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Comment by rkomorn | Hacker News Reader

> Occasionally I will see posted the beautiful school lunches given to children in many European countries. Nutritious, appetizing, made from scratch.

Man, comments like these compared to my 10+ school years in France really make me wonder wtf happened in my 3 different schools' cafeterias.

My 3 and change years in 2 US schools definitely had tastier food.

IDK if my expectations of food in France (my home country) were just higher and harder to meet. I don't think that was the case.

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The quality of food is probably extremely variable across schools even in the same general region. I’ve seen some pictures of really appealing lunches plucked from European schools. But how many different schools are there in Europe?

I'm guessing a bigger consideration is whether what appears online is subject to selection bias (especially when the context is "look how much better the food in European schools is").

Maybe it's also changed a lot. My anecdata is admittedly not recent since I am also "not recent."

Absolutely. I work at a school where the food is OK, but just, and the school across the street has very good food. One of our students used to sneak into the other school in the mornings for breakfast. He made the mistake of bringing the food back to our school where people asked questions, and pretty soon the other school knew he wasn't their student and banned him.

Something seems really off to me about different kids within a couple hundred feet of each other getting drastically different quality of food.

In the Netherlands no elementary schools have any cafeteria, kitchen or lunch area at all. Kids bring their own lunchbox, with usually some sandwiches, fruit and water, and eat inside the classroom.

Same in Germany, and not just for elementary schools but also secondary schools. At least that's how it was decades ago when I was a student, maybe it's different now.

My relatives live in Germany and in all schools their kids were in school gave out lunches. They were not packing own luch and did not considered sandwitch as a proper lunch.

Is a sandwitch made with Salemi?

(Sorry.)

In the Netherlands we eat bread for lunch. Many Southern Europeans have been brought to tears when they were invited "for lunch".

The classic cheese sandwich and a glass of milk. So remember it can always get worse.

Cheese sandwich and a glass of milk sounds genuinely better than extremely overcooked, watery pasta with watery slices of pork.

If you solely looked at my schools' menus on paper (or arguably even in pictures), sure, it would've seemed good.

Side note: I lived in the Netherlands (but went to school in Belgium, so I have zero experience with school meals) as a young kid. I do remember chocolate sprinkles on toast being a thing, though!

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