In my country, there’s no US style cafeteria (instead it’s a canteen where it’s up to the student if they want to buy anything) some bring their own lunches (home or leftovers) to school, so why do American kids rely on cafeteria food instead of bringing their own?
I mean, is cafeteria food across American schools that bad? It depends on where one resides or if they attend a public or private school. In my case I went to a private (Catholic) high school and the food there is actually good (& cheap when converted to USD).
It absolutely depends on where the funding comes from. I know someone who works student nutrition for a school district that doesn’t receive state funds, it’s all county school tax funded. They chose to contract out to a company that provides the food. Usually this is a recipe for disaster, but they actually provide high quality food. All fruit or vegetables are fresh, not frozen or canned. All food is prepared fresh daily, no microwaves. Their food is so good, every employee that she knows, eats the food too. This is in stark contrast to prison food level quality found in many districts.
Very literally prison food.
Public schools in the US often contract with companies to provide the school lunches, and the companies fulfilling those contracts are often exactly the same companies that provide food for prisoners in the prison system.
This is a false equivalence. The same company providing food for two different markets might be providing two different menus. Like a cake company which makes different cakes, and also some bread products, maybe some biscuits… you wouldn’t open a box of biscuits and find a cake inside. Except maybe Jaffa Cakes. What was I saying again?
Oh yeah, faulty logic, but it wouldn’t surprise me if there were some mix-and-matching going on. Capitalism gotta capitalise.
Sometimes the school food is actually worse because our prisons are much better funded than our schools.
It’s literally the same food in some areas, 1 for 1, no false equivalences. Like I could go to jail and get served the same thing available in the school cafeteria.
It’s not all that different for restaurants, you could go to 10 different ones and get the same Sysco Tyson chicken patty.
There’s only a few suppliers for everyone, the main difference within a supplier is the different tiers of quality you can order.