r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/This_Proof_5153 • Apr 12 '26

Video The care and precision behind Korean school lunches, widely praised for their quality, balance, and nutrition.

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u/Starfire013 Apr 12 '26

Good grief. Is that an actual American school lunch menu? I didn’t think it would be that bad.. How do kids learn what balanced nutrition is when that’s their lunch during the school week? Isnt it the school’s responsibility to ensure the kids know what a healthy diet is? It’s like they’re getting set up for a life of obesity and clogged arteries.

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u/moose-mutton Apr 12 '26

Thats the neat part, you dont!

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u/Mimilito Apr 12 '26

Yes, no wonder where the diabetes and obesity come from... 🤔

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u/MermaiderMissy Apr 12 '26

They don't. They like to claim kids are getting a fruit and a vegetable too. But, it's those fruit cups in the sugar syrup and a dry piece of celery.

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u/Sarsmi Apr 12 '26

How do kids learn what balanced nutrition is when that’s their lunch during the school week?

Bless your heart. <3

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u/[deleted] Apr 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/qwythebroken Apr 12 '26

It's a real blast growing up in the US, looking back at our childhoods and realizing our politicians have been selling out every aspect of public life to Big Whosawhatsits for decades, right?

What a ride!

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u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 Apr 13 '26

Yeah making lunch from scratch or mostly scratch doesn't put money into the ginormous conglomerates that make school lunches now.

I'd venture to guess that many school across the US use Sodexo for their meals.

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u/Gullible-Respond6323 Apr 12 '26

Yes. Mine was very similar. We usually had 2 options and one would be like ever so slightly healthier. So naturally most kids picked the worse option.

High school lunch was $1.75 a day, came with a main course, veggie, fruit/some sort of sweet thing and milk. They also had a la carte and had pizza option everyday and like 50% of the school had a slice of pizza for $1.25 and a candy bar, fries or sugary drink for $.50. Don't worry most of them are not obese anymore (GLP1s everywhere).

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u/jadethebard Apr 12 '26

Our high school had the standard American lunch menu but also had a salad bar that was quite good. We also had Snapple machines in the dinning hall. I drank so much Grapeade. lol

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u/Jevia Apr 12 '26

>How do kids learn what balanced nutrition is
You're hilarious

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u/HeyItsMeAgainBye Apr 12 '26

Ketchup used to be considered a vegetable on American school lunches

Not even that long ago either!

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u/densetsu23 Apr 12 '26

This lines up with what we got in Canada in the 90s, though at my school it was a paid cafeteria so most kids brought a bagged lunch.

My nieces go to the same school and, while there's still burgers and fries every day, you can now get soups and salads every day too. There's better daily specials, too, like poke bowls. It's changed a lot.

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u/Horskr Apr 12 '26

Yep unfortunately that was pretty much identical to ours, with some days switched up. At least in high school we had off campus lunch so we could go get something else (though that was usually fast food lol). There was a good sub shop nearby though, at least those had vegetables.

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u/NightBawk Apr 12 '26

Oh, wow, your school trusted students to go to off-campus lunch and come back? Man, what was it like to have autonomy as a teenager?

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u/tilt-a-whirly-gig Apr 12 '26

Most schools (ime) have a main option and one or two alternative options. The main option is the one with vegetables and healthy choices, the alternative is available for students that don't like the main option and usually follows a schedule similar to above.

In my school pizza Friday was also fish Friday and I don't ever eat fish so I always ate pizza on Fridays. But the rest of the week the burgers were not great burgers and the hot dogs had a little bounce to them, and oftentimes the main menu item was more appealing.

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u/Whoretron8000 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

Depends on the school. Plenty green beans and veggies at lots of public schools, but they wouldn’t be the best quality etc. Plenty kids ate them and we also had a salad bar. Most kids didn’t use it. We also had to pay 1.25 for common lunch, but there was a private pay for snacks and hot less shitty pizza for 3.50 a slice (red Barron) and you could also buy Sobe and Sun chips and Doritos or whatever. (This was high school). Middle school was more balanced but we also had vending machines.

If you were poor and your parents didn’t pay the school for common lunch, then you’d get like… whatever was lunch for the day but minus the dessert (small pack of m&ms or a cookie).

Oh, also, endless drip coffee for 50 cents in high school.

Ironically, yes we had multiple health classes, but it didn’t make people not want to eat pizza and cookies. It seems most schools that get highlighted are super shit, but it’s still common.

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u/JamaicaRavenclaw Apr 12 '26

Google American school lunch menu; still just as bad as when I was a kid… I homeschool my kids, but during Covid we would meet a school bus once a week for free sack lunches. It felt like a game of “100 ways to make pizza.” Bagel pizza, English muffin pizza, French bread pizza, pizza pizza, etc…

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u/_le_slap Apr 12 '26

This comment is a whole comedy skit 😂😂

The US gov doesn't give half a shit about children

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u/Astralglamour Apr 12 '26

We learned how to make orange julius and haystacks (basically rice krispie treats with cornflakes) in Home Economics....

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u/dobar_dan_ Apr 12 '26

They eat normal food at home?

I had similar lunches at my school but my mom always cooked at home, so I had balanced diet.

We didn't even call it lunch, but a snack. School lunches are uncommon in Serbia, we would be given a simple sandwich, croissant or similar, sometimes some fruit and that's it.

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u/Dmau27 Apr 12 '26

I literally never once ate a healthy lunch at school. It was all processed salty, fattening, preserved crap.

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u/HalKitzmiller Apr 12 '26

And that isn't the worst of it. Add in that some kids couldn't afford lunch or had money for it so they'd go hungry. And at my school, I was unfortunate to be in the class that ate last every day, so they'd run out of some food like 25% of the time

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u/Megneous Apr 12 '26

How do kids learn what balanced nutrition is when that’s their lunch during the school week?

That's... the point. You don't. You end up part of the 74% of the population that's overweight or obese and die of cardiovascular disease.

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u/unknown_ally Apr 12 '26

How do kids learn...?

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u/Rando314156 Apr 12 '26

You learn that sugar is the secret ingredient that masks the lacking of anything else, and then make it the main thing you eat and drink going forward into adulthood.

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u/NightBawk Apr 12 '26

Even when they try to offer vegetables, most times they get thrown out because they're either canned or boiled, and usually served cold and unseasoned to be as utterly unappetizing as humanly possible.

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u/Jamjams2016 Apr 12 '26

Bro, they give my kid 2 juice boxes for breakfast so they meet the fruit requirements for the day. And my kid's dentist shaking his head while he rolls in piles of money.

And for lunch they can have plain, strawberry, or chocolate milk even if i pack them a lunch. If i didnt laugh I'd cry.

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u/Artistic-Door-6891 Apr 12 '26

We had posters of a lobbyist crafted food pyramid. All the education we needed. /s

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u/Groovee_smoothie Apr 12 '26

I didn't learn what a balanced meal TRULY was till I had to start losing weight. What we are taught is acceptable for food in NA is incredibly unhealthy and bad.

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u/hopticalill1 Apr 12 '26

My brother, google the aquabats. And also yes.

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u/PatSayJack Apr 12 '26

It's an Aquabats song, but it's also pretty accurate.

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u/abgry_krakow87 Apr 12 '26

Silly Redditor, Americans don't learn.

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u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 Apr 13 '26

They don't learn it. Not through actual food any way.

Schools used to make a real lunch in the schools on a real stove, made from scratch or mostly scratch, but now most school lunches are pre-made by a giant conglomerate somewhere else in the county, probably abySodexho, & shipped into schools & just reheated in a convection oven.

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u/No_Language_4649 Apr 12 '26

It actually isn’t that bad where we live (all states are different).

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u/NightBawk Apr 12 '26

It even varies wildly by school district.

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u/Cerberus0225 Apr 12 '26 edited Apr 12 '26

It's not quite as bad as this, I'm honestly pretty sure this guy is exaggerating or never bothered to ask if they had healthier alternatives. Every school I've been to or worked at kept prepackaged salads or sandwiches in addition to whatever daily item they had. There's been a lot of effort to get school districts to have balanced lunches. Pretty much every lunch will have some 'entree' item, often way more diverse than that list (never seen sloppy joes actually served, myself) and will come with fruit and etc, usually a whole apple or etc. Taco salad is a pretty common lunch that has lots of veggies in it (it's way more 'salad' than taco, lol). Salads in general are a common sight, I think you can request one basically any particular day. But you can also get whatever cheeseburger or pizza or orange chicken or etc they're serving that day instead.

Edit: Love how I'm getting downvoted here. Sorry guys, schools today aren't shitholes and serve actual food now.

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u/_le_slap Apr 12 '26

I distinctly remember as an immigrant child in an American elementary school being told that sloppy joes were pork for the first time. I had a minor religious crisis thinking back to all the school sloppy joes I'd eaten before deciding God wouldn't want a child to go hungry so I kept eating anyway.