Lunch from Home: Chips

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

Parents often say the food at school is so bad, they would much rather pack their kid's lunch at home.

From what I've seen, the lunch kids bring from home often is much worse than what the schools are serving. It's a funny thing what some parents think is appropriate lunch food.

I couldn't help noticing this girl, for instance, who was diving into a plastic shopping bag crammed with an assortment of different chips and cheese puffs.

I suppose the trick is to pack enough different kinds of chips to maintain a child's interest.

Is this anything like what you call lunch?

What for Lunch: Turkey Sandwich, Chips from Home

By Ed Bruske
aka The Slow Cook

This looks a lot like the lunches I ate when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure I always brought a brown bag lunch from home with some kind of sandwich. Except I don't think we had "turkey ham" in those days, made out of turkey thighs "chunked and formed." And a plastic cup with mayo?

The kids are probably more likely to eat the carrots in this plastic bag than the steamed carrots they are often served. (Did you know that these are not actually "baby" carrots, but regular carrots that are industrially "sanded" to make them look junior-size?)

This was the alternative: spaghetti with meat sauce. I believe these are the famous "beef crumbles," made with government commodity beef and soy protein by a company in Cincinnati. They arrive frozen and are poured into a steamer to reheat, then sauced. The spaghetti also is cooked in a pan in the steamer, proving that you don't actually need a stove to make school food.

And this is what one fourth-grade girl brought from home to eat with her lunch. In some public schools, this would not be allowed. Junk food is confiscated.

Stax

They say the food kids bring from home often is worse than what's served at school. You can't get stuff like this at my daughter's elementary school. But you often see kids with junk food in their backpacks. Stax, made from "potato flakes" and a long list of processed food components, deliver 150 calories in each 1-ounce serving.

It's not unusual to see kids eating Cheetos for breakfast.

What's in your child's backpack?