was available on Fridays.

Most tables would be a mix of these choices. Some tables might only have kids buying items, or only bringing items from home. In one friend group it might be considered lame to buy lunch, or lame to have something packed by a parent. In some groups and age brackets trading might be prolific, rare, or non-existent.

In my school about half the kids packed their own lunch and the other half would get a lunch from the school. The school lunches were made hot and you had a rotating menu with 3 options and a salad bar each day, they called it hot lunch. Some kids (most of the ones who got hot lunch) received it at a free or reduced price. A little over 2 dollars normally but 75 cents reduced or free like I got mine. Some schools did have a canteen rather than a lunch menu. American culture is not anywhere near as homogeneous as it appears in our media.

Many United States public schools treat their students more like prisoners.

When I was going to elementary school in Texas, there was a traffic light on the cafeteria wall. If the light was green, we could sit where we liked. If the light was yellow, we had to sit in the same order we came through the line. If the light was red, we had to sit in the same order, and also we were not allowed to speak.

The food was terrible. We loved our awful little pizza rectangles because they were the least terrible thing we were served.

You can bring your own food. Cafeteria food in the US (at least, from my childhood) was notoriously bad. Back in the day they didn't really care about whether or not you could eat it either, if you couldn't you got a cold alternative dish.

Another factor is poverty however. Poorer families are more likely to rely on the cafeteria system. Rich families provide their kids with high quality food.

It’s free in our state, so why not?

We live in a pretty rich district too, so the food is actually really good. They’ve got multiple options each day for vegetarians and gluten free, and also a salad bar.

And it’s hot food. Sure you could send a packed lunch, but they don’t allow 1000 kids to microwave their lunches. It would take too long. So if you want hot food, you go through the lunch line.

affordable (most is less than the equivalent of 5-10 USD max and it's not slop, it's actual food)

The average cost of school lunch in the United States in 2025 was about $3.20, before subsidies bring them down to free for many families. So the cost to the actual families is often between $0 and $2, and almost always under $4 for the pre-set lunch.

Also, speaking as an American parent who often packs kids lunch from home, it's just a lot of work in a tight window between my kids waking up and getting to school on time. I've got enough tasks to do in the morning, sometimes I just don't feel like adding to that task and have my kids buy lunch instead. I'm literally a former professional cook and meal prep is really easy and fast for me, but sometimes I just don't want to.

My kid just started TK and the school is serving such a high poverty area that they give free breakfast and lunch. It's hard to pass up, and isn't the worst quality in the world but still a little more sugar than I'd prefer. Fruit yes, vegetable no, and loads of dairy (which is a thing thanks to US subsidizing farms, this is where that surplus goes. Corn syrup, too though, unfortunately).

It's also kind of a lot of trouble for two working parents to prep a lunch for multiple kids every day. Leftovers are great, but they don't always hold for the few hours they're in a bag. I'm allowed to bring food to them at 11:30am, but I'm working so it's a non starter. My daughter also attends a Japanese Saturday school though and prepping a bento box is required.

Because 1) its convenient, and 2)its affordable, and the pay scales with your parents income.

Children from very low income would get free lunch, people from low income might have to pay 2 dollars a week, and then kids from regular income might pay..10 dollars a week? At least from what i remember during my families financial ups and downs as a kid. Those prices may be different now, with inflation and seething hatred of government towards helping people.

Typically you only see the well to do kids bringing lunch, cause they're the only ones that can afford it.

The lunch arrangements will vary greatly by age/grade level. A high school is more likely to have the canteen style while an elementary school is more likely to have the cafeteria style. In either case, bringing a lunch from home is also reasonably common.

When I was in school, the full price of the cafeteria lunch, with 8 oz milk, was $1.25. That was very affordable, and the federal nutrition guidelines meant it wasn't that unhealthy. Finally the actual food wasn't actually all that unpalatable either.

Breakfast was free for everyone under a federally funded program. But I didn't eat that because you had to show up at 6:30 am to get it.

(GenX) when I was in school, the cafeteria food was trash: square pizza and fries were the constant staples, then a small rotation of things like burgers or chicken nuggets. The “fruit” was canned “fruit cocktail” in heavy syrup.

To a kid, that shit’s awesome. To my mom, it was horrific. So she went through all the effort of packing a healthy lunch every day. Lots of kids didn’t have that luxury, as other comments have addressed.

Due to the divide, I got mocked for my nutritious meal (think of that one scene in The Breakfast Club). This often ended with me bartering for some of that trash food or purchasing cafeteria food with my own allowance and the lunch my mom made was often wasted. I’m so ashamed of that.

I haven't seen any mention the social aspect. Kids could be sent with their own lunch, but (at least growing up the '90s) there was a lot of social pressure to conform. Bringing something from home invited scrutiny. One way to mitigate that was by bringing one of the popular pre-packaged products like Lunchables, which was certainly less nutritious than any regulated meal coming on a tray from the kitchen.

when I was in school which is when a lot of movies showed stuff like this. Only kids with money bought from the cafeteria or if they qualified for a program. the middle level often brought lunch. actually so did wealthier types. in high school people could work jobs and have money and some spent some of it at the cafeteria. enough that it was pretty busy. I think movies have showed the kids who went in line sometimes sitting down with kids who are brown bagging in some movies.

FWIW, in Portugal, during my youth, I ate at the cafeteria rather often. It was decent food for the most part (it was also my first exposure to soy minced meat). It was hot, didn't involve carrying a lunchbox, and it was tasty and convenient and cheap. Eventually I opted to go back home because I lived close enough to walk, and mom's food is better.

We did not get ways to heat up food (though I bet you could have asked the cafeteria staff if you needed it) of our own, though.

So, I'm not sure I understand the question - you said your schools have canteen and kids use them.

What reasons do they have?

Why America specifically? The same reason you ate cafeteria food or any other person does - it's easy and typically alright food that doesn't cost much (if anything). A cheap, easy, and healthy meal should be self explanatory.

Why are you asking about America? It's such a weird thing to call out when your entire post explains the universality of school lunches.

When I went through school, I did both at various points. Sometimes I'd buy lunch in the cafeteria. Sometimes I'd take a bag lunch.

The cafeteria can do hot food, which you can't bring. But a bag lunch lets you choose options that aren't served in the cafeteria.

I mean, honestly, same subsequent to education, at work. People might bring a lunch, or might eat commercially-prepared food. Not really a universal standard.

I ate school lunch whenever I could because I had enough problems already without preparing a lunch for myself while groggy in the morning.

This is a 1:1 copy repost of a thread from months ago. Will post original if I find it again.

EDIT: https://lemmy.world/post/44664547/22841691

it was deleted

The cafeteria at our school is free for everyone.

In my region, and this will vary a lot depending on what state and school district you're in, the median income is below poverty level, so the school offers free breakfast and lunch to every student.

It makes no sense for me to spend time and money preparing lunches for the kids if there's a free hot meal waiting for them.

When/where I grew up, free lunches were available to some students, based on the household income, and my parents packed me a lunch because it was cheaper than paying the daily cost.

The general logic seems to be if the kids are required to be at school all day then the school is required to feed them.

Also more practically, the school meals are the best meals some of these kids get, depending on their home situation.

My kids both go to a Kansas school. One is lactose intolerant, so we often pack his lunch - yogurts and cheeses figure fairly heavily into the meal options. My other kid usually grabs whatever's being served, which includes hot options along with things similar to what you listed.

They have a school-issued card that they scan whenever they get the school lunch, which is linked to an account we top up online. I believe that qualifying families get either reduced pricing or funds for the account. Our kids actually keep assuming everything is free, because they just go through and get to pick so much from this station, so much from that station, etc.

It's convenient and they like it.

I don't feel like the food I got in the cafeteria as a kid was slop, but there were definitely some dishes that did better when cooked en masse than others, and some that were more or less appealing. Like, pizza, ravioli, burgers, chicken sandwiches or nuggets, they all tended to be pretty consistent and good. The spaghetti tended toward being kind of weak and mushy because I imagine it's tricky to get a proper al dente when you're cooking for hundreds of people. Likewise, the baked chicken wasn't anything to write home about.

Most of where they'd drop the ball was with texture or with things not being spiced as well as they could have been. But again, at scale I'm sure it's tricky.

As others have said, though, the US is nowhere near as homogeneous as you'd assume if you only watch our media. A lot of the complaints about school food being inedible are also significantly overblown because it's something to complain about and bond over.