[Coffeewine]

Pertaining to that observation, I really liked this section:

> In 2022, California became the first of a half dozen or so states to offer free school meals to all students, regardless of family income. Dillard supports free meals for all students with an emphatic, “Yes, yes, yes!” Food should not be based on income, she says: “It should be part of the school day. Your transportation is of no charge to students. School books are no charge to students. School lunch should be of no charge to students. … It’s just the right thing to do.”

On one hand, that seems like an excellent argument to use for free school lunches. On the other hand, it feels like school busses are like libraries, accidents of history out of step with the modern world. If this became a rallying cry there'd probably be a strong pushback to start charging kids to be taken to school.

[michaelrpeskin]

We did "free" lunch for all here a couple of years ago. The idea is great, execution is terrible. You can't get a la carte free, only the full "FDA approved" lunch is free. So if you forget a drink, or just want to add a snack to your own packed lunch, you go get the whole thing and throw everything else away.

The elementary school tried adding the "share table" where you can put anything you don't want so that someone else could pick it up, but that was shut down because they could assure the feds that everyone was getting a "balanced" lunch.

My highschooler tells me of all the kids going through line multiple times to get pizza on pizza day and then throwing the rest away because they don't want that.

Of course we had a second tax that was approved this year because the free lunches were more expensive than they had planned. Wonder why.

[64756salad638]

If you wouldn’t mind sharing, what school district was this?

I’m curious to research and learn more! What accounts for the budget overrun? Are there stats on how many free meals were taken per student (especially if this was broken down on a per-day basis, this could back up the “pizza” explanation)?

[Spivak]

I mean this is the nanny state at its best. Getting in the way of progress because you refuse to meet people, in this case kids, where they actually are. The challenge should be minimizing the amount of waste—cook literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then try to nudge toward healthier options while keeping your waste % low. Let them take any subset of the lunch as they please, prune dishes kids either don't take or leave behind until you have a menu.

Mind boggling how getting the kids actually fed is lower on the priority list than making sure they eat the "right" things.

[somerandomqaguy]

Not exactly easy. The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety. I can't imagine developing it for far more numerous school children is going to be any easier.

[scrps]

faint sound of fading laughter from a US SSBN

If you want a successful lunch program (and rations if you have a to-go bag) look no further than the US Navy's sub program.

Given the environment and danger (and having a bunch of humans in close proximity, deep under the ocean, with nowhere to go, hangry, is not going to inspire unit cohesion) they get really, really good food. Which is probably not a bad thing to give people tooling around with enough firepower to take out a few dozen cities.

[gishh]

The sub nukies I know would disagree with this. The few weeks before they would get back to port they just eat whatever they can find.

Storage is a big deal on a sub.

[scrps]

Ah didn't know that, thanks!

[komali2]

Whenever I watch a video about American military nutrition, the only takeaway I have is "are these people incompetent?"

Sailors in the USA navy get fat after their first deployment, common knowledge. Why? Because half the time their food is frozen chicken nuggets, frozen tater tots, etc, chucked into the oven, served bulk at mess.

2025's most well funded army, that's the best they came up with? Why not just freeze non deep fried chicken breast? Why not use lentils for carbs? Why not fast-freeze dry vegetables?

In any case I don't see the relevance for schools. Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals.

[krapp]

>Hire a chief lunch lady who has the same job a head chef does - find the local produce and dairy and fish and meat, plan meals and portions, organize supply, and direct meals.

Who's going to pay for all of that? Not the American taxpayer, who would consider it theft and waste, and not the poor kids who actually need school lunches, and probably not their parents.

You'll wind up with a Macdonald's kiosk in every school cafeteria, and vending machines full of Monster energy drinks.

[thaumasiotes]

I found a twitter thread years ago that talked about how the author had gone to school with a lot of (US) mafia children, and the school had unsurprisingly provided lunch via a local vendor with mob connections. Presumably some of the money wound up going to the mob.

But, the thread pointed out, since high-level mafia officials sent their children to that school, they had no interest in skimping on the lunches. And the lunches were excellent. After a big FBI bust, the mob-affiliated vendor was replaced with a major interstate school lunch vendor, and the quality of the food was rock-bottom.

I've tried to find the thread again, but I can't. If anyone else wants to dedicate an unreasonable amount of time to it, I'm pretty sure I originally found it through a links post on Marginal Revolution.

[jimbokun]

The ladies discussed in this article.

[thaumasiotes]

> The US military (hell just about every army on the planet) spends a lot of money and effort into developing field rations that are palatable enough for infantry sections on the move to eat in it's entirety.

Why? That's not even a real concept. If you want everyone to like everything they have, you can't do that without letting them trade away the stuff they hate.

[somerandomqaguy]

From the horse's mouth?

>The CMNR reviewed many of these studies when they were initially completed and noticed that underconsumption of the ration appeared to be a consistent problem. Typically, soldiers did not consume sufficient calories to meet energy expenditure and consequently lost body weight. The energy deficit has been in the range of 700 to 1,000 kcal/d and thus raises concern about the influence of such a deficit on physical and cognitive performance, particularly over a period of extended use. Anecdotal reports from Operation Desert Storm, for example, indicated that some units may have used MREs as their sole source of food for 50 to 60 days—far longer than the original intent when the MRE was initially field tested. > >There have been successive modifications of the MRE since 1981. These modifications in type of food items, diversity of meals, packaging, and food quality have produced small improvements in total consumption but have not significantly reduced the energy deficit that occurs when MREs are consumed. This problem continues in spite of positive hedonic ratings of the MRE ration items in laboratory and field tests. The suboptimal intake of operational rations thus remains a major issue that needs to be evaluated.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25121269/

Or to summarize it; soldiers weren't eating the full MRE's in Desert Storm, and it a widespread problem. Soldiers that weren't meeting their caloric intake requirements were suffering cognitive issues while in combat operations. Bit of an issue when you've got two groups of people trying to kill each other and not their own side.

So they figured the best option to get the soldiers to eat their rations was to keep improving and updating until soldiers were more inclined to eat the whole damn thing. I don't know if they've succeeded per say but they have been updating the menus pretty consistently since the 90's. I think only the beef stew and a few other meal items have stayed consistent over the last 30 years of MRE's.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Why?

You don’t want the dude trading away everything for desserts kapooting midway mission because his bowels are in uprising.

[thaumasiotes]

So what? If you think that problem exists in the first place, you still have no choice but to address it by doing something that is possible to do.

[pxc]

Agreed, though the term makes for a funny metaphor in this case— a good nanny would likely take the same approach you describe here: meeting the kids where they're at and trying to encourage them to eat better along the way instead of making food just for it to be thrown away.

[pqtyw]

> literally anything where the kids will clean their plates then

Feeding kids sugar and hen nudging them to eat slightly less sugar while still providing inherently unhealthy meals seems suboptimal. Them cleaning their plates is not an inherently a good thing. Rather the opposite.

> making sure they eat the "right" things.

Certainly better than feeding them the wrong things? though.

It's not like starvation or malnourishment is the main issue when a significant proportion of children are overweight. Them eating crap is...

[Spivak]

It's always a treat when the exact problem I'm describing shows up in the replies. Yes feed them sugar. Children have a significantly heightened sweet tooth until adolescence where it slowly declines and they develop more complex tastes and a tolerance for "adult" flavors. When I bake for kids I have to make it cloyingly sweet to an adult palate and it gets snarfed down. And it's also why Funfetti cake doesn't hit like it did as a kid because your tastes have changed. Trying to impose adult standards on kids is native at best and futile in aggregate—you can only serve it, you can't make them eat it and they won't.

You understand how moronic it sounds to prepare and serve food that kids won't eat in the hopes that they eat less, right? Plus free lunch programs are to deal with malnourishment and to make sure kids get at least one full meal a day.

My elementary school, which was a private school and so wasn't beholden to any government meddling, followed this formula and it worked out great. Every meal was carbs, protein, and sugar, and everything was sweet. It wasn't an apple, it was fruit cocktail in syrup, the pizza had sweetened bread and sauce, vegetables were sweat peas, carrots, and corn. Every student was put on a rotation to clean trays so I got to see first hand what the waste situation was. And it wasn't zero but you didn't see a tray full of food minus pizza coming back.

[pqtyw]

> serve food that kids won't eat in the hopes that they eat less, right?

Not hope as such. Ideally they eat it eventually. If they are not allowed to eat unhealthy foods they won't have much of an option. Even the most obstinate ones will change their mind after spending a couple of days being hungry.

> followed this formula and it worked out great

And they didn't end up being overweight?

[Spivak]

This really does keep getting worse, first you were just wasting money for your ideals now you're suggesting we purposely let kids go hungry until they behave in the way you want. We're beyond they just don't happen to like what's being served but you're trying territory and into they're going to eat it and like it or they don't get lunch. Please don't ever run for your local school board.

And no we didn't all turn out overweight, it's been a minute but I think in my grade there were three "fat kids," two girls and one boy. I really don't understand why you take being overweight as the natural consequence of this. Kids crave sweets because it's calories and they're growing. In my early teens the size of my meals were on the order of two Chipotle burritos or the entire taco twelve pack and I was a perfectly normal weight. I mean I was a girl in high school so I didn't exactly think that back then but I was fine. It wasn't until I was post college and had depression that I put any kind of significant weight.

[watwut]

I find this attitude super weird. Adults are responsible for what kids eat and problem of kids taking multiple lunches can be solved by allowing them to go only once.

What is weird is that American kids seems to be taught to refuse "healthy" food. Somehow the problem of kids refusing fruits and real food is something that happens only once in a while with few kids elsewhere, but is apparently epidemic in america.

[Spivak]

Yes we are responsible for what kids eat, it's why it's all the more maddening we have adults who come up with a menu of how they wished kids ate, made it policy, and take literally no responsibility for the (I think very predictable) outcome.

[watwut]

Except it seems to me more that American adults sort of want kids not eat that and fish for anecdotes of kids not eating normal food.

The issue in post is kids who just want a snack in addition to lunch. Kids that are getting lunch as lunch eat it.

Frankly, free lunch dont have to come with free snack pizza for those who dont eqt lunch.

[komali2]

As an American if I paid the same taxes but the half that's spent on building -b2 bombers- fine, substitute for "devices used to kill people I'll never meet in countries I'll never see," instead went to giving kids so much food they threw half of it away, I would be ecstatic with this change in the distribution of my taxes.

[simmonmt]

They stopped building B2 bombers 25 years ago.

[mylies43]

And now we build B21s

[jimbokun]

Today, libraries are more amazing and more necessary than ever.

With online services constantly changing what is or isn't available, having a library with physical media, books, and even their own services for borrowing audio books and other online media, can be a real asset when trying to watch a specific movie or TV show or listen to a particular song the streamers decided to stop offering, or moved to a different service you're not subscribed to, etc.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

For getting media made inaccessible, you could just do what all those many countries around the world without good public libraries do: pirate it. Talk to anyone serious about cinema as an art form in Eastern Europe or the developing world, and Bittorrent was their school, not a library or a paid streaming platform.

In any event, I agree that public libraries are good, but it is easy to see that momentum in the USA for sustaining them has slowed: on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.

[nathan_compton]

> on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.

Don't get where you are coming from. I'm american and everywhere I've ever gone into a library its been great. Everyone I know with kids (including myself) visits the library all the time, often daily, at least weekly.

[pxc]

The university I went to did start restricting hours (requiring student IDs for more of them than it used to) during my time there, apparently to try to divert some homeless people away at night.

But I've never actually been to a library that didn't feel safe, clean, and comfortable when I was there, including that one. I certainly never saw any signs of drug use, or anyone browsing pornography.

[pxc]

I also want to add that being homeless isn't the same thing as being disorderly, frightening, unfriendly, or smelly.

Over the years, I've had friends who were homeless (depending on the person, before or during the times that I've known them). Sometimes they have a lot of difficulty getting bank accounts, jobs, or apartments in part because of documentation issues or bureaucratic tasks that they need internet access to solve. Libraries are a lifeline that helps homeless people rebuild stable lives.

Libraries should be sanctuaries and feel safe for everyone, including the most precarious people in society.

[mikkupikku]

You should stop believing that you can learn what America is like by reading about it online or in the media. Homeless scum making libraries unusable is extremely rare in America, if in fact it ever happens at all. I regularly visit libraries everywhere I go and only a few times did I ever see anything even like that and it was limited to one or two street people wandering around in the lobby or hidden off in some corner. Even in Seattle where the number of street junkies sprawled out on sidewalks was far too high for my standards of decency, the public library downtown was absolutely pristine. You might sometimes see a bum in the ground floor going for the toilets, but that's it. They otherwise avoid the library, it has nothing for them. Porn? They have phones I guess, I've never once seen a computer room overflowing with street coomers. I'm not saying it never happened somewhere at some time, but it's not a regular thing.

Also, I don't just visit big flagship libraries in big cities. Libraries in metro suburb areas and also libraries in small rural working class towns are places I've been to many times without seeming anything like what you've described. All across America, libraries are clean and designed to be safe and inviting places for families of all ages.

Of course what I've written is just a other online account which you shouldn't blindly believe. You shouldn't have beliefs one way or the other about American libraries unless you've actually visited American libraries yourself. If you aren't even American, then the status of American libraries shouldn't be something you pretend to be informed about. It shouldn't even be something you pretend to have an opinion about. It's like my opinion on Luxemburg supermarkets; I have none! I've never been in one and they're far from my life so I can't just walk into one. I have no opinion on them, have no reason to pretend to have an opinion, have no reason to believe I can form meaningful opinions about them by reading about them online. Somehow people can't manage this when it comes to America.

[i80and]

> on American-dominated forums people often view public libraries nowadays as a place for the smelly homeless to hang out, look at porn, and possibly shoot up.

I think this says far more about your specific forum bubbles than anything else, to be honest.

At worst I see a perception that libraries are for children.

[HeinzStuckeIt]

If you do a DDG search site:news.ycombinator.com "libraries" "homeless", you find some such discussions from this very site. But as I said, you can also find this across the internet when forums are dominated by Americans and it’s certainly not limited to obscure and dodgy venues.

I suppose it is the big-city Americans who are complaining about the social problems. But it’s also common to see from small-town Americans that opening hours at their local library have been slashed, which also speaks to declining support for them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> school busses are like libraries

I’m reading a book from my county library right now.

They also have a library of things, which means I can borrow e.g. a sewing machine or laminator, as well as an area where we can use a laser cutter, 3D printer and soon, a micro mill, all for free. (You bring your own materials.)

Whenever I’m in there it’s packed with adults and students. They also have a terrific lecture series, the most recent of which was by a local homebuilder describing new bioconcretes she’s been using.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

It seems odd to me that anyone would need an argument in favor of free school lunch. School is mandatory between certain ages and it's free. Let's just make meals free as well.

And I'm not sure how school buses are out of step with "the modern world." What are you proposing? Uber or something?

For the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we sure seem to spend a lot of time discussing why we shouldn't spend money on social causes.

[carlosjobim]

The argument would be that parents have an obligation to feed their children. That's the least you could expect of them.

[HeyLaughingBoy]

Awesome. And as for the ones who are not able to for some reason that you apparently can't comprehend, what do you propose?

[carlosjobim]

What happens in reality in those cases?

[supportengineer]

In California where I live there's no school buses. You're on your own to get to school, fortunately there are so many neighborhood schools that almost everyone can walk.

I love that my tax dollars are being used to feed kids at school.

[devonbleak]

As someone who lives near a school I can say school buses are very much a necessity and they are getting modernized. I see an electric one consistently going through the neighborhood. And I much prefer them to hundreds more cars or pedestrians going through the neighborhood (people drive like maniacs through the residential streets here).

[tstrimple]

Imagine the conservative backlash to the concept of libraries if they hadn’t grown up with them. The panic and hysteria they would generate over the idea that people could access books without paying for them! Communism! You’re making authors into slaves!

[ryandrake]

Or, some goofball centrist would say "Good idea, but why shouldn't we charge people and make them profitable?? Government should be run like a business!"