Chicago school bans lunches brought from home

I can buy a loaf of bread, white or wheat, at Wal Mart for $1. A pack of bologna for $2. A bunch of bananas for $2.50. A pack of juice boxes for $2. That amounts to two weeks worth of lunches (about 10 lunches) for $7.50/ 75 cents per lunch. I can add a bag of chips or cookies or fruit snacks and still come in under a buck a day for a lunch for my kid.
It can be done.

 

You can get 2 weeks of lunches out of one loaf of bread?

 

School lunches are nutritious? Ha! I remember the disgusting orange "pizza" that our cafeteria served and we decided to conduct an experiment. We squeezed the pizza and drained off the orange, gooey grease. It filed up a coffee cup to the brim. Ewwwww. Yesterday's meatloaf is today's...sloppy joes.

This is the nanny state at its worst. But really, follow the money. The Feds fund free lunches. The contractor that provides the free lunches gets paid to provide said lunches. Want to make more money? Ban all of the home-brought lunches. Use it with that liberty-destroying catch-all "we've got to do it for the children!"

Cripes.

 

Again, you can't tell me the lunch-meat filled sandwhich I make my kid, with generally carrots and yogurt or something along those lines isn't better for him than the mozzarella cheese sticks that they had as the main dish at his school the other day.

 

Could this be a badly-handled way to make the kids who get free lunch not feel bad?

I have only worked in one school where there weren't any lunch issues. Those issues included repeated delinquency on the lunch account resulting in the kid being handed a cheese sandwich instead of lunch. A kid bringing raw ground meat in his lunch because mom told him to pack his own lunch. And my favorite, an able-bodied, normally developed second-grader whose mother brought him subway every day, broke it into to pieces for him before he ate and made him sit with her away from his classmates. Mom later complained that the kid was a social outcast.

The school with no lunch issues? Ninety-eight percent of the kids were on free or reduced lunch. So every one took the school lunch. There was no ticket scanning, no lunch count and no whining over choice of entrees. Those who could pay for the lunch took care of it discreetly with the office staff.

 

Why do you hate capitalism?

 

20 slices of bread. 10 sandwiches. Five days in a typical school week. If there is a minimum day or short week, I can make a loaf of bread last three weeks.

 

Went to the store today and kept the receipt to make sure I wasn't going crazy.

Apples came out to 35 cents each, large bananas came out to 23 cents each, and I paid $1.48 for a loaf of Sunbeam. (They had generic store brand for 68 cents for a full loaf, but the expiration date was rubbed off so I took that as a bad sign).

I guess I've never lived in a major metro area, but $3 for a loaf and $1 for an apple seems absurd.

 

Hows your bread taste at the end of that?

 

Just fine. Store bread is so loaded with preservatives it'll last three weeks easily.

When I've got time on my hands, I sometimes bake my own at about 30 cents a loaf, but it doesn't last more than a few days.

 

Somebody posted this here a while ago, and while I've never done it, I did bookmark it.

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/11/04/homemade-bread-cheap-delicious-healthy-and-easier-than-you-think/

Actually, I'll bet it was Rick who posted it.

 

Cool deal on your pricing, but does junior ever get a vegetable? Try giving him two servings of veggies and a hot entree for around a buck and see what your school lunch director is up against.